At the end of my last post, I left a comment to say that I would like to write about how attitudes towards money relates to how you approach and play poker. A tight player may be over-cautious and conservative with his bankroll; a loose player can be wild to the point of being irresponsible. While a good player, who is able to adapt his play and is neither tight or loose but uses both styles dynamically and correctly is almost completely indifferent to his bankroll. It will grow regardless.
Prior to this evening, I felt that the tight attitude that had crept into my game was holding me back from fulfilling my potential as a player - and this really is down to the fact that I have always been so damned obsessed with my stupid balance and so preoccupied with whether I was going to be able to prove to people that I was a winning player. I lost over £300 on a bad beat tonight at The Empire but the fact that I was the Table Captain, playing great A-game poker and pretty much running the show before the fateful hand struck, has given me the confidence I needed and a great deal to hope for in 2012. I now think that I don't need to prove that I'm a winning player to anyone but myself. (And I think this may be both the blessing and the curse to winning players.)
I now understand that being honest in this blog about my balance, is the reason why my game has become stale. I'll even go so far as to say that displaying my results has probably had a stifling effect on my game without me even realising it. I guess the £160 that I lost tonight is a small price to pay for this extremely important lesson.
The reason for the blog is to highlight what the ups and downs are like for an amateur poker player in a typical year of his playing career. The updates and results are there as a kind of scoreboard but they really have brought a lot of pressure on myself and this brings me to the attitude towards money issue that I mentioned at the beginning: you simply cannot have an indifferent attitude to your bankroll (the ideal attitude) if you are showing the profit and loss balance to the viewing public. You cannot "let go" if you are chained so much to your results.
This is something I guess I have always known subconsciously but have just not been able to articulate. I think this topsy-turvy night at The Empire this evening has helped me to identify this. I've had quite a few enlightening poker sessions over this last week and as we come to the end of 2011, I am confident to say that although I've not made as much money as I would like this year, I feel that my game has greatly evolved. Sometimes you've just got to take one step back before taking two steps forward. This is why, in 2012 my starting bankroll for the year will be greatly increased yet my attitude towards it will be one of total indifference. But I'll not be sharing those results with anyone.
As for the blog, well we are on a 12 month journey and it will carry on to the end. I'll post up the trip report for tonight's session tomorrow and I will be posting my results/update for October for the sake of consistency. I am very reluctant to stop doing the update thing for November and December because I think these updates are an integral part of our journey and it would be a shame if these were just simply missing. They'd be like missing parts to the jigsaw puzzle - so I guess I'll have to do those really.
Anyway, it's gone 2:30AM and I'm knackered.
Until next time, Uncle Wobble.
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