Man I hate bad runs

They're so mentally disturbing. With each bad day it becomes harder and harder to get myself mentally ready for the next day of play because i just expect to get pummeled. I have had one winning day in the last nine days (20K hands) that I've played. I just can't win. It really fucking stinks to work hard for over a week straight and be down $500. I'm still up $450 for the month, but I'm gonna have to dip into my bankroll/savings a little bit to pay bills which really sucks. I guess I've been running pretty well for a few months now so it's bound to happen eventually but god it just screws with my head to just lose all in after all in, small pot after small pot. You know those days where your blue line is about even and your red line goes steadily down because your semi-bluffs never hit and you opponent shows you the best hands he can have... over and over and over.

I hate it when people tell me bat beat stories so I won't ramble on about this much longer. But this is my blog and I want to vent!

I miss the good old days....

.... when 1200 hands per hour was considered a lot.

http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rush-poker




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I'll get there when I get there

About a year before I graduated college, I did something which I didn't think too profound at the time, but which has helped me a lot since then. I had arrived at school in my car, and I was stressed about potentially being late. I sat for a moment in my car, breathing consciously and attempting to relax my worrisome and useless thoughts. Then I held the 'Clock' button down for a few seconds until the time display was blinking, placed my fingers on the hour and on the minute buttons, closed my eyes, and pressed repeatedly, fast enough so that I lost count of how many times I had pressed each. I then went to class without looking at the result. For a few weeks after that, I would continually glance at my car's clock and get negative reenforcement.

Now, I only look at it when I am tuning the radio. I don't know if I'm going to be 5 minutes early or 10 minutes late. After a while, I stopped caring. Sure I might have been able to speed up a bit, run a “yellow” light, or otherwise get myself to Point B two minutes sooner, but the necessity of doing so is virtually non-existent, and the stress I inflicted upon myself by worrying about it was higher than I had known. It was extremely liberating to simply accept that I would get there when I got there. Most places have a clock, and the cell phone in my pocket has one too. I would find out what time it was soon enough.

There is a statistic listed in Poker Tracker with which I am constantly concerning myself. I worry about it and look at it constantly during my sessions. I am pretty good at getting a rough estimate of what it is and what it should be on average, but I want to know the exact details of it, to two decimals. My friend Edals told me not to concern myself with it—it is after all one of the most useless statistics there is, and it takes hundreds of thousands of hands to even begin to approximate what it's true average value should be. But I can't seem to stop worrying about it, so I took a lesson from all of my car rides over the past few years...

This morning, I configured Poker Tracker to not show me how much money I won or lost.


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A belated Christmas thanks

It is right now the time between Christmas and New Year's. I am up in Seattle visiting my mom, and I have had a very pleasant and relaxing Christmas, the best kind!

I often update my blog when I'm upset or going through a rough time, because it's when I'm most upset and anxious that I feel a need to vent... so I write. But I want everybody to know that I am very happy to be back in Vegas and that things are going well. The past 8 months have been some of the most difficult and scary of my life simply because it's kind of the first time I've been out on my own, and doing that itself is scary, but doing that by gambling and on top of that being a person who is very risk-averse and likes to know what's coming up (things which I must say gambling does not promote) has made it all the more difficult.

But I am finally getting set in. It has been rocky because all of it was so new and scary, but I've been at it for a while and am now sure of my success. I am not worried, and although I haven't saved up very much, I know it's because I was so scared and not playing my best, nor was I putting in enough hands. But all of that has changed, and I am very confident that I will be playing at a limit I can make real reasonable money at within half a year. So trucking ahead, happy and confident, I would like to offer my thanks to all the people in my life who helped me get here, because here is where I want to be. It's going to be incredibly cheesy as I'm sure most spill-your-heart-out letters are, but hey it's Christmas, I'm happy, and I don't care how cheesy it is!

My parents are the first and most obvious choices. Neither my mom nor dad were thrilled when I first mentioned I had started to gamble many years ago, and my dad still tries to get me to go back to school for a degree that isn't useless, they were as supportive as they could be when I told them this was what I wanted to do and showed them that it was actually possible to make money at it. But more than their support was how I was raised. I have instilled in me a want of doing what is right for me and a want to make my own way in the world. And if I wasn't raised with the courage to follow through with my heart, I wouldn't have been raised to be happy and fight for what I want. So I am thankful not just for learning to accept what I'm doing, but for giving me to courage to do it in the first place.

The next step is the live groups I meet with in Las Vegas (rarely at the moment I'm sorry to say), the NLDG and WPDG, and in particular Jan Fisher and Linda Johnson. The live groups showed me a bunch of reasonable and responsible adults who gambled responsibly and who were able to make it a positive force in their lives. I had grown up thinking, merely by the programming of society, that gambling was wrong. Not evil, but just a vice like smoking and drinking--something that is inherently bad and has no virtue other than to entertain. And while that is true for the most part, these people showed me that not only could they gamble responsibly but that they could learn from it and use it to help themselves. Linda and Jan even organize charity events, and in that way make gambling help other people as well. Now of course it IS a vice, and it DOES harm a portion of people who can't handle it responsibly, but these people showed me that that is not a necessary outcome and that I wasn't crazy for being so intrigued by it. Jan Fisher in particular took special care to encourage me, which really helped me break out of my shell and embrace my passion, for which I am extremely grateful.

Jim Leitner, also a member of the groups, also was important in that he was the first person to introduce me to a higher level of thinking in poker. I had reached a peak in my poker knowledge before his way of looking at the game infected me with the urge to study it from new angles. Most people in the group know he's smart and better than they are at poker, but few of them realise just how MUCH better he is. I haven't seen to much of him, but every chance I get to talk with him, I learn something groundbreaking.

Finally of course, I have one of my closest friend, Erik, who is also my poker coach, and I guess somewhat of a life mentor. He has taught me how to properly think about the game, how to contextualize all my thoughts and reads and experiments, and how to better learn more. He is solely responsible for my going from an average player to an excellent player (and I am pretty damn excellent), and he has also helped me through many difficulties in my life. He is a fantastic coach and friend, and I am very grateful for all that he has done for me. (And I would put money on him over Jim Leitner in a poker match, and those who know Jim know that's saying a lot!) I lucked out amazingly in finding Erik as a coach, but hey, as I always tell him, I run like God when it comes to poker, and this is no exception.

(See I told you it'd be cheesy.)

Of course I have many other friends who have shaped me life and personality and view of the world, and I am truly thankful to have them in my life. But this is a poker blog--or at least it's supposed to be--and those people above are the ones who shaped my poker career. I am thankful to everybody good in my life, those mentioned and those not, and I hope I have been able to show my thanks and love before now. But if not, thank you all! I am very lucky to have you in my life.

And I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!


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I love shortstackers

A lot of poker players around here, and a lot of low limit players, abhor short stacking. Especially at the lower limits, this boggles me. It is true that a smart shortstacker can be a thorn in your side when he sits behind you (and plays properly), but by and large, at low limits, most shortstackers are fucking terrible at shortstacking and are the easiest money on the table.

They don't ruin the game or make it so you can't play poker. You simply have to adapt and recognize how they are going to affect the game. If that means you can't open as many hands to isolate the fish on your right, that sucks, but it's part of poker. (And incidentally, if they are hurting you but helping themselves, doesn't that mean they ARE playing better poker?)

The unwarranted loathing of shortstackers is going to seriously hurt the game. FTPDoug has said in his latest "FTP Answers" thread on the Internet Gambling forum of 2+2 that Full Tilt has plans to take action against the "shortstacking problem." So congratulations, you are getting rid of the shortstackers. You want to play "real poker" instead of make the easiest money in your life.

Instead of sitting at the 50bb minimum tables, you've fucked yourself and the community.

This is not a problem for me thankfully, because I have little enough ego in my poker to simply go where the money is. If they move sites, I will move sites. If they play lower, I will play lower. In short, I will do what I always do when I encounter a shortstacker: I will figure out how best to take his money, and then I will take his money.

So take a lesson from me: Let go of your ego, respect shorties for what they are, and put on your big girl panties and learn to deal with it.


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A common criticism I get...

A common criticism I get about my apparent vocal and flagarant religion bashing is that religion is not the main problem. All the horrible things happening would happen anyway because of the situations people are in or because people are just violent, and on and on and on.

This is true, but it misses a very important problem: religion IS the cause of much more than it gets credit for.

South Park got it right in their "Go God Go!" set of episodes when Eric "Time Child" Cartmen went into the future, a future composed entirely of atheists who were waging a horrible world war sparked by differences in opinion about what name organized atheists ought to call themselves--well that, and who gets Hawaii.

I am under no delusions that religion is the MAIN source of the world's problems. But my criticizers are under the horribly inaccurate delusion that religion is not the cause of any of the problems.

The reason I attack not just religion, but belief in god at all, and faith as a somehow virtuous doctrine, is because of the harm that it does do, and because of the harm which is done in its name. I promise that I do understand that most of the evils would be committed anyway, but that's one of my points--I want to strip away the false pretense of religion so that evils are shown for what they are.

Many evils go unnoticed because they disguise themselves in religious ritual or morality.

The Middle East might still be in conflict without religion. Good people would still be going to Africa to give out food and help heal the sick. Parents in Texas would still fight over how to educate their children.

What would not happen without religion however is that Sharia law would not be allowed in Britain because it's a religious right. The good people in Africa would not propagate the spread of AIDS because they preach to teenagers that while premarital sex is bad, condoms are far worse. The parents in Texas who want to teach fairy tales in the bio9logy classroom would not have any pretext for getting a foothold for their craziness.

From this site

In the 1300s, the Aztecs would make human sacrifices to the Sun god.

Hearts of sacrifice victims were cut out, and some bodies were eaten ceremoniously. Other victims were drowned, beheaded, burned or dropped from heights. In a rite to the rain god, shrieking children were killed at several sites so that their tears might induce rain. In a rite to the maize goddess, a virgin danced for 24 hours, then was killed and skinned; her skin was worn by a priest in further dancing. One account says that at King Ahuitzotl’s coronation, 80,000 prisoners were butchered to please the gods.

And...

When Puritans settled in Massachusetts in the 1600s, they created a religious police state where doctrinal deviation could lead to flogging, pillorying, hanging, cutting off ears, or boring through the tongue with a hot iron. Preaching Quaker beliefs was a capital offense. Four stubborn Quakers defied this law and were hanged. In the 1690s fear of witches seized the colony. Twenty alleged witches were killed and 150 others imprisoned.


Most people see the above quotes and think that that doesn't happen any more--we know enough about how the world works to not resort to these horrid rituals. Well those people are half right... we do know enough now to not need to do horrible things because we just don't know what else to do in order to get rain or make our crops come up full. But disgusting crap like that STILL GOES ON IN THE WORLD TODAY.

Once we strip away the protective cloak of religion, we can see many things for what they are. Here are a few harmful things done only in the name of religion (and even non-religious personal belief) and which could not possibly have been done otherwise:

1. Genital mutilation as a common practice and commitment to spirituality (as opposed to a possible medical benefit)
2. Rampant antisemitism in Western "liberal" countries
3. Telling teens in AIDS-ridden Africa not to use condoms
4. Telling school children blatant inaccuracies about biology, geology, history, astronomy, physics, and chemistry because it contradicts a book you like
5. Human sacrifice--not bad people or people you are at war with, but people you love specifically for the purpose of having better fortune

Also, there is often a logical fallacy of my critics which I would like to briefly point out: If you claim that religion does a lot of good, you MUST concede that it does bad as well. If you claim that religion does good, you are implicitly saying is does some form of good which could not otherwise have been done. So you must admit that either religion is unnecessary in order to do good, or you must take responsibility for the bad it does in its name as well. I would like to put forward a question Christopher Hitches came up with, which succinctly makes the point: Can you name a moral action taken, or a moral statement made, by a believer that could not have been made by an atheist?

What about an immoral action or statement?

Game, set, match.

So please stop telling me that religion plays not part. I understand that there are other forces at work and that people will always find ways to fight. But don't tell me that teaching them to believe condoms are evil has no consequences at all. Don't tell me that every now and then an otherwise good and tolerant person doesn't develop a dislike of gays or Jews because he was taught they are evil or wrong. Don't tell me that in this modern day and age, adulterers would still be stoned if believing myths wasn't encouraged.

It all happens. And it happens directly as a result of not just organized religion, but faith itself. Once you convince yourself that believing things which you cannot possibly know is acceptable and a path towards some form of knowledge, you open the door for all kinds of nonsense, both good and bad to enter. The reason I argue against religion and belief is because I want to close that door. I want to enable people to tell right from wrong, because many of them simply can't do that--and we let them get away with it under the guise of political correctness and tolerance. So I will continue to point out errors in logic and beliefs which have no basis, because otherwise people will continue to do things -- right and wrong -- for the wrong reasons, and it is important that we as a society strip away the cloak of irrationality in order to move forward and teach people to do good for the sake of doing good in and of itself, and we teach them not to do bad things that they THINK are good because they believe crazy shit.

In the words of Steven Weinberg: With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.


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JUDGEMENT

I got into an argument with a friend of mine recently, and he said something that many of my friends, and many people in general, say often: "Stop being so judgmental."

I'm sorry? Could you repeat that!? Because it sounds an awful lot like you just said that you feel I am incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. That is what that statement means, is it not?

In fact, usually when people say this, they do not actually mean it as an attack on my abilities, usually they say it as a mental defense to shift attention away from what they are doing--that is, they know what they are doing is wrong, but they want to be able to continue doing it, so they justify it by simply not thinking about the consequences and sending their attention elsewhere.

It is true that there are many many gray areas in the plane of ethics and morality, and a plethora of situations which are clearly right sometimes and clearly wrong other times. It is also true that I have often made judgments which turned out to be wrong in the light of new information. But there are also black and white areas, and many grey areas that are almost black or white, and as any good poker player will tell you, you have to work with the information you have.

The old biblical axiom "Judge not, lest ye be judged" is in error--society does, and rightfully so, uses the correct axiom "Judge, and be prepared to be judged."

I have done, and I'm sure will continue to do, many bad things. But there are very few reasons why I do them:

1. I thought it was right but I was in error, which is usually an outcome from a mistake of the following reason.
2. I thought the special circumstances in my situation allowed for the action to be justified. For example, my stealing food would be wrong but a beggar on the brink of starvation would be morally justified in stealing it. So "stealing food" could go either way on the right/wrong scale, even though usually it leans towards the "wrong" end.
3. The action is wrong and I know it is wrong, but it benefits me personally to such a high extent that I toss my morals out the window and do my best to live with myself.

Universally, when I am told to stop being judgmental, it is in the face of somebody using Door Number Three. But rather than own up to the obvious, they instead tell me I am morally inferior for daring to make an assessment of the ethics of the situation.

Well I'm sorry. As much as I've made some mistakes in my judgments, and as much as I've even lost friends due to my judgments (because they turned out not to be people I wanted to continue to associate with), I have yet to see a reason why judging is wrong. Most people consider rape and murder wrong, but here's a secret: There are other things that are not nearly as damaging which are still wrong!

As my friends I would hope that you'll tell me when I am doing wrong. Actions and intentions have consequences, and I would hope you would trust and respect me enough to know that I want to be told when I am doing things that are harmful to the world. When I am choosing Door Number Three, or I am mistaken in thinking that I am in Door Number Two, I need a friend to snap me back into place and help me be the better person I want to be. You are my friends, help me!

And I will return the favor.


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