Patience
This week was another reminder how important it is to minimize losses. When I say minimize losses I mean don’t lose more money just because you are losing. You could call this tilt in some cases. Sometimes it’s really just losing focus, making mistakes because you want to confirm your bad run (this happens so often. People want to confirm their bad luck and they make bad calls and go ‘SEE!’). Tell me that doesn’t sound familiar! When you try to minimize losses it means that you don’t take your previous loss into the next session and let it affect you. You lose because you happen to be on the wrong side of variance, or you’re making mistakes and learning from them.
Especially when you’ve proven that you are a winning player, this can also be very motivating. Recognizing that something isn’t working, or that it’s not the day where you can handle anything, can make you feel very responsible. I had quite some days on the stream myself where I just said ‘sorry guys, not the day to play, see you tomorrow’. As far as the stream goes more hours are better, but that’s also the poker side where I have to protect myself. Blowup Friday cuts into my ev/profit enough already so please understand when I have to make some smart decisions. The nice thing is, most of the time the viewers are even suggesting the smart thing to do and full support the decision.
Ideally you always want to make your hours and never have to quit early in a session. The more you play, the more you win. However, that’s a pretty unreasonable standard to hold yourself to though. Also the times where you just hang in there, but end up playing bad and losing unnecessary money, are very tilting. Tuesday I was able to pull the plug at a pretty early time. I saw I busted about 25-30 tournaments in the span of 2 hours, and I realized it’s just not happening today. I’m gonna do other stuff that’s important or laying around. Negreanu told me an awesome (pretty extreme) example of a situation like this once. Ivey walked into Bobby’s Room in Bellagio and sat down to play the biggest game in town. He played a stud hand that he wasn’t quite happy with, looked around for a second, and then decided after 1 hand he wasn’t feeling it today, and didn’t have confidence he could turn it around. That’s a skill! That’s so huge. I bet you your biggest losing session was also a very, very long session. I would like to emphasize though, that it’s not like you should just quit if something bad happens. Just recognize those days you’re not in the right zone to play.
Wednesday was the Star Wars: Rogue One premiere. I won’t spoil anything!! I really liked it. You really have to realize it’s a non-jedi Star Wars movie. I liked the plot, the pace and the acting. Good movie, so if you like the Star Wars universe (or sci-fi) go check it out!
Thursday was one of those days where you feel like you’re gonna get rewarded for keeping your cool and avoiding trouble. It started out really poorly but I had a very positive mindset. This is also due to the fact I quit in an unwinnable situation on Tuesday. I didn’t take that day with me as bagage. I felt good about quitting. The biggest tournament of the day, the early $215 Thrill was going pretty well. I had a decent stack and all of a sudden I started winning bounties and running well. Had I been pissed again that it was looking to be another bad day, I might have missed a valuebet, missed an obvious fold. These little things matter SO MUCH. Every tournament can be the turn around tournament. We saw that 4 weeks ago with the bounty $44’s. Atrocious few weeks and BOOM $7k in cashes in 2 days. Hang in there bratishki’s.
Friday was so much fucking fun. I say it every week, but you really should come by on Friday. Different vibe in our style, the chat, you guys, everything. It’s a perfect mix of everyone being ready for the weekend and watching a clown try to bluff people. I had 3 special beers alongside the normal ones and I was a little bit smashes. Happy to say I profited though! I came third in the $16,50 bubble rush, as well as some bounty builder. Oh I also won in small PLO cashgames. Very important to book a win once in a while on Friday. I am convinced that even though some of the plays are far from optimal, there is always some sort of truth in the hyper-aggro playstyle. Bounty builders almost always seem to be going well.
Oh god, is this the first step to playing like that again? Let’s find out Monday. See you then.