Sunday, June 1, 2008

Good but Not Great

I’m really not great at anything, but pretty good at many things. I love playing games. I've never truly excelled at any one game, but I like learning the strategies behind winning. I like to win. One of my favorite movie lines is from Patton: America loves a winner and will not tolerate a loser. I feel this way about myself. It's difficult for me to tolerate losing. It's been a lifelong ordeal trying to keep from taking losing personally. I feel it so completely. When I've lost a game I should have won, I go into total respiratory shock. I want to punch holes through walls. You'd like I'd get used to it. I don't.
Like most people, I tend to overplay my abilities, thinking I’m actually a lot better than I really am. I was like that in the dating world. So what if I was 5'6 and balding with no real career to speak of. I thought my natural wit, charm and good-guy tendencies would win women over. HA! What a delusion. They saw something, the women I wanted to charm. Or nothing. I've been a big loser in the dating realm.
Poker: I'm getting better, but can't bring down a tournament or satellite. The table I played at today was good. I played straight up poker, nothing fancy, and lost half my stack with second best hands. I just couldn't get anything going, and then my AK ran into AA. I used to do that a lot. It's been a while, but I can be pretty good at it when I'm up for it.
I Haven't played any limit on Stars in a while. March was so brutal for me. I think I lost 400 or so. I've been a big loser on limit lately. But what's been working well for me lately has been the double shootouts. This weekend I took two and came in 2nd on the other two at the first table. Not bad. I've been using the ICM strategies and they've been working well. The players at these low-limit DSs are not very good. Way too passive when the blinds get big.
Today was my first Sunday Million tournament and $650 WSOP. In the Sunday Million, I pushed all-in in the small big post flop with AQ and the button called with A8. An 8 hit on the turn and I was out. Had I won, I would have had 16K in chips. Really disappointing.
In the WSOP Satellite, I ran into AA with my AK and that was that. Pretty ugly way to go in both tourneys. I had great cards in the WSOP satellite. Had I had those cards later in the tournament, I would have won a seat. They were incredible cards.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

FWIW, try Oklahoma. They raise donkeys and weak hands alike.