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Can’t Sleep

Posted by Alex Fitzgerald on January 25, 2012 · Leave a Comment (Edit)

Couldn’t sleep much last night. Gotta grind.

I was never one of those MTTers who had to make every tournament or got excited for prize pools or anything. I got to the computer when I got to it. My best friends would beg me to watch their final tables and I’d tell them, “fuck off I’m going to watch TV”. I never taught my horses anything, or really watched them, even when we all lived together just for that very purpose.

Going broke helped me realize there is no law that says I have to be a poker player and that I get to travel the world. Black Friday reinforced this.

People tell me how garbage I am, how I just run good. Watching some of my recent hand histories, and seeing all the goofy spots I put myself in, sometimes I agree. Then I think back to PCA and despite coming short, there wasn’t a spot I felt like I really played bad. I was very happy with my play, but more than that, I was satisfied that I’m looking for those spots now where I can improve.

It’s good to take a shot to your ego, to wonder about the times you don’t play your best.

You know who has great self esteem? Serial killers. “I’m so great I can kill those under me.” The countries I can actually stand people are ones where the people have no ego. The Costa Ricans laugh at themselves, it helps me laugh at myself.

I’ve put in a lot of work in this game, but its not been enough. I’m not where I want to be financially, professionally, or mentally. I’m confident in my game but I have a lot to learn. It seems the concussions and drug use might not have made the most stable poker player, but I’m determined to get over this. So I have to soak everything up. I have to watch every final table my friends play and have a discussion with them afterward. I have to review more videos. I have to read more books. I need to start study sessions with my circle of friends and learn more. I need to get on myself for mistakes.

That seems to be the biggest problem lately, impulse control. I get a little tired, I feel the grind of staring at the same computer display for seven years nonstop, and I deviate from standard…because I feel like it.

You see that old timer, that old washed up tournament pro, grinding for 10% of himself in some local 1k MTT when you grew up watching him at WPT final tables. You wonder what happened. He has 13X and he set mines out of position. The scary thing to me is that guy is so grinded out it makes sense to him. He’s seen so many hands and is so immune to any possible gain he could have, because he’s become so negative and so in debt, that he just sleep walks. I’ve watched so many guys who were good just…get this way. Shoving in absurd spots and losing value, because in their mind they are always avoiding the cooler. Their positive expectations and desire to win has been grinded down to a nub of “I just want what’s mine” and then when that becomes too lofty just “I want to say I deserve it but I got unlucky.”

I’m terrified of becoming that guy, so I stay around positive thinkers. Maybe not the best players but open-minded, and smiling. I can’t change the years I played as a spastic kid who just made money from cards. I can only become a professional this year.