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Goldenad Article on Grinding/Life

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    Goldenad Article on Grinding/Life

    Pretty cool article by goldenad quoted from his post on p5s, his approach/things he's learned are pretty similar to mine so I enjoyed it, hopefully someone picks up something from it!:


    i woke up really early this morning and couldnt fall back asleep so i wrote this. yes, its lol long. read it...dont. laugh that i spent so much time writing it, meh

    In my four years as a member of Pocketfives, without a doubt the most useful threads I have come across have not been strategy-based but rather those that discussed poker from a more meta POV. Reading about the lifestyle poker players have to adjust to and getting a dialogue going that is civil and informative serves as a sort of therapy. So, knowing this, I’m going to use my 2000th post as a sort of stream of consciousness in which ill just ramble. Some of the stuff will be new, some of it will be a concept or two from a blog that I used to actively try to update but have since given up on.

    First lets talk about attitude. If you let it, tournament poker will suck the life out of you. Playing full time, or even semi-regularly, lead to heartbreak most of the time. How sick is it that we choose to get a game where getting 2nd place out of 2500 people will leave you disappointed and wanting more. In nearly every other metric, finishing in the top .08 percentile is fantastic. In poker it sorta just leaves you disappointed. Granted, if you just got 2nd place in a huge tournament that is far and away your biggest score, you’re going to be happy. However, I guarantee that you’re also going to be somewhat disappointed you couldn’t close out, and that feeling may linger for a few days, or at least until your next session. If you don’t have this feeling, this hunger to literally finish first every time and be disappointed with anything else, then I think you’re doing something wrong.

    There are a few posters on this forum that we all know. They’re the guys who habitually reply to threads bitching about how bad they run or play. If there is a congratulations thread, they manage to sneak in “wish I ran this good!” etc etc. They talk about how they haven’t been able to win in months and how they are miserable now but don’t really know what to do with themselves, so they continue to let the daily ups and downs of poker dictate their lives. Do not become one of these people. No, I don’t believe if you want something bad enough you can achieve it…I think that book The Secret is complete bullshit. Nonetheless, if you approach this game with a negative attitude then you are just guaranteed to get crushed. Furthermore, this negative attitude will translate to life outside of poker and you’ll just become the most dejected, miserable, human out there. I guess it all depends on your personality but as a tournament player where each day gives you the possibility to win thousands of dollars, how do you not wake up every morning hungry and ready to grind? I don’t know too many people outside of this industry who have the resiliency factor that we have. Coming up short so many times just makes me want it more, and once again, I just don’t see how you can approach MTTs with any other attitude.

    -------------
    Poker is always on my mind. I think its best, if youre not playing then you shouldn’t really be doing anything poker related. I typically find myself talking to other players and sweating them when im taking the night off. While watching them do well motivates me to play, it also has the downside of making me jealous. Seeing my friends achieve success is enviable to say the least. I’m not perfect, when I see them do well I am happy for them but also start to get into this self-pitying, self-destructive mindset of ‘why them? Why not me?’

    Which leads me to my next point. This game is about incomplete information. By that I mean you really only get half the story when you watch other players. From my POV, a friend of mine has ran really good this year and won a ton of money and a bunch of tournaments. It seems like he wins something every other week and is always going deep somewhere. While it looked that way to me, when I asked him how hes been doing he went off saying its been the worst few weeks of his career and that he hasn’t been able to get anything going. The few deep runs hes had have barely helped him in terms of makeup and hes at the highest point in his career. I guess im not verbalizing this very well, but the point is, from ones own point of view, you can look at another player and see someone who is playing well, running well, and absolutely crushing it. But the truth is we never have the full story, and often times what we perceive to be the truth, and what is actually truth, are two vastly different things. Want proof of this? Read JMasters post in the makeup thread. He is ranked in the top 100 and has $2 million in cashes, yet has been in makeup for 18 months.

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    The truth is everyone thinks they run worse than everyone else. Everyone has those deep runs where they come up short and carry it with them for a long time. This year I have a 20th and 24th in 750k (one during doubles week when it was 1.5m guaranteed), a 45th in the mill, 29th in the Sunday DNG, 31st in the double deuce, 20th in a $109 wcoop second chance, was 1 outted to get 9th in a Sunday $75 mtt etc etc. The list goes on and on. Now lets see what a few of my friends say their disappointing finishes are:

    Friend A: 20th in the mill, 11th in the 55r 6max scoop, 8th in a 109 freezeout twice, 10th in a 162

    Friend B: 8th in the $2500 6m ftops, 12th, 13th, 15th, and 17th in the weekly 1k, 11th and 20th in a wcoop

    We forget about the good times though and only focus on the bad. When I look back at how poker went in 2010 I hope I don’t look back and see a million disappointing deep runs and final table bubbles. I hope I have the ability to see I won the $55 100k on a Sunday for 20k, I won a 20r, the 20c, the 5 2r1a, chopped the 75 6m etc. I hope I can laugh at the fact that my FTP stats are LOL_BAD and appreciate the fact that my stars stats are respectable

    I hope friend A will remember he won the mulligan, a 163, a 75, the Sunday 3r, the 10r, the 55 500 cap twice etc etc etc and countless others

    I hope friend B will remember he chopped the brawl, won a 100r for 32k, the tilt $109 during double week for 29k, second in the 320 for 26k, fifth in the Sunday 500 for 25k etc

    The point is, perspective is everything. I have had a fantastic life. My family and girlfriend are loving and supportive. I went to a great college, am currently in a great grad school, and will leave both of these institutions with 0 debt despite something like 300k in tuition/living expenses during this time. In every sense of the word ive been blessed, and im happy to say I don’t take this stuff lightly or for granted. The point is, when times are bad, take a step back and try to appreciate what youre doing and (odds are) how lucky you have it.

    Another thing to remember is to not forget where you came from:
    on 1/31/09 i played 31 $10 DON sngs on pokerstars that cost me $322.40 to buyin in total for a profit of $77.60. it was a very good day.

    on 1/31/10, i played 40 mtts with a total buyin of $2257.10 and profited $2945.47. it was a very good day.

    In a year I came a very long way, and its hard to remember this when things aren’t going well. Poker players have an incredibly short-term memory. In august I won the 20 cubed and 5 2r1a five days apart. It felt great and I was extremely happy. Three weeks later I barely remembered those two tournaments as a downswing had my head in the wrong place. I remember saying countless times, “GOD wtf does it take to run good over a prolonged period of time dfl;adjfdal;f” I have another friend who had been about 30k in makeup after 8 months. He went on a sick heater and cleared it in less than 4 weeks. Nonetheless, a few weeks later he was bitching nonstop about how bad he ran.


    Some other random stuff which you may have seen before:
    Poker owes you nothing –
    How often do people complain about running X amount of buyins below EV in cash games or how much equity theyre owed from getting bad beated late in tournaments? The truth is, there is no guarantee youll ever run above (or even at) expectation to make that money back. Poker owes you nothing. For every vietcong who plays like shit and has glaring leaks yet ships majors, there is another guy who plays great poker but just never wins the crucial endgame hands.

    If it sounds like my confidence is low, its absolutely not. If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. I'm feeling good about my game and my deep runs reinforce this confidence, This isnt a bad beat post, but its an interesting feeling to take a good hard look at your game and understand that no matter what skill you posses, there may be a chance you just never ever see the results. Poker owes me nothing. This statement applies even more so in mtt poker where the swings are crazy, and a bad beat can cost you literally hundreds if not thousands of buyins. if you feel like the good guy should always win at the end of the movie, if you hate it when bad things happen to good people, then this game isnt for you.

    Thus, i shouldnt find it weird how sometimes the difference between a good heater and a bad month is three or four hands... all i can do is keep playing and hope that my luck balances out when i get deep. nonetheless you wont hear me complaining that im owed money, because im most certainly not. am i running below ev? maybe. can i do anything about it? certainly not. all you can control...is what you can control. if youre not capable of handling this concept, which is both simple yet mindblowingly complex, then i'm sorry, because you still havent realized that poker owes us nothing.
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    Mourning a tournament: Things are looking great, there may be 20 people left, 8 people left, whatever, when you misplay a hand, get bad beated, coolered etc and essentially go from hero to zero. Getting knocked out of a tournament will inevitably leave a bad taste in your mouth. I used to react with a sick feeling in my stomach, a "why me?" mentality. I call this phenomenon "mourning a tournament." You keep the table up despite being just knocked out and continue to watch people play and watch in disgust at how bad they are. You keep the lobby up and stare at the payout structures, saying "oh man, even if i had gotten something like 4th place that still would have been $X and could have really helped this downswing."

    It takes a lot to just get knocked out of a tournament and move on with your life. It's especially hard if you're mid session and have to go from being in a tourney where the blinds are 10k/20k/2k to 100/200. I'd like to think that I've gotten to the point where I can be "over it" relatively quickly. Sunday night I got knocked out of the $27.50 25k in like 15th place out of 1466 runners. I earned $227 while first place was $6k. Rather than dwell on what could have been, I simply closed out of pokerstars and went to sleep at 1:30am. there is really no sense in getting inside of your own head and driving yourself crazy.

    Maybe I can act all holier than thou because most of my last knockouts havent been extremely devastating. Watching my friend, he has taken some brutal beats in the last few weeks. He went from 2/9 at the FT of a $162 to out 9th place. He went from 3/14 in last nights $109 to out 14th... both on coolers and bad beats were for the most part unavoidable. So if I were him I'm not sure I'd be able to just say "oh well im over it" and move on with my $11 freezeouts or whatever since those tournaments were pretty big. We'll see how I react the next time I get screwed deep in a very big tournament, but considering i was 1 outted to take 9th in a sunday $75 a few weeks ago and handled it pretty well, I think I can talk.

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    Obsessing over your status: I really want to start working on this. When I get deep in a tournament, say less than 50 left in a huge field, I start to obsess over my position in the lobby. Does it really matter whether im 2/50 or 18/50? Even worse is if I lose a big pot and look at where I would have been had I won that? "Oh man, im 18th in chips now and have 22bb when had I won that hand I would have 60bb and be 2nd in chips, ugh." Once again, its completely pointless to fret over what could have been when it will only serve to distract you from the goal. You can only play as perfect as where you are now. If you "should" have 60bb but only have 22 now, you better be prepared to play that 22bb stack as well as you can.

    So my new goal is to no longer check my status while im playing. I will only check how deep I am during the breaks and not worry about what could have been had I won that last hand

    #2
    Mourning a tournament, lol. I'm still mourning a bad beat while deep in the Sunday Million in April. I think I need a break

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