First of all, just an update on my 2016 results to date:
So going off recent evidence at least, I make money at poker. I just feel so......... empty at the moment. It's been a stressful 6 months or so, ever since going on a stag to Germany, overdosing on Red Bull, getting home, nearly getting sectioned and subsequently melting down poker-wise.
It meant that for living expenses, I had to borrow from my GF's business. This came at a bad time for the business, what with Christmas coming up and stock orders to pay for. The knock on effect was that the store was badly understocked going into Christmas, which meant much less sales than is usual, which meant less money, and so on and so on. All the while I'm playing poker trying to make up the shortfall, and also eat, and also move up stakes, all of which is a bad recipe for mental stability.
So yeah, we're here again, with tons of orders to pay for depending on my ability to conjure up at a heater worth $3-$4k at 100nl, an ability severely hampered by a weird combination of stress, low BR, and coming to fucking hate the game. To be honest, given these factors, I'm amazed I've done as well as I have.
I owe a mate (cheers Chris, pay you back soon bro!) $500 too, plus various court driving offences and various other shit dating from years ago. Shop orders for stock were looking at ~ £3.5k. Then mortgage, food, and actually breaking out of 100nl while stressed and undermotivated. FML.
Solution yesterday- borrowed £3.5k off my Mum n Dad, used to pay for all the shop orders. Woot, it's meant complete separation finally of my day to day pokering from the business, and finally a respite from all the stress. I mean, I still have to make money to live, but that's fine I've always done that, and I can live frugally if need be!
Strangely, and this has happened before, the disappearance of all the stress has left a feeling of emptiness and depression. Almost like my body is just like beat up, and just has to lay there a bit to recover. It's also made me realise that I have indeed 'paired' poker with stress, and so minus the stress I can actually see myself enjoying it again now.
I had a weird rebound yesterday though where I swear to god I just lost money on purpose, almost as if to say yersssss it's not the end of the world to spew off a buy-in sometimes. This act then made me quit and had me worried, but I think to be honest it just came from a combination of relief and being under-motivated.
Motivation is hard for me at 100nl, sorry if that comes across annoying or whatever. The game is just so mind numbingly dull. Actually, scrap that last sentence, it came from the very place of low motivation that I'm trying to cure. It certainly has APPEARED dull given the low quality of play, but I guess it was probably the life sentence of 100nl that was mainly doing my nut in. Now that the tantalising possibility of escaping it is floating in front of me, I can see myself getting interested again.
The main thing to remember at 100nl is that when something seems completely and utterly obvious, so fucking totally obvious that you can't believe that your opponent isn't aware of how galactically super obvious it is, then it is the truth. There is never any need to go an extra level and avoid making the big fold when someone turn check jams a rainbow board in a 3bet pot when his range is like, sets, for example.
Man that was another depressive style paragraph wasn't it? The whole point of this blog is to move away from that stuff, and so with that in mind I'm gonna talk about things I think are important in poker that people don't really talk about much, or ever.
So back to the point of the blog, where is the edge? Well, I have a dozen or so concepts that I think I understand better than other people, simply by virtue of me basing all my decisions around them.
*writes several paragraphs about technical things, gets paranoid about opponents reading it and raping me, deletes and writes this instead*. But fuck it, it had the desired effect on me.
Cliffs: bring yourself back to now, again and again and again. Do it now, and now, and now. And now. Not the idea of now that exists as a thought bubble, but the literal undefinable now. And just when you think you understand now, and can get on with playing, IT'S A TRICK, so do it again. If any question truly needs asking, it is 'who is the one asking?'. From this place, technical concepts and ideas naturally flow, understanding appears, and before you know it we've right back into another hand, another moment. And now.
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