What do you want from the game?
I’ve been thinking about why I play poker quite a lot recently. Despite the odd spell of disillusionment, my love of the game has never diminished. Given the opportunity (and ability) I’m pretty sure I could play both live and online full time for the rest of my life. At the end of the day though, I’m an average player at best with a family and a job and there’s about as much chance of me making it as a poker player as there is of Heather Mills growing a new leg and becoming a nice person.
So, with that in mind, I thought I’d take a look at my poker ‘career’ and see what I want from it.
Live Play.
Now making a serious level of income at live poker requires an enormous amount of time, a lot of spare cash for a decent bankroll and a huge amount of ability. Sadly, I have none of these things and so making money at live poker is out of the question. I’ve seen so many people playing in the casino, at home games and pub games who treat it like the World Series. You’ve heard the quotes like “yeah I really like the game there cos there’s decent players there who will respect your moves”. Are you for real mate? It was a £10 pub game FFS! Now I want to make money as much as the next man and an extra £100 in my sky rocket on a Tuesday night is a very welcome bonus but to me, whatever I spend, I’m willing to lose cos I’m going for a night out It’s not a night’s work, IT’S A NIGHT OUT. Yes success in poker is measured by money, but I’m going to enjoy myself, not be a successful poker player. If your enjoyment is directly correlated to your winnings then fair enough my friend, but I’d have another look if I were you, let’s get together in two years time. I’ll compare my memories of fun nights and raucous pissed up Dealers Choice cash games, to the fact that you’ve got a positive income of £178 and then you can tell me who’s had the best of it. That’s my idea of positive expectation anyway.
Online poker
I dream of satelliting into a big event from an online game. I nearly did this last night and so the dream is stronger than ever. I won’t waste a lot of money on this and would prefer to dabble with the silly little steps tournaments, super, super, super satellites and freerolls but I’ll keep plugging away and one day it might happen. Getting a seat at an EPT event for me, would be like playing at Wembley for United. (Well not really but you get the idea). This side of the game is the fantasy that keeps us all coming back and I don’t ever want to lose sight of the ‘big score’ that everyone wants. The way I see it, my Mrs plays the lottery every week and there’s a much better chance of me getting my dream than she has, so why not? I’m not expecting anything so I’ll keep trying at a total cost of about £10 a year and one day, you never know, I’ll be that fella on telly who proudly declares a straight flush versus de Wolfe in the London EPT, despite there only being two hearts on the board.
MTT’s. Friday and Saturday nights you’ll probably find me in the $5 donkaments on ipoker (I no longer have a life). This is mildly related to the satellite game as they’re just a bit of fun with an outside chance of a decent score but I have one weakness that I struggle with. I play good quality, solid, tight-aggressive poker for the first four or five levels, then by the time I’ve hit the second bottle of Red, I transform into Phil Ivey’s semi-retarded cousin. I start thinking that a pre flop 3bet, floating the flop and an all-in check raise semi bluff on the turn is stunning poker and my opponent must fold, surely? I have, however, paid no attention to the fact my opponent hasn’t played a hand for 4 orbits, the flop is wetter than Dawn French in a cake shop and I’m holding 5-2 off suit. I’ll never make any serious money at this but who cares. I enjoy it, it doesn’t really cost me anything and barring the odd occurrence of punching my computer (I have actually done this twice) I’m happy with it.
Cash Poker. For me, this is all about money. Grinding away at micro stakes should never just be for fun. It’s a must for anyone who really, really wants to learn the game, but to do it forever? I think you’d best join a dating site if you think that a lifetime of 5c/10c NLHE is a suitable pastime. I used to lose most of my money at cash poker but now, this is where I make it. My old Poker Tracker stats were recently analysed in a poker magazine article. The standout point from the generally poor advice that I received were that I was a borderline maniac. I couldn’t agree more. Luckily though, thanks to the ukpokerlife forum and the help of one outstanding poker pro, I’m now turning a nice little profit and it’s funding all the fun parts of my game. I never expect to live of my poker winnings, but if one day, I can get my hands on enough regular money for a session with the lads every few weeks without the wife moaning about my spending ability then I know I’ll have finally made it as a poker player.
To summarize, I, love playing poker now that I know why I play it. Have a think about it yourself and just concentrate on having fun you miserable b*stards J
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Genious sir!!