Ooops I Did It Again

Another new month, another horrendous opening session.

Fortunately, since I'd been offline for about a week, I'd decided to kick things off with a night of low buy-in poker. So while the count in buy-ins was high, the fiscal punishment was relatively low.

I've just finished Nolan Dalla's compelling biography of Stuey Ungar - The Man Behind The Shades.

One quote from that book rattled around my head throughout the session. Billy Baxter's pronouncement that 'Poker is like pool. Some days you make every shot; other days you hit nothing but the rail.'

Hitting the rail last night meant doubling through fairly rapidly on table one; before losing the lot when my top set lost to middle set spiking their one outer for quads.

Simultaneously on table two, another buy in disappeared when another top set hand saw all the chips in on the turn, against someone holding 2-pair and a gutshot. The gutshot arrived on the river.

At that point the red mist descended and the tilt monster took hold.

Oddly, I now seem more prone to tilting than when I first started playing. I suspect it's down to understanding the game better, and instinctively knowing the odds.

Whereas before I had a vague idea that I'd been rather unlucky, I now know instantly when I've lost to a 10/1 shot after offering the caller 2/1 odds.

The most annoying thing was that gutshot guy took an eternity to make the call. The longer he waited, the worse feeling I got about it. When I should have been willing him to call, because I knew he was well behind, I found myself thinking 'fold, fold'.

Sometimes I can be philosophical about these things. Sometimes I can be uberpiqued. Last night was definitely an uberpique night.

Last week I delved into Super System 2 for the first time.

An early chapter covers Doyle's views on internet poker. One of the benefits he lists is that more hands per hour means variance evens out more quickly.

Which is a perfectly rational and positive minded comment. It's just that sometimes it's easy to miss this, and just recall the bad beats coming along twice as fast.

I should perhaps add that to my list of aims for the year. Stay positive, embrace the bad beats, and remember the awful calls that went well - of which there are many more.