Finally Turned The Corner, (Thank God)

I have played poker for about five or six years now, and to be perfectly honest I have never been all that confident about my own game. I know that I am a winning player and that in the long run, I will be a winning player - but I never really totally understood why.

In the last two or three weeks, I have been playing a boat load of poker. Whereas during the first half of '08 I was playing on average 46 hours per month, I am now playing that much per week.

I am now understanding that my theory on the emotional nature of the online poker player isn't all that I thought it was. True, one must always consider ev-er-y-thing at the table (speed, chat, name, picture etc.) I think I was placing too much emphasize on when raising and folding should be done. It's not about feelings at all. It's about the math, plain and simple.

And when I realized that I started to play continous sessions, whereas I loaded up more tables as each table disappeared. I have found that I can play 23 tables per hour, while 16 tabling. Playing in 3 hour sets allows me to get in about 70 games. For example, today I played for 8 hours, 56 minutes and played 205 SNGs.

I put up a pretty good score today, 1413 but I think that might be a 7-10 spot so I'll have to beat that tomorrow. 1600 is pretty much untouchable from what I've seen. I still haven't won the Leaderboard. Twice I was leading with like 5 hours to go in the week, and ended up getting a 2nd and a 3rd. I'm not positive but I think I've made over $3,500 solely from Stars' newest way to make me never get a real job.

Right now, I'm firing away at the $60s whenever I can. I'm going to play 1,000 SNGs this week. I was reading ZeeJustin's blog from way back, and I kind of have to laugh at how much things have changed. I remember reading "8 tabling, then 12 tabling" and thinking this guy was nuts. Now today I was sitting there with 18 tables and still able to see a bit of Family Guy.

Anyways, once I realized that it had nothing to do with feelings - I realized something very important. It had nothing to do with how I was feeling. This is going to sound f*ckin' retarded, but I somehow thought before that if I payed attention to an all in, it would go my favour more often. Rediculous.

Now, I realize that the reason why people get so frustrated is the fact that not all cards are dealt at once during an all in. If all 5 cards were laid down at once, you would see immediately who won and lost. The pauses between the cards being dealt causes people to change the % of the probability of them winning in their heads. This is a flawed math.

AA vs. 77 is going to win something like 80% of the time (or more, doesn't matter). The board will come out a combination of the remaining 48 cards in a sequence from left to right. The ORDER of that sequence (of 5 cards) is what makes people rip their hair out. Understand that those five cards were coming down, no matter what.

If you follow me, put yourself in both the 77 and AA's shoes. For arguments sake, lets say both of the plays are completely justified preflop.

For this example, if the flop comes Axx, turn x, river 7 - no big deal. Nobodies emotions ran high. However, if the board came 7xx, turn x, river A - there would be a tonne of emotion. Feelings of justice and not being able to catch a break come to mind. Deal with the fact that those five cards are coming down, and regardless of order thats the outcome of the hand. Your KK will fall to K2.

I am starting to teach myself different things. I made a wicked call today that I normally wouldn't make but I just felt it after I looked at it for a while. Mostly just took advantage of the usual Sunday crowd who love to donate money to me for my 2nd house.

Numbers for the Day

SNGs: 205
Hours: 8 hours, 56 minutes
Profit: $2,995.50
FFPs Earned: 17, 938 ($287)
FPPs To Date: 597,708