The Frustration of Being a Recreational Player
Being a recreational online poker player is great. I’m not relying on success at poker to bring me any kind of steady income. Because I’m a college student, any extra cash is gladly accepted, but if I don’t bring in steady wins, it isn’t the end of the world. Being a recreational player also means that I don’t get to play nearly as much as I would like. School comes first, no exceptions. No matter how badly I need my poker fix, I have to hold off unless my homework is done (which isn’t that often). This brings me to my extreme frustration.
For those of you who play regularly, a bad beat here or a poorly played hand there isn’t as big a deal to someone like me who doesn’t play as regularly. Whenever I play a hand like a typical microstakes donk, I stew over it for hours. Usually I’m thinking about it until my next session and I never know when that’s going to be. For regular players, the luck and variance are minimized over time. I only wish I could play often enough for them to be minimized in my game.
I’ll give you an example of something I’m talking about from my most recent .05/.10 NLHE session. I was holding AhJh from the big blind. UTG min-raised preflop and we saw the flop heads-up. The flop came Ad9h7h giving me top pair and the nut flush draw. I bet .30 and he called. I put him on an ace, considering his UTG raise. The turn came the 9c giving me aces up and, I figured, him aces up. I bet .80 and he called again. I don’t think he has me on just a flush draw because he would have tried to price me out with one card to come. In my mind, I can stack him if a heart comes (it’s very difficult for micro stakes players to get away from any two pair). The turn came the 9s, giving me nines full of aces. This wasn’t a terrible card for me because if he did have an ace, he probably had a better ace. I’m thinking that a nine gives us a chop. So of course I ship it in and he calls with As9d. He flopped top two, turned a boat, and rivered quads.
The hand itself is really no big deal. I don’t think I played it bad and it certainly wasn’t a bad beat. It pretty much played itself because I was going to go with top pair and the nut flush draw anyway. It’s just a really annoying hand, and if I were a regular, I probably would have forgotten it by now. It would have been hundreds of hands ago so why cry over spilt milk. My problem is that it wasn’t hundreds of hands ago. It was one of the last hands I played and I haven’t been able to get in another session to wash it from my memory.
It seems like a catch-22. I certainly don’t want to be a full-time player (I have no idea how you guys do it). But being a rec player puts me in these spots where I beat myself up over hands that occurred long ago. As time goes by and I get better, maybe I’ll learn to deal with it better. For now, it’s back to the books.
RipCity
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Comments
I agree, one of the things I started doing was playing other games. NLHE does not always punish poor play, games like Razz and OM8 under normally punishes those that do not play for the nuts. It helped me.
I think feeling this way is good for your development. I remember talking to Nam Le after he lost headsup in a WSOP event to Mark Vos. Le said that he was obviously really pissed about losing, but he was kind of savoring in his pain rather than just trying to get rid of it so that it would make him hungrier and ultimately better. It’s when mistakes or losses don’t bother you that you really start stalling in your growth as a player.
Also, if you’re going to think about something, the hand you described above was pretty well-played by you. There were probably dozens of other hands that you could have played more optimally, though, and even though they were not evident as much in your results, these are the hands you should be focusing on playing better and analyzing.
Am right there with you. I am lucky enough to find enough hours/wk. to satisfy, but w/a full-time job & other commitments, I’m strictly “recreational” as well.
Somewhere along the way I began finding it easier to accept that fact & thus am rarely frustrated about having to play short sessions and/or being forced to leave on a bad note (like in yr example). I suppose it comes down to learning how to be patient not just at the table, but away from the table as well.
Hope yr semester gets off to a good start here.