Some guy asked in the forums why we still play poker. I wanted to write a long answer and decided to post it here instead, since it's fairly personal. Why do I keep playing while many of my "poker friends" quits? Here's my long, non-proof-read and probably fairly inaccurate take on it.
I started out for fun, my friend wanted me to play a live 5 USD SNG or something like that and while I started out feeling that "hmm, a J and 3 must be decent cause a jack is a fairly big card" I soon found it exciting enough to read Grot's old guide and put 50 US on Party and grind away. The beginning was a bumpy road and I soon withdrew my money and put it on Unibet where someone said they had lower rake on SNG (they hadn't). Started winning on micro stakes though and I'm fairly sure I had some dreams of making extra money and such but it was still mostly for fun. It was my first semester of University studies away from home and I remember, fondly, how I would feel great if I won like 30 bucks before going out drinking with my new friends since I kind of felt that I was drinking for free. I played almost every day but not for too long. I've always been a nerd, defined as a person who gets completely sucked into something and spend much more time at it then most other people. It's been Starcraft, Robert Heinlein books, other books, libertarianism, poker and other things. Now that I think about it this is basically the first week in 4 years when I've been able too play poker that I haven't put in more then an hour, heh.
The during the Christmas break I was playing NL50 and ran good. I think I made like 2400 USD or so in 2-3 weeks and I started to feel that this was something I could finance my studies with. That was actually more then I planed to spend my first semester, which is lol but I was young and naive. Skipped new years eve partying to play a 50-rebuy (it was a Sunday) and didn't get anything going which made me slightly sad. The spring came about and I kept running good getting up to NL200, ran bad during the summer I think and bunched up and down between NL200 and NL50. At one point I withdrew my bankroll except for 206 USD and started 4-tabling NL50. This is the only time I've been close to quitting poker. Managed to run good though and soon I was back on NL200. Played that for almost a year I think, withdrew a decent coin most months and felt fairly good about it. Never imagined that I'd play much higher and I remember some great times from that year. The next summer or so I started taking shots at NL400 but never really managed to really get established on that level. I think I might have continued to withdraw and then gotten discouraged by every downswing but I still made money every, or almost every, month and felt good about it overall. In October, or some other month in the fall, I got a retarded heater going playing NL400 and NL600 with the most overaggro retard style ever. We're talking 3bet A2o, flopping J62r and bet/shoving vs QQ and spiking another 2 while thinking it was probably a good play anyway because “aggression is good”. Think I made 10k or so. The things went to shit and by January I was back to grinding NL200, considering (and rightly so) that limit to be my bread and butter.
While playing a little bit higher I would spend a ton of money on drinks while out partying, doing stupid shit and generally being a duchebag. I also hoped to one day be a real high stakes player and whatnot. Don't really know why I wanted that, but I supposed I figured that I wouldn't need much game to sleep with women with big boobs and low moral if I just had enough money. I also played for my income right at that point. It was nice to have money and don't have to worry about rent and such. I was frustrated when I couldn't beat anything higher then NL200 and I remember calling my father and bitching about it. Now, being 21 or something and calling your dad bitching about your low income when you probably make about as much as him is a fairly gay thing to do, but then I could not see it. The summer came, I won a small donkament for maybe 3k or so the day I woke up after writing my last exam for the semester. Only reason I played it was that I wanted to play poker but was to hung over to play cash. After that I started winning consistently on mid stakes. From there on it was basically a race to the top and after another year or so I was a consistent winner on NL1k and took shots higher. Been playing a lot of NL2k too but without much success overall.
While playing NL200 I used to say that I was not a gambling addict, but I jokingly added that I was probably an addict to winning. Stating that if people just gave me their money at once instead of making me go through the motions of actually winning them I'd be even happier. When I went up I started to have more doubts about that considering how the winnings, while bigger, was much less consistent. Swings were higher but I still kept going. Did I actually depend on playing? My mood sure was affected a lot by my results and I spent the better part of the summer playing and when the fall came my grades where pretty darn bad. Can't remember exactly when I moved up and down after that. I think that fall was fairly uneventful and I basically became established as one of the better mid stakes “grinders” (oh God I hate that term) on the Prima network. When last year began I was playing from NL400 to NL1k and took occasional shots higher. I went well and I kept building my bankroll and during the summer I moved up and played mostly NL1k and NL2k. I had another big heater and made a ton of money over June and July. One the months was so good it was stupid and I was up more money then most people make in a year. Hell, I was up as much as most people with ordinary jobs makes in 3 years.
I got invited to Unibet Open London. This was cool and it was my second big poker tournament ever. First one was the spring before when I got busted 400bb deep the first hand in a 5bet pot with KK vs AA on AK6ss... This time I was determined not to play that bad and do good. Had horrible table draws but played fairly well day one and despite drinking like a full blood alcoholic and running into some bad situations I managed to be the only Swedish player to survive day one A. That was cool but but busted about 15 places from the money with KTs vs 99 that go all in pre, flop came Kxx with two diamonds, turn a diamond that paired the board and the river came a God damn nine. Before the river I said I had a bad feeling and Ket (high stakes player who I knew who he was form LP and some instructional videos) commented that I jinxed myself.
I remember taking up omaha, sucking horridly and not learning that properly before quite recently. This winter sometime, I think. Overall I made a decent coin last year, but it'd would've been much more if it wasn't for my horrid ending of the year (lost 40k € or so in November and maybe 10k in December) it would've been great.
I think it can probably be summed up in what I said in this interview during Unibet Open Prague.
(it's like 2.50 into the clip)
“This month I've played mostly 5/10 and 10/20 and lost a lot cause apparently I suck”
During the summer I felt on top of the world and I was really happy about everything, for obvious reasons, but the fun part is that except for a lingering fear that I might just suck at this game and that I had just been lucky as hell for 3 years or so I was really happy. I studied interesting subjects, got a few new friends and even though I was really frustrated from time to time I kept playing through and in the end I managed to turn it around early this year.
I had to rethink some stuff and change a lot of things but even though I felt kind of relived that I could win again it did in fact not change my feelings for the game that much. I still liked it as much as ever, but I also felt that lady Luck could suck it. Here's an old blog post about how I lost a 10k pot to a two outer and commented on it.
As I said then, there are a lot of things in this world more important then money. I'm obviously super happy about having a decent bit of it but to be honest I'm not really spending to much anyway. Yea I don't look at price tags anymore, and I buy whatever crap I feel like, but other then that I don't think I'm spending that much more then any random student. Maybe on taxis and shit, but I'm not out partying to much anyway.
I made another blog post somewhere along the line about how I tried to get to high stakes. Basically it was an excuse to post this youtube video:
I stated that if you just run your head into the wall enough times the wall will sooner or later fall. Or you'll get yourself a constant headache. This last week I think I've figured something out though. It's not that I'm good at getting up every time lady Luck kicks me down. I am, but that's not the point. It's not that I'm really lucky either. I'm that too, but still not the point. It's that I actually like pain. I hadn't realized it before, but I was talking a bit with some of the guys I train BJJ with and heard myself say that I actually preferred rolling with guys much bigger, better and stronger then me. Just getting my ass handed to me time after time while constantly trying to do better despite getting more and more tired I feel is much more rewarding then rolling with people who is about as good as me. Walking home with slightly sore arms and legs, bruised all over and tired as hell is the greatest feeling ever and I actually don't feel as good if I for some reasons haven't gotten owned to badly. As for poker I love it when I manage to turn some real bad downswing around. When that empty feeling you get when you lose a ton of money leaves and you finally manage to pull things around. To see how much crap you can take, how many times you can see someone hit his gutshot and stack you all over again while not losing your cool and just keep powering through while still playing your A-game is very rewarding.
"Pain is the best teacher, but nobody wants to go to his class."
Some German guy, Leibniz I think but I'm to busy to look it up, talked about how our world was the best possible world and how we would not be able to appreciate sunshine if it wasn't for those rainy days and how we could not feel joy if we never knew sadness. I think he meant that everything is relative, which I personally feel is a load of crap, but I do agree what most of what we feel we can only feel in relation to something else. And every time you see what light in the end of the tunnel, that's the reward for your suffering and the hard times and in the end I feel that most of the time the reward is worth the price we pay.
So why do I still play poker? The money, obviously, for pride, maybe, but mostly because I somehow have gotten used to the emotional swings and started to appreciate it all.
And as my father always says; “No Pain, No Gain”. I finally get it.
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PanoRaMa United States. May 27 2010 21:21. Posts 1655
"Pain is the best teacher, but nobody wants to go to his class."
I like that.
Congrats on getting to where you are now, you're definitely on a higher mental/emotional plane than me to be so content with everything. GL
On May 27 2010 22:50 PplusAD wrote:
lol BJJ pain ?
maybe u shall try MMA, too
lots of pain to have there ^^
yea gonna start doing thai boxing this fall and then get into MMA next spring (you gotta have at least one semester of grappling and one of stand up to be allowed to train MMA at the gym) if I can make it work with time and such. Tried to do Thai + BJJ this semester but my conditioning sucked to much so I just did BJJ which is more fun, but now that I'm able to train more without getting tired I think I can start doing both.
edit: Also wanted to ad. It's probably not only just pain in the regular way I'm talking about but rather "the pain of losing" or something like that.
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