Four Letter Words, AJ

Four Letter Words

Alright, as any of you who know me personally are aware, I'm quite well versed in 4 letter words. I use them quite frequently and, I would like to think, with style. I'm not talking about 4 letter words in that sense though. Up until recently, I always used to think that grinding had a negative connotation. I thought that in order to be a good player, you needed to challenge yourself and try and extend beyond your limits. While the former is definitely true, I no longer believe the latter. While it is always important for me to challenge myself while playing poker, I've come to the conclusion that this no longer means playing in limits just above what my bankroll can safely allow for the sake of testing myself against various things, be it the stakes or the players.

The word "grinder" is no longer a four letter word to me, and I think this has greatly to do with my recent success in the past two weeks. Now granted, this could just be a nice run of cards that I'm catching that has allowed me to increase my bankroll, but that's not what I'm talking about. Even though I have been winning consistently lately, that fact is immaterial to me. What is relevant to me is what I am doing with the money I am winning, or rather, what I am not doing with the money. I am not cashing out and I am not jumping up in limits. Granted I have begun to play more 2/4, but this is a result of the buy-in for this game becoming a smaller percentage of my growing roll. I'm not doing it because I'm chasing money, trying to hit a big score, or trying to prove that I have the skill to play at a higher limit, all psychological lapses that were common for me in the past.

I've noticed something in the past few days, and I haven't determined whether this is a good thing or a bad thing yet, but I'm going to share it with you now. Once again, those of you who know me know that I tend to have a very level head at the table. I'm not very prone to going on tilt and I really don't allow bad beats to affect me all that much. I've always prided myself in my ability to have a healthy removal from the game emotionally while I was playing, not allowing events in the game that I have no control over affect the way I make my decisions at the table. While this has been the case for the past couple of years now, it seems different for me in these past few days than it has been. I find myself even more removed from the game emotionally. The problem is, this also means I'm not getting the excitement out of the game lately that I usually do. Instead it of excitement, I'm feeling more of a sense of accomplishment at the end of a winning session, not so much in the profits earned, but in building my BR steadily now, I feel like I'm working towards something. I don't know if this change is temporary or permanent, good or bad, but it is definitely different from anything I have experienced before in my poker, well I guess, "career" and I use the term very loosely. I dunno though, I guess any experience can't be completely bad, as long as whatever comes of it I learn something.

Scabbed Llama

In honor of the final Scabbed Llama I decided to take some time and play in the tournament tonight, I finished 5th. Since the buy-in of the tournament was relatively small, and I knew there were still going to be a decent amount of solid players in it, I decided to try out some new things. I had an eye-opening experience a couple of weeks ago. I signed on to Full Tilt, and decided to watch Huckleberry Seed play for a little while. Since the first time I saw Seed play, I was very intrigued by his style. He's a maniac, but he's a maniac with a purpose. Granted I'm only 23 years old, but Huck Seed is my idea of old school, he plays the man, he plays the pain threshold, every once in a while he plays the cards.

So I was sitting watchin Seed play in a multi-table tournament. He was aggressive and relentless, but strangely controlled. If he was in late position in an unopened pot, he would raise, if he met resistance he would fold. But he was relentless, if he got played back at he would still raise preflop all the same if he had position, like a clock. He didn't care that everyone knew exactly what he was doing, he just kept doing it, and because of the antes he was picking up and the play back he was getting when he had big hands, it was working. This was amazing for me to watch and, when I coupled this with a few things I read in Matt Matros' book The Making of a Poker Player, I decided I wanted to experiment with a more aggressive style, especially late in the the tournament. I wasn't going to play to money in this tournament late, I was going to play to win. Now of course since this was an experiment, I didn't expect it to work and while I took 5th there were a couple of plays I think I probably should've re-evalutated.

One hand was where I was on the button in an unopened pot preflop with AJ and was reraised all in by the SB who was I believe second to me in chips with about half of what I had. In hindsight, I probably should've folded this hand to the reraise, I was a huge chip leader and could've afforded the fold, plus there was really no reason for me to tangle with another big stack there. I took Matros' principle of "always be accumulating chips" too far and it cost me. I didn't need to risk half my stack to continue accumlating at that point. I ran into AQ and busted out shortly after when I moved in with ATs and was called by A8os out of the sb. Flop came 88K and I was meat. Aw well, I think the experiment was at least a partial success and I'm definitely going to try using a similar strategy in the future, with some tweaks and changes of course.

Currently playing a little $2/4 LO8 before it's time to go to bed.

BR: $340

- Huck