Two Plus Two Older Archives - A tale of Dids and poker (aka Cards is Fun!)

This is basically a "my poker story post" except that my poker story is for the most part boring and doesn't involve me running hot at 300/600 or taking bikes.

I started playing a couple years ago. Threw 50 at Party, lost it, read books, threw another 50, started winning. I made some horrible posts here, learned some, gave people shitty advice, kinda plugged my way along.

I always played like 1 to 2 tables. Never put in long marathon sessions. Maybe 1.5 hours at most. Starting at .5/1 , and eventually moving to 3/6 short on 'Stars, I got my roll up to like 2.6K. (folks may remember that along the way I walk backwards into 5K in a party step 5, but that all went into paying off a horrible car loan)

Around that time I decided I wanted to be a Serious Poker Player. I thought I was decent, but a lot of people at my skill level or worse were making money I wasn't because they were putting in ten times the hands at 4 times the tables.

So I cashed out a bit, got a second monitor, and prepared to become a multitabling hand playing machine. About the same time I got my first rakeback account set up, and started realizing how much I could make by really putting in hands. This involved moving to the Party network and playing 3/6 full.

So I started on my attempt to be a serious player of poker hands. 4 tabling Party's 3/6. I wasn't ready for full games after playing SH for so long, I adjusted bad, and I was playing like crap. I never really was able to become the machine that I wanted to be, because I just found myself really disliking poker. Eventually I blew through about half my roll and had to move down to 2/4. I still wasn't playing well at 2/4 and I wasn't enjoying poker. Eventually I basically just stopped playing.

It was frustrating, because I really really enjoyed player poker, and not having that sucess bothered me a lot. At one point I had that 1.3K sitting in Eurobet, just doing nothing. I thought really hard about just cashing it out and buying some toy. I was so close to giving up on poker. Probably the only thing that kept me thinking about the game was that I was still chatting in the 2+2 IRC chans and posting on the forums.

Then Party opened up 3/6 6 max. I sat down, played a short single table session, won something decent. I repeated this a few times, and kinda got back into the swing of things, but I came to a different understanding about my approach to the game.

I'm never going to be somembody who can 4 table for 3 hours a day. I don't have the patience or the attention span. I far perfer playing a 30-minute to one hour session. If I sit down and win 20BB and then feel like leaving, I'll stand up. I only play poker when I want to, and if I feel like quitting for any reason, I'll get up. Poker isn't an obligation, it's something that I do for fun, and the fact that I'm good enough to win money doing it is just gravy.

The other thing that happened is that I started winning. It's a meaningless number of hands in a very soft game, but I feel like I'm playing great. This morning I played about 20 hands, won 15 bets and that pushed my bankroll to 2.7K. All the way back, and doing it my way, and having fun doing it.

I know this stunts my growth. I know that a good number the people who were playing the low limits at the same time I was 2 years ago are now at 20/40 or higher. I know that my approach means I will never be anything close to a great player. That's OK though. I got blinded to what I liked about the game. If being great means that I don't enjoy myself, then I've got no interest in that.

Back in college, I played in a cheap goofy homegame. The kind of game where we played games like Baseball and Chicago and nobody had a clue what to do. Anytime people got a little heated, or just at random, this one dude would announce "CARDS IS FUN" to remind people that they're trying to have a good time. It's a phrase that I throw around a bit myself, but as of late I've really started to embrace it. Once poker stops being fun, I'm standing up until it is again (and since I do love playing poker, that's often the next day, or an hour later).

I see people like bisonbison lose their enthusiasm for the game as the rigors of the grind suck all the joy out of playing for them. I just hope everybody is able to take some enjoyment from the game. For the amount of time we can spent playing, I hope we're all still taking some enjoyment from that. Life's too short to spend it forcing oursleves to do things that we don't enjoy.