Balance.

I was reading a few posts on the CardRunners forums, and one sentence really stood out for me:
"Do you realize there is more to life than poker? Do you wake up, go outside, feel the sun and the wind and feel good to be alive?"

While I know I'm not even close to the level of degeneration of some of these guys, I was still affected by this one sentence.

feel the sun and the wind.... that's something I often do, mostly when the going gets rough. I never even considered talking about it because I thought it was just my thing and I was special or something, but reading that changed my mind.

When I feel like crap, I like going out for a walk right when the rain stops. It's just so calm and relaxing, and I swear, it even smells better for some reason. I sometimes wish I'd meet someone just to talk about random stuff, but it never happens.

I think a lot of people are missing out on this for some macho reason, but sometimes, going out for a walk is just the thing that you might need. Going out just to enjoy the sun also helps me from feeling depressed every other month.

Then, there is also the hammock and the barbecue, which both allow me to enjoy the sun while still feeling manly. The punching bag is a nice plus, for different reasons, but is still part of the whole. All in all though, having a way to 'digest' repressed feelings and emotions is very important to me, and I just don't know how most people seem to live without even thinking about it.

They like to dream about how they will enjoy it once they are filthy rich, without realizing that a lot of good things in life are actually free.

Marathon - Take 2

That one was pretty crazy.

At one point, there were 7 of us playing about 40 tables total, and most stayed up over 24 hours. I only played about 5k hands though, but that's easily explained by three important factors:
1- We played some stupid tournaments, flipped for rolls in PLO, and played Ro Sham Bo.
2- We watched some very special* poker videos.
3- I tend to be a lazy bastard.

Those are all very good and valid excuses, so I'm not mad about playing so little. I also spent some time watching a very good high roller (I consider 10/20NL high rolling) playing 9+ tables at a time, which is very inspiring and insightful.

There were some interesting hands I played, which I might post later on, but for now I'll only post my graph, and talk about how great a play the min-raise really is. Ended up winning a whooping 28.50$, which isn't bad considering I dropped a few buy-ins early on by playing like a donkey.Min-raising postflop seems to induce so many bluffs, it's not even funny. People will shove any crap if you min-raise, it's like they can't resist it. It's also pretty fun to re-min-raise a guy who min-raise bluffs you, just to get him to fold cheaply. I'm surprised at how often that works against decent players, and how often that entices donkeys to go broke.

People seem to consider the min-raise to be a donk play, because so many donkeys use it incorrectly, and because it sucks before the flop. Postflop though, and maybe button vs CO preflop, min-raising is actually a pretty decent play. It's just dangerous to fall into the trap of min-raising too often.

Against players who will shove good draws, min-raising is pretty safe. There are actually very few players who have the discipline to just call a min-raise if they have good odds, knowing that their implied odds are actually good because you probably have a good hand. Moreover, it's actually pretty tough to adjust against the min-raise out of position, because it's such a cheap play that you could really abuse the crap out of it and still get +EV situations.

I'm not even sure what the correct defense against the min-raise is. Re-min-raising might work, but they can adjust to that easily. I think it might be the play with the biggest tilt factor that can still be used correctly, because it's so damn frustrating.

*Note: When I say special, I mean it the Ralph Wiggum way.

Sick Run

I put in a few more sessions in the last couple of days, winning around 5PTBB/100 over a few thousands hands. Today though, I ran so hot that my chair almost melted*. I ran at something incredibly high like 38PTBB/100 over 1500 hands.

Brag: Won over 9 buy-ins in a single day.
Beat: I was still practicing with my new style, thus it's only at NL100$.

Still not bad, as you can see on this graph:
Winning is always nice. I guess I should have tried a little harder, just to break the 1k mark again in cash games. Maybe tomorrow...

Yeah, because tomorrow, I have another marathon! About 20h of poker with only short breaks (if all goes well). If I run half as good as I did over the last 5k hands, this should be another 1k day!

Pitch & Rewrite

It has been quite a while since I wrote anything up here. At first, it was simply because I ran bad and was waiting to be up to post, then I just didn't feel like it anymore. Maybe it was part embarrassment because writing these few introductory lines always feels weird. Then again, maybe it was just that when I don't feel like writing and I type something down anyway, it's complete garbage.

For now, I've completely rebuilt my approach to poker, as I lost it there for a while. I tried to add too many things at the same time, and some changes ended up screwing other parts of my style, which made me play bad and without confidence. I also ran pretty bad (according to PokerEV, I should have won over a thousand dollars more than I did simply in all-in situations. Sucks.), which takes some more confidence and part of the fun away.

At some point, I was stuck there, in that low low, at the bottom of the barrel, unable to climb back up and too embarrassed to call for help. I didn't like my game anymore, and quite frankly, I was finding random excuses not to play. So, I did what every programmer does when he encounters something he doesn't like: I pitched it and wrote it all over again.

I made sure everything I planned was based on at least decent mathematics, and ideally backed by experience. I dropped down a bit and really worked on playing good, solid poker, and keeping the moves for situations that require a move, not simply because I usually do that and it works.

I also took the time to re-read some of the solid posts found on 2+2. That stuff is really juicy, and most of it is also surprisingly well-written. I'd almost say it is delicious, if that word was still allowed for anyone even remotely manly. Armed with that new info and some regained confidence, everything went way more smoothly from that point on.

Updates should come more frequently now, which isn't entirely a challenge. I might even post graphs at some point, which always seem to delight the audience. In any case, I'm back and I'll provide a regular dose of chokage again to all of you who can't live vicariously anymore.