Pansy

Full Tilt came through and credited for the SNGs that were interrupted the other night by chip count and added a little bonus for the inconvenience. I signed up for the old standby 24 +2 26K Guarantee last night and quickly regretted it. As I have started to concentrate more on the cash games, I find it irksome to play in an MTT for four hours and win double my buy-in. Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of making the big cash. I just find myself not having the time nor the energy to devote a big chunk of my weekday to pursue the dream. I find myself playing the MTTs at UB and True as the numbers there are much more manageable. The only MTT on True that goes over three hours is their Sunday WSOP 6K and the ones on UB I play usually have 200-400 players which makes for a quicker night than a 1500+ love fest.

In all the debate about the skill level involved in cash games versus tournament poker, I think the psychological aspect was given short shrift. It takes a special skill to put up with the beats one must endure as an MTT player. When that two-outer spikes in a cash game, one can always reach into their pocket and reload. What do you do when it hits after you have spent five hours building up a nice stack and are getting very close to serious money though? A lot of tourney players cuss and scream and cry and whine. A lot shrug their shoulders and say, “dems the breaks.” They all have no choice left in that game as their shot is gone, destroyed by a maniac that will probably get his stack taken in the next few levels. My feeling is that is easier to learn tournament play as there are more pure math decisions involved as opposed to deep stack cash games. Also, it is a lot easier to go broke playing cash games which means many players won’t be around long enough to learn. In tournament play, you can buy in to a lot of $10 MTTs and build a knowledge base. Once the game is learned though, the two are sufficiently different that a meaningful comparison of skill level require is nigh-impossible.

Two weeks ago I made one of the best calls I have ever made in any game. It was a live NL cash game and I had built up my stack to 10x my buy-in. I made a call on the flop for almost all my chips after much inner debate. My read of the situation was true and I was a 92/8 favorite when th emoney went in. After I lost the hand, I tried to not say a word. Hell, I’ve sucked out on people and I don’t need some asshole telling me that I did so. As he was sweeping in my massive pile of chips, he made the mistake of asking me if I thought he had made a bad play there by going all-in with his top and bottom pair. Somebody else piped in, “I wouldn’t ask him that right now.” I just quietly said, “Brother, you got all the money. I guess it was a good play.” I thought about that hand for days and the only person I have a right to be mad at is myself. As I was sitting there thinking about the hand, I actually contemplated folding as I had done so well during the night and the game was about to wrap up anyway. Even though I felt I was way ahead, I almost convinced myself to fold, book my win, and head on home. Sure, I would have been relieved when I saw his boat hit if I had folded but I can’t help feeling there would have been a nagging voice in my head saying, “Pansy. You might as well quit playing.” That little voice is right. It would have been a terrible play. After all, I wasn’t playing with the rent money. I was playing to win.

Everybody have a big weekend and go all Irish and all that. I plan on drinking Guinness while working in the yard.