A New Direction

Sorry for the lack of updates, id like to say it is because I havent had the time, however that would be the most inaccurate of any excuse i could come up with. In fact, ive had too much time, far, far too much time, but i suppose thats alright.

The blog is taking a new direction, its never going to be a "hey today i made xxxx amount, im trying to make xxxx this xxxx, hopefully to reach xxxx this year, with a side goal of trying to make xxxx at xxxxx".

Not going down like that anymore.

Why you might ask? Because its not interesting, quite frankly. Who cares how much i make today, lose tomorow, or whatever. I think there are certain subjects to talk about that are much more important for the devolpment of my blogging experience here, and maybe for my life in general. Maybe this will help give me some new perspective that i seem to be lacking, and perhaps this will set a good tone for the future of the sessions i play. Then again, maybe it wont. Regardless the blog is going to be much more thought related and much less results related and hope that you (the reader!) are going to be ok with that.

So lets address a few of my goals this year, its the least ive done after blogging so much this year.

1) Make SNE

This was only a goal recently, its jut not going to happen. It would take too much time and its just not healthy to grind 15 hours a day of breakeven poker to try to be a rakeback pro. Not gonna happen. However next year it may certainly be on the table we will see.

2) Win my prop bet

Obviously this didnt happen. Was really tough for me, worked really hard but it just didnt fall into place. Sometimes things go your way, sometimes they dont, and sometimes you sit in a chair grinding nl 25 for 16 hours a day. At least after winnings and my stars fpp package i didnt do too terrible here.

3) Make $100,000 at 1/2 over the rest of the year.

Not going to completely rule this one out but i think it would be fair to say its quite unlikely given the current scenario and the fact im swinging pretty hard.

So its not all bad right? What have we done this year that was good? Lets go back in time to the start of 2008.

With a fresh bankroll in the upper 4 digits, I hit the streets 24 tabling nl 200 fr and trying to grind out my moneys. What were my goals at this point? Make moneys. Well i probably did do that.

1) Make Moneys

Yeah probably made around 80k or something this year after rakeback and bonuses and etc etc w/e else. Is it amazing? No, obviously not. Especially given that i spent way too much of it because i didnt ever have any money before and wasnt prepared to handle it well actually having a little bit. But at least this wasnt extremely unsuccesful

2) Switch to 6m

This happened, but i may switch back, I honestly dont know at this point. I would say my 6m game is probably my strongest suit but I end up playing too many tables which is much more detrimental then in fr. However I did switch over well and make money playing which is all you can ask for i guess.

3) I became a Cardrunners Guest Pro

I guess this would be one of my more proud moments, obviously being invited to do videos for them is something im really happy about.

4) I played a major live donkament

This actualy is something I always wanted to do, and despite only busting 1 person (vanessa roussou though, at least i made it count), and being knocked out in around 100th, I did have a good experience.

So I hope I can put most of that type of stuff behind me now, I may talk about it more in the future, I may not. But the primary objective of this blog is going to be much less poker summarizing and much more theorizing about life and poker in general, because thats where my mind has been recently.

Id like to talk about downswings and the poker mindset. A good friend of mind recomened I read the elements of poker, so i decided to take him up on that and just ordered it from amazon. Hopefully its a good read, I really need some help with this at the moment I think. I end up taking too many shots into higher games, always seem to run bad, and then try to stay there too long when im probably negative ev and it costs me money. Honestly if i just played the game I sohuld be playing and didnt take shots I would have so much more money now, but thats just how it goes sometimes. People often ask me why I do that, and I tell them because I guess thats what i think I should be doing. It certainly feels like you sohuld right? Win money, move up, win more money. Easy game. However the mental and emotional state of winning and losing larger amounts of money really can get to me I think, and oftentimes when I have big down days it really gets to me. I had a particularily bad day yesterday, and it just starts to feel like I have to start all over again. No one likes that feeling, but its one ive had to deal with a lot. Because regardless of how much ive won or where im at given my start at nl 2 with $20 in May 07, Ive played a ridiculous amount of hands and should be farther then where I am.

Dont get me wrong, I dont think there is anything wrong with how ive done or where I am at. I just feel like with the amount of time and effort ive put into it, it really hasnt been as awesome as I thought it would be. It certainly is more difficult then I anticipated moving up through the limits. As at least a semi intelligent person (then again I suppose I would like to think this), finding periods of time where you cannot seem to break through seems extremely frustrating, especially when compared to the scope of the success of many of the players that surround you. I mean its not to difficult to find a ton of extremely talented succesful players, and then I look at myself and think, wow why cant I be that. What seperates this 25/50 reg from WCGRider? And the answer, other then proably a few hundred thousand dollars, is simply he has better adapted to the games then myself. Even if hes played for a couple years more then me, it would be pretty unlikely hes played as many hands. Ive played >1.5m hands in my 18 month career, thats a lot of hands. My winrates when i play a lot of tables are small, as almost anyones are, and you just grind out that hourly.

For the past half a year, especially post prop bet, that is something I realized I really didnt want to become. I didnt want to become the sick grinder who plays low stakes 24/7 and makes ends meet through massive hand volume. I wanted to be good, I STILL want to be good, and ive put a lot of time working on my game recently in order to be better at games like heads up and 3 or 4 handed games in six max.

But the results havent been there, and thats frustrating. Well some sort of results have been (except HU, which i seem to be quite the fish at), but certianly not to the extent I would like to have them. Of course this is always the catch with poker, no one ever wins as much as they would like to, and the future is always greener then the past, the present always dull to the flavour of oppurtunity.

So for now im going to be playing 1/2. Its sort of ironic becuase im currently staking a bunch of people for 1/2, but there is no rush. I am fine playing lower in a game im way overrolled for in order to just make some money and try to improve. I may play more fr and grind the rest of the year, I may just 4 table 6 max. I dont know, and no one really will know for sure. There is one thing I do know though, that regardless of what happens I will always give it my all, because that is the only thing i can gurantee.

~Doug