There is something to be said for setting goals for yourself. There is also something to be said for accepting a failure to reach those goals.
It’s been quite a while since I wrote anything here. I have thought a lot about giving up poker. I also thought about just letting this blog become one of the thousands of poker blogs out there that suddenly stop short one day when the author apparently gave up, walked away, and vanished into cyberspace.
I decided I don’t want to be one of those guys that starts off all excited, writes about all the good things, leaves out all the bad things, and then just disappears one day when the unmentioned bad things get too bad. I started this thing with the intention to tell a story, a whole story. I would have liked for it to be a glorious story of triumph, happiness and riches…but it hasn’t worked out that way.
Somewhere along the way I broke myself. What had once been a clear plan and a disciplined style of play, learning and review became a convoluted stream of mistakes, confusion and disappointment. I lost my ability to focus, my trust in my own judgement, and my faith in my strategies. I was convinced that I was smarter than everyone I played against, and that I deserved to win, no matter how many bad moves I made or how many stacks I handed over to my opponents.
Shortly after my last post regarding Full Tilt, things went bad in a very straight down to hell sort of way. I was able to clear a lot of bonus money on Full Tilt and rack up Iron Man Points like a madman. Unfortunately, all that happened was that I ended up giving my bonuses away to other players. I was able to keep myself pretty much even, but I didn’t make a dime. If I take out the bonuses I was awarded, I lost a ton of money. I started changing everything I was doing, every time I sat down for another session. I tried regular tables, deepstack tables, loose strategies, tight strategies, shortstack strategies, and maybe even an Indian rain dance mixed with some Voodoo ritual.
To make a long story short, I crashed and I crashed hard. Shortly after that last post I gave up on Full Tilt, and shortly after that I pretty much gave up on poker alltogether. I spent several weeks basicly scared to play any poker at all, because I just couldn’t control my state of mind anymore, and I was afraid of losing everything I was able to make so far. For several months after that I would only allow myself to play occasionally for a few hours on weekend evenings. They were usually very short sessions, leaving when I hit either my first big win or big loss for the session.
I decided recently that I don’t want to give up. I realize I still have a lot of work to do, and that my goals from the beginning were probably a little bit unrealistic. Perhaps the goals weren’t unrealistic as much as the time frame in which I tried to achieve them. I still have the same dreams, even if maybe a little less drive.
I need to find the fun in everything again. That’s true for much of my life at this point, not just the poker part. I haven’t read any blogs or participated on any forums for at least 6 months.
I’m planning to try to get myself back into twoplustwo and hopefully play a bit more on a regular schedule, something like 1-3 hours a day, 3 or 4 days a week and see how that goes. I’ll be sticking to Pokerstars since I’ve always been most comfortable with their software, and in my absence they seem to have kept on growing. There are always a ton of players on and plenty of good tables running.
Luckily, even through all the trouble, I still haven’t had to redeposit. My current bankroll on Pokerstars leaves me a bit over-rolled for the $10 tables, so that’s where I’ll be. Hopefully I’ll also be able to make more regular updates here and pull this thing back from the dead.
May the fish be with you…