Renewed Spirit

I almost posted yesterday about Tuesday night. It would not have been a very happy post. Well, it would've ended somewhat happy, but it would've been much too much complaining.

The bottom line is that on Tuesday night I was ready and willing to bust. After having zero cards, missing every flop, and losing w/my chips in as a favorite in my first two SNGs, and losing another big pot for all but the last $2.20 of my bankroll in .10/.20 limit when my opponent drew his gutshot on the river while we capped all the way, I sat in my last SNG w/the last $2.20 in my account. In the SNG I had 750 chips out of my 1k starting stack, and the blinds were at 50/100. I was on the ropes, and had come to terms with busting, looking forward to moving on, and putting some of my B&M bankroll toward TripJax's advice for Mansion via Poker Savvy as promised. Then, miraculously, my KJ vs A7 push saw a flop of 9 10 Q and held. A few hands later it took EVERYTHING I had to push w/33 in the big against a SB raise. I was positive I was racing, but didn't think I could win it. Well I did the right thing, held up, found myself at the top of the heap, and guided my stack to victory. Ten bucks in my bankroll, and a fresh start looking very similar to this day. I still was very upset with poker, upset with missing flops, upset with losing races, upset with losing with the best of it, and flat farking tired of seeing Face/X off. But for some reason I walked away with a very positive feeling of a new beginning.

Then, as if they were written especially for me, yesterday I read blogs about frustration, variance, ego, and tilt, and a winning attitude, and it only further reinforced this feeling of a fresh start and renewed spirit. I realized that I was expecting the game to come to me and the slump to break itself, especially at the $2.20 level which I used to kill routinely with a couple of big hands per SNG and weak competition, but when you're dealing with a bout of variance, you're not only playing against the players, you're playing against the game, and it takes everything you have to exploit your edge over both. Perhaps even more importantly, it can easily reach a point where you're playing against yourself. Like Pauly said, when you start to experience some bad breaks, you can't help but question the very foundation of how you play. You start to wonder if any success you ever had was just luck, and if you even have anywhere near enough of the pieces of this giant puzzle put together to be a real winner, or if you even have the right pieces. That certainly was the case for me as I had my last $2.20 on the line and expected to lose it, because no matter what I did, I could not come out ahead, and I had a terrible attitude about my game and about the game in general.

Luckily, the cards bailed me out.

So, with my renewed spirit and new beginning, I was excited to sit down and test my will last night. With some strict concentration and way more effort than should be required at this level, I managed to cash in the two SNGs I played. The cards were still very much on the bottom side of average, but I used reads, position, table image, and a handfull of the other subtle neuances of the game to exploit advantage when I had it. It would have been nice to win one, but I got cold-decked heads-up in the first when it seemed like no matter what I had I was dominated, and in the second I got in racing w/AK vs QQ and couldn't catch. They were both heroic performances, though, and I was proud of myself.

So that's where I'm at. I've got 7 SNGs in my online bankroll, and I'm not looking back this time. I've come to terms with the fact that until the variance dies down, the game is going to take more effort than it maybe should. But the real takeaway from this whole episode is that I'll hopefully find that I'm a good enough player to persevere. A lot of people say that the best poker players don't need cards to win, and while that concept certainly contains a lot of validity, when it really comes into play is when you're not getting cards. The best poker players are the ones who you'd never know were dealing with variance, and I'm currently out to prove myself as one of those players.

Then once I get my feet back under me, I'd like to take the next step and start working some more aggression into my game. But for now, I'll take "Cashing Without Cards" for $2.20, Alex.