PokerGreed Poker Blog - Wiggie

It seems like only yesterday that I was posting about my moderate success, spouting optimism and touting the freedom of my new life. What a fool I was. So young, so naive. I've come to realize over the last twenty-some-odd hours that poker hates me, and I it. Let me explain. I played a short one hour session in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. It started off well. I was up about $55 at one point. Then the wheels fell off in one hand. I won't go into the gory details but I will say that it involves a certain individual's Ace-high straight being sunk on the river by another individual's back door flush. You know who you are, Mr. 97 Sooted. And that's the story of how I lost my first full buy-in as a full-time poker player. I'm sure there will be many more, but you never forget your first.

Seriously though, I've been sucked out on a lot worse and I'm certainly accustomed to losing good-sized chunks of money on occasion, but it's a whole different kind of feeling when there's no paycheck coming in. Talk about pressure. And it's not just that I'm whining about losing a buy-in. I've been in a serious funk the last couple days. For the week I'm down about $40, which is not at all where I wanted to be at this point. I know things can turn around pretty fast in poker, and it's not like I'm ready to throw in the towel, but I am concerned. Besides losing, I just feel like I'm playing bad. When I've been losing for awhile my game gets really weak and it's like I start playing scared. I'm reluctant to raise when I know I should, and I start thinking that the other guy's got the nuts every hand. I should probably spend some time going over a couple books to try to get my game straightened out.

I'm not ready to give up yet. I knew there would be some stress involved in this, but it would have been nice if I could have gotten a couple of winning weeks under my belt first. Hopefully, my next post will be full of rainbows and kittens. If I have to deal with much more of this, someone's getting punched in the sack. I'm looking at you, Mr. 97 Sooted.

Wiggie wiggie@pokergreed.com