By
grapsfan
When Steely recently used the title of a great movie in his “limit v. no limit” article, he inspired me to do the same. It’s much better than my original: “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” The movie a few years back was about a man changing his life in order to complete a task, with many of the changes blurring fact and fiction, reality and dreamscape, and lots and lots of flowers. This article is mostly about the first part, I think. There will be no flowers.
I was exposed to more poker this summer than I ever have been before, and probably ever could be without being a professional player. Most weeknights were spent in San Diego hotels playing online, or in one of the several cardrooms in that area of the country. Several weekends found me in Las Vegas, hanging with the crew at Casa Bodog, immersed in the game and all of the knowledge that the residents and visitors to that house brought. I got to see greatness at the WSOP and meet personally a lot of P5ers that have been kind enough to share their thoughts on this site and teach me so much about the game.
Looking back on it, it was quite a whirlwind. I learned the details of Ari’s Bubbling Theory, the Ruso-squeeze, the bluff re-steal, the TTH 2-Out Special, and hundreds of other strategies and techniques for many different forms of poker. When I got back to a normal job and normal life, all of this stuff was still battering the insides of my head. I couldn’t wait to try it all out and immediately vault to the top of every TLB, every ranking, every final table....every everything.
The problem, of course, is that nothing in poker is ever immediate, because it’s not just a game of technique and knowledge. In golf, you can learn a new putting technique and shave strokes off your score the next time you play. A good basketball player can improve quickly by picking up a fadeaway jumper or crossover dribble. Poker isn’t like other physical games; it’s a game of understanding people, primarily your own self, and for some reason, I couldn’t keep sight of that through the haze of excitement and potential. I found myself fighting my inner nature, and being very uncomfortable at the tables as a result. Within a week of the conclusion of the WSOP, I started the worst downswing of my poker career.
Looking back on that period, it’s almost embarrassing how inept I was with making some of the plays I did. There are many analogies I can use here, but none of them fully describe the donkishness that I displayed for the denizens of Full Tilt, Bodog and Poker Stars to see. You know how your mother always said to let your food digest for one hour after eating before going back in swimming? I was the kid with the belly full of sun-warmed bologna sandwiches trying to swim out past the breakers.
It probably doesn’t help that I started making this assimilation while quitting smoking too. It’s been five weeks. Wanting that taste and not having it is something that weighs on your consciousness all the time. If you’re going to make changes that affect your decision-making process....take it from me, make them one at a time.
Last week, I started to come out of the coma, and I did so primarily by trying to go back to the way I used to play. My new arsenal is still available, if the situation calls for it, but I won’t be actively seeking to use it. It’s a reference, rather than a weapon. I know more about other thought processes behind the key decisions in a poker game, which will help not only determine my right play, but provide insight as to why my opponents may have made the play they did. Nothing tilts most poker players more than losing a hand to a guy whose apparent thought process was little more than the Meow Mix jingle bouncing between their ears. The more open I am to other ways of thinking, the more I can appreciate the previously incomprehensible. Hopefully, then, I’ll stay on an even keel after leaving the table broke, frustrated, and confused about what just happened and how.
In the end, though, I still need to be who I am first and foremost, adapting my game to the new information rather than trying to be something I’m not. I’m confident that in the upcoming weeks, months and years, I’ll be a better player than I am now, and much of that is due to talking about poker with the dozens of experts I talked with in the last three months. Ari, Hattrick, iLLNuGWichee, Trues and Ruso are all great players, it was a pleasure to share a roof, pizza, and beer, and the pieces of them I carry with me can only bring greater success. Judging by how ridiculous each of them have been since coming back from Vegas, they learned from each other, just as I did from them.