Bankroll We Hardly Knew Ye

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. How have you been lately? Have you, like me, been juggling a crazy madcap lifestyle full of parties, excessive booze and hardcore drugs? I certainly hope not. And in fact, anybody who read my previous blog here on Devil Fish Poker will know that I myself... am lying. For you see, as I write this, at 9:30am, any good student would have only just collapsed into bed after an all night bender. But I, the lovingest of monks, am up at a prim and proper time, sat at the desk of my insanely tidy room (honestly, my sock draw is ordered!), after deciding to catch up with you good folks in a manner most pleasant. A wee little yarn. Worlds away from zippy nightclubs, endless Apple Sourz and multiple sexual partners in the same night.

Yes, since arriving at university back in September I've pretty much avoided everything a normal student does; whereas most will spend their nights being sociable and visiting Nando's and/or McDonalds each and every dusk without fail... I find myself here at work, quietly plugging away... and only occasionally venturing out into the dangerous (and almost always sticky floored) kitchen.

It sounds like, then, my poker playing should have come on ten fold? With all this quiet time I should have been able to read up on all the strategies, hoist myself up to glory and begin setting up my drop out from university – a staple amongst the young successful players, seemingly. Well... not exactly. The observant among you will have spotted the title of the blog. It's not ironic, I'm afraid.

I closed my last blog with sunny optimism, noting a desire to improve my game and a belief that my efforts at the time would be vindicated and I would soon see the returns. Again, reading the blog title, we'll know that things haven't exactly worked out as planned. To put it in cartoon terms, the first blog was me rising up through the air, arms forward in a Superman like pose because no one in the world could hold me back. But very soon after then, things changed. Consider the camera in a birds eye view, and myself flying up and up towards it. I get up to a nice close up, strong, earnest, confident... and … suddenly... “shiiiiiiiiiiit!” back down I go! Somebody help! What the!? ARGH! This can't happen to me, I'm trying haaaaaarrrrrrrrrd!

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I hit a rough patch and, therein, I think, I set myself up to not get out of it – and here's why. The disheartening of the beats, coupled with the stress of mounting university work and – sadly – troubles with the missus, led me to spend very little time actually developing my game. Sure, I'd play poker... but what did I do to develop my game? Nothing, is the answer. I didn't move onto reading Harrington Volume 2, I stopped taking notes on players which consequently led me to spending very little time even just watching them... I just kept myself in the little rut I was in, playing the same flawed game and hoping for (and even, to be honest, feeling oddly entitled to) a great big change in luck.

I must clarify that I have recorded wins within this time period, and even enjoyed a couple of days where I've made decent profit. But these, dearest reader, have always been times when I've been getting the cards. And this, I feel, is dangerous territory. If I get a few games full of high cards and pocket pairs, I lull myself back into poker ignorance, just playing the cards I'm dealt and nothing more. If I don't work on the game I play when I'm not getting the high cards, then I'm going to be in great trouble when they don't come. Which will be more often than not, of course. I need to keep working on things and bettering my game whether I've just played a session full of magical aces or shitcake 47o's. Even if the latter makes me want to crush my own skull and has me sat there, lips pursed with great frustration as I try to hold in the anger, my screen being intermittently sprayed with fine spit... I have to keep at it. Nothing that's worth having comes easy, so I can't stop learning. If I do I'll just dodder around at the same level, making the same mistakes, and never going on to better things. And I certainly don't want that, as I'm sure nobody out there does. Of yourselves, I mean. Maybe even me, if you're particularly caring.

So what else has happened since I penned The Poker Dream back in September? Well, there are very few trips to the mistress these days. For the uninitiated, I refer to the game of Omaha as my mistress, whilst likening Hold'em to my wife. It's fun, roll with it. Yes, I decided that I'm a one woman kinda man, mostly, and I'm just concentrating on Texas Hold'em at the moment. She calls, the mistress, pleading for attention, but I'm sticking to the wife. There's more rewards to be reaped from getting on well with the wife, I think. She'll cook me a nice meal, wash my clothes and, if she's really good, send me to sleep spent.

Now then, where am I going from here? What's the plan? Well with university work now solidly digested and, whilst no less there, much easier to deal with, things back on track with the lady (no card game aliases here, this time it's a real lady – boobs and everything), and what I feel has been a realisation of what actually needs to be done... I think it's finally time to move forward from this rough patch. To do this I need to finish reading Harrington Volume One again (getting the basics down one more time for good measure) and move straight onto Volume Two which deals with the end game strategy. This will hopefully be very helpful because it's all well and good playing ABC poker through the early and middle stages, but if you can't negotiate the much savvier waters of the latter stages you won't make the big money, which you should always be gunning for! I'm hoping the book will teach me a lot about table image at that stage as well, as I'm finding that to be amazingly important and – surprisingly and shamefully – pretty much an ignored concept from myself thus far.

I also need to play within my bank roll. A lot of newbies, I'd guess, fall foul of this once they creep out of the shy stage and realise that it's okay to play the dice baby, you just gotta do it responsibly. I'm guilty of playing outside my roll, and that's a big reason why it's looking so sorry at the moment. Had I stuck within it, I'd be in much better shape at the moment. Play within your roll, people. Everyone shouts it at you for good reason, because it's true. If you play outside your roll and play shit you'll be bust in a week. Play within your roll and you can stretch your failures over a month, perhaps! Wonderfully worded advice, I know!

Well it's time to leave you guys now, I need to eat cereal and prepare for my lectures on design, radio and TV. Today might be the day that I finally belittle the medium of radio in front of my radio lecturer, just because I know she's the kind of person who will take the bait and snap. Possibly even cry, she seems frail enough.

So long, and best of luck at the tables. Unless you're playing me, in which case I fully expect you to take pity on my withered roll and ship your chips across post haste!

Lovemonk