open letter to tommy angelo

[Tommy Angelo]

"how can i stop caring i was right? how can i stop "rewarding" myself this way. you said it's masochism but it's not."

Sure it is.

"im not trying to punish myself."

Mike, you already knew before the flush card came that you were going to call and it was going to hurt.

I'll go out on a ledge here and say you're two leaps away from finding peace at the table. First you have to get to where you beat yourself up over beating yourself up. In other words, you have to no longer beat yourself up for, say, calling on the river on this hand, and no longer beat yourself up any more for your perfectly normal merely common place personality traits and features such as fear and ego or whatever you feel like labeling about yourself.

When you get to where you know you should stop beating yourself up for what you do, and for who you are, but you keep beating yourself up anyway, then you're at the odd realization that all you are doing is beating yourself up for beating yourself up. And that's just silly. So stop it. And then you have peace, at least for little stretches. Then make the stretches longer. Ad infinitum and good night.

Tommy

[Zeno]

[ QUOTE ]
are you one of those eurotrash internet wizzes?

[/ QUOTE ]

NO. A complete misread.


Book 2

[ QUOTE ]
"Your move."

forget it. i fold.

[/ QUOTE ]


Just when it was getting interesting but I agree.

Farewell at the table.

-Zeno

[mike l.]

well then where the hell is Spitsbergen? west virginia?

[mike l.]

i always buy into games w/ two racks, i dont feel comfortable buying in for less. so whatever that is. yeah 25 big bets i guess.

[rory]

Thank you for posting this mike.

[mike l.]

"just out of curiosity what's the ratio of good players to fish in the 1/2 commerce game?"

first off im nowhere near authority on this, someone like snakehead or someone else who never posts anymore would have a better clue.

"I guess I always pictured 8 guys like lenny martin feasting off 2 clueless rich guys."

my funny lenny martin story is this: a couple weeks ago some kid im friends with says hey do you know that is in the 2 seat in the main game over there (i was in the must move), that's lenny martin, mason told me. he was serious, not pulling my leg at all. i said wow that's neat. then i played w/ the guy a few times and watched him play and he's not awful but he's certainly not excellent and far too loose and far too passive to be expert status. plus people are calling him by another name. so finally ask this other kid who is a really tough player who just beats up the 1-2 constantly who the guy is and say do you know who lenny martin is, is that him? and he says well i dont think so cause his name is XXXX. so i explain well LM is this guy that is supposedly the end all be all of limit hold em. and the kid looks at me and says no that's definitely not him. when you first asked me i was like 80% sure it wasnt him but now that you told me that im 100% sure it's not him. lol, i dont know struck me as funny at the time.

"do you run into many tough players, is the game every really bad?"

it depends on what you consider tough. if by tough you mean players who are generally very fearless and aggressive and fairly unpredictable, as well as good to excellent hand readers then yes, it's definitely a tough game sometimes. but there also tends to be this steady stream of tiltly uneducated very rich generally asian men, but also women, as well as russians and eastern euro, and US white and black guys who just suck and donate say $5-$15k at a time into the game. they do have some things they do well, as all higher limit fish do, but in general an educated very skilled player who can stomach losing $1k in a hand will do very well in the game.

now forget all that and stay away.

oh one more thing. last night the must move game was pretty darn bad. two okay but not great players and 4 players ranging from very good to excellent. so i skipped when they called my name. then the main game was looking okay and short around 5 am but still not fish central and i was tired so again i skipped it.

[Zeno]

[ QUOTE ]
well then where the hell is Spitsbergen? west virginia?

[/ QUOTE ]

Spitsbergen


Great 'Northern most cam in the World (wonderful lighting)


By the way, I've never been there.

-Zeno

[tolbiny]

Sorry mike, i lost it. I was in the shower coming up with a fantastic reply, and i forgot the whole damn thing. All except this. Its an old quote.

To pursue perfection while accepting that it is unattainable is the path to wisdom.

Accept it mike, dont know it, accept it.

[shemp]

So you put him on a hand you could beat and then called and for $200 it turned out you were right about the turn.

Have you ever been wrong with one of these reads (see, I know the answer to this, having read your other posts)?

Couple of math questions.

Do you know how far ahead on the turn you were of JhTh, QhTh, and QhJh?

Do you know how rare it must be for him to actually have a hand for your play to make sense?

I realize that none of this matters, because you knew what he had, and you are simply angry with yourself for paying off to stroke your own ego -- but there's more. And thinking about it might make you even better, so you can rape, pillage, burn houses down, light bankrolls on fire and mix metaphors like no other man alive, small penis and all.

[mike l.]

"I realize that none of this matters"

no i got you. that was a great post, well written and great content. thanks i hear you loud and clear.