Poker in the Rear

This holiday is feeling like a run of horrible torture, at least as far as poker goes. Everything else is nice but man, I've gone from a week long break even stretch to a 3 day downswing where I can't seem to get a single thing going on. I had one session where I was briefly in the green and the rest of the time I've started off losing a cooler or a bad beat right away and then never recovering and having to quit the session in the red before I start tilting.

I'm gonna try to take some time away from poker.

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Yeah!

I'm at the airport now waiting to board a plane to Washington DC. Gonna spend a week there with family and then head out to Michigan to spend another week with family. My GF is coming with me. She came on the same trip last year so it's all pretty standard. I'm excited to have 2 weeks of hanging and chilling. Not sure how it will affect poker - I think I should still be able to play a lot. But there isn't much extra space where I'm going so I might have a hard time finding time to be alone and play. We'll see.

The last week has been a break even stretch. I think I could have won a decent amount if I'd avoided every single spew spot and made all the good folds that I should have. I've re-focused myself on avoiding spew while playing. I guess that's the good thing about this downswing. Now that I'm running bad it's so important to me to play perfectly while before playing well was good enough. I think downswings can often make you a much better player if you learn from them rather than tilting due to them. I'm gonna try and make this stretch into a learning experience.

Plane boarding soon so I'll wrap this up.

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So I made a blog post earlier today about how bush dodged a shoe, and then I come home from a night out with my GF and some friends and find these 3 different replies from the same person to my last blog post:

On December 15 2008 19:05 sawseech wrote: DIAF you ratholing faggot

On December 15 2008 19:06 sawseech wrote: you fucking faggot and your faggot ass bitch blog about how giant a fucking bitch you are

On December 15 2008 19:14 sawseech wrote: you're too much of a faggot to explain to your gf that she's involved with a faggot retarded generate gambler, so you hop on stars in a rage and hitrun me who is harsh but kind to your faggoty requests for info? fucking faggot

First off, what does DIAF mean? Second off, time for a poll!

Poll: wtf is this shit all about?
(Vote): seriously awesome level
(Vote): that time of the month for sawseech
(Vote): you stacked him and now he hates u
(Vote): i dunno gimme a drink now bitch

I do have a faint memory of a recent hand where I stacked him, so that might be the source of the posts. But I don't think it was today - I only remember getting killed by everyone today. So yeah, like the title says, I'm confused.


EDIT:

I think I found the hand! This was Saturday night before the bigger fight with the GF when I did a 1k hand session. Finally won a monster pot and figured I was probably up for the session and should quit asaply so I could FINALLY log a win after a week of losing / break even sessions, and it would be smart to talk to the GF. So I quit pretty soon after this hand. hahaha. Poor bastard.

+ Show Spoiler +

Guess it doesn't help that when I got back online later on saturday night he was still on and I took this pot from him:

+ Show Spoiler +

Poor guy.

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Wtf I totally missed this! I guess this happened in Iraq. Some journalist went shoe throwing crazy on bush. I love how bush has this grin on his face like "yeaaa let's dodge sum shoes! throw another one sonny boy! yeeeeehhaaaaawwww!!"



Some video on it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7782774.stm

Here's the BBC write up on it so you can get the whole picture of what was going on and what the guy said:

With his second shoe, which the president also managed to dodge, Mr Zaidi said: "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq." Mr Zaidi, a correspondent for Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV, was then wrestled to the ground by security personnel and hauled away. "If you want the facts, it's a size 10 shoe that he threw," Mr Bush joked afterwards. Al-Baghdadiya's bureau chief told the Associated Press that he had no idea what prompted Mr Zaidi to attack President Bush, although reports say he was once kidnapped by a militia and beaten up. "I am trying to reach Muntadar since the incident, but in vain," said Fityan Mohammed. "His phone is switched off." Correspondents said the attack was symbolic. Iraqis threw shoes and used them to beat Saddam Hussein's statue after his overthrow.

and here's a funny writeup on it:

Reagan forgot to duck. Bush didn't. It's unforgettable television that, upon reflection, appears to sum up the man and his presidency. Watch the video. From behind we see the Shoe Thrower lurch up, ragged and uncouth, doing his best to reinforce all negative stereotypes of angry Muslim fundamentalists. He yells, "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog!" and unleashes the shoe, hard, straight at Bush's head. The shoe moves fast, with good rotation, perfect for a bloody nose. And, without batting an eye, Bush ducks a foot and a half. What was about to nail him on the schnoz sails harmlessly into the backdrop. Then, wait. This is the strange part. There's no mass tackling of the Shoe Thrower, no Secret Service agents diving across the stage to take a Nike for America. For a beat the Shoe Thrower owns the room. And--my favorite part--Bush does NOT hit the deck. Instead he pops back up to normal height. His face is cagey and attentive, on full alert like a basketball defender. He's little bewildered, but not paralyzed. Instinct consumes him. It looks as if he realizes this is incredible, amazing stuff, a must-see event, history unraveling before him. Maybe some Texas bravado wriggles in. Maybe he feels assassination coming and is determined to watch it in. He has to see how this ends. In this situation, Bush loses no dignity by crumbling to the floor in the fetal position. We expect this of our presidents--it's the rational thing to do. It's what I would do, and what I hope my friends and family would do. But Bush stands there, a sitting duck, waiting, just as intrigued as we are. He does not take over. He is not in control. Like his presidency, Bush's staredown looks foolhardy and counterproductive, but here a corner of my gut roots for him hard. Bring em on, indeed. The other shoe drops. Good rotation, and thrown hard, but it sails on him. Bush flinches, raises his hand, but it's not a full duck. He's seen major league pitching. This guy doesn't have it. Finally, the other reporters in the room awaken and move to collar the Shoe Thrower. A little while later, Bush adds the mandatory quip: "All I can report is a size 10." It's a strange capstone to a presidency, one of those semi-absurd semi-scary incidents like the pretzel-choking, the back-shooting, the bike-crashing. Yet somehow those ten seconds seem to say everything about the man, about guts and intelligence, humor and luck, the dangerous world Bush has helped make worse. For what the world hopes to be the last time, we've watched the man do just enough to keep himself afloat.

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Waste all this time trying to create an account on a new site with a no deposit bonus and at the very end they go "Oops, sry ur american, lolz, made u work for nothing!" I tried through pokerstrategy.com to get free money on FTP and even though FTP takes americans they still shat on my head. It sux cause now I made an account on FTP with a bonus code that is worthless AND I can't ever make another account there and get any benefits like rakeback. GAY.

I was hoping to get a free deposit bonus going on one of these sites and see how quickly I could build up a roll. Do a kind of experiment... how quickly can I start with nothing and build a real BR?

Oh well, being an american in the online poker world sux right now. Get rid of the UIGEA one time!

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In case my friends or readers are curious, came out with nearly 5 buyins profit tonight, over a shitload of hands. 5.5k hands. Whew. I just reviewed all of my major losing pots and there was 1 spew, 3 semi spew (could almost be coolers but I see where I could have maybe saved some money) and a shit load of coolers / beats. Still ran @ 4 ptbb/100 so that's good I guess.




Decently recovered right now. At about 3.7k. Working hard for every penny right now. Played a lot of tables but that's my regular routine on the weekend cause there's so many fish on NL100 at that time. Was usually between 10-16 but tried my hardest to get rid of bad tables asaply.

I'd love to have a heater soon. God that would be fun.

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well despite playing 16 tables while my GF yelled at me (guess that line wasn't as good as I thought... shes' still pissed) I won 3 Bi in 1k hands. Then I quit. Now time to go try and fix things.

Spend the entire day trying to fix things and when I think they're fixed they're not. Relationships are fucking hard. Makes poker seem ez.

I'll probably end up playing again later tonight and losing it all. Fucking life.

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Slightly tilted. A week of slowly losing while playing lots of hands tends to do that. I realized today that while I have usually made about 1 mistake for every 1,500 hands I've played over the last week, they were huge mistakes and things I didn't need to do. Stupid calls with a set on a flush board when it's clear he has it and so on. They were situations where I KNEW I was beat, and all my experience has taught me to fold, but I called anyway. They were spewy tilt moments. And if I'd avoided those as I easily could have, I'd actually be up like 1 buyin since Monday. Instead I'm down about 8 since Monday.

Spew really ads up. And it is especially obvious when you're in a downswing / break even stretch. I've basically broken even or had a tiny win for every session where I didn't spew. The main reason I've lost money instead of just breaking even for the week is that I spewed.

Now if I had actually run well, the spew wouldn't have seemed so significant, cause it wasn't huge. I would be up pretty well for the week and I'd look at those spews and see that I could be up even more, but it wouldn't bug me so much. Right now the spew bugs me like crazy.

I have to be careful now. I'm starting to find myself wanting to play lots of tables. I'm feeling impatient. I'm eager for myself to "finally run good " and recoup all my loses. And with that mindset I'm not paying as much attention, not willing to fold when I know I should cause I am talking myself into believing that, even though he's nearly never bluffing here, this is the one time that he actually IS bluffing and I'm going to catch it! I can't play like that. If I let that mindset take over then this will turn into a real downswing. A painful downswing. A soul crushing downswing.

I have spent all day trying to un-tilt. Watching movies and so on. The plan got kind of ruined since I had some arguments with my GF, but that's been worked out. Now I gotta keep trying to decompress, to un-tilt, to get positive. If I can get myself into the right mindset then I am going to do more NL100 tonight. If I can't get myself thinking straight, then I'm just not going to play at all. If I have another losing session tonight then I'm going to drop to NL50 for a bit, even though I'm still very well rolled for NL100. Just gotta stop the bleeding and rebuild the confidence. I was also thinking about trying to get some money on another poker site via one of those no deposit promotions and grind up a roll from the microstakes for fun. I think if I have a bad session I might end up following through on that.

The hardest part is that it's the weekend, it's the holidays, and the fish are out. I don't want to miss all that money. I also felt so close to NL200 on Monday but now it has started slipping away. That's frustrating. But I'm acknowledging it and trying to reset my plans to take shots with a bigger BR. 2 weeks ago I was in a solid mental state where I could lose some money while taking a shot and stay totally positive. Right now I'm feeling shitty and I know if I took a shot and lost money I'd probably life tilt. So it sucks to feel like I was so close and now it's slipping away from me, but I'm reminding myself that it only slips away if I throw away my BR. As long as I keep grinding I'll get another chance at NL200. But if I tilt it all away then I'll only get to join Marshall and Neilly.

Well that's one hell of a rant. I think it helped me to write all of this out.

Oh and I gotta share this, cause it earns serious pimp points. When I made up with my GF tonight I was doing some sweet talking about how amazing she was, and then I threw in "You make me feel even better than having AA hold up vs 99 all-in preflop in a 10 buyin deep pot!" The great thing is she understood what I meant, and the awesome thing is that she didn't look at me like a freak for saying it. We just laughed.

That's some serious smooth talking yo.

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Comments (9)

Was about to quit and was closing down tables, and hit 3 hands where I lost 4 buyins right in a row. They were spewy hands too. Wtf. Then I check my graph and see that I was up 3 buyins before those hands. Damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttt.

I'm very unhappy with myself right now.

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Comments (7)

Lots of set ups. Keep having to fold good hands to obviously better ones (or I've become everyones favorite person to bluff, but I doubt that). Luckily I'm at least breaking even. Well, not totally. Yesterday I quickly lost 5 BI when I sat down for a 200 hand session. It was insane. Today I lost 4 BI and was about to take a break and say "fuck it's a downswing, might as well move down a limit for a bit" and then had a card rush which I played aggressively and won the 4 BI back to break even.

Hopefully this weekend treats me well. I'm sitting on 3.5k right now. So if this weekend goes well I will be able to rebuild to 4k. I'm planning to be very conservative on NL200 shots and try to keep building my BR past 4k. If I hit 6k I will definitely do a full out 10 BI shot though. Otherwise I'll just keep doing NL100 and if I see juicy tables @ NL200 and I have over 4k I will give it a go.

I am still hoping to get into NL200 by the end of the month and I think the holiday season might put out enough fish to allow me to do it. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Otherwise I want to at least play a lot of hands @ NL100 so that I can make progress towards another bonus. I am gonna save till 100k fpp and buy the $1,500 bonus. If I have to do it all via NL100 I won't clear it till the end of January, maybe a bit earlier. If I get up to NL200 then I should clear it early Jan. So we'll see how that goes =)

Anyway might as well post a graph of the last few days. So here's everything since Monday:

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