I Hate Poker

Saturday, November 10, 2007

The title is no lie. I actually hate the game more than anything in life other than unprovoked violence. I know of nothing else in the world that can so brutally punish you for doing everything (or most things) right. In work terms its like closing all the big deals, increasing the turn over of the business 10 fold and making all the right moves but then getting fired because some stuck up temp bitch takes exception to you and spreads a rumour that you tried to root her in the stationary cupboard. Poker pisses on that. You knacker your pan in and it shits on you waaaaaaay more than you can possibly imagine.

The weeks not actually gone that bad. I've made a little money despite being coolered to hell and taking beat after beat. Today alone I ran QQ into AA (he was short), was beaten with AdJd by Js10s on a 4d5d9h flop (all in on flop) and had the usual 2 and 3 outers. This was in just 1200 hands. Yesterday was worse, $500+ drop - same sort of shit. In one of my two outers I had AK and villain stuck in 75% of his stack on a king high flop and turn with 99 in the hole (river 9).

But, ironically, it's was just 5 minutes ago that really got me fucked off. My brother is round and we are having a few beers watching 'Football Factory'. Spirits are high and Malcy mentions he has $40 hacking around on a cryptologic account so we agree to go 50:50 and try and parlay it up. We start at 6-max NL$50 and find a few favourable spots to move our stack up to $100 or so. Now when I say favourable spots I mean that we raised solid hands, hit flops, value bet and kicked shit out of fools that took the flop with shitter kickers. Not ONCE did we draw on anyone! Of course, we got 3 outed once, 2 outed another time and, somehow, still hung in there and fought back.

We move up to NL$200 6-max and work our stack up quickly to $200 before taking a seat with $211 at NL$500. Playing fairly tight and very aggressive we progress to a $250 stack and the following hand occurs:

UTG+1 call $5 and we are dealt 77 in the CO so raise to $20. SB and UTG+1 call. Flop is A,Q,7 rainbow and we bet just over half pot. SB min-raises, UTG+1 folds and we flat call. The turn is an 8, SB bets and we shove. Villain calls with AQ and rivers the queen to stack us completely and end our paralay. The final pot was $525.

I think what really pisses me off is that when I play serious for a living I get shat on non-stop and take beat after beat. Lets not forget that according to PokerEV I'm still over $2500 down from all in pot equity since August. That's a months living expenses that is mathematically owed to me - I won't hold my breath! Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if, on nights like tonight when I take a mugsy gamble, I could just catch a break. I don't ask for much. I'm not even looking for Ed Hollis type luck where you hit your draws, hit flops and generally suck out on someone in most pots you enter. Just avoiding 1-5 outers for a few hundred hands would be enough usually! But no! I [we] NEVER get any luck or a fucking break and I really do mean never. You will recall in around April-June time I spend a fair bit of time short-stacking higher stakes and still found no joy at a time where Ed would run £200 into £20,000 in a matter of days.

There is no real point to this post - it's just a rant. I do want to make something very, very clear though and that is that I hate poker. I hate playing it, I hate thinking about it and I hate the way it affects my life. Notwithstanding I do love the freedom and if I can make enough money at it I will happily grind away simply for that reason.

I wish there was some way for me to upload my experience of poker to the blog for others to download - to see what I've seen so to speak. I know that 100% of people reading this are thinking, "waker, he's no different to anyone else - we've all been there!". I think is that fact that annoys me the most. Anyone that's seen the episode of the Simpsons with Grimey will understand - he saw the truth of homers existence when nobody else could and it drove him insane.

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