I'm Beat

NOT THE MOOKIE!!!!

YES THE MOOKIE!!!!!


I spent all morning tying up a reaction to a play last night in my home game. How sad is that? Anyway, the Mookie is tonight and I hope to be awake to play. It's been a rough week already and gets rougher.

Hoy posted a very nice comment I wanted to respond to privately but don't know how so here it goes:

Great job in the Hoy last night as well, Wes. No reason to kick yourself over not cashing, that was a recockubeat if I ever saw one that left you on the bubble. One thing I have to say about you is that you never seem to tilt at the tables when you take a bad beat. I'm constantly amazed at how "gl" you are every time you get bad beat out of one of these things (I've dished a few of them out myself as I recall). Are you just effing burning up inside or do you really not care so much about it? The self-control is pretty admirable man.


Driving to my home game last night, I came to an intersection of a busy street with no light. Across from me was a young lady attempting to make a left across my path. I intended to let her go first as she had been sitting there a while and I am nothing if not a gentleman. Well, she edged further and further out until she entered the flow of traffic in an impediment sort of way and a driver gave her a mild warning toot as he passed by. Her response was yell and flip off that guy for five seconds not realizing she had an opening to make her turn. I moved on past her with a smile and a cheery wave. She had spent her time bitching about a situation that was partially her own creation while letting an opportunity pass her by.

I view poker the same way. Rather than moan about a bad beat, I try to move on immediately to ensure I don't follow-up with another one. I am always playing multiple table, so even if I get knocked out of a tournament, I have another decision to make almost immediately and need to get my mind right to make the proper one. It's easier to get back on track if you haven't strayed too far to begin with. That, and I am a pretty easy-going person anyway.

Now, as for the caring part, I do place a high importance on most tournaments I enter and do get bummed when I get knocked out. Sometimes, I will agonize over a play I made for days in an attempt to figure out where it all went wrong. The trick is to do that after you have finished playing for the night and given your head a chance to clear a bit so you can analyze the situation more effectively. I think Hoy's ridiculously detailed hand descriptions are a great tool. It makes him think critically about the hand while giving others the opportunity to weigh in.

I have always treated sports as "life or death" situations as I was playing them. As soon as an event was over though, I turned off the competitor switch and moved to analysis. Of course there was many a time I beat myself up for days due to a mistake I felt I made in a game but I always wanted to redirect that into a positive. Poker is the same. I can bitch about donkeys or I can concentrate on best way to counter their magic.


Also, good observation about 2006 and the "death" of the poker blog. I got a big kick out of all that last year fo sho, mostly because I found it to be just a few of the "old school" poker blogger types whose blogs were dying out because those guys were burning out. As I've written about several times on my blog, I have an endless desire to keep writing about poker every day, and a seemingly endless supply of topics to write about since I spend some time every day either reading and/or thinking about the game. It's just funny to hear someone else describe how they need to get back up to speed with the whole blogger tournament thing, which I've just taken for granted after playing in most of these tournaments most of these weeks.

When I discovered poker blogs (hell, blogs) in 2004, I spent hours every day reading every one I could. I devoured the classics and saw dozens be created and die. There has always been an undercurrent of ego associated with the scene though. It is as though if certain bloggers don't still post every day, then the scene is dying. I never felt this way as I was always discovering new ones through the beauty of chance bounty. On a personal front, in 2006, I took a step back to take care of babies and work. My writing and reading slowed to a crawl. The scene wasn't dying, I just wasn't taking as active a role in it. This was not a conscious choice; it just happened. Blogs are all about ego. If you are not reading me, the scene is dead. Well, that is a pretty personal scene and never has even come close to accurately describing this corner of the blogoshpere. As a result of not being as active though, I lost touch a little bit and have been playing catch-up for the last few months. I do have a bit of a personal renaissance going on here. I have upped the quantity of my output and hope to have a corresponding jump in quality soon. My inspiration as always, are the other bloggers; some the same as in 2004, some brand new.

Nice post. You've been running pretty well in the blogger tournaments I've seen you in, especially for a guy who claims to be pretty out of touch about much of the competition these days.

Thank you.