A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend, one who hopefully reads this blog ;-), and I mentioned to him that I had played a 16+ hour session earlier that week. He asked how it went and I told him that I finished the session down ~$50. I was a little taken aback by his reaction when he exclaimed "Oh I'm so sorry!!" While obviously I prefer to win every session that I play, I understand that this is a completely unreasonable expectation, and that all I can realistically do is put myself in the best position to win over the long run. Much like the stock market, I'm going to have winning days and losing days, but the key to success lies in consistently making smart decisions. Where the average job should show positive results over a 16 hour span, a job like this one may only show positive results over a 100-200 hour span.
So let me break down exactly why that session was a positive one despite the losing results. This particular session happened on a day that Foxwoods likes to call "Monday Madness". Without getting into too much detail, the poker room gives out over $36,000 in bonus money to the players over the course of 12 hours, and it causes a frenzy like no other. At 1:00 in the afternoon there are close to 100 tables running where there would normally be 20-30 tables running at that time. I try to never miss Monday Madness, which happens about once a month, because the games are always really good that day. Unfortunately for me, I went pretty much my entire planned 12 hour session completely card dead, and lost a couple hundred over that time.
Right around the time I was planning to leave, however, I caught a break in the form of a couple of really great opponents. We're talking three friends who were all drinking and there to gamble and have a good time. Needless to say, I never leave a table with this kind of action, and I quickly reloaded my stack to try and extract maximum value. Well unfortunately for me, I got dealt KK on an early hand and ran it into AA for another $300 hit. So at this point I was really deep in the hole, but still playing well and still understanding the value of staying at this table as long as these particular opponents were there. Sure enough, over the course of the next six hours, I was able to win back almost all of my losses from smart play and careful table selection. I have no way of controlling bad cards, but I do have some control over who my opponents are, and as long as I am constantly aware of this and taking advantage every chance I get, I should continue to be successful in the long run.
In a more extreme example, I encountered a man recently who called himself the "Casino Robin Hood". He had recently won over $10,000 playing roulette and he was determined to lose a big chunk of it back to the poker players before calling it a night. I have no idea why he was so excited to do this, but he knew he was losing and he truly didn't care. Over the course of about 90-minutes he dropped close to $1,500 at my $1/$2 table (which is a very large amount for those stakes) and I was a beneficiary of a large chunk of those funds. He was literally shoving his entire $100-$300 stacks into the middle before the cards were even dealt. I don't think I could ever ask for a better opponent.
Anyway, thanks as always for reading, for following along with my journey, and for all of your words of support. Have an awesome Thanksgiving and I look forward to writing again in a few weeks. Hopefully I'll have a few stories from the Vegas trip that I'll be able to share ;-)
I enjoy the posts Steve! Glad things are working out. Happy Holidays!
ReplyDeleteMatt T.
Thanks Matt!! I'll try to be better about posting over the next couple of weeks haha. Happy Holidays to you too!!
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