The ups and downs of poker

              Seriously, there is no photo above this caption!

So you* download the poker software (as seen on tv!), toy around a bit with your $1000 play money, get up to $300,000 (because you’re a tremendously gifted and talented player obv), and then decide to play for keeps. Just make sure to quit your job first, ‘kay.

A hundred bucks seems like a reasonable place to start, since you won’t get hurt too badly if you happen to lose a c-note. It also affords you a decent cushion, since you plan to play low stakes, at least until you make your first million.

But where to start? Sit-n-gos? Ring games? Multi-table tourneys? And how much should you put in play at one time? You decide to try a $5 sit-n-go, reasoning that 5% of your bankroll isn’t too excessive.

You win the sit-n-go, and take down $22.50. You enter another, and win that as well. Two hours in, and you’re already wondering how much of a pain in the ass it is to register a Lamborghini. So you play a few more sit-n-gos, pepper in a couple micro stakes ring games, win a little here, lose a little there, and after a month you’re roughly even and have to cancel the all-in death match with Phil Hellmuth. And call back the Lamborghini guy on Craig’s List.

Thirty days with zero profit does not a secondary income make. So you try a few MTTs. After all, where else can a mere few bucks can turn into hundreds or thousands (aside from a half pound of oregano)?

You find that you’re sometimes playing for hours just to finish outside the money (and get LOL’d at by the entire table), or else you’re cashing for mere cents over your buy-in. This seems like a lot of work – worse than real work even - when instead you can risk the same amount and have to better only six players to cash in a sit-n-go, instead of hundreds or thousands in an MTT.

So you go back to sit-n-gos, determined to do better than break even, have a terrible run of luck (and some bad play), and find yourself down to a mere $5. Alas, ‘twas fun while it lasted.

However, soon after, you get your groove back, win a sit-n-go to get up to $20, win another to go to $40, enter an MTT with 600+ entrants, finish 10th for another $80, enter another MTT, this time with 700+ entrants, finish 7th, add another $150, and suddenly you’re the tremendous poker player you were a few paragraphs ago, not the $5 broken-reed you were during the sad part of this article.

You go on a tear and simply brutalize every table that dares defy you. You cash every sit-n-go, double up at every ring game, and even find it fairly easy to cash the MTTs. Yep, you’re bringin’ sexy back like Justin Timberlake can only dream.  

Of course the rush comes to an end, and you’re up, you’re down, swing high, swing low, Steve Miller or that tv series “Swingtown,” but still comfortably in the black. You were up to $400, which seemed like a fortune when you considered the small stakes you played, but after a few weeks of peppering small wins and a-little-more-than small losses, you’re sitting at $250.

And then it happens. No, you don’t finally get laid, I mean the “other” thing. For a week solid, it seems you lose every coin flip, consistently show down second best, get sucked out on like you were a fresh snakebite on Angelina Jolie’s ass, and pick up an endless procession of 72 and T4 in between. You’re back to evens and your profit is gone… again. 

So you muster up the strength to play tight but aggressive, make the tough folds, disregard the junk hands, and play your absolute best. And still lose. And lose. And lose. Now you’re back deep into the red, and chasing your losses like you read about in Loss Chaser’s Monthly.

When you’re just about to swear off poker for life, you find the resolve to button down and play like you know. You rally, catch good cards, and make great reads.  Now, you’re back to even again. Dude, srsly, roller coaster much?

[As I was writing this, I was deep into two MTTS in great shape to make the final table in both. I was playing about as great as I possibly can (which is to say catching good cards and having them hold up) then ran into complete and utter suck. I called the small blind with ATs on the big blind (sneaky!), the flop comes 58T, I bet ¾ of the pot, get called and the turn comes another 10. With my set, I bet the pot, get called, and the river brings an offsuit 6. At this point, I’m down to about $3500 and my opponent, who started the hand with 244K (2nd place had 46k!), puts me all in. I call and see his hand: 97o. lolz@me. Exit your humble narrator in 11th place out of 305. In the other, I raised on the button with JJ, got a call, and the flop came J27 rainbow. I bet just about the size of the pot, got called, and the turn brings a 2, giving me a full house. I check, since I’m so clever, and my opponent puts me all in. I call, he shows 22. Omg and lol and out I go in 14th place out of 368. lolz just lolz y’all. I spent a total of 4 hours completely owning two separate tourneys, and in the span of about two minutes completely sucked, because sets are the utter suck.]

How can the same guy completely own and completely suck? (see above!) How does one play well enough to annihilate his opponents, and then turn around and get steamrolled by a series of awful players who make awful decisions? C’mon, how hard is it to obtain a sense of consistency in your game? When you spend six hours turning a $40 profit, must you immediately lose that $40 in ten seconds when your AA gets crushed by KQ in a $.50/$1.00 ring game? Yes, it must, just like what’s her face wrote to Ludwig at the end of “Immortal Beloved.”

That’s poker. Up, down, down, up, like Mickey Rourke’s career. You take solace that even the pros experience tremendous swings. Gus Hansen, for example, had a terrible run of luck playing online in which he claims to have lost around $500,000 in one weekend. Talk about “makin’ it rain” in da’ club, yo!

There are plenty of YouTube videos that show Mike Matusow chunking away thousands of dollars, reloading, chunking that away as well, and reloading again. Daniel Negreanu and Bob Safai have had recent losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars… on television no less. So no one cares about your hundred bucks. Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.

If the pros can lose their ass now and again, should we, mere mortals, think ourselves immune to the tremendous ups and downs? Yes, because we have real jobs.  However, in most forms of competition, one would prefer to see a progression of skills, and the end results are often the only way to judge.

A weightlifter who bench presses 250, 275, 300, and then 325 pounds over the course of a month, would certainly be pissed if the next week all he could manage was 250, despite his best efforts. He’ll ‘roid up and get back at it, which, as they teach in junior high, is a perfectly acceptable response to disappointing results.

A quarterback with seasons of 28, 32, 35, and 38 touchdown passes isn’t going to be too impressed when he tosses 19 the following season, even if the coaching staff, fans and media are really the ones to blame.

Even a salesman who exceeds his quota by 5,7,8, and 11% is going to be searching his soul when next month’s stats come back and he only beats it by 2%. Time to buy an assault rifle.  

In poker, success is measured by money won. While it’s not realistic to expect to win every time you sit (except in America!), as human beings we expect our results in a measured time frame to show positive growth, like Demi Moore’s breasts in 1988.  If your time frame is one week, one month or one year, anything that falls below a certain point is liable to ruin your day.

While some of us will weather the storms better than others, and manage to end up in the black with consistency, there are plenty who will find themselves popping their heads into profit so infrequently as to wonder if anyone ever makes any money at this game. It all, I suppose, depends on the long run, and how long you’re willing to wait to determine that the long run has officially been reached. 

While you’re waiting for the long run, be sure to buckle up tight, pack an extra pair of socks, maybe some clean undies, and a CD of Journey’s Greatest Hits, ‘cause this road here gonna be bumpy. Even if you are a tremendous poker player.

* The “you” in this article may be a semi-autobiographical, but I made most of it up, like Prince did in “Purple Rain.” It’s called “dramatic license,” which is what you do when you’re too lazy to write a real article.