Humbling Sports: an exercise in ego deflation

Golf is a humbling sport. Poker, on the other hand is a humiliating sport. I started playing in the blogger tournaments to see how I stood. I can confidently say after six months, I stand in muck!!! Not the good kind of muck where I might have had the common sense to fold a hand I knew to be beat. No the nasty, smelly muck that filled mid-evil streets and burns the nostrils and makes children hide under the covers and on lookers cringe when I pay off that hand that I never had a shot at.

I am going to try an experiment in my next ten tourneys. I will not enter a hand unless I have a top 10% starting hand (blinds excepted). I will make myself be patient, I will attempt to learn discipline, to the extent that I will allow myself to blind out before I will enter with a less than what I am allowed to. I will not donk off with top pair, and I will not put my chips in a pot if I do not absolutley believe I am ahead. I will loosin up the starting requirements only when I have >7 bbs. I will also cut down my play to 1 or 2 per week.

I have been playing in the 90/3.3/mtt. It can be a donkfest, and for a long time I avoided it because I am susceptible to following the bad plays I see with bad plays of my own. However, in my past ten (which I will not attempt to analyze here) I have cashed in 5 (1-2d, 1-3d, 1-5th, 1- 8th , 1-9th). The last twenty 3.3s I have attempted to instill somewhat of the discipline I describe above, to varying degrees of success. There are a lot of good hands that get beat by better hands, suckout or no suckout. If someone wants to pay for all seven cards, they get to play all seven cards, no matter what kind of crap they start with. I always try to keep that in the back of my mind. Sometimes it stops me from tilting so fast.

Thanks for stoppin by, ya'll come back now, ya hear!