Last ever blog

After noting in my last blog that life is a rollercoaster (at least according to a very bad song), things kept looking down for me. As I got back into the online grind, a downswing (or actually more of a sideswing, that is, a prolonged breakeven patch) that  I've been going through  since the end of January continued.

In the last blog, I put up my lifetime graph for online mtts (missing a few sites like Bodog not properly tracked). At that stage, my graph for the year looked like this:

After a great start to the year (up 35k in the first 500 games, ie, January), I then hit a 2000 game breakeven stretch. I've had these before (every serious online mtter has) but that doesn't make it much easier.

It was against this backdrop that I went into town to meet David Lappin. Lappin's a great man to turn to on these occasions as apart from the fact that he understands variance better than anyone else I know, and has a similar aversion to downswings, and can offer tons of perspective and sage advice, he's also pretty much the only person I know in poker that understands that sometimes all I want is someone who will shut up, humour my complaining and whining and forecasting that the end is nigh for all of us, and let me blow off steam.

After my mental health check up with Dr. Lappin, I got home late but in time to start a mini evening session, and promptly won two tournaments, one on Stars Fr and the other on Ipoker. Over the next week, I won another three online tourneys and a few Marbella sats, and clinched my third PocketFives triple crown (but first since 2011). By the end of that spell, my revised graph for the year looked like this:

Gary Clarke wrote a great blog recently where he said, and I quote, "Life is so simple and yet we make it so hard." I've certainly been guilty of over complicating my life recently. Gary's right: life is pretty simple. It's about identifying the things you like doing, and doing them, and identifying the things you don't like, and avoid doing them.

For the past few years, the thing I enjoy most is playing poker online. Yes, I enjoy live poker too, but only as a diversion. Online poker has always been the thing. In 2011, I became the first Irish player to win a PocketFives Triple Crown (awarded to players who win three big tournaments on three different sites in the same week). In poker, the first thing people ask you when you win something is "How much?" That is the point of poker in general, but sometimes it's beside the point. Nobody should want to go through life measuring everything in money. So in poker, where money really is the scoreboard, it's good to focus on other things once in a while, whether it's a virtual badge, or representing your country.

In 2011 I won not just one but two Triple Crowns. In 2012, none. I was actually thinking about this before my most recent triple crown. Maybe the game just got harder. Maybe I focused too much on other stuff. I still did okay under the money scoreboard system last year. I got involved in staking and coaching, and found it rewarding. I played pretty much every major tournament on the Irish live poker circuit. Did I get too comfortable with the idea that these are social occasions? Probably. Did I start thinking sometimes the purpose was just to be there, not to win? Possibly. One of the worst things about experience is poker is that it makes you realistic. When you start out, you go to every tournament thinking "I could win this". That naivete doesn't last long.

I find live poker increasingly jading. Nothing makes something less enjoyable than the belief that it has to be fun. It's like the tiresome pillock at the party who goes around insisting that everyone must enjoy themselves. I enjoyed live poker more when I didn't think of it as something that needed to be enjoyed.

I've been thinking about all this recently, trying to decide what I should do going forward. The main conclusion I came to is stop over complicating everything. Focus on the thing I enjoy the most (online poker). Be more selective in what I play live, so when I do turn up to play live, it feels special. I feel like I needed a mini break from live poker before Vegas, so apart from Marbella, I won't be playing anything else.

I think when you're young you tend to think "There's a first time for everything". I guess it's natural to give the first time you do everything, anything, a special importance. Experience teaches us that we get better at pretty much everything with practise, so first times tend to not have the same importance in retrospect. They simply represent a start.

As you get even older, you realize there is also a last time for everything. Your last day in school. Your last day in a job. Your last day in another job. Your last day in a house or country. The last time you see a loved one.

The thing about last times is you generally don't realize at the time that it is the last time. Chess dominated my life for years. Gradually I lost interest as I realised I had gone as far as I could with it. But the last time I sat down to play it competitively, I didn't think "This is it. The last time". The same is true of other interests and passions. I only knew they were over well after they were over, not as they were ending. With poker I hope that it might be different. One of my most fervent wishes is that I realise when my time as a winning player has passed so that I get out with most of the fruits of my grind intact. I don't want to be one of those people who has to lose their entire bankroll before they realise it.

In a few weeks, I head to Vegas with Daragh Davey and Jason Tompkins. Lappin is again taking the sensible route and staying home to feast online at the time of year when it is traditionally the feastiest. Next year I may make the same decision (I noted on a Vegas blog once that every year in Las Vegas, it's Last Vegas for some of the Irish contingent, even if they generally don't realise it themselve at the times), but for now I'm looking forward to giving this year's WSOP my very best shot.

After Vegas, I intend to focus even more on online, and to cut back on all other distractions. I have already started cutting back on my coaching, staking and other commitments, the better to focus entirely on my own play. Like everything else, there will at some point be a Last Ever Blog, and I probably won't even realise it at the time. Who knows, this might even be it (I doubt it though: I imagine I will think of something to blog about in Marbella or Vegas).

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David Hasselhoff, graphs and.... something else

Everything just seems to make sense in Germany. Things are organised in the most logical and efficient manner. The trains run on time. People show up when they said they would. When you're in Germany it even seems to make sense that David Hasselhoff should be a major recording artist. 

According to a very bad pop song, life is a rollercoaster. I always felt that was a bit of an oversimplification, but certainly the poker life has more than its fair share of (occasional) ups and (mainly) downs. This point was brought home to me when I followed one of the highs of my poker career in Cyprus with being turfed out of Berlin Cup shortly after dinner on day 1.

Afterwards my friend Max Heinzelmann (who dipped down with Schnapps king Marco Drafehn to rail me at one point) commiserated saying I had an unusually tough table full of good regs. That may be true but I didn't play particularly well either. My timing was off, a few bluffs got snapped off and an unfortunate piece of stationing left me coming back from dinner to play 5 and a half big blinds. I did manage to more than triple my stack and then after looking down at kings felt I had every chance of getting back to starting stack. Not to be though as I ran into aces.

I met Smidge and Liam (fresh from his Tramore triumph) for some food. We went on to a place I'd been brought on my last trip that combines the German love for two things: beer, and round numbers (they proudly proclaim themselves to serve precisely 100 different types of beer).

Back in the hotel bar for "one last one" we ran into some of the German heroes including Max, Marco and Martin "moertelmu" Mulsow. If there's one (more) thing Germans like (apart from beer and round numbers) it's a good graph, and the first thing most of the young Germans said after being told who I was was "wow, your graph is very good". A little amused or perhaps bemused by the acclaim I was getting one of the Irish lads remarked "Jesus Doke, you don't get this at home". Afterwards, one of the Germans asked me if this was true. After I assured him it was, his response was "This is because Germans judge by graphs and Irish judge by... something else".

It was interesting to observe the culture among the German players, which is a strikingly supportive one. If there's one things Germans do well it's teamwork. If poker ever becomes a proper team sport the rest of us are probably screwed. It's not exactly fashionable in the English speaking world to express admiration for the Germans or to admit to supporting them at the World Cup when your own country fails yet again to qualify, but I hereby admit to both. Germans have a wonderful directness in their communication. They tell you what they are thinking and they ask you what you are thinking when they don't know, rather than trying to guess. Having created Europe's oldest and arguably richest civilisation, the Germans have a knack of owning anything they put their minds to. So it's no surprise to me that the Germans have established themselves as one of the world's strongest poker nations in such a short time.

The following morning I relayed some of these thoughts to David Lappin via Skype, explaining the reasons for my admiration of the German way of approaching things. He commented "kinda like what we are trying to do with the Firm". I never really thought of that before but it's spot on. Perhaps we should change our name to die Firma.

If the Germans are to be admired for their discipline, work ethic and logical approach, there's also something to admirable about the Irish alternative. I'm no surer how to characterise it than the German was with his "something else". Blind optimism? Illogical faith? The English also struggled with how to characterise our often bewildering lack of logic before eventually deciding there was no other way to describe it other than as "a bit Irish". Maybe it's a historical hangover as a small country but we seem to value success based on the sheer improbability of it.

To illustrate, consider the fact that in the midst of deep recession with card clubs all over the land struggling, not one but two new ones opened in the Dublin region on just one day last week. Last Friday, popular TD Luke Ivory opened a new place in Rathmines, while I headed to Newbridge to cut some ribbon at the new Full House Card Club, run by Mark Day, Daniel Olmer and Ladas Lux. The lads have a lovely room there and deserve to succeed, tough though that will be in the current economic climate.

I hung around to play the opening night tourney. A bounty had been put on my head, three times the buyin. This meant everyone at my table was quite keen to get in pots with me. Contrarian that I am, I nitted it up and played a total of 4 hands in 6 levels. The last two were against a  delightful character called Mick who I played against a few years ago in Carlow and remembered as a man with a lot of favourite hands, and got dealt them so often he never had to suffer the annoyance of folding preflop. He particularly liked hands that had either a 6 or a 2 in them. This strategy had resulted in the necessity of an early rebuy for Mick, and he had already done half his second stack when we finally got in a hand. Folded round to Mick, he opened for his standard four and a half big blinds (playing 15). After everyone else folded I had the problem of what to do with eights in the big blind. I decided that since I was well ahead of Mick's range that included any hand with a 6 or a 2, the only thing for it was to wager all of my chips. Mick looked a little upset at this unexpected development (having seen me fold all night he was clearly rooting for that trend to continue), but called and turned over QT. After the KKJ flop I pointed out there was a lot of ways I could lose this now, and an ace on the turn was one. As he raked in the chips, Mick remarked "I was sure you had aces when you shoved....but I called anyway". Now there's a man who has no truck with trends or graphs when it comes to decision making.

Next hand he limped (which basically meant he had a hand he wasn't mad about, and almost certainly lacking a six or a two), and I now considered the problem of what to do with queens in the small blind. Given what I knew about Mick and his distaste for throwing in the towel preflop, I decided a big raise was in order here. I considered the shove but thought that might be overkill, not to mention the possibility that it might be the only bet size that would get a fold. So instead I went for the hefty pot committing third of stack raise, and got the snap call. The rest went in on a K42 flop. Mick had K7o and my bounty, a fitting reward for a man doggedly determined to keep chipping away against the odds.

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