Sisyphus's Task

Sorry for quite a long post, this is mainly a trip report post about the psychology(and tilt) of a new 1/2 live play and a new poker player in general more than anything else, it has very little actual hand details.

Walking back home at 4AM after a gruesome 5 hour commute from Atlantic City this morning, I cannot help but compare myself to these old Chinese men I sometimes see on an early winter morning in Chinatown getting off their "fortune buses". They usually look so very fragile, old and empty, with expressions that match the Jewish ones in concentration camp photos, devoid of all hope. A long gluttonous pull from cigarettes would bring an almost unnoticeable flush to their cold faces, as if this tiny dopamine shot can bring some life back to the walking corpses.

"Perhaps I'm turning into one of them? " I let out a quick sigh, my memory quickly brings me back to the very beginning of my day at the Borgata. I remember eating my breakfast/lunch salad slowly in the cafeteria, ignoring the fact that the olives were too salty for my taste and the lady had put way too much onion. "I only have 200 dollars on me for 1/2, 100 was my winning from last time and the other my "investment". Should I shortstack with 100 each time or risk playing with scared money and play my regular 100BI with 200 dollars?" After much thought it seems buying in with 200 was the most profitable strategy in the long run, and I eagerly sat down in my assigned seat looking to repeat my easy victory last trip.

"Hmm this doesn't look too good..." I said to myself as I noticed the chip tower of the Asian guy in the brown American Eagle hoodie immediately to my left, "there must be at least 300 dollars in each one of those three columns, he has a least 1k in that stack. Maximum buy-in is only 300, he must be running hot or is pretty good, and that tower looks suspicious like the newly finished Burj Dubai." I would later learn that he is an ex-marine who currently works for the risk management group of Charles Schwab, plays almost weekly in the Borg and is a fairly TAG degen gambler. He was also running quite good.

To the Asian guy's left is an Eastern European guy with avatar shades and a 60 dollar hip haircut, what's even more important is his 600 dollar plus stack and expressionless face. Later I would learn that he's a programmer who's semi retired and a regular in low stack AC and Vegas games. It did not take me long to notice that he too is a TAG player and almost never competes with the Asian guy for the pot. "This is starting to not look so good, I am short stacked and with these two to my left I'll have a pretty hard time to see some cheap flops." The rest of the table was pretty unremarkable, players were all tighter than the ones I faced last week, although there was one obese old man reading a 40% off book from Barnes and Noble titled "Self actualization" the whole time while playing, perhaps it is for his gambling problems?

Although feeling I could be outmatched, I still decided to play my regular ABC style and go value town as opposed to walking away from the table. It did not take me long to lose a nice 70 something dollars to the Asian guy with my TPTK as he showed his 45s for a straight on the river. While seeing my stack slowly dwindling as I pay 10% of my stack for every pocket pair in hopes of farming a set I got a chance to speak to the two TAGs to my left, learning that they actually keep track of the amounts in the pot on every street and are able to calculate the pot odds. "I probably should switch table since these two definitely aren't fish, look at how tall the Burj Dubai is now, there must be around 1600 chips in there." Thought I.

Yet against my better judgments I stayed, though on the bright side the two TAGs decided to leave after 4 hours or so of play and the table received a bunch of college age players whom were repeatedly asked by the dealer to have their IDs checked. The bad news is now I only have around 100 dollars of my chips left and I am running no better than I was before. Against their 300 dollar buyins I am playing scared money for sure, one bad flip and I could be on that shameful bus ride back to New York city within half an hour. Yet despite knowing I'm playing with very scared money I still couldn't just walk away, it's my hubris that keeps me from riding the almost as shameful bus ride back knowing I have lost half my live bankroll.

In my quiet desperation I attempted a few bluffs since I know I have quite a tight table image, which allowed me to have some breathing room, always just for a quick while. My lucked turned briefly as I doubled up twice with a house of 7 full of queens and a house of queens full of jacks which turned my 70 dollars into 370. All seems to be going well for me as I can play more adventurously with my new gained wealth, at least for a little bit.

What I failed to notice was the dark specter of tilt that had unmistakably lurked to my back after 6 hours of continuous play with mostly limp/fold action. I would start to calculate the number of hands I've had vs. the lack of aces or pocket kings, and every time a new guy who just sat down for two rounds and hits a set of kings with his pocket kings the tilt would gnaw at my nerves. Soon enough I had the flashing thought of "Maybe I am tilting." that would be dismissed by my ego as quickly as it surfaces. In my personal experiences this question is the most accurate tell-tale sign of tilting as the rational part of my brain attempts to communicate with myself for one last time before having my actions over taken by emotions/subconsciousness/whatever you think tilt is.

Once tilt takes over it was all over. Some of the new college age kids started playing a tricky/maniac image type of poker with 100 dollar raises and much more common river bluffs yet I was no longer getting premium hands to trap them with. Soon I started chasing open ended straight draws, sometimes even on flush draw boards and betting on the river with my busted draws at one final attempt to steal the pot as I try to hold on to my chips in the pot as a sinking sailor trying to hold on to any piece of plank floating on the ocean. The struggles proves to be futile as my chip stack quickly sinks and I finally busted out with a pair of queens with ace kicker vs. a king high runner runner flush.

The bus ride back was depressing as I replayed the day over and over again in my mind like a projection machine stuck on loop. In theory 300 hands down swing should be expected but I know I was not getting the maximum amount out of my playable hands and tilting like hell in the end. Perhaps it is a good early lesson on the importance of table selection in live games, a necessary lesson on tilt management, bankroll management and live variance but losing the equivalent of half your online bankroll in a short 8 hours still has it's after shocks. It will be a while before I have the proper bankroll to return but I sure hope I don't consistently lose in live games that I would turn into another Chinese walking corpse before even hitting my prime.

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Woot First Post!

Okay time to introduce myself, I've been playing poker on and off since High School but started playing online back in October. The journey has been pretty much up and down so far, but I felt quite comfortable with 2nl so I decided to go to Atlantic City and try out my luck last Saturday. 1/2nl live was quite soft, made the easiest 100 bucks in my life time. After I got back to New York I went on a pretty hot streak and proceeded to overcome my 2nl hurdle and doubled my bankroll in 13 hour 24 tabling action. Now moving on to 5nl, excited!

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