Tuesday, October 3rd: Oh, Canada!
What has two thumbs and is happy not to be American. This guy!! Alright, you know what: I'm actually going to write this post ignoring the hooplah of the past 48 hours -- if you had your head in the sand, Sen. Bill Frist managed to attach anti-internet-gambling language to a port security bill that was passed resoundingly by both the House and Senate, meaning that it now only awaits the signature of President Bush before it becomes law. Why ignore the elephant in the room? Because people have been losing their collective minds over this thing and nobody - nobody - knows just what type of effect this is going to have. Because it's unknowable at this point in time: the next step is for the US Department of Justice ("DOJ") to formlate a set of guidelines to dictate how the law will be interpreted and enforced. A bunch of uninformed adolescents yelling that the sky is falling serves absolutely no purpose other than to inject an irrational measure of panic into the proceedings. Online poker will survive in some form. Neteller will be fine. Do I have the answers to just how this will affect the internet poker scene? No, and neither does anyone else, so for the purposes of this blog, it's business as usual until we get some more concrete information from the poker sites or the DOJ.
A healthy disregard for money: I don’t think I have it. But something tells me I want it.
Oh, I've got it to some extent...the other day I let a few acquaintances watch me play a few tables (I didn't dare play anything higher than 20/40 for fear of offending their sensibilities), and they were positively dumbstruck that I could shrug off a $400 loss in 15-minutes. But another nugget from The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King that really jumped out at me is that these high-limit pros have a very unique ability to treat enormous sums of money like confetti. You would think that people who had lived their lives by the "bottom line" would have a shrewder conception of the value of a dollar, but the exact opposite seemed true. There were tales of a small group of players who, on a lark, each put up $10,000 to have Howard Lederer, a vegetarian for the previous decade, eat a double-cheeseburger at the table. And you didn't at all get the sense that, after he accepted and scarfed it down, their internal monologue was telling them "what the hell did I just do!?? I can't believe I'm gonna have to pay this guy 10 grand for that!!". Conversely, they really, honest-to-goodness believed that they had just made a wise investment of $10,000. That seeing this man eat a hamburger was worth a Mini-Cooper. Other prop bets they had were even more outlandish, with stakes many times higher. How do they do that?? Mike Matusow, after winning over a Million dollars at last year's WSOP "bragged" that it was all gone within 2 months. We're quick to label him a degenerate / undisciplined / idiot for blowing the biggest cash score of his life, but might there be something worthwhile to learn from this devil-may-care attitude that all the pros seem to have about money? I mean, have you ever heard the story about the pro who practiced fiscal responsibility, played within his bankroll, invested wisely, and never forgot the value of each and every dollar he earned? Me neither. I wonder whether to really reach the stratosphere of the poker universe I'll have to learn to develop this 'healthy' disregard for money...I'm getting there, but still have these occasional hang-ups about the amount of real money that I'm putting at risk. "Easy come, easy go" is just about the last expression that I'd use to describe my money management mindset; more like "scrap like hell to get it, and squeeze it like 'til they rip it out of your cold, dead, hand". I've been wondering more and more lately whether that mindset is a limitation keeping me from stepping up to the next rung on the poker ladder.
A successful mid-to-high stakes NL player recently told me that he rationalizes big losses (or losses that would seem sizeable to the general public) by reminding himself that if he had never taken any risks, he would never have built up his bankroll nor enjoyed the success that he has. For whatever reason, that simplistic line of reasoning struck a chord with me. Nothing but a cute soundbite, perhaps, but it speaks to the emotionally neutral mindset you need to be able to rise through the ranks of the poker world. I think I’ve done alright so far. My comfort zone right now is $30/$60 and $50/$100 and $1,000 NL (arguably $2,000 but I'm not so sure of that), and I’m able to play those stakes without compromising my gameplay.
But in analyzing recently why I’ve had more difficulty at even higher stakes, I’ve realized that despite my beliefs to the contrary, I do indeed change my play at stakes like $100/$200 and $2,000NL / $5,000NL. My VPIP/PFR at 100/200 6-max is closer to 25/18 over a few thousand hands, very far from the 31/21 that had been my norm over hundreds of thousands of hands at 20/40 and 30/60. Despite trying to convince myself that I’d simply run poorly at 100/200 (which is why I was playing fewer hands) I think I’m in denial: a few thousand hands at 100/200 is enough to substantiate that I am indeed changing my game, and it’s because…well…$200 bucks is a lot of money! See, that’s what I’m talking about – I've resigned myself to the idea that (as of right now) $100/$200 is the threshold for me – wish I knew what the key was to ‘getting over’ that emotional hump. When I was a low-limit grinder, I used to look in on the $15/$30 games (at that time the highest game Party spread), and wonder how on Earth people could toss around so much money every hand – e.g. “doesn’t he know that 3-bet is a nice dinner for him and his girlfriend!???” I remember equally well sitting in an $8 / $16 game in Atlantic City with my stomach churning with every hand…it just felt so unnatural to be putting as much as $100 of my own money into a single pot. And this was less than 2 years ago. Go and read my entries from early 2005 if you want a glimpse into how hard I took bad beats in my first few $15/$30 sessions…it was almost unbearable, and I think I ranted and raved in this blog to no end…I remember within my first week at 15/30 suffering a $3,500 downswing (I don’t think I’d ever had to put up with any drop bigger than $1,000 before that), and I was just beside myself…that was nearly 1/3 of my bankroll at the time, and it just made me sick to my stomach. Fast-forward to present-day, of course, and downswings of 5 times that magnitude come and go with alarming regularity.
I haven't come up with any "solution", as it were, to getting comfortable other than practice, which in poker parlance unfortunately means having to actually put the money at risk. The other night, with the help of my good friend Jim Beam, I came home and decided that I'd had enough of writing about this mental block and it was time to hold my breath and take the same step that had allowed me to finally break into the $15/$30 games. The $5,000NL games looked soft, so I jumped in head-first on a couple tables. Long-story-short, I stumbled initially, then went up a couple buy-ins, went to sleep happy, tried it again the next day and gave it all back. But I felt pretty darn happy with myself -- I didn't once tell myself "you freakin' degenerate, do you realize you just won $10,000 in an hour, and then lost it just as quickly?? Who does that!???" And I was able to play a pretty good game too (losing the second 5K back w/ KK all-in PF vs. AK). My net profit may have been zero, but I think I took an important step forward in for the first time being able to adopt the emotional vacancy I think I'm going to need to finally shed my uber-high-stakes training wheels.
That's it for now -- if nothing else, the recent legislative mess has really got the old cranial gears turning...it's a bit of a shock to the system to see one's entire income stream flicker...maybe this soon-to-be law diploma's not such a bad insurance policy after all...more thoughts to come.
A healthy disregard for money:
Oh, I've got it to some extent...the other day I let a few acquaintances watch me play a few tables (I didn't dare play anything higher than 20/40 for fear of offending their sensibilities), and they were positively dumbstruck that I could shrug off a $400 loss in 15-minutes. But another nugget from The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King that really jumped out at me is that these high-limit pros have a very unique ability to treat enormous sums of money like confetti. You would think that people who had lived their lives by the "bottom line" would have a shrewder conception of the value of a dollar, but the exact opposite seemed true. There were tales of a small group of players who, on a lark, each put up $10,000 to have Howard Lederer, a vegetarian for the previous decade, eat a double-cheeseburger at the table. And you didn't at all get the sense that, after he accepted and scarfed it down, their internal monologue was telling them "what the hell did I just do!?? I can't believe I'm gonna have to pay this guy 10 grand for that!!". Conversely, they really, honest-to-goodness believed that they had just made a wise investment of $10,000. That seeing this man eat a hamburger was worth a Mini-Cooper. Other prop bets they had were even more outlandish, with stakes many times higher. How do they do that?? Mike Matusow, after winning over a Million dollars at last year's WSOP "bragged" that it was all gone within 2 months. We're quick to label him a degenerate / undisciplined / idiot for blowing the biggest cash score of his life, but might there be something worthwhile to learn from this devil-may-care attitude that all the pros seem to have about money? I mean, have you ever heard the story about the pro who practiced fiscal responsibility, played within his bankroll, invested wisely, and never forgot the value of each and every dollar he earned? Me neither. I wonder whether to really reach the stratosphere of the poker universe I'll have to learn to develop this 'healthy' disregard for money...I'm getting there, but still have these occasional hang-ups about the amount of real money that I'm putting at risk. "Easy come, easy go" is just about the last expression that I'd use to describe my money management mindset; more like "scrap like hell to get it, and squeeze it like 'til they rip it out of your cold, dead, hand". I've been wondering more and more lately whether that mindset is a limitation keeping me from stepping up to the next rung on the poker ladder.
A successful mid-to-high stakes NL player recently told me that he rationalizes big losses (or losses that would seem sizeable to the general public) by reminding himself that if he had never taken any risks, he would never have built up his bankroll nor enjoyed the success that he has. For whatever reason, that simplistic line of reasoning struck a chord with me. Nothing but a cute soundbite, perhaps, but it speaks to the emotionally neutral mindset you need to be able to rise through the ranks of the poker world. I think I’ve done alright so far. My comfort zone right now is $30/$60 and $50/$100 and $1,000 NL (arguably $2,000 but I'm not so sure of that), and I’m able to play those stakes without compromising my gameplay.
But in analyzing recently why I’ve had more difficulty at even higher stakes, I’ve realized that despite my beliefs to the contrary, I do indeed change my play at stakes like $100/$200 and $2,000NL / $5,000NL. My VPIP/PFR at 100/200 6-max is closer to 25/18 over a few thousand hands, very far from the 31/21 that had been my norm over hundreds of thousands of hands at 20/40 and 30/60. Despite trying to convince myself that I’d simply run poorly at 100/200 (which is why I was playing fewer hands) I think I’m in denial: a few thousand hands at 100/200 is enough to substantiate that I am indeed changing my game, and it’s because…well…$200 bucks is a lot of money! See, that’s what I’m talking about – I've resigned myself to the idea that (as of right now) $100/$200 is the threshold for me – wish I knew what the key was to ‘getting over’ that emotional hump. When I was a low-limit grinder, I used to look in on the $15/$30 games (at that time the highest game Party spread), and wonder how on Earth people could toss around so much money every hand – e.g. “doesn’t he know that 3-bet is a nice dinner for him and his girlfriend!???” I remember equally well sitting in an $8 / $16 game in Atlantic City with my stomach churning with every hand…it just felt so unnatural to be putting as much as $100 of my own money into a single pot. And this was less than 2 years ago. Go and read my entries from early 2005 if you want a glimpse into how hard I took bad beats in my first few $15/$30 sessions…it was almost unbearable, and I think I ranted and raved in this blog to no end…I remember within my first week at 15/30 suffering a $3,500 downswing (I don’t think I’d ever had to put up with any drop bigger than $1,000 before that), and I was just beside myself…that was nearly 1/3 of my bankroll at the time, and it just made me sick to my stomach. Fast-forward to present-day, of course, and downswings of 5 times that magnitude come and go with alarming regularity.
I haven't come up with any "solution", as it were, to getting comfortable other than practice, which in poker parlance unfortunately means having to actually put the money at risk. The other night, with the help of my good friend Jim Beam, I came home and decided that I'd had enough of writing about this mental block and it was time to hold my breath and take the same step that had allowed me to finally break into the $15/$30 games. The $5,000NL games looked soft, so I jumped in head-first on a couple tables. Long-story-short, I stumbled initially, then went up a couple buy-ins, went to sleep happy, tried it again the next day and gave it all back. But I felt pretty darn happy with myself -- I didn't once tell myself "you freakin' degenerate, do you realize you just won $10,000 in an hour, and then lost it just as quickly?? Who does that!???" And I was able to play a pretty good game too (losing the second 5K back w/ KK all-in PF vs. AK). My net profit may have been zero, but I think I took an important step forward in for the first time being able to adopt the emotional vacancy I think I'm going to need to finally shed my uber-high-stakes training wheels.
That's it for now -- if nothing else, the recent legislative mess has really got the old cranial gears turning...it's a bit of a shock to the system to see one's entire income stream flicker...maybe this soon-to-be law diploma's not such a bad insurance policy after all...more thoughts to come.
posted by Blog Administrator at 4:07 AM
12 Comments:
Dan, i love your blogs. You actually DO the crap that 99% of the whiny losers on 2+2 dream about.
Great post.
You are correct in observing that it is too early to know exactly how the online poker landscape will change. I note that the European players, in my experience, display the same range of abilities as the American ones. For non American players I predict that it will be business as usual with a smaller player pool at the lower limits at least.
It will be interesting to see if the Canadian and Australian governments follow the lead of Uncle Sam in attacking the “scourge" of internet gambling. Given the willingness of the Australian government to follow the U.S. on a wide variety of issues, I would not be at all surprised to see similar legislation here in a matter of months. I can't think of any legal impediments, constitutional or otherwise, that would stop the federal Australian government from doing so.
An interesting legal analysis of the U.S. legislation is at this url: www.gamblingandthelaw.com/columns/2006_act.htm. It must be said that Professor Rose offers some insight as to what will eventuate as a result of the legislation. Another article on his site clearly differentiates gambling issues from freedom of speech issues.
I spent a couple of hours on Monday trawling the internet in general and the 2+2 forums in particular. The most common issues that I encountered were "will I be able to get my money out of the poker sites after the bill is ratified by the President" and "will there be workable strategies for moving my money around post ratification thus enabling me to continue playing online"? There was only peripheral concern about the infringement on basic liberties.
There is a forlorn hope that the Democrats will come to the rescue of online gambling, but this fails to account for the fact that the Democrats voted for this bill primarily because they did not want to been seen to be soft on terrorism. Yes, the "war on terrorism" has unleashed an insufferable hypocrisy in our society whereby governments that profess to support Friedmanite economics on the one hand, trample on the liberties of ordinary citizens on the other. Witness the obscenity that is Guantanamo Bay for example. I say "why stop there"? Once the infrastructure to monitor our every financial transaction has been established would it not be possible to effectively shutdown the online porn industry and other assorted evils as well?
You have got to give Sen. Frist his due. He check-pushed on the river and then showed us the nuts.
A sane and rational discussion of the legislation can be found at the Sound of a Suckout blog: http://suckout.blogspot.com/. The 3rd October post is particularly relevant to affiliates.
"I mean, have you ever heard the story about the pro who practiced fiscal responsibility, played within his bankroll, invested wisely, and never forgot the value of each and every dollar he earned?"
Yes, Todd Brunson.
Admittedly, he may be the only one, but still...
- Kuso
Not too long from now I am likely to never play on Party again.. I am a $2000NL and $5000NL regular these days, and I have followed your blog since its infancy back when I was a $50NL guy. I haven't the foggiest idea of your screen name on Party, but it was a pleasure playing with you. PM me on 2+2 some day.. s/n on 2+2 is needbeer
"I mean, have you ever heard the story about the pro who practiced fiscal responsibility, played within his bankroll, invested wisely, and never forgot the value of each and every dollar he earned?"
Bobby Baldwin is one as well
Interpoker (and probably every Crypto sites) shut down all US accounts as of Oct. 3rd. They are mailing checks for the remaining account balances.
long live bodog, wpex. and absolute
"A bunch of uninformed adolescents yelling that the sky is falling serves absolutely no purpose other than to inject an irrational measure of panic into the proceedings. Online poker will survive in some form. Neteller will be fine."
Snap!
Americans should move to sunny England, Internet gambling is not thought upon as such a big deal in the UK in fact the Inland Revenue do not see any form of gambling as a stable enough income so therefore it is none taxable. Also our government is not as yet trying to save us from ourselves by banning online gambling.
I think it beggars belief that something that was taxable one day becomes illegal the next.
The online gaming induystry is in a bit of a shakeup now. It will be interesting to watch for sure. Nice post my man.
This will be an interesting time for online poker.
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