one of Those Nights

Posted by Verstehen

May 6, 2009

Had one of Those Nights last night. The games were insanely good on Pokerstars, I had at least one 65/4 superfish on every table and two had guys with VPIP > 90. Obviously I dropped 7 buy-ins with all the usual beats like losing every pre-flop allin, losing a 300BB pot with Q9 on a KJT flop, that sort of thing.

This sort of thing used to really drive me crazy, keep me from sleeping, make me so angry that those idiots had my money. Lately it doesn’t get to me so much. Partly it’s just playing way over-bankrolled compared to what I am used to. I used to be a very aggressive shot-taker and play on a short BR frequently. I never busted but I took some sickening steps down the ladder, even going back to playing 50NL for a while just to get the confidence back. Now when I play small stakes games like 200NL it’s with about double the bankroll I’m used to. A seven buy-in downswing is still extremely unpleasant but it’s not really threatening my ability to play the games (although it did put a little crimp in the plan to cash out a bunch for vacation…) Bankroll management is very fundamental but it seems to be one of those things you can only learn by making mistakes early in your poker career.

The other reason I feel better: it gives me hope for the future of poker. There have been so many “the games are dead, poker is a played-out fad, Cardrunners has educated the fish” posts floating around the internet that I was getting genuinely worried about poker’s survival. In a bad economy it is a bit of a luxury product that people can do without. So when I play small-stakes (100NL and up) and see guys still playing 70/0 and 91/24 I’m mostly just relieved that the games haven’t devolved into 21/19 TAGs never seeing a flop. Some of them won money from me and now (hopefully) they will tell their friends how poker is so easy and how min-re-raising preflop is such a great strategy.

The games may die at high stakes but there’s plenty life left up to at least 400NL. Reports of poker’s demise are exaggerated, at least now during the WSOP lead-up where everyone decides it’s time to gamble gamble.

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