Forbidding myself the tilt

I've been putting off blogging about this because I know I'm going to jinx myself, but I've made a fairly spectacular return to limit hold'em this month. After pretty much burning myself out in April and May (playing 20,000 hands of 3/6-6 and winning $35!) I messed around with Omaha and then no limit in June and July, with mixed results.

Finally though, it felt like it was time to get back on the horse. I missed the subtlties. I missed the gamble of ramming and jamming on a laggy table. I missed the feeling of absolutely owning a table, one big bet at a time.

No limit cash games are fun, and they're quite profitable. I'm not playing for profit anymore though. Not in the same way anyhow. For once in my poker career I have zero outside money pressures. I can play simply to play. And to me, being a winning limit cash player (even at the donkarific 2/4 and 3/6 levels) is one of the toughest tasks in poker.

So one night a week and a half ago, I decided once more into the breech. I threw $1,000 onto Party and decided to see if 2/4 was still as soft as I remembered.

Oh my.

It's a small sample, but 4.65/100 over 3500 hands can't be all wrong.

I've run a little hot, but I've also been playing under control much more than I used to. My tilt-o-meter hasn't hit red once, and the few times I've tipped into orange, I've managed to get off the tables or get my head back in the game. I'm much more conscious of my mindframe now and, as chipp's new favorite poet would say, I'm forbidding myself the tilt.

I also think it helps that I don't care about the money. I know I can beat 2/4 short. I know I can crush it in fact. I've run at 4/100 over 10,000 before in this game and I genuinely believe I'm good enough to keep that up for long runs. So if I lose the occasional big pot to a suckout, I roll with it. At 3/6, it still tends to feel like money, or, it did when last I played. I'm gonna triple up this first stake before I find out again.

Another thing I'm doing is playing shorter sessions. I two-table, which is just enough for me, but even so I think mentally I'm maxed out around 2 hours in. Yesterday I played three sessions, 2 hours, 2.5 hours and 1 hour. I won all three, but was glad for the breaks. Popeye talked about this many moons ago, and I never listened, mainly because I'm a compulsive about shit and want to get more more more. I should know better than to ever contradict popeye's advice though.

The only other differences I see are paying off slightly less and value-betting a little more.

Simple things, but they're the things you do when you're running good. It's nice to be back.

These guys are no good

Well, I did it again. Played two $4 yesterday, one sober, one not so sober. Busted out of the sober one around 30th. Final tabled the buzzed one in the middle of the night.



This one was mainly thanks to a hot run in the first hour. Everything was hitting and I chipped up to 9,000 at the first break. Hovered between 17,000 and 10,000 for the rest of the tournament, then finally got it up to 22,000 at the FT, but was still basically in jam-or-fold mode. Busted seventh when I ran AK into both TT and 88. Win that one and I've got 80,000 chips. Oh well. I need the sleep anyhow.

The best pitcher I'll ever see

Baseball was my game when I was a kid. I messed around with street football, shot hoops from time to time, played soccer once even, but I ate, slept and breathed baseball. It was the only game for me, I still love it more than any sport.

Sadly, I was also a Cubs fan.

I got to watch some pretty good ballplayers in the mid to early 80s though, Billy Buck, Ryno, Sarge, Manny Trillo, Jo-dee, Lee Arthur, the Red Baron, Gracie, even the Bull. Some of those guys were actually good, some were just good considering they were Cubs, but none, not even Ryno, was in a class with Mad Dog. Greg Maddux, to me, is the best ballplayer I’ll likely ever set eyes on, including Clemens.

No one thought much of Maddux in ’86 or ’87. He threw a 90-mph fastball and that was about it. I’m pretty sure I could have homered off of him. Nearly everyone else did. But as he worked with Billy Connors (god, about half of the Yankees ‘90s management staff worked for the Cubs—Zim, Connors, Gene Michaels… Thanks TribCo) and developed that change up, then learned how to make a baseball do absolutely sick things, he became a true wonder.

It wasn’t like watching Doc Gooden or Clemens overwhelm guys with their stuff. I remember seeing both several times as a kid and they were absolutely dominated. Maddux looked more like, well, some guy. The ball didn’t explode out of his hand. The pop of the mitt didn’t echo out to the bleachers. But always, just at the last moment, the ball would seem to float away or around the bat, rolling harmlessly to short or second for a routine putout. It wasn’t just one batter or a few good innings. Every time. He was, in his way, more dominant than Doc or the Rocket.

I got to see him pitch twice on his return to the Cubs. He won both games without being dominant, just crafty. I didn’t realize it at the time, but now that he’s off to the Dodgers, I really wish I had a kid and wish I could have taken them to see the old man throw every kind of junkball you can imagine. He’s the last link to my childhood, and it’s rare you get to share that sort of thing with your kids. The same way my dad wishes we could go to Sportsman's Park and watch Gibson throw once. And now he’s gone again.

My strongest memory came in the dorms when I was in college though. About six of us were watching him throw 8 2/3rds perfect innings in the ’92 Cubs home opener, when some guy, a Cardinal fan, says “Cool, I’ve never seen a no hitter.” Crack. Line drive to right.

Sorry for the jinx Mad Dog. And thanks for everything.