Introspection and Discovery

I’d like to get serious for a moment if it’s okay with y’all.

(Bring house lights down 50%.....cue piano and violins)

Since deciding to start doing this last week, it has kind of forced me to look inside myself to see what’s really going on, and how I plan to actually keep it going. This has led to some self-realizations and discoveries that I will share with you now.

First off, I have discovered that as a person who now purports himself to be a (predominately) poker blogger, I play a shockingly small amount of actual poker. That is not to say that I don’t dedicate much of my waking hours to the subject (evidence that I am the leading poster in the RPT message boards), I just don’t play much. Now I’ve known this fact for quite some time, but until now, I have not actually confronted it. So it seemed natural that I ask myself “why?”. This led to more introspection and another startling discovery.

I don’t play poker to win money. Hmm, perhaps some clarification is needed. Clearly when I sit down and play in a tournament or at a cash table, I would like to stand up a few hours later with a heavier pocket. However, that is not the reason I sit down in the first place. For me, so far, playing poker, whether online or live, has been social first, cerebral second, and money third. Let us look at these one at a time.

First and foremost is social. I got into poker roughly two and a half years ago now. In that time, I have been fortunate enough to meet some great people and establish some very good friendships. A kinship has developed. I am married with two children and I don’t have a lot of free time, but I try to afford myself one hobby. Being that I like the game and have established true friendships, poker is that hobby and has become my social activity of choice. Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to get out nights to play the RPT. I try to have a semi-regular cash game at my house (Palatial Snakster Manor for those who don’t know) for my social pursuits. So when I DO have the opportunity to actually sit with friends and play, it’s social.

Reason two is cerebral. I like to play because it is a thinking man’s game. Last week during the RPT tourney, some Cowboy fan wrote in the chat that they would give anybody 7 points right then for the game (The Boys were up 6 or so at the time). I replied “No thanks, I don’t like to gamble”. It got a “lol”, which was the desired response, but it was also a true statement, I really don’t like to gamble. I don’t consider poker, by and large, to be gambling. At the risk of sounding like a PPA cliché, I believe poker is a game of skill and mental acuity, and that is why I like it so much.

THEN there’s money. A little over a year ago, my friends finally convinced me to make the jump to online poker. I had been resistant because it seemed a little impersonal from the outside looking in. But I relented in the hopes that it could possibly be a social surrogate to my ever decreasing ability to actually play live. Fortunately, it was about that time that RPT started its online tour (coordinated by the venerable Al). This helped fill the void of social activity for me. Being that it was a new experience for me, I also branched out to other games, some cash and some other tournaments (like the 25K guarantee). I experienced a modicum of success which, upon withdrawal, paid for my summer vacation.

As time went by and the novelty wore off, I stopped playing the cash games. I rarely played SNGs before, and that hasn’t changed much and I stopped playing the guarantee tourneys (for the most part). I basically limited myself to the RPT online and the occasional Mookie. So I find myself playing, at best, one time a week. You may see the problem this has caused. Playing so infrequently makes it near impossible to avoid or play through extended cold spells. Each MTT becomes an isolated incident. If I don’t cash, then I don’t give myself another opportunity for another week, maybe two. This has slowly, inexorably drained what few funds I had in my account. For me, the money was only there so I could play in these games. Now I sit here with a pittance in my account (and writing a small novel detailing why). Something has got to give.

Next Post: Introspection and Discovery Part 2 – “So What?”