It’s strange but I have been meaning to write this blog post for quite a few weeks now. Weeks turned into two months so it feels good tapping my thumb prints onto the smooth keyboard keys.
Let’s wind back the clock a few months to August 31st of this year. It was technically the first of September but the derailment had started late in the evening of the 31st. It was now the first of a new month after a fairly regular all night poker session. The worst session of my poker life to be exact. I had a really nasty start to my cash session and was much more than 1k deep into the game. After some nasty pot holes earlier in the session I had kicked the tires back onto the smooth roads of a beautifully scenic comeback. That’s when the car was set to crash into a gigantic oak that was two very overplayed monster hands. To make the long story short I basically gave away all the money I had gained back and then some. I was felted twice in two major hands and the table fur had swallowed me like a green hole of death. But in the end it was really my play, not the felt nor the cards, that was my unraveling. I should have played two hands much safer which was totally prudent considering both game theory and logical deductions from these villain player behaviors.
In the end I found myself at home, after the biggest losing session of my life, on the brink of failure which was my professional poker career. After coming home at 6am I couldn’t sleep and felt compelled, although mentally kicking and screaming like a tantrum infused child, to search for a disgusting corporate job to slam me back into the wall of reality.
When my wife awoke and asked what I was doing my tear ducts began to flow like a steady dripping spigot. I explained what I was doing and we had a short discussion. It was brief as she was preparing to get ready for work, as she always has for years on Sunday morning. The gist of the conversation was that I was coming to the realization I just might not have the patience and discipline to make consistently what I knew were strategically proper decisions day in and day out, hand after hand. Poker, if you let it, can be like a long standing stretch in the hole of solitary confinement. Only you and your thoughts agonizing about what went wrong and wondering how you can survive each forthcoming minute, hour, day, week, and month.
Forgive me for leaving a little cliff hanger here, like buttery hands digging into a steep cliff’s crevice, but the post has already become too lengthy. You will just have to stick around and anticipate my next post which will reveal much more about how I moved forward from this fulcrum of fear.
Until next time, Smile Big and Dream Bigger!
The True Dreamers 