One Last Dance

I should have added "this month" to my short verbage of needing to quit, stemming from yet another head-on-brick-wall night.

After an extended losing streak two years ago, I thought I could weather through just about any losses or "beats", but after two months of the same shit every night I realized I'm just not strong enough to play through it. The final blow was similar to last week's Dookie when someone decided to play any four cards for a significant amount of chips and went runner runner to crack me. Then some comments of "BOOOOOOOOOOM" and "classic" were spewed in the chat which just salted the wound. Meaningless of course, classless maybe, but they couldn't know how badly I've been kicked around, and they shouldn't even care. Having fun should be why you play unless your mortgage depends on it, and right now I'm not having that fun.

I suppose I could let the venom shoot on this page about the non-textbook play but there's no up side to it, people were just having fun at my expense, its happened my whole life I just deal with it and move on to the next TPS report. But to watch people win in such a manner over and over takes the fun away, the competition, the reason I play in the first place. So congrats to whoever that was last night, and thank you for opening my eyes to what poker really is.

Timing and luck.

I give myself more lottery tickets getting my money in "ahead" more often then not as analogy by Doyle was said a couple of years ago, but without some good timing and luck your bankroll will tank just like mine has, almost to the point where cashing out entirely (which is not that much anymore) and walking away have started to creep into my thoughts. If you don't believe poker is timing and luck then I seriously implore you to look into your game. Granted you can make "great reads" and "level 15 type plays" after pouring over PokerTracker stats, 2+2 and PocketFive posts, pay-for-coaching poker videos, game theory tomes, and the countless poker books out there, but if your read is entirely off you can end up looking no better then a penny game pro that watched Bill Fillmaff videos for expert poker play (he does rock).

Timing is everything.

If I can't be funny during the day at work or while flipping Kyra over my shoulder, there's something seriously fucked up and like I mentioned yesterday if the black cloud slithered into my personal life, I'd quit for awhile.

Tonight will be my last test. Thursday night has always been my "fun" night of poker with plenty of girly chat, freeflowing drinks and non-"serious" poker. Should my Full Tilt bankroll dip below a pre-set amount, then I'll be hanging it up for the balance of the month and start again fresh in April playing at lower limits which is going to take some serious ego suppressing as I've never gone backwards in limits in nearly four years.

Edit: Just found this. Minnesota's second card club, Running Aces Harness Park, is finally going live!!! Hopefully the online poker gods leave me enough scraps to visit on opening day April 11th.