Back to the Felt

After some fun in the sun and all kinds of hassles with my business, CEU.com, which we are trying to sell (more later), I'm back blogging. The way it is suppose to be. Not only that, but I'm going to talk about what we all love - poker. Live-in-the-moment Poker!

It was great to be back in live tournament play. I played two events at Foxwoods and I thought I might be a bit rusty since I haven't been in a real event for about five months.

So first I enter the $340 event which attracts 1093 entries. For the first six hours, I got very poor cards and worked hard to tread water. The longer I could survive with crap hands, the better chance I'll have when the mother load of starting cards comes in. At one point my 15,000 starting stack was down to under 4000. I skanked my way back up to 9000 or so when I went on a mini-rush. I get pocket aces and made a standard 3X raise. I got one caller. An old guy with a lot of chips who didn't seem to know what he was doing (I just moved to the table). It was gift time when the flop came out 6-6-A. He checks. I check. Turn puts 2 diamonds out there. He bets 3,000. I call. Diamond on river. He goes all in with his flush and I, of course, call. When you get situations like that, you can see why making big, strategic lay downs is important (more on that and plenty more on my courses). I got two more courtesy double ups. Another weak player goes all in for 15X. I have AA again. He has 8-8. (I would feel his pain later.) A few hands later, I'm peeling back one ace and I hear; "I'm all in." The woman had over $100,000. I peeled back another ace. "I call." She had A-4 of hearts. The flop brought a 3 and a 2. The turn brought a second heart. It's never easy. But I won and was now table chip leader.

I cruised into the money. Picked up a lot of chips around the bubble. Now we were down to two tables. I had about $420,000 in chips. Just before a break I get 4-4 in the cutoff. The BB is $30,000. I raise to $100,000. The SB goes all in for another $120,000 to me. This was a sucky position. I knew I had to call. He was getting low and would certainly push with A - (any high card). So I figured I was a slight favorite. And I couldn't just abandon my children out there. So I called. He did indeed have AK. So I was happy, but my happiness did not last long when a K hit on the flop. Now I was short and the blinds were going up to 20K; 40K. I got my stack back up to $380,00, but we were in push or fold territory. I decided to fold 9-9 when an early "all in" was called by the guy on my right. It turned out to be AK against AJ and I would have tripled up!!! Instead I went all in with 8-8 and was called by pocket AA. I finished 14. Remember 1093 started. Cashed $2399.

I'll tell you all about the Mega Stack Challenge ($2000) next time.

Zen Poker

I love the concept of Zen. Its everywhere. Its other worldly, but its something we experience and witness all the time.

When a typist zips across the keyboard at 100 words of minute. He's experiencing Zen. When a cabinet maker cuts a plank of maple, she's experiencing Zen. When a major league batter hits the ball, he's in Zen.

The mind becomes blank. The body takes over. A flow comes over you. Things become crystal clear. You can almost see the results before they happen. A peaceful feeling permeates. A focus relaxation is achieved. I love it. I just love it.

And, of course, Zen happens in poker. It just happened to me yesterday as a matter of fact. It was like each of the players had their hole cards pasted on their chest face out. I KNEW what everybody was holding. You know what they are going to do. You know if you have are ahead or behind. I wasn't reading tells. I wasn't thinking about the betting patterns. I just knew. As a result, I had a big winning day.

Its really hard to intellectualize what is happening when Zen is occurring. Practicing an art, game or sport has something to do with it surely. By training the body and mind to react rather than think, Zen is developed. But its more than that. Things come together. You're in a zone. The Zen Zone. Maybe it has something to do with intercepting brain waves. Being at one with all the signals. Being a super receptor. You're apart of the world rather than an observer. An intricate piece of the puzzle. Your letting yourself go. Someone or something else is at the controls.

When it happens, its a great experience. And when it happens at poker you feel like a mind reader - a mind reader with a few more dollars in his pocket.

Plato, Pain and Poker

Pain and pleasure are funny things. No one likes pain and everyone (as far as I know) likes pleasure, but you really can't have one without the other. Think about your right ankle for a minute. It feels fine (hopefully), but its not really giving you pleasure. However, if it was shackled for days with a metal chain that was digging into your skin you'd be feeling pain. When the shackle was taken off you'd feel incredible pleasure. This situation is how Plato starts out his famous work known as The Last Days of Socrates. Socrates makes a very convincing case that pleasure can not really exist without pain. Its the contrast, not the state itself that creates pleasure and its brother, happiness.

It seems to me that Plato must have played poker (or the Greek equivalent). We poker players feel a lot of pain - especially in tournaments. We get so close only to lose to a weak player who makes a bad play so many times. We enter a tournament and lose. We enter another tournament and lose again. But if you play well and don't give up, sooner or later you're going to go deep and eventually win. When that happens, the pleasure is far greater than all that pain we experienced up to that point. Its ecstasy. Its like the gods love us. We feel at one with the universe. OK, maybe that's a bit much. But the point is that all that hardship allows us to feel this high degree of happiness we couldn't otherwise experience.

The same thing occurs with entrepreneurs. You fork out lots of money for a long time to create and build a business. For the longest time you get nothing in return. Roadblocks. Fighting entrenched competition. Fear of losing everything. It ain't for everyone. Its tough. Its stressful. But when you finally get those first customers. You get some positive feedback. You keep improving your product or service, flashes of success suddenly appear. Its a great feeling. I've known one successful entrepreneur who told me, the most important thing in starting a business is persistence. Don't give up. Keep trying to improve your product or service and in the end, you'll be successful. Too many people throw in the towel too early. Don't be afraid of pain. In the end, it's the only way you can feel the triumph of success on a whole other plane.

Stick with it, my friend, and everything will be alright.

Balancing Act: Life as in Poker

I think unconsciously, we are all making decisions on a sliding scale. There are always extremes and we are always adjusting how we live, act and relate based on our mood, our goals, our upbringing etc. For example, there is work and family. How much should we focus on our work and how much time should we spend with our family? In the short term, there is a drive to be at work and make as much money as we can. Be successful. Be rich. But in the long term, we find out that accumulating excess cash at the expense of spending time with our family is an empty pursuit. Not many people on their deathbed say; "I wish I spent more time at the office."

On the other hand, we do need to make enough to ensure our family's security and to achieve some personal satisfaction. So we slide our actions on the "Family/Work scale" that works best for us.

We also have scales relative to Eat/Starve. Friends/No friends. Organize/disorganize. Exercise/relax. etc. Life is a big balancing act where we try to keep things just right. When things are out of balance, we can fall down the evil road of drugs, alcohol or infidelity or some other unhappy failing.

Personally I do yoga once a week. Been doing it now for 22 years and haven't missed a week. Besides working wonders on my weak back, it gives me a chance to reflect on the balances in my life. Many times we are unaware of the scale and we fall into these ruts. I don't say I completely "unskew" my ruts (far from it), but I use that meditative time to make some adjustments.

Poker works almost the exact same way. I'm currently working on a course on Tournament Play during the middle phase. A good player carefully slides each scale in a dynamic way as new information and situations change. For example, in tournament poker it is absolutely critical that you make moves (bluff or semi-bluff). How often you do so is the sliding scale. You may slide toward bluffing a lot if: prior attempts were successful; you are the chip leader; your opponents are playing passive (ABC) poker; good opportunities keep presenting themselves; you haven't been getting good starting cards etc. The good player keeps changing his or her bluff percentage based on everything in his or her poker universe. The weak player plays the same way every time. Being aware in poker and acting on what you perceive leads to success in the long term. And guess what? It's all about the long term.