Sloe Times
A journal of my adventures in learning and growing personally and professionallyMonday, December 20, 2004
Poker: 12 Days to the new year - Motivation
It's really unclear why I've imposed the break from poker on myself like I did. It's not like I busted out and needed a time out. It's not like I got tired of playing the game either. So what happened? I think the answer is that I lost my motivation. I was playing but had no reason. I wasn't trying to get better, and in fact just before I cashed out and stopped I believe I had posted that I was purely trying to "make money for the next doodad I wanted to spend it on." Ok, that's nice but there are easier and faster ways for me to make money. My non-poker skills definitely generate more coin than my meager draw from the poker tables. But I still want to play poker damn it! That's all well and good, but why?
I spent some time with one of my under-read books, "The Psychology of Poker" and decided that perhaps I should try and answer the questions posed and understand why I want to play in an effort to be more realistic about what I would get out of playing as well as to find ideas or attitudes that I want to change about my play. The first two questions right out of the gate are "Why do you play poker?" and "Why do you play the way you do?"
Taking the second question first, I had mentioned previously that I had looked at my stats from last year and had PokerTracker auto-analyze them. It's determined that my play-style was Loose-aggressive and gave me a fish icon. Trying to be honest with my play and reading the description in TPoP I just can't agree with that type of a rating. I'm not as patient as I could be when I play, but I also do not 'crave' action. Upon further examination of the numbers a couple of things become apparent. First, not all of my play is reflected. PokerTracker has come a long way this year, but with quite a bit of time spent whoring around on sites, many of which were not PT friendly, a lot of my history is missing. The other thing I noticed is that my session time was on average between 30 and 60 minutes. Maybe 100 hands dealt during that span of time. Hardly a staggering number and I modified my play style to work with that. By this I mean step one is play a couple of orbits pretty loose (maniac) to set up a bad image and then spend the next half dozen orbits or so trying to punish peoples assumptions. Then it's time to go take care of the boy, deal with work, wife, etc. So basically, I'd adopted a maniac bait and switch play style to compensate for how little time I could actually play.
Getting back to the first question I tried to reflect honestly on it (which is harder to do than you'd think) and I'd have to say that the number one reason for doing so was status. Both my personal view of how I was doing ("Must be a winning player!") but also how others viewed me as a player (Damn them blog reading hordes). The second reason was the money. If I could win a lot of money, I could pay for other stuff. On that second item, boy did I. Let's see, last year I got set of 1000 nice clay poker chips, a set of fancy KEM cards, spent some on miscellaneous doodads, and paid for most of a vacation dedicated to gaming(not the casino type) all on my winnings. To round out the top three reasons for playing, I would have to say I played for the fun of it. That's a pretty generic statement that encompasses the thrill of risk, winning, losing, meeting new people, getting involved in blogging, and just playing cards.
So looking towards the new year I'm trying to put a plan or strategy together that will help me overcome the weaknesses that exist within my game but still work towards my overall personal goals. I think I've moved past the point of having something to prove. I think from a performance perspective last year I proved that I could learn from my mistakes, overcome my lack of knowledge and apply raw talent to new knowledge and become a winning player. So taking this from page 35 of TPoP I'm rating my motives for playing this next year:
Ok, this felt good getting down and helps focus the mind on what I want to achieve but I've neglected to put into words what my personal goal is. It may seem silly to some but I want to be like Richard Brodie. Just in case there is any confusion I mean that in the financially free, comfortable, jet-setting way. But I'll get to that in a different post.
I spent some time with one of my under-read books, "The Psychology of Poker" and decided that perhaps I should try and answer the questions posed and understand why I want to play in an effort to be more realistic about what I would get out of playing as well as to find ideas or attitudes that I want to change about my play. The first two questions right out of the gate are "Why do you play poker?" and "Why do you play the way you do?"
Taking the second question first, I had mentioned previously that I had looked at my stats from last year and had PokerTracker auto-analyze them. It's determined that my play-style was Loose-aggressive and gave me a fish icon. Trying to be honest with my play and reading the description in TPoP I just can't agree with that type of a rating. I'm not as patient as I could be when I play, but I also do not 'crave' action. Upon further examination of the numbers a couple of things become apparent. First, not all of my play is reflected. PokerTracker has come a long way this year, but with quite a bit of time spent whoring around on sites, many of which were not PT friendly, a lot of my history is missing. The other thing I noticed is that my session time was on average between 30 and 60 minutes. Maybe 100 hands dealt during that span of time. Hardly a staggering number and I modified my play style to work with that. By this I mean step one is play a couple of orbits pretty loose (maniac) to set up a bad image and then spend the next half dozen orbits or so trying to punish peoples assumptions. Then it's time to go take care of the boy, deal with work, wife, etc. So basically, I'd adopted a maniac bait and switch play style to compensate for how little time I could actually play.
Getting back to the first question I tried to reflect honestly on it (which is harder to do than you'd think) and I'd have to say that the number one reason for doing so was status. Both my personal view of how I was doing ("Must be a winning player!") but also how others viewed me as a player (Damn them blog reading hordes). The second reason was the money. If I could win a lot of money, I could pay for other stuff. On that second item, boy did I. Let's see, last year I got set of 1000 nice clay poker chips, a set of fancy KEM cards, spent some on miscellaneous doodads, and paid for most of a vacation dedicated to gaming(not the casino type) all on my winnings. To round out the top three reasons for playing, I would have to say I played for the fun of it. That's a pretty generic statement that encompasses the thrill of risk, winning, losing, meeting new people, getting involved in blogging, and just playing cards.
So looking towards the new year I'm trying to put a plan or strategy together that will help me overcome the weaknesses that exist within my game but still work towards my overall personal goals. I think I've moved past the point of having something to prove. I think from a performance perspective last year I proved that I could learn from my mistakes, overcome my lack of knowledge and apply raw talent to new knowledge and become a winning player. So taking this from page 35 of TPoP I'm rating my motives for playing this next year:
The breakdown for each one:
Make Money 20% Socialize, meet people 15% Relax 10% Get excitement of risk 15% Test self against competitive challenges 25% Sense of accomplishment from winning 15% Pass time 0%
- money - No denying this, no sense in playing poker if there isn't money involved somewhere. I got plenty of other fun games I can play if I'm not interested in the money.
- socialize - Hell yeah. This makes it fun. If it weren't for the bloggers I've met this last year, I probably would have just up and quit a long time ago out of sheer boredom.
- relax - It seems odd but I've always found playing games with something on the line relaxing. I think it's a release valve for other stresses
- risk - If you're not really living if you're not exposing yourself to a little risk. I don't mean this in the gambooler sense. I mean it in the sense of taking on tougher games or opponents where you're the underdog and taking the chance to heroically come out on top
- test self - I'm going to use the challenge/step program to try and improve my overall skill. I think that by doing it I will have to use many different skills in different combinations to be successful. The result is that I should become a more fierce competitor as time goes on.
- accomplishment - regardless of what others think about my progress or abilities, when I reflect back on my play I want to feel like I moved in the right direction for improving myself as a player and reaching my goals.
- pass the time - There are far better ways for me to pass the time than play cards, if I ever feel the need to kill time, you won't find me at a card table because that's the wrong attitude to have
Ok, this felt good getting down and helps focus the mind on what I want to achieve but I've neglected to put into words what my personal goal is. It may seem silly to some but I want to be like Richard Brodie. Just in case there is any confusion I mean that in the financially free, comfortable, jet-setting way. But I'll get to that in a different post.
posted by Andres Silva # 12/20/2004 04:39:00 PM 
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