What addiction?

I’ve been on quite a heater the past few days in the SNG universe. For the month I’m already up 2k, and as per usual I still haven’t been playing as much as I should be.

I can remember back when I first started playing online, that I couldn’t wait to get home from school/work to play. I’d play all night and day, and any hour or minute in between. This is a common theme for me with things I enjoy. Once I get hooked on something I become obsessive and can’t stop doing it. Generally if something is good enough to hook me like this (usually video games) I can’t stop without external interference – usually in the form of my girlfriend, friends or family members scheduling an intervention to get me to stop. I always thought poker would be the next in line of things I needed to be physically removed from.

But it hasn’t happened that way. I have really slowed down this year compared to last. It’s most likely due to the fact that I’m not doing it strictly for entertainment anymore. But I don’t think that is all there is too it. Sometimes I really find myself just simply not having fun. Whether it because I’m cold decked, getting sucked out on or just not winning, poker for me can actually suck at times. And it is the combination of this propensity to suck and the added negative impact of losing money which keeps me from playing excessively, like I would any other activity I enjoy. I need to trick myself into playing by doing something else really boring for an hour, then I compare poker’s relative entertainment value and it starts to look viable. And it truly is that bad sometimes for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I can’t imagine a better lifestyle. Poker has provided me with my dream – the dream of any sloth – doing nothing and getting paid for it. And it is my inner-sloth that leads me to avoiding poker, as even that is too much “work”, especially when I’m up for the day/week/month.

That being said, I’m always on the lookout for creative/new ways to enjoy my poker experience, because at its essence, I enjoy the game of poker thoroughly. I’ve expended more mental energy learning this game than any schooling or video game in my life. I enjoy taking things I’ve realized, applying them and seeing payoffs.

I came across a post at 2+2 detailing a challenge one poster had about playing 100 games at each SNG level, and tracking results. This co-insides with a discussion I had with a friend who commonly plays the $15 SNG games on stars. We came to the conclusion that a different skill set is needed to beat the $15 games compared to the $60 games. People are much more willing to put their tournament at risk with less than marginal hands, even on the bubble, so it would be more efficient to push less and wait for the donks to knock each other out. It’s an interesting hypothesis, one that makes intuitive sense. But if there is one thing I’ve learned about intuition and playing SNGs is that your intuition when you first start playing is dead wrong. It is generally –EV to sit around and wait for others to knock each other out, hence the whole pushbot phenomenon that dominates the games today. The reason pushbotting dominates is because when new players sit down they think they are playing smart by folding and trying to sneak into the money and avoiding going broke, when really in the long run they are giving up heaps of EV.

All that said, I think with the weekend starting, my poker boredom at an all time high and my curiosity with this experiment peaking, I think I’ll try it out. I may drop it down to 50 games at each level as 100 games are going to take hella-long. I’ll probably 10 table the first few levels until I get back to the $60 games, and maybe if my balls have dropped by then I’ll jump up to the $110 games for a little tester.

A toast to new adventures in Poker


Thanks old indian man, you can sit down now.