Monday, June 26: About rakeback, pt. 2, and more

A note about rakeback -- I still get at least one or two emails a week from people who are looking to get rakeback. I think it's because in an old post I wrote that I was an affiliate, and offerred to hook people up with rakeback if they weren't getting it. Anyway, sorry to disappoint, but I've more or less weaned myself out of the rakeback business. I simply found that it wasn't really worth my time. I've still got a stable of around 20 or so players, but as I've moved up in stakes and my hourly winrate has increased, it just doesn't really make much sense for me to continue spending as much time as I do communicating with and paying players, all for the relatively negligible income it provided for me. Also, to address the most common Q's I get: there is no rakeback at either Stars or Party...Stars only pays its affiliates a flat $75 per new signup (e.g. there is NO revenue share option, and hence no possibility for rakeback), and Party simply prohibits affiliates from offering it -- in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that it's still technically possible if you find a Party affiliate willing to bend the rules and some people do go this route. You should also know, though, that there has also been a recent crackdown on affiliates suspected by Party of doing this...and I know of several affiliates who have had their accounts closed by Party because of it, and several others who simply had their trackers turned off (making it a real pain in the ass to figure out which of their players paid how much in rake.)

Anyway, for all other sites you can go with any of the major players in the rakeback business since they all offer essentially the same rates: I'd recommend Rake the Rake (www.raketherake.com) -- I use them myself for a couple sites. They have a very good reputation in an otherwise somewhat shady business, and manage to provide good email support for an operation of their size, and you can track your monthly rake paid online via their website. FWIW, I have no affiliation with them whatsoever, other than using them myself for rakeback for a couple sites.

I do have one request, though: If you do end up going with Rake the Rake, it would be cool if you mentioned that this blog referred you. When you set up your RakeTheRake account, they prompt you via email to tell them if anyone referred you or to give them a 'referral code'; it would be great if you jotted down "LSDPB" (acronym for Law School Dropout's Poker Blog). They give the referrer a small commission, but it doesn't come out of your rakeback %, so it's no-lose from your end. You don't have to...certainly no one here owes me anything, but if you're going to choose them anyway, you're not losing anything by telling them I sent you their way.

Anyway: although some of you know that hand analysis is the absolute last thing I like talking about in this blog (perhaps also the last thing I'm qualified to do, given my recent performance), there have been recent calls for me to post more strategy stuff, so i will take a rare walk through a hand from last night that I particularly like. It's also perhaps because I took a playing line that I don't think I've ever taken, and it worked out nicely.



MP2 and MP3 were the reason I was at the table - both very loose and bad. I thought about raising this from the CO, which I don't think would have been terrible, but QTs' real strength comes from making straights and high flushes, so I didn't mind a little action behind me too.



Flop was obviously great for me, with 5 people in the hand. Open ended straight draw (note that I also have what I call a sucker set-up, since I'm going to take any naked T to the cleaners if the J hits.) This is obviously a very easy bet if it gets around to me, which it looks like it might until MP3 bets. Here's my thought process: I've got the straight draw and two overcards, except my T probably won't be good if it hits either because a 6 will have hung around, or someone with a jack will make a straight, so I thought briefly about raising to drive out a J or 6, both of which probably would have had the odds to stick around for one small bet. There was also the advantage of having the option to take a free card on the turn if I want. So those are the advantages to raising, but I elected to call, because I had such a huge hand, and I didn't want to potentially drive out another Ten, especially since that's who I stood to crush if a Jack hit.

Here's where the hand gets interesting, though -- SB (a decent player) checkraises which could have meant any number of things. I don't think there's any way it was a made straight because there's no way any thinking player with a made straight would check the flop when first to act and take the chance that it might get checked through, with a high likelihood that his made straight could get counterfeited. It probably meant that he had a 9, a strong 8, or possibly two pair, but that's unlikely, because the bottom line is that there isn't anything he could possibly have -- not even TJ that could afford to check the flop and risk it getting checked through. Bottom line is that even without knowing what SB had, I think that checkraising here was a misplay.

The weak MP3 calls, and I elect to raise now, for several reasons. Whereas when the betting got to me the first time, there were 3 people left to act behind me, and I didn't at all mind if they came along for the ride, now that only 3 of us were left, I decided to re-take control of the hand, but most importantly, I wanted to get information from the SB -- I knew he was a reasonable player, so if he capped it, it would likely mean a made straight or 2 pair (albeit played poorly), but I also knew that I could probably get him to fold any single pair by representing a made straight myself, and maybe even clean up my Ten as an out if he held a Jack, and my queen if he held Q9 or Q8 or the like. When he had checkraised after a bet came from late-position, it looked like a hand that he thought needed protection (likely a single pair of some kind), which I felt pretty sure I could knock him off of with a 3-bet here. He did indeed fold, leaving only the weak MP3 to contend with.



The Ace isn't actually a terrible card, since it's a scare card that might let me bluff out MP3s single pair (at least that's what I read him for...possibly also a 6 or a T himself.) He wasn't going anywhere though.



The K on the end is also not all that bad a card (given that the poker gods didn't give me a 6, T, J, or Q) , and although I'm not one to fire at any pot when I miss, I felt like betting here was the only option, needing to make MP3 fold only 10% of the time to make it profitable -- the risk of course is that because MP3 was so weak he might even call me down with a 7 or 8, figuring me (correctly, ironically) for a busted straight. All I can hope for is that with all the strength I displayed throughout the hand, that he quietly mucks a single low pair. He does indeed fold, and I let out a relieved breath.

Who knows -- maybe I was actually "bluffing" with the best hand all along, if he held 46 or T2. Also, I acknowledge that this was by no means the only way to play this hand. I guess another creative alternative might have been to just call the SB's flop check-raise and raise any turn scare card (the ace certainly would have been a good candidate.) Note, however, that that plan gives you absolutely zero information about the SB's holding...can you really raise a turn scare card confidently without worrying that the SB's going to cap you? Then you'll have paid 3.5 big bets to see the river instead of 2 (the worst that could happen if the SB caps your flop 3-bet and leads the turn. That's a pretty key conecpt, if you ask me -- when faced with a close decision, adopt the course of action that will give you the most information about your opponents' holding.

Anyway, as I wrote, by no means am I claiming that my line was the only way to play the hand, nor the best way to play the hand. Just thought I'd give people a glimpse into the kinds of things that run through my mind when evaluating a decision. Yes, all of the things I wrote above did enter my thought process during the hand...and that's the answer, I think, to one of the questions I get from people a lot, when they ask what it is that makes me a better player now than I was when I started out: it's that the above thoughts sort of spring effortlessly to my attention, and it's much easier and more natural to cycle through the possible / likely range of my opponents' holdings, and what each potential course of action might lead to on future betting rounds.

Oh -- very lastly, I just enabled something called weblogs.com, which -- from what I can tell -- does something that many people have asked me to enable: it's a free service that lets you know when blogs that you read are updated with new content. People have asked about an RSS feed (I sort of know what that is, but I'm not too clear on it.) I think this weblogs.com thing will do the same thing though. If I'm wrong about this, feel free to correct me.

Sunday, June 18th: The $20,000 Day!!

Yep, 20 grand. Break open the champagne, put on your fancy pants, and go out for a stroll, because it was a banner day yesterday. Um...well, actually wait a few moments on that champagne. Might want to stick with the regular pants today...seems like it was twenty thousand dollars in the wrong direction. I would post a PokerPatterns chart or PT screenshot, except that (thankfully?) most of yesterday's session wasn't recorded in PT because I someHOw corrupted the hand history files...perhaps when I put my fist through my computer's motherboard, I don't know, I can't be sure.

Yes, not long after vowing to step up in stakes, I spent a few days nearly exclusively at the 80/160 and higher tables, and oh-my-god, you would not believe me if I told you how juicy they were. I had seats to the immediate left of the aforementioned 65/40 fish (how do they get the money to play so high!!) on TWO different tables, and gleefully 3-bet him all day long, much to the chagrin of the other players who folded helplessly. The string of beats that I sustained rivals anything I've ever experienced (more than doubling my previous worst single day)...well, perhaps it only feels that way because it was at higher stakes. I guess it was really only about 120 big bets, which is completely within the realm of reasonable variance. In fact, when I first moved up to 15/30, I immediately experienced a painful $3,500 downswing, which I Suppose is very comparable in terms of magnitude to what went on yesterday. It just wasn't at the hands of such awful, awful opponents. I played 5 or 6 handed, and the table average VPIP was between 45 and 50. There was one other solid player at the table, and 4 players that were inconceivably bad. Alright, enough whining for now. It's hard not to think of the weeks of profits that 3 hours of atrocious beats wiped out, but I'll live to fight another day. In fact, it's perhaps fortunate that (for the first time ever) I actually ran through all the funds in my Neteller account, and that's probably a good thing, because so help me God, I would have deposted another 5 grand in a hearTbeat to keep after those fish (i actually even tried to use my credit cards, but my damn cards aren't accepted at e-gaming sites.)

Well, rather than restrict this to a bitch-post, I'm going to try and take a slightly different approach...yes, it's true that the beats were "bad", and no amount of decision making (other than staying in bed entirely) would have prevented a very bad day, but I still think I made several mistakes that exacerbated the magnitude of things, so I'm going to try and stay constructive here, and pick apart a few of the mistakes I felt I made, whicH will hopefully help me turn things around. I'll go on record here saying that one of these days I'm going to simply go off for a $50,000 day or something ridiculous -- that is, if I can get another few tables like the ones I sat at yesterday. I'll try to stick with my top 3 mistakes.

1. I got waaaaaaaay to excited and aggressive when I got heads-up with the maniac.

Typical hand (which I'm just making up): Maniac raises UTG, I 3-bet with AQ, and it's folded around to maniac who calls. Flop is completely innocuous, something like 2,5,5. Maniac leads out. Now in my head I'm thinking "whatever buddy, there's no way that flop hit you, easy raise." Maniac inevitably would 3-bet me here, and I think I often capped it. Then went into call-down mode if he bet into me again again on turn and river. The bottom line here is that I didn't incorporate information that I learned about the maniac. For starters, his pre-flop raising standards were approximately as follows: any pair, any ace, any two suited cards, and any medium-to-high connectors. Not suited connectors, just connectors. I also noticed that when he had to act before me, he would bet out with ANY part of the flop, and ALWAYS played top pair (any kicker) as though it were the nuts. His flop action could mean a 2, a 5, or some inside straight draw like A3. Most importantly, if he led out on the flop, he ALWAYS 3-bet it if I raised. I did not properly adjust to that, and continued to employ a free-card raise type play (although I genuinely thought I was raising for value) when I knew it was going to cost me 3 small bets instead of one. I should have simply called the flop (or at least mixed in a healthy percentage of calls instead of raises) and reevaluated on the turn.

2. I did not make correct folds when other people (who undoubtedly witnessed my maniac isolation strategy) played back at me.

Here's a hand that sticks out for me. Maniac raises UTG, I 3-bet with AJ, another terrible 50/20 fish behind me calls 3 cold (which merely means an above average holding), and it's folded around to maniac who calls. Maniac leads out on flop of A,2,3 (suits unimportant). I raise, fish behind me calls 2, and maniac calls. Turn is a 9, maniac checks, I bet, fish behind me now raises me and maniac folds. This is a fold that I make approximately 90% of the time...I felt like I was drawing to three outs, but possible zero. But the pot was relatively large, and I was running bad, and just "wanted" it too badly. I called down all the way and was shown A9 for a turned two pair. Call it tilt if you want. I just call it bad play on my part. There were approximately 20 hands were I got "2 to 5 outed" yesteray (and perhaps 8 or so hands where I did it to someone else. Each of those pots were in the $2,000 range, so it's easy to see how a deficit of 10 to 12 'bad beat' pots can turn a day at high stakes absolutely putrid.

3. I got scared to value bet when i was quite sure that I was ahead.

The maniac had me playing on eggshells, even while I had a very, very good understanding of his post-flop style. He got me out of playing my solid TAG game, I knew exactly what it meant when he checked to me on the river. It meant "I don't have top pair, but I'll call your bet if I have ANY part of the board, sometimes even just A high". That's an easy, easy value bet with any second pair, but I got into this mindset where I was just happy to get to showdown with my marginal holding and take a pot from him.

Like I said: none of the above mistakes were so bad or prevalent that they could have turned -$20,000 into a winning session. But they undoubtedly exacerbated what should really only have been a $17K or $18K loser. Might not seem like much of a difference when you're losing that much anyway, but it's absolutely critical: a dollar saved on a losing day is worth just as much as a dollar won on a winning day. Think about it this way; i win between $1.25 and $1.50 / hand played -- The $2,000 or so that I cost myself with my errors explained above will require several days of play simply to erase. I'm not talking about the big $20K hole I dug for myself, I mean the teeny, tiny, seemingly forgiveable errors that I made, which I usually do not. The part of yesterday's loss due to mere bad luck and regular negative variance is all part and parcel of poker itself, and my long-term winrate will eventually compensate for those losses (I had actually run quite hot for the weeks prior). But not built into the variance picture is any type of corrective mechanism for simple player error, so those $2 or $3 thousand are an ugly sunk cost if you ask me, far uglier than the $20K figure itself.

EDIT: After writing the preceding paragraph, I re-read it, and actually think it might be one of the more important and insightful things I've ever written here. Worth another read if you ask me.

A few mistakes I did NOT make. I did not play tired/distracted. In fact, I felt like I was extremely mentally sharp yesterday and very attuned to my play. The mistakes I made were not due to tilt or fatigue, but rather due merely to irrational exhuberance, and a little overzealousness at having found such great tables at such high stakes. It's days like this for which keeping this blog is extraordinarily worthwhile for me. You think there's honestly anyone in my life right now whom I could comfortably tell that I lost $20,000 in 3 hours playing poker? 1) My family would freak out and probably try and get me into some sort of counseling, 2) My friends would ridicule me and probably try to stage some type of intervention, and 3) any online acquaintances would likely subscribe to the philosophy I once heard about how other people felt about hearing bad beat stories: "9 out of 10 people don't care, and the tenth wishes you had lost more." So instead I choose to write about it here, with a mostly anonymous audience. This is why, as I've written before, medium-to-high stakes poker is so socially alienating -- there's a very, very limited subsection of people who can actually evaluate the situation intellectually without getting blinded by the dollar figures. Perhaps most importantly, taking the time to think about and document the above shortcomings in my play yesterday, I hope will preclude me from making the same mistakes again next time around.

Wednesday, June 14: Money, pt. 1: 24/7 P.O.C.

So following up on my last post's motivation to take another plunge into higher stakes, I dove headlong into 80/160 games, and unbelievably found a 65/25 shorthanded fish who I followed from table to table for the better part of two days...and I was dutifully violated in the most uncomfortable of places. Well, I guess it was only 40 or so BBs, so perfectly reasonable variance over fewer than 1,000 hands, but frustrating nonetheless...watching this guy swim along also brought out in me some telltale compulsive gambling habits -- I made up some lie to get out of dinner with friends because I just had to keep playing with him, skipped the gym, and didn't leave my apartment all day, because damnit I just couldn't bear the thought of other people getting to this guy's money before me (and the secret was indeedout...the tables he was on had noticeable waiting lists.) I fell victim to this almost sociopathic ideology that every second that this guy was playing without me was costing me money...not the healthiest of mindsets to be sure, but it made me want to revisit a story that I actually wrote about a few months ago here, but which I've thought a lot more about, because I think it illustrates to succinctly the warped ideology I'm talking about, and the difficulties I think a good portion of the new generation of young and successful poker players is having trouble adapting to.

I bought my sister a camcorder for her birthday: $220, but it came with a $40 mail-in-rebate, so I was happy to get it for the reasonable price of $180. As I sat in my apartment cutting out the UPC code, printing out the rebate forms and such, however, it dawned on me that I was probably going to spend 2 hours of my life actually fulfilling this $40 rebate, after mailing all the stuff in and taking the check over to the bank, etc. And I couldn't help but think to myself: "Geez, did this rebate just SAVE me $40, or did it actually COST me several hundred, because I wasn't playing?!??" I know that may seem like a silly example, but the more I think about it, not only is it not silly, but rather it cuts swiftly to the very heart of the absurdity that is the poker mindset and lifestyle. Never before, I don't think, has there been any activity readily available 24/7 that has been as potentially profitable as online poker for those skilled enough to beat it consistently, and it's created this absurd pattern of thinking I call "poker opportunity cost", or POC, that encourages a perverse (but irresistibly rationl) compulsion to compare activities to the money the actor is foregoing by not playing online.

After several hundred thousands of poker hands played, I know approximately what my hourly win rate is, and sitting there filling out that rebate form (which I did dutifully complete) might have been one of the worst financial decisions I've made in my life. Clearly, though, it's not appropriate to evaluate EVERY one of your life undertakings based on what the financial opportunity cost is. Take, for example, the lavish wedding in Chicago I attended a few weeks ago for a good friend. Did the trip cost me the $1,000 I spent for the airfare, 4 nights accomodation, entertainment and other misc travel expenses? Or did it actually cost me in excess of $10,000 because of the POC?? Obviously, experiences like these one must consider to be, in some respects, priceless, right? I mean surely you can't put a dollar figure on having an outstanding travel experience to a new city and attending the wedding of a good friend. So those are two examples at the extremes of this 'opporunity cost' enigma: the rebate (because it serves as a means ONLY to a financial end) is a pretty clear cut case where it IS appropriate to compare the time you spend to the opportunity cost of not playing poker (also a purely financial activity), whereas it's equally clear, I think, that a 'once-in-a-lifetime' experience like traveling to a good friend's wedding is NOT really the best candidate for such an analysis. But those are the extremes, and I think the other 98% of my life is spent in the middle ground where the answer isn's quite so clear. Sure, you can't spend your entire life wondering "man, I can't believe the money I'm missing out on by doing this and not playing poker" or you'd be utterly paralyzed...but just where is the line between reasonable and absurd? Another somewhat silly-but-not-so-silly example: I stupidly left my suit in the coat-check closet of an airplane a few weeks ago, and they wouldn't let me back into the boarding area to get it, but told me I could return the next day and pick it up from the airport baggage office. Taking into account all the hassles of getting to and from the airport, that was a 3-hour endeavor...from a purely POC perspective, it would have made eminent sense to simply forget the whole thing, say goodbye to my suit and shirt, and just buy a new one when I needed it. But nope, I borrowed a friend's car, drove to the airport, and picked it up...bad decision or not? I just don't think the answer's so clear-cut, and it's this new mindset that I'm struggling to adapt to. Just what is the test to determine in what situations the POC-analysis is appropriate? How about watching a show you like on TV? Going to dinner with an acquaintance you don't really like, but feel required to do so out of obligation? The mail-in-rebate example is a particularly unique one because it does not bring ANY life satisfaction other than financial remuneration...in fact, I learned in a business school course that mail-in-rebates are actually a very elegantly-designed price differentiation mechanism that leverage the same financial-opportunity-cost mechanims I discuss here: retailers wanted to figure out a way to create the most economically efficient marketplace for their goods possible -- the seemingly impossible objective was to figure out how to get people who were willing or able to pay a HIGHER price for their good to pay that higher price, while getting people who would only pay a lower price (but still a profitable one for the retailer) to buy the good as well. The answer was the mail-in-rebate. They reasoned (correctly) that rich people wouldn't waste their time filling out a $20 rebate form, whereas less wealthy people would, enabling them to more optimally charge each and every customer the most they were willing to pay. Pretty sneaky when you think about it. Anyway, I digress. For a guy who was raised to clip coupons and drive across town just to save $10 on a gadget, and who worked in the campus snack bar for 4 years in college for spending money, adapting to this new mindset isn't as cut-and-dried as it might have seemed from my reasoning in this post. In fact, it's a transition that I think some people NEVER make. My dad recently flew down to take care of me after a second jaw surgery (yes, I had to have a second one, ugh, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the first one, when I had my jaw wired shut for a month), and I couldn't help but marvel at the care he took in evaluating the merits of two different toothbrushes at the pharmacy (he had forgotten his at home), finally deciding on one over the other because it was 20 cents cheaper. Or in finding a flight to come down and see me, he spent 2 hours on the phone with the airline because it enabled him to save $30 over the price that he had found online. In my head, I'm thinking: "jesus, you were a partner at a law firm, my mom owns her own successful marketing company, and yet you still expend so much mental energy in making these insignificant financial decisions!" I'm not bashing fiscal responsibility -- actually, I'm thrilled that it's something my parents saw fit to instill in me -- it's just hard to come to terms with how much collective brainpower our society devotes to decisions that will have negliglble impacts on their lives.

I have many more thoughts about these topics of money, which I'll try to pinch off in the next few days...in fact, this is one of the last topics that I've had on my "must-write-about" list for this blog...after that, I really will have set out what I intended to accomplish when I started this thing way back when. It also coincides nicely with my departure for Australia...I'm not saying that I'll be saying goodbye -- the encouraging emails I continue to receive from people for whom this thing has proved to be a valuable resource and worthwhlie endeavor on my part make me think that I shouldn't end things just yet...Perhaps it's also fuled by my own selfish search for significance: the belief sought by all that their life is 'worth living' and leaves a mark on others. Regardless, I'll end this post now...got to go chase that 80/160 fish again.

Sunday, June 11th: Small Fish, Big Pond

Yuck: I only managed 3 posts here for the entire month of May (and only 3 in April)...that's pretty unacceptable, and now that school is over with I'll do my best to get in at least a post or two per week. I just never really bought into the 'post for the sake of posting' mentality...one of my pet peeves in law school are people who ask questions (which they usually already know the answer to) just to hear themselves talk or put their intellect on display for all to see. Conversely, there was a girl in my classes who everybody respected as quite brilliant (indeed, at the graduation ceremonies she swept pretty much every academic award up for grabs), but she hardly every volunteered her opinions, except when she was called on by the professor, and she was always just incredibly on the ball. Anyway, that's my long-winded way of saying that I gravitate more toward the blog mentality of posting when I have something interesting to say...so I apologize for the recent infrequency of posts, but it's only because I respect and value the intellect and introspection of my readership, and I don't want to dilute the quality of this thing just for the sake of jamming in 4 posts / week. I spent much of yesterday, actually, reading through a lot of other internet poker blogs (damn, I had no idea there were so many), and some of them are marginally interesting, whereas most are simply daily or weekly recaps of how much the author won that day/week, or an outlet for his bad beat stories. I'll end this blog far before it devolves into anything like that, I promise.

A lot of the emails I get are from people who have happily beaten the games at stakes x/y, but always get creamed trying to move up to the next level, and are sent scurrying back to their previous stakes with their tail between their legs. I've made several previous posts about moving up, so I won't rehash my old advice here, but rather simply say that you're hardly alone...I never really thought to look into it much until I was randomly perusing my PokerTracker stats the other day and noticed that I've been absolutely creamed at the 50/100 and 100/200 games. Granted it's only over around 7,500 hands, but it was salient enough to make me think more about playing higher and higher stakes. A quick sample screenshot...notice a pattern of any kind?



For around a year now I've been perfectly content sticking to the 30/60 games, and dabbling in the 50/100 and 100/200 when they look good (and yes, also the NL games, which I've really been enjoying lately)...but reading through a few of the really high-stakes' players blogs really made me reconsider my reluctance to jump into those huge games (I'm talking the $300/$600 variety). I mean, skill-wise, I have no reason to believe that I'm not just as good if not better than them...the mathematical test is an obvious one: all I would need to do is maintian a TENTH of the winrate as I do at the 30/60 games to make that jump worthwhile...that's a mere 0.3 or 0.35 BB/100. Surely I can do that, no?? Bankroll isn't really an issue, although I'm not saying I'm thrilled with the idea of a 200BB downswing ($120,000 holy crap)...psychologically something like that might be enough to make me want to take a few months off from poker. But then again, wouldn't it be cool to run hot at that game for a few weeks and make a quarter million or something! Like I've told many a friend who has complained to me incessantly about doing fine at $5/$10 but getting crushed at $15/$30 every time he's tried to make the jump: one of these times you're going to hit an immediate heater, and you'll never look back! That's basically how it happened for me and countless others.

All of this high-stakes talk was really spurred, I suppose, by reading the postings of Stoxtrader and other very high-stakes guys who regularly make $100 - $200 thousand each month. I admit, I guess, to feeling a few twinges of jealousy since I've lived obliviously in my own little $30/$60 kingdom for the last year, of which I am (at least in my little mind) the de facto ruler. The question is, I suppose, just how much money is enough?? (And that was actually supposed to be the topic of my next blog post before I got sidetracked by all this high-stakes talk...i'll make it the next one -- should be interesting, I think.) Maybe I shouldn't be treating $30/$60 as the ultimate destination, but rather as a proving-grounds, of sorts, for even higher stakes...that jump should also actually make for some interesting blog posts. Anyway, writing this all out is actually just reinforcing my will to try those bigger games...I think I'll give them a go. I just don't feel like all that hot sh*t anymore.