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01.27.10
0-7
posted by Absinthe | 4:11 AM
It’s hard to write well about losing. For one, it’s hard to write well at all; two, writing about your losses means reflecting on them, dwelling on them, generally not having much fun. When you’re deep in tournament mode, and you’re not a sick gambler who love love loves every second of the action in the game, time off is better spent thinking about something else.
Also: not much fun. Possibly even less fun than the losing itself, if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t kick and scream at every bad beat, but instead raps the table, gathers his belongings and slips away to call his wife to talk about the day. It turns out that this is the kind of person that I am, and am I glad for that, because lemme tell you, it has been ugly out there.
Zero for seven is not the best way to start a tournament series. That’s my result at the LA Poker Classic thus far (follow link for dry but fairly exhaustive chip counts and tourney results, if you can bear not seeing my name at all). The worst thing about a shit run like this is that I can’t complain. I’ve been playing well, getting my money in good and giving both math and instinct their due. The tournament structures are great, and Matt Savage has put together an interesting schedule. (Though, Matt – it’d be a lot easier to justify playing a $545 2-7 TD event with all the iffy players that would draw in, than $1k for an event with a stronger field.) Everything is going well except for the tiny little minor detail that I’m not winning anything. Not even a min-cash to break the ice, though I was tantalizingly close on Saturday before my 95%-to-win hand died a cruel, pointless death. (“Not like this,” I said, to no one in particular. “Not like – oh, come ON.”)
A while back, in a tourney at the Bike, I got moved next to an amiable fellow who liked to compliment other people’s play. There was no undercurrent of sarcasm to it, at least not that I could detect, but it tilted some players anyway. The only person he didn’t say anything nice to for quite some time was me, because I wasn’t playing any hands, because I wasn’t getting any hands worth playing. I’d had something like T23k when I moved to the table, and watched it shrink by at least half, fold after fold after fold, orbit by orbit. Eventually the action went raise, reraise, I looked down at AJs, and tossed it into the muck. I don’t know if I flashed him my cards or if he just couldn’t bear not saying anything nice to me any longer, but after he folded as well, he turned to me and said, “I admire your patience.”
I gave him a what-can-you-do shrug and said thanks, then got back to folding.
I’m a pretty patient guy. But I’m starting to get hungry. Tomorrow – er, that’s today – I’m going to sleep until I wake up, and then go find a game at Commerce. It’ll either be no-limit hold’em or Stud 8, depending on the clock, and I’m going to do exactly what I do every day in these things: look for opportunities. Get it in good. Steal when I can. And – note to self, here – don’t worry about the little counter on the board that says “Players remaining”. All you need is chips in front of you and the ability to make good decisions, right?
And a little luck. Fortunately, the law of averages isn’t on anybody’s side.
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