Okay, Poker, You Can Sleep in the Bed Tonight

Yeah, yeah. Amazing what a decent poker day after much junk-kicking can do for one's mindset.

I do need to work some kinks out of the poker system, though. A lot of my frustration (and resulting sub-optimal play) this weekend came from a pretty obvious source. I'm using the next few months as a test run to see if I can do the poker thing full-time, so I'm basically pretending that, indeed, I'm doing it full-time. Okay. Cool. So my basic game plan is to play tons of poker and try to get in 30-40 hours a week, and see where I'm at, results-wise. Easy enough.

Except it's a little painful (again, in a really obvious way) when you run poorly under that scenario. In the past, I'd have shut things down pretty quickly on Saturday, around about the time when I lost the third or fourth huge pot to the resident maniac who capped with 58o preflop and caps every street afterwards, rivering the gutshot straight to take down my flopped set of kings and/or aces. Easy call there, turn off the computing box, let it go, come back and fight another day.

In my pretend world, though, that's a much harder thing to do. Yes, indeed, I can still do it (and should have), but it's hard to make money when you aren't playing. While it's a no-brainer when poker is just a hobby and source of supplemental income, it's harder if that's where your income is solely derived. Time spent not playing is money lost, when you get down to brass tacks.

That said, it still should be a no-brainer, when you hit a certain frustration level. It's easy enough to take a few days off and cram more hours in later in the week. Or take a week off, and make it up later in the month. And so on. It's also not like I don't have other assorted ventures that can also generate income, so I need to get out of thinking that poker itself has to be a salary replacement, each and every day/week/month.

I've been tracking things on a daily basis, and I'm a little conflicted as to that approach. I think it's good, as it adds impetus to grind out hands and get my hours in, but I need to temper my expectations a bit, as the more important results are how I do over six months or a year. I'm still going to push pretty hard for the next few months, likely even harder than if I do it full-time, as I'm hoping to build up a nice cushion by the time I flee the corporate world. So far so good, but I need to not be so focused on the individual daily numbers I need to get there, as those are naturally going to yip and yaw all over the place.

Apologies for yet another introspective, useful only to me post. Be forewarned, though, as ye may have to put up with a fair number of these in the near future, as I work through assorted mundane issues in my head and get it down, all concrete-like, as a reminder for the future.

Don't fear, though, as I have some more strategy and poker bonus goodness simmering on the back burner.