In August this year, I’m going to be embarking on a holiday of my dreams… a week in Las Vegas with my friends in a luxury villa off the main strip with dreams of making some money and avoiding being fried to death in the Nevada desert sun. But before I go, I need to put some solid hours in getting properly back up to speed on my poker game. I’ve played odd tournaments here and there over the last couple of months but not consistently – mainly because I get my chips in good and fly into raging monkey tilt when I get beaten by the worst hand. In addition to this I’ve been done reasonably well in the private league, but its very different to a full field tournament of 60+ participants. Its something I’m working on, but I think effectively without a bankroll, I’m using my wages to play with and not a dedicated amount of money.
Therefore, I’ve decided that in May I’m going to deposit the equivalent of $500 in PokerStars or PartyPoker and try to run it up into at least enough to cover my flights – having a goal is good right?
This actually gives me a good a reason as any to start streaming again, previously I was on twitch.tv/christovjn but had to stop due to some personal issues – however if I have a set bankroll as of the start of May, then I should be in decent shape to play a couple of low-stakes tournaments a day to build up the experience and look to actually broadcast it and start building up my brand again. The problem is, the cost of going to Vegas is overriding a lot of my saving now – a grim prospect when trying to practise a game that is only accurately balanced when it is for money.
Maybe if I end up doing this full time then I can change the blog more towards the poker aspect of my life instead of spreading myself across geek culture and gaming, but I can’t even get to that point if I don’t take the leap and invest in myself…
This does tie in to my ongoing love/hate relationship with online poker – I’ve got it in good so many times and been beaten by the 5% underdog and honestly, its draining and sometimes make me think I shouldn’t be anywhere near the game if I can’t handle these beats. But when they are happening so frequently, it honestly makes me wonder if I’m just bad at the game. I’ve had previous success playing live poker in casinos but online I’ve only had a couple of tournament runs go deep online. I understand that variance is massively skewed online because you go from seeing 1 hand every few minutes in live poker to seeing 5 or more when its electronic, but when you run KK into AA every time and AA into KK who spikes a set, you do wonder if you’ve pissed off the Poker Gods in some way and this is their fiery retribution.
Regardless, I think this is something I have to do, even if it costs me money – besides playing the WSOP Main Event at least once in my life (hopefully before I hit 40) this will be one of the very few times I go to Las Vegas, even fewer of the times I go purely for poker – so I need to be prepared. I’ve downloaded some of Jonathon Little’s material and I’m listening to the audio book but with everything that is going on right now, I need to put some serious time aside and get my mind right.
Be First to Comment