Poker Should Drive You Crazy

 

  What Genius looks like 

        Years ago I used to play poker with this older guy, let’s call him Mike. Everyday Mike would come in to play looking an absolute mess. His hair was always scattered over his semi-bald head, and his clothes looked like he slept in them the night before. If one were to describe him the words Mad Scientist  might come up a lot, and believe me his antics at the table would confirm your suspicion. He was always talking to himself, always gyrating he acted like he just escaped from the Nut house. However despite his appearance Mike was a Genius poker player. He had great instincts and understood the math of the game better than Rainman at a Vegas casino. One day I finally got up the nerve to ask this crazy looking human being why he was the way he was. His answer surprised me. He simply stated, “ Cause I’m good at the game” At that time I didn’t quite understand what he meant. Years later as I began to take the game more and more  seriously, I started realizing exactly what he meant. Poker should drive good players crazy. It is a constant war between minds. Successful players are always asking themselves difficult questions at the table, sometimes they do it out loud. All of this madness in an attempt to go one level above their opponents. This is why it is often called leveling. Mistakes from previous sessions are constantly being replayed in the head like a sports highlight reel. The intense pressure of trying to make the correct decision over and over can be a drain on anyone. In fact after a long poker session many times all I feel like doing is having a drink and sleeping for 20 hours. As the hands and the years add up good players begin to skew the line between the felt and the real world. Often times in very innocent situations I will find myself interrogating someone, Studying their every move in an attempt to decipher if the Salmon really is good here. One of my favorite rappers of all time Nas once said, “The noise in my head is the curse of the talented”. Boy was he ever right. Anyone can sit down at a table and play the game, but to be good at the game takes a certain bit of crazy. I believe that the truly great players rarely get a good nights rest. In fact add that to the list of question you ask your opponent at the next table you sit down at. “Hey how did you sleep last night“? If their answer is, “ Like a baby“, Then feel free to exploit, Poker can be fun and enjoyable, but if you want to become great at it  be prepared to be committed, literally.

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9 Reasons why Online is Better than Live Poker

1. Multi- Tabling - If you’re a winning player at poker it only stands to reason that you want to play as much poker as you possibly can. Multi tabling fits that standard perfectly. I can win more money by simply opening up another table.

2. Very Low Overhead - One of the most frustrating things about Live play is the amount of effort that it takes to play. You have to drive to the venue, You have to wait for the game, you have to tip the dealers, you have to tip the waitresses, You have be civilized to the fish. All of that and then you have to try to beat the game.

3. Game Variation - Have you ever tried to learn how to play PLO or Budugi or any other form of poker before? If you go to most casinos chances are they don’t even spread these games, in fact they probably only spread Hold ‘em. Online you have the opportunity to learn these games many times for pennies, combine this with the multi - tabling aspect and you can now learn at an exponential rate.

4. Don’t have to hear other people Bad beat Stories - Now I’m not saying that you don’t ever hear bad beat stories online, but at least online you have the ability to turn off your chat or simply tune out the storyteller. Good luck doing that in live poker, how many times have you sat down at a game and the guy to the left of you starts telling you about this horrific beat? I never know how I’m supposed to respond when that happens. Sometimes I give sympathy sometimes I provide positive re-enforcement, and sometimes I pretend I’m on the Beach in the Cayman Island. One thing is certain though, I never want to hear YOUR bad beat story unless you are going to Pokersteamroom.com to post it.

5. No Dealer Errors - I guess it is possible for the machine to mess up every once and a while, but for the most part online has very little dealer mistakes. I thought of this this past summer when I was playing in an event at the Golden Nugget Casino. My opponent had lead into me on the river and I was trying to figure out what my odds where to make the call. I asked the dealer if he could spread the pot for me. The dealer looked directly at me and said, “I can’t do that” It was just then I realized that sometimes in live poker you can have very little control over winning and loosing.

6. Very little criticism - I was playing in a live tournament recently and was short stacked (under 10bb’s) when I picked up J-10 off on the cut -off everyone else had folded and I decided to take my stand. I was called by the SB who happened to have A-Q I spiked a 10 on the turn and won the hand. I could instantly hear the whispers from the players at the other end of the table. “How could he go all in with J-10” among other comments. I ignored it but it got me thinking. I went through all this work (see #2) to get here and play in this game, and I have to listen to this nonsense?

7. No waiting for a game - I absolutely hate waiting to get into games, I play a lot of limit poker at the Bellagio and it is one of the most frustrating things in the world to me sitting and waiting for an opportunity to play in a game. Online I can take my time search out the right game for me and sit on down. Time is money and there is no bigger waste of time and money IMO then waiting for a chance to beat a poker game.

8. You know the situations every time - This kind of goes back to my Dealer Error statement. Online all I need to do is look at the screen and I can tell how many chips you have, what the amount of the bet is, and how much is in the pot. In live poker your better off asking someone if you can have sex with their spouse than getting a straight answer to some of these questions.

9. No where for the fish to hide - This is a very intricate statement, when Im playing live and there is an inferior player at the table, I only have this one opportunity to beat them. If it’s a tournament and he bust me, then I’m done playing, if I bust him then he is done playing. I got no other chance to exploit this fishes weaknesses. In a cash game the same thing goes. Yes it’s true that you can reload but you still are waiting for the opportunities to exploit this opponent and these opportunities are far and few between. Online I can play this same opponent as many times as I want. If this player is in 5 cash games I can now exploit him by a factor of five same goes for his tournament play. In fact I can design my entire session around finding where this fish is playing and exploiting him.

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