Friday, August 18, 2006

The Measure of Success

I am no stranger to the world of playing poker as this was a main means of acquiring spending money while in college, which for me was before the introduction of online poker so it was all live games with my buddies (and some stupid crazy games at that). We were in college and none of us had a great deal of money but I recall one game that got way out of hand. On this particular night one of the guys playing was on the school’s golf team. The game was a “guts” game with no cap on the size of the pot. For those who may be reading this and not know what a “guts” game is, since you don’t see this at the WSOP on ESPN, it is a game in which you are dealt cards and you make a decision all at the same time if you are going to continue in the hand or not. If you choose to stay and loose then you match the pot. Anyway the pot had climbed to hundreds of dollars to which most of us did not have on hand, but hey, there were checks still in the checkbook so all was fine. So we’ve been on this game for quite a while, the pot is huge and everyone is gun shy to mix it up in fear of loosing more money than anyone has. So golfer guy and Duggar stay on a hand and Duggar takes it down. Golfer guy gets up from the table and goes out to his car and comes back in with a brand new set of golf clubs and puts them up as his payment for the lost pot. He also proceeds to loose them. If I remember right the story was the clubs were stolen from his car.

So where is this going…Oh right…At that point in time and until recently for me, poker success was measured by how much money you walked away from the table with and really wasn’t something that I tracked from night to night. I have been reading several poker blogs (this one in particular) and forums and have come to the conclusion, at least for myself that true success in poker is measured over a fairly long stretch and with the technology available today, like Poker Tracker, in conjunction with the online poker sites tracking is quite easy. Now I haven’t been playing online poker for very long and I haven’t really made the effort that a lot of people have/do to make this the sole or primary means of income for me and my family. I do it to have fun and make a little extra on the side. I am by no means the best poker player around and have a considerable amount to learn but I have been able to hold onto a respectable 3.25BB/100 track mostly at the $1/$2 and $2/4 tables with very limited forays into the $3/$6 arenas. From what I have read if I can carry that across an increased number of total hands played I could do quite well however at this point in time with a family to support and not neglect, I play when I can. Over time my play might increase as well as the limits that I play and this could become a great source of additional income, until then I’ll continue to trudge along as have been and sharpen my skills for when that day comes, provided online poker is still available when that day comes, but that is another story altogether. I do have to admit that reading and hearing about the money that some of these people are making in the short amount of time that they do really makes me want to jump in with both feet. I will however not do that if it has adverse impacts on my family. Heck some of these people are playing 20,000+ hands a month.

1 comment:

EDGEDOG said...

Good old guts...similar story: I won a keg of beer from a guy...new set of clubs would have been nicer but a keg of beer provided one hell of a time.