I'm not dead... (loooooong.)
.. but I sure feel like it right now. Being sick sucks. Thank god that it's a head thing though and not a stomach thing because I can still eat. Isn't that the worst when you feel like crap and are starving at the same time? On the other hand though it's made me pretty irritable and prone to tilt easily, so combine my perpetual run bad since my 2nd this summer, a congested head, and a rebuy tournament made me a little spewey today.Anyways, I'm rambling. I suppose I'm trying to avoid the meat of what's on my mind and that is I am scared. I am depressed. My bankroll is at it's lowest point since January of 2006 (I'm about to go on a selling spree of many of the toys I've bought since then and I still have money and I'm not broke, so I cannot complain OBV...). But, I really feel like I cannot do a damn thing right in poker any more. Yesterday I was 8th in chips in an online tourney with 42 remaining, money at 40, and the very next hand I busted 41st. It was a cooler and it was against the only person at the table that could bust me. Just so sick. I am sure there are some leaks in my game, but historically I have been very good at identifying my leaks/doing damage control in these downswings. I was on one at the beginning of this year, dropped to 15-30/2-5, and rebuilt. I made things happen in the tourneys, scored big in the series, and have been on an overall downswing since.
It's interesting that before my last two big downswings I scored big. I think that tournament poker has made me lazy. When you score in tournament poker you feel like the king of the world and that turning a small sum into a large sum is the easiest thing in the world. But damn, I was fortunate in the start of my career in the big leagues of tournament poker in that when I got deep I ran good in the right spots. I mean, there are so many times that you end up all-in in a coin flip situation and there wasn't a damn thing you could do to avoid the situation and then it's all up to the cards. Then there are times like two weeks ago when you make it deep and just get screwed and it's about a BUNCH of money. I get it in AA v AQ flop 962 and it goes QQ, and I bust 10th instead of being 2nd in chips and get $1200 instead of whatever else I would have earned up to $24k.
I haven't consistently played live cash games since April of this year. I miss it. I miss the people, I miss the interaction, I miss the feeling of actually going to work. Call me crazy, I know, but I am not happy where I am at right now. I am constantly worried about going broke to the point that it has consumed me and made me pretty irritable at times. I chewed on the topic of being too wrapped up with becoming famous a couple of months abo, but I didn't exactly reach this point of realizing that I have been too consumed with poker until the past couple of weeks.
I'm not saying that I've been a degenerate or addict or anything like that. I'm saying that if I'm so wrapped up wiht poker that I am unhappy with life and depressed in general that something isn't healthy.
This weekend I went to Vegoose. It was the nuts. Check out the pics.
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
I seriously think I should be a photographer. If any of y'all have any connections lemme know.
Anyways, Vegoose is a two day music festival out here in the corner of Las Vegas with 12 bands playing each day. We went on Sunday and it was headlined by Rage Against the Machine. It was a ton of fun.
I kept thinking during the festival how much I missed being a hippie. Now, this place was a straight up hippie festival, so I'm sure that had something to do with it, but really. The happiest times of my life have come being a hippie. My favorite time of my life was when I was guiding on the Kings river in central California outside of Fresno. I lived in a tent on the bank of a river ninety minutes from a traffic light. I would wake up with the sun, do whatever I wanted until about 11am on most days, and on most days this included something along the lines of fishing, playing my guitar, or just chillin with other hippie peeps. At 11 we would load boats and get gear ready, at noon the custies would show up and we'd take care of all the bidness. Up the river in a bus on a dirt road, and we were paddling by two. Done by six, unpack gear, kick it by the river playing harmonicas and guitars and bongos and djembes and mandolins, smoke, figure out some dinner around dark (which would be a 2-3 hour endeavor and nobody cared), and hang around the campfire with good people.
That community that I was a part of was the most loving and caring community I have ever experienced. When I first showed up on the river in 2001... Actually it's pretty funny how I ended up there in the first place. I was mowing my lawn in Los Angeles wondering what I was going to do now that school was out, decided that I was going to the river, and then six hours later I was walking down a trail to a campfire on the Kings river five hours away. That night at the campfire one of the guides said to me, "So do you love the river brah? Sweet man, me too. Me too. Cheers."
And that was it. That was the conditions of being a part of a community where people loved you unconditionally. Those were the sweetest of times.
The poker community has actually come the closest to that for me. I have met some of the best, most trustworthy people I have ever met in my life in the poker world, but it has been tainted by some of the most dishonest people also.
This blog has turned into quite the ramble, eh?
I wonder how much of my unhappiness is connected to my fissure from the church. I was very cynical to the church for a while after I started to guide because I saw one community of "unbelievers" that loved each other more than any group I have ever seen, yet every Sunday morning I saw a false community of people pretending to be happy. I was judged by the church for being a hippie. I was judged by the church for playing poker. I was judged by the church for drinking beer. But nobody I have ever guided with, smoked with, drank with, or played cards have ever judged me for being a Christian. Or going to church. Or being a missionary. Or any of the other faith based things I have done or want to do. People in the poker world think it's awesome that I want to start a camp - but there are way too many in the church world that do not think it's awesome that I'm a card player.
I have never wanted to be exclusively a poker player and I bet that is the source of my disdain lately. You REALLY REALLY REALLY gotta love this game to make it in the long term. Will I play poker all my life? You betcha. Do I want it to be everything I do? No shot.
I think I'm going to turn poker into something of more regularity here soon. Maybe I'll get onto a similar schedule as Jared. Head to work at 4pm, quit at midnight, five days a week. Play 2-5. 15-30 limit. Pay myself hourly again. If the roll rebuilds, then move up as allowed, and give myself a raise.
I'll never forget how sweet it was watching and working with my good friend Doc in Minnesota. Doc is a card player that doesn't play higher than 15-30 limit simply because he doesn't need to and he doesn't like the swings. He's not happy when he plays 30-60 and thus doesn't play it. Three nights a week he works as a bartender in a downtown Minneapolis bar. He doesn't need the money. He does it because he loves it and has done it for years. But you know what's awesome about Doc? Is that he makes Canterbury a better place. I have never met a single person that doesn't like him. He genuinely cares for people and genuinely loves people. He regularly has a handbag full of goodies. About once an hour somebody comes by asking for something . The employee with a headache? He has several pain-killing options. Need a piece of gum? He always has at least two flavors. He's a stud card-player. He is as rock-solid as they come and thus ends up taking more than his fair share of bad beats because he's almost always in the lead. I have never seen him get frazzled, and his usual speech is something like this with a cheery voice. "What's he got? Nines and fours? Yep! That'll do it! Very nice." He smiles, throws his cards in the muck, and moves on.
I think that's the point of being twenty-something. We gotta figure out how to make ourselves happy in this context of life, because happy people make other people happy and generally the world a better place. I believe that good things, things that are productive to the world, can happen on the green felt. Doc changed my life for the better and I am sure that he has changed others too. I want to be that guy that people are happy to see, that is happy to see people, and is happy to wake up in the morning. I am not that guy right now and need to do some work on that.
For the record, I 86ed my contact info from pokerpages since I was getting too much spam mail, but my e-mail is still maverickusc@gmail.com and you can always leave comments on my private blog at campfires.blogspot.com.
For all the haters out there, I know y'all get off telling other people how much they suck, but this blog was about how much I suck, so you don't need to tell me about it. K?
And for the record, as always with my blog, this was zero editing, zero thinking, just writing, just talking, just honesty. I believe that it what a blog should be - a free flow of thought.
Peace and good luck,
Devo
posted by Devo @ 11:31 PM
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