Random Grind Report

I've been grinding a lot (for me, anyway) in the past week, and I had some nice results. The badbeat jackpot on Absolute was pretty fucking high, over 700k at some point. It is EV+ to play at these tables around 375k, so that was like printing (theoretical) money.

So, 22k hands in 11 days is not bad, considering I also got wasted pretty bad once, and the weather has been really nice so I've spent some time outside.

The bonus I get on Absolute is also ridiculously high. I'll get 600 in rakeback, I already got 445 in bonus (which is pretty much unlimited), and I'll get another 250 once I convert my points into cash. This puts me at about 5k for this period, for a pretty good profit considering I could still play even more than that.

Also, this was all at NL100 200bb deep, I wanted to see if I could play 30k hands and keep a winrate over 7ptbb/100. I'm currently at 8.2, with only 8k hands to go, so unless I run like crap, I should be good to go. I'm also not running even that hot, as I'm down over 400$ in all-in equity, but it's obvious I'm not cold decked at all.

I guess that's it for the day, remember that the sun is made of love, and helping others is made of win.

Tilt

I've always been pretty good at controlling my emotions, or so I thought. It's true that I'm good at controlling anger, despair and hatred, but I absolutely suck when it comes to handling doubts or feelings. Then I realized that I was good at not monkey tilting, but I could often nit tilt or cry tilt and not even realize it.

So I let my mind wander a bit, and I categorized different forms of tilt. Then I realized I might as well write it down because, y'know... It's always good to write things down.

The first, most obvious, and well-known form of tilt is evidently the monkey tilt. That's the tilt depicted in tons of movies, where some bastard just completely loses it and does something reckless. The kid deciding to gunsling against some epic outlaw, the husband who beats the sh*t out of his wife's secret lover, or the retired officer who explains years of conspiracy in court and justifies it by saying people could not possible handle the truth. In poker, the monkey tilt is seen by the guy overshoving all-in preflop and generally going broke very easily. His raise button suddenly grows big enough to cover both the fold and call options, and shoving 500$ to steal 20$ suddenly looks like a very valid and reasonable option to him. Thankfully, I'm pretty much immune to this, as are most people who claim they never tilt. It's also the easiest form to recognize, so eventually, most people learn to adjust to this.

A second, more subtle form of tilt is what I call the crying tilt. It's the guy who suddenly realizes he is powerless and has to endure whatever life throws at him. He usually cries himself to sleep for a while until a life-changing opportunity arises, and then he finally comes back to face everything he was avoiding, realizing that he's pretty badass. Except that this last part happens only in movies, in real-life society seems to enjoy these fellows as they are very profitable for their surroundings. In poker, these guys are equally profitable, as they stop raising or folding anything, just cry-calling everything down, accepting whatever you throw at them as their fate and only path. I tilt this way to some degree when I'm drunk, tired or on some long downswing. Fortunately, sound logic and reasoning can get you out of this pathetic state, so all it takes is a gentle tap in the back from some external force to get you back on track.

The next form of tilt used to kill me at the tables and cost me dearly in life, and I haven't settled on a name for it yet. Paranoia, Nit Tilt, Loser Tilt, or maybe Monster Under the Bed Syndrome. Actually I like that last one, so I'm gonna call it MUBS. This tilt is pretty obvious and is hard to get out from. It's a state in which you seem to think that every good thing is slightly worse than it appears, and everything bad is likely to happen. It usually appears after someone's been down on his luck for a while, and as most bad habits, it's pretty hard to get rid of. Hopefully, at some point, everyone learns to recognize and avoid this pattern, but it takes lots of self-analysis and positive external force to really make the difference. Obviously, in poker, this causes you to fold too often, and miss a ton of value when you do have the best hand. It can cause you to play less, because any activity you do with the MUBS will be a lot less enjoyable. While this form is obviously not as strong as the monkey tilt, it is just as dangerous due to its sneaky nature.

The last form of tilt is kind of counter-intuitive because it is actually a good thing. I consider it tilt though, under the definition that tilt is a state in which you do things based mostly on unconscious reasoning due not to careful training and analysis, but to some temporary state of mind that you cannot really work on and improve to make yours permanently.

Wow. That sentence is pretty badass. Mostly meaningless, but it sounds good.

Anyway, this last form of tilt is best known as The Zone, and I'll call it Zen Tilt. After some fortunate event, your mind seems to be really focused, and with your newfound confidence, you can easily avoid useless thoughts and come to faster and better answers. The ultimate form of zen mastery is living under this state of mind in whatever you do, and takes a lifetime of training to achieve, according to writings such as Zen in the Art of Archery. For most of us, this is ultimately out of reach, but we still do have our moments. Unfortunately, this state is very fragile, and anything could disturb it and throw you back into your normal routine, or even down into paranoia-land.

The first three forms are obviously pretty bad, and while you do have a main way of tilting, under the right (wrong?) circumstances, you could fall for any of these. One caveat of not falling under your usual tilt is that you might not recognize it, and you can't climb out of a hole you don't know you're in in the first place. However, once you start working on ways to avoid tilt altogether, it seems that zen moments come more naturally. No matter how you look at it though, it's something that is worth investing a lot of time into, as it makes pretty much every aspect of your life better, and the sooner you do it, the more you'll reap out of it.

The Secret of Addiction

When I wake up this early for some reason, I usually just go back to sleep. The reason is pretty simple: I don't really want to get up, because I have nothing I really feel like doing.

I remember a few different times though. Times when I was addicted to something, and not only would I instantly get up to do it, I think my brain would subconsciously wake me up sooner just to feed my addiction.

While I wish it happened with more constructive activities, I remember this feeling mostly from video games. My first memories of this feeling go back to my early Ultima Online days, although I suspect I just forgot about the earlier occurrences. Then there was DiabloII, World of Warcraft, and more recently and to a lesser degree, Guitar Hero, although addiction to such a game can never be as bad because at some point your fingers/arms are just too tired to play.

I guess that the point I'm trying to get across is that I wish I could get such a feeling for something really useful, or at least lucrative. I remember having it on the rare coding project, but it usually lasted only a couple of days, and it was more because of a particular challenge. That feeling is long gone now though.

When I think about something I want to do everyday for the rest of my life, I think about that feeling of addiction, where you can't stop thinking about it even in your sleep. Part of me thinks that no matter what I do, if I think of it was mainly for the money, I'll never get that feeling, so in a way, I am doomed. Another part of my tries to understand addiction though, and figure a way to redirect that feeling toward any activity. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a way to get yourself addicted to something you actually choose?

So far, the only thing I've identified as a criteria for addiction is that, from your point of view, you're always winning when you perform. Constant improvement with observable results is hard to top, and it hits a very sensible string in all of us. Problem is, with most activities, it's not a constant walk in the candy park.

However, if you could always see the big picture, if you could imagine yourself always going up that hill, even if it seems like you've just stumbled and fell down, it would be the start toward addiction, and the start toward waking up early and actually getting out of bed.

I can't imagine doing something I'm not addicted to everyday of my life, and rather than quit and try to find something else every time, I think it's more interesting to actually figure a way to enjoy doing what you want to do.

Hell, it's about time.

One post a month, I guess that's a good average. Well, one published post anyway.

So, about that sidebet... We ended up aborting it after 5 days for a lot of pretty bad reasons.

On my side, I started last month with a good ol' otitis. Five days on the pills, pretty similar to last year's. That allowed for very little poker, and it kinda crushed my good intentions. Excuses...

I've been sick pretty much everyday since then, waking up with a sore throat, random ear pain (which is gone now thankfully), and lots of crappy stuff you don't care about. Like a good boy, I talked to the doctor about it, and he said it looked like untreated allergies. Great. Hopefully that will be the end of it. I really don't want to be thrown around in the medical system forever, and feeling good would certainly be a nice change.

On the poker side, I've barely been playing at all. I completely lost my motivation last month, and to be honest, I've been pretty depressed ever since. I'll need to get back to it eventually, as going busto is probably better than not playing at all, and anyway I'm pretty fucking good at this. I guess I'll never get rid of that rampant laziness that's been plaguing my life forever. Better learn to deal with it...

So, on a brighter note, I'm planning a few interesting trips next year. Costa Rica, Vegas, Australia maybe... Should be pretty terrific. I've also started to like donkaments again, and playing these has historically encouraged me to play more. [Insert complicated chain of thoughts that leads to something good]. As you can see, things can only get better from here on, and I might even start posting at a decent frequency again (no, for real this time).

ps. Yes, I mean it.
ps2. Not leveling anyone this time.
ps3. Boy was I on fire when I was writing last year. Ludicrously good prose there.

Sidebet.

Wow. It's already been 2 months since my last post. [insert random comment about laziness]

October should be a big month. I have a sidebet with Glover, a pretty good player also from Quebec. The goal is simply to play a lot of poker. At the end, the winner receives 1$ per 100 more hands he played. So if I do 90k, and he plays 60k, he'd owe me 300$. Not that big of a sidebet, but just enough to encourage (at least one of) us to play more. More than that, and it becomes tempting just to play hands and not care about playing good.

I'm aiming for 100k hands in the month, and that would certainly be my best month so far (actually, it would be more than twice as many hands as my best month yet). Hopefully, I can retain a decent enough winrate to also show a nice profit. 300$ won't seem like much if I'm down a few thousands!

4k hands per day, plus two marathon sessions of 10k hands should do it. That leaves me 8 days to procrastinate... unless I adopt the 28 Hours Sleep Schedule, in which case, I'd only have 4 days to slack off!

In any case, it should be a pretty fun month poker-wise, and hopefully profitable as well. I'll get over 2000$ in bonuses/rakeback alone, so throw in a decent performance and I should join the 5-digits league.