Losing that loving feeling
I have to admit, it takes something very significant in poker to get my attention these days. I'm confident in my longterm winrate and my brain has become (relatively) desensitized to the natural swings that poker brings. This relegates my brain to just "mindlessly" play through the variance to achieve said winrate. Obviously big wins and losses still affect me, but the scales have changed dramatically since I first started.
Take for instance this week. I played solid all week and brought in an above average haul. Friday night I get drunk and play and drop $1.5k. And to be honest, I could really care less. Sure I'll have to put in an extra few hours at the table to make up for it but thats it. I know its coming back, its just a matter of time. While this confidence is helpful in playing the game of poker, it also could have dangerous side effects.
Since my emotions have become increasingly less of a factor when playing I tend to play a much more robotic game. This style is a winning style (for now) but I'm positive I'm not challenging myself to improve. And if you lose the desire to improve and adapt in poker, you lose the desire to win.
All this can also been seen in the microcosm of my life as well. When I read back on this blog throughout the years, I can see myself giving less and less attention to individual hands. I can go on stretches of 10-20k hands where I don't really feel the need to post a single hand. Most of the time when I am reflecting on the hands I played that day I can quickly assign the net result into a few categories that I've already "dealt with" in my psyche. For example if I lost a pot with Kings vs Aces preflop it doesn't even hit my radar since it was an inevitability and just part of variance - therefore I can quickly stash that away in the the variance drawer. If another hand I overplay my hand and lose my stack, I can put that in the "I'm a retard" drawer. Trust me that one is overflowing.
But rare is the hand where I can identify a unique problem that actually makes me question my entire game. This type of hand used to be a daily occurrence. Obviously this makes sense due to the fact that if I play more hands I'm going to become more familiar with situations that become common. But the fact that I rarely get riled up over an individual hand still scares me. I need that emotion to keep my brain active. I need it to continue to become a better poker player.
Its interesting, this phenomenon. It is often said that emotion and poker must be separated for success to occur. And while I believe this to be true on a basic level, it starts to lose its merits once your game becomes stale and dormant due to the loss of total life emotion in general.
What it comes down to for me I think is that I need to continuously be challenged to keep the passion alive. However the only real way to do this in poker is to move up in stakes, which is always a scary proposition, but is something I really must always keep in mind for my long term goals. At the levels I'm at right now I can make a very comfortable income and its easy to become comfortable doing so. However for the sake of my long term overall game, its a necessity.
Take for instance this week. I played solid all week and brought in an above average haul. Friday night I get drunk and play and drop $1.5k. And to be honest, I could really care less. Sure I'll have to put in an extra few hours at the table to make up for it but thats it. I know its coming back, its just a matter of time. While this confidence is helpful in playing the game of poker, it also could have dangerous side effects.
Since my emotions have become increasingly less of a factor when playing I tend to play a much more robotic game. This style is a winning style (for now) but I'm positive I'm not challenging myself to improve. And if you lose the desire to improve and adapt in poker, you lose the desire to win.
All this can also been seen in the microcosm of my life as well. When I read back on this blog throughout the years, I can see myself giving less and less attention to individual hands. I can go on stretches of 10-20k hands where I don't really feel the need to post a single hand. Most of the time when I am reflecting on the hands I played that day I can quickly assign the net result into a few categories that I've already "dealt with" in my psyche. For example if I lost a pot with Kings vs Aces preflop it doesn't even hit my radar since it was an inevitability and just part of variance - therefore I can quickly stash that away in the the variance drawer. If another hand I overplay my hand and lose my stack, I can put that in the "I'm a retard" drawer. Trust me that one is overflowing.
But rare is the hand where I can identify a unique problem that actually makes me question my entire game. This type of hand used to be a daily occurrence. Obviously this makes sense due to the fact that if I play more hands I'm going to become more familiar with situations that become common. But the fact that I rarely get riled up over an individual hand still scares me. I need that emotion to keep my brain active. I need it to continue to become a better poker player.
Its interesting, this phenomenon. It is often said that emotion and poker must be separated for success to occur. And while I believe this to be true on a basic level, it starts to lose its merits once your game becomes stale and dormant due to the loss of total life emotion in general.
What it comes down to for me I think is that I need to continuously be challenged to keep the passion alive. However the only real way to do this in poker is to move up in stakes, which is always a scary proposition, but is something I really must always keep in mind for my long term goals. At the levels I'm at right now I can make a very comfortable income and its easy to become comfortable doing so. However for the sake of my long term overall game, its a necessity.
posted by RikkiDee at 9:20 PM
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