Dangerous Mood Swings
For some reason I sunk further and further into a mighty torpor over the weekend. I blame Coral/Eurobet. All day yesterday I wanted to play poker but I thought "No, I'll save myself for the $20K guaranteed". By that time I could hardly be arsed, and had already started watching Fight Club (disturbing but very good). Perhaps the film induced some kind of testosterone surge because I bluffed off all my chips, something I very rarely do online, for the simple reason that it's usually a fucking stupid thing to do. This being no exception.
But for some other unknown reason I felt great this morning, breezed through the day and fired up a couple of $20 comps just to get my mojo back. Which it seems to be, as I worked up to 25K on Crypto before, erm, doing the lot losing 4/5 allins. Fine by me, you can have your 3 9th places, I'll take my 25th, 18th and 2nd and we'll see who's alright in the end.
I've been thinking about some aspects of Buddhism lately, particularly some of the Zen stuff I've read. I read somewhere about different aspects of your life, or a task, being like spokes of a wheel. If one spoke is much longer than the others, making it longer still doesn't help. In poker tournaments, I can view my short stack game as being the longest spoke. I know how to play a short stack inside out back to front upside down with my eyes shut. Sorry, but I do. Honing that still further is a bit of a waste of time unless I can bring my bigger stack/smaller blinds game up to scratch. Which is what I was trying to do this evening in the cheap tournaments. And it felt good, so we'll spin it up some more.
In life, there's a song by Crowded House which I must have heard 100 times without actually listening to the words. "All I ask / Is to live each moment / Free from the last". Do you see what they mean ? I have a terrible habit of dwelling on the past, mentally. Thinking about mistakes and what might have been. What I'm trying to do now is, when I find myself wandering off and thinking that way, just pushing the thought to one side and thinking instead about what I'm doing now. Or supposed to be doing instead of daydreaming. Or if daydreaming is OK, thinking about what I could do in the future. Try it, as the Buddhists say. It might work. What difference if it doesn't. I feel better for it anyway.
But for some other unknown reason I felt great this morning, breezed through the day and fired up a couple of $20 comps just to get my mojo back. Which it seems to be, as I worked up to 25K on Crypto before, erm, doing the lot losing 4/5 allins. Fine by me, you can have your 3 9th places, I'll take my 25th, 18th and 2nd and we'll see who's alright in the end.
I've been thinking about some aspects of Buddhism lately, particularly some of the Zen stuff I've read. I read somewhere about different aspects of your life, or a task, being like spokes of a wheel. If one spoke is much longer than the others, making it longer still doesn't help. In poker tournaments, I can view my short stack game as being the longest spoke. I know how to play a short stack inside out back to front upside down with my eyes shut. Sorry, but I do. Honing that still further is a bit of a waste of time unless I can bring my bigger stack/smaller blinds game up to scratch. Which is what I was trying to do this evening in the cheap tournaments. And it felt good, so we'll spin it up some more.
In life, there's a song by Crowded House which I must have heard 100 times without actually listening to the words. "All I ask / Is to live each moment / Free from the last". Do you see what they mean ? I have a terrible habit of dwelling on the past, mentally. Thinking about mistakes and what might have been. What I'm trying to do now is, when I find myself wandering off and thinking that way, just pushing the thought to one side and thinking instead about what I'm doing now. Or supposed to be doing instead of daydreaming. Or if daydreaming is OK, thinking about what I could do in the future. Try it, as the Buddhists say. It might work. What difference if it doesn't. I feel better for it anyway.
2 Comments:
Some Zen concepts for Poker:
Don't worry about getting even. You are even.
When you get black Aces and you raise, and then flop JT9 of hearts, you are in a worse position than when you get a free ride with A2off and flop 22J rainbow. No hand is a goldmine, but all hands have potential. Accept the strength of your hand as it is, not as it might have been or you feel it ought to be.
Some nights you will sit down at a bigger game than usual, and you will end up breaking even, having gone nowhere all night.
Just because you have folded 25 hands on the trot, that is no reason to reward yourself with unjustified activity.
Pete
The Galloway interpretation:
Don't worry about getting even. You won't today, so don't spend any time worrying about it. Instead, worry about which of the 34 online accounts you have pays out the fastest in the vain hope that the wife won't notice the hole you just left in the joint account.
When the flop comes down 9TJ it is a blessed relief and you get away from it having only lost 3/4 of the pot on the flop. When it comes down 22J you get your A2 ripped up and stuffed up your arse by some joker that calls for all of it with 66 and spikes it on the river.
Some nights you will sit down in a bigger game and watch your dipshit opponent hit his (worse) kicker 5 times on the trot and wish you had gone nowhere instead.
I couldn't think of one for 25 hands - I've never folded that many!! Surely one of those little JT's must have been worth a little action raise?
You guessed it - not my best week ever online.....
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