Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Calling to Fold

I broke a rule about playing poker last night and was smite for two stacks by calling stations and persons with less intelligence then your average front quarter panel of a Yugo.

It seems after you’ve received shock therapy that the 50,000 volts of punishment for touching the offending behavior, that people really don’t learn. I set a rule “don’t play when others are up”, every once in a while I’ll find myself floating for a flush card to hit or playing three tables while attending to my love one’s sore feet.

And I lose. Every. Time.

After two years of setting this constraint (which has exceptions, like a blogger tourney, FTOPS-type qualifier, or playing lower limit SnGs when the kids are almost in bed) I still manage to give away mobneys that should have gone towards a trip this summer or increased the bankroll to a point at which I’d feel comfortable moving up.

But nooooooooooooooo, the gambling monkey inside was beating against the cage after watching a table where the players didn’t seem to care about silly things like paired boards or possible flushes. If you don’t put much weight on WHEN you play versus how you play (strategy, book knowledge, not sucking), then I challenge players to look at their spreadsheets and poker tracker stats and see WHEN those bad session were and give yourself some insight as to why you thought it was a good idea to bluff a flush card for a whole stack when the calling station was going to call down anyway.

Never would you think of doing that. Right?

Thanks for dropping by, now I’m going to wallow in self-pity tonight and force myself not to even turn on the laptop. The monkey is beaten but not in a lubed up way and needs to rest.

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