I'm riding on a wave of virtual table markers (or chips, as they're normally known), and, as of today at least, I'm riding that wave right into a sandy trough. I've dropped about $1.5B since my earlier session ... maybe more actually ... In any case I'm at like $1.4B now. I'm framing it in my head with the powers of D&D to instead feel like $1,400. So ... essentially, I goofed $2000 this morning by playing outside my range and chasing straights that were never going to happen. Pretty nice that I did with virtual chips and not real ones like I plan to this weekend. These are the kinds of mistakes that I can't make out there if I want this big plan of mine to work.
I've noticed a lot of turns of phrase I hear in everyday speech have come from poker: Playing your cards right, playing the hand you're dealt, being under the gun, all-in ... Poker as a concept seems to permeate western society in some way that is almost ... esoteric feeling. What is being poked in this case may be the concept of luck itself. Playing the game allows one to touch luch, to ... poke 'er, as it were. Definitely baloney on the whole but I've got nothing else to do while this silly poker video game shows me a full house that I folded out of -- J5 offsuit just isn't in my range I don't care. But then J10 offsuit is? I write this mere moments later of course as I lose another pseudo-$240 to the abyss (my opponents set of 9's). But that's just poker isn't it. I'm calling 3/5 offsuit, whatever, maybe I'm tilted - Heck, I'll even raise it ... aaaaand, middle pair, lost again.
As if from above, a full house then came, netting me a virtual $50.
Whatever it's a win. That's poker baby.
...
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The virtual poker luck is flowing like molasses at this moment. I mean, I'm not locked in ... I think the losing streak actually began when I was out there watching birds, not locked in just the same way.
...
OK ... I need to study more. Essentially woke up today, took $3,900, briefly turned it into $6,100 then watched in horror basically as it turned into $4,100, then $3,200 then, $1,900 and finally $800 -- which, if this were real life and not a video game (that I am CERTAIN is warped slightly in the favor of the "house" to create big / unlikely hands based on what's on the table unlike a real deck of cards that can't be influenced by algorithm) then I would still be up from the hypothetical $200 I "bought in" with a couple days ago when I started with as much. This is a facsimile of the pain and frustration of getting stomped by better straights and fuller houses, but without any of the pain of refinancing the rent bill or selling the cat to the circus. I take this experience in with a deep breath and gratitude; it's the same trough in the wave I'll be riding as I approach the tournament that nets me my first million.
It's been a few hours on the same day. I've helped a couple of people / departments with their tech problems like I'm supposed to, but much more than that, and for every second in between, I've been chipping at this Poker game. I'm refining my range. I'm continuing to roleplay my chips so that $1M = $1. The system is working. I've turned the $800 I was complaining about before into $3,600 once again, only $300 off from where I started earlier and easily attainable. It's about staying calm. It's about not tilting. It's about never trusting a straight or a flush you don't flop or that you didn't receive as second best present after a made-hand with top-pair from the flop. I could be onto absolutely nothing here as a low-bankroll minnow with no experience and all that, or maybe, just maybe, there's something more to beginner's luck than people give it credit for. Maybe it's the kind of luck one can carry on and cultivate long into the future, and through a career, and over the hills of all their silly manifestations about millions of dollars and sports cars and high-rise penthouses and, most importantly of all, writing checks for absurd amounts of money to simply hand out to whomever - like a loan or charity, except I'm not going to expect it back or write it off my taxes. I'm just going to spread the luck. The money's made up. The points don't matter. All the cards that are ever gonna be dealt in my lifetime have already been dealt as they're gonna be, the only thing I can do is decide whether or not I want to be present for the hand and prepared to bet on it. It is never going to be up to me to get to the bottom of why the world I live in is that way. Maybe it's because I make it so with my thoughts and actions? It's narcissistic ... or maybe just solipsistic, for me to think so. That my actions are a reflection or culmination of everyone elses in the world somehow, that, however paradoxically, it works the same way for every one of them too, just the way it does for me. I don't need to know how that works. All I need to know is that you trust luck to take you where you need to go on AK and you do so even harder when it's suited or AA altogether, if life wants to hand your opponent quad queens, then life will do just that.
A note to self to remember as it seems to be helping so far, don't let the chip stack get all big and stuff -- if $300 becomes $1,000 -- you need to cash out and shortstack yourself. I'm not sure if it's bad etiquette to do that, it likely is at home games is what my gut tells me, but in cash games at a casino? This is for the dreams, this is for all the nuts; If I am to choose to dull my elbows for every other occasion in life when it comes to the outcome of my fellow, let it be in this single combat of cards alone that I be a blood-thirsty apex predator in my actions. I feel like writing these things down is going to help - and I type a whole lot faster than I can scribble, you see.
That isn't to say I would have been disappointed in myself or the game or anything else if it had gone otherwise, or rather, if it had gone like every day before I made the intentional decision to pursue this Main Quest I've chosen. I did that all the time with the virtual chips; I'd squander them in the high limit games that I wasn't suited for solely based on my stack size. I had no idea of what range I wanted to play and no idea of what to do when the cards came down that I wanted. But, what I did have even then was the throughline of intuition guiding my moves, my pattern recognition sparking and whirling at every card coming to the table, I mean for crying out loud, checkraising somebody is just waiting until the second mainphase to destroy their creature or boardwipe them. I am incredibly well versed in the syntax of this game as I believe it is no different from the high-level Magic the Gathering I was playing when I was younger. This is another one of those games you see, just like in Magic, if I have the cards, and the board is the way it needs to be, there is nothing stopping me but myself from securing the win. The same would go for any random Joe who walks up to the poker tables off the streets, it's why the World Poker Tour is such a big deal. I guess I'm just typing this all out in the last few minutes of my day here because it does feel like a bit of a revelation to me that I was once playing Magic for fun, and at that very same time, I was honing the blade that would go on to earn me my fortune. It is yet another example of everything always working out the way it is meant to be. I must trust this fact. It is what lead me here, after all. Anyway, point is, from my earlier notes, I've now gone from that $3,600 virtual dollars to $11,581 virtual dollars. I realize it's a game, still, that this virtual thing isn't going to exactly like the real tables. But hot dog if this is what the real thing could feel like then I can only be grateful for the path finding me. Many more thoughts to come, as per always.
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