Midlife Crisis? What Midlife Crisis?

jbpatzer · 2010-06-24T10:48:39Z

After reading endless blogs by students and 20-somethings, some of which are very entertaining, I thought it might be nice to write my own, focussing on the what it's like to try to play poker when you have stuff going on in your life that tends to get in the way. Reading blogs by people like TwiceT just makes me feel simultaneously jealous, old and also relieved that I'm not that young any more (this will only make sense to the over 40's). I have a) A wife b) Three kids, ages 3, 8 and 15. Anyone like to guess which one is the most troublesome? c) A full time job d) 44 years of wear and tear, both mental and physical, to cope with. e) An unfortunate tendency to compile lists. About me --------- I'm a maths professor at a British University. I'm not going to say which, as I want to stay anonymous. I'd be horrified if any of my students worked out that this is me. However, it's a very good university, and if you do work out which one it is, you should definitely encourage your teenage children to come here. I specialise in mathematical methods and modelling, mainly continuum mechanics, but I'm trying to learn some game theory in a feeble attempt to improve my poker (more on this later). I used to be a keen and quite good sportsman (cricket and badminton) but dodgy ankles have recently caught up with me, and I'm slowly expanding (think Jabba the Hut!). Poker does not help much in this regard. I've always been interested in games. My grandparents taught me a rummy-like game called Kalooki (just googled this and found there's a web site! Can't believe it!) and we used to play for Licourice Allsorts, so I suppose I have a history of gambling from an early age. Remember, no video games and no internet when I was a kid. I also used to play Bridge (badly) when I was a teenager, mainly because my friend and I could play at the Bridge evening at our local tennis club when we were too young to get into the pub, and get served at the bar (50p a pint!). There was one memorable occasion when we went to the Young Chelsea Bridge Club (so many wanky posh kids there!) to play a duplicate tournament, and my mate wandered off to the bar mid game, and had to be dragged off the fruit machine claiming he was too pissed to carry on. We finished exactly half way and earned Bridge Master Points. Who says it's a game of skill! Anyway, I haven't played Bridge for years, but I've always been a keen chess player and still turn out for my local team (current grade 170 BCF = 2000 ELO for those who know about these things. County standard for those who don't.). Edit: For all you Americans, 'pissed' means drunk. We say 'pissed off' when you say 'pissed'. Me and Poker ------------- I always thought that poker was a game invented in Westerns as an excuse for people to shoot each other, and that it was now mainly played by Texans in silly hats and gangsters. Of course, I was right, but it turned out that normal people can have fun playing it too. I discovered this last August when my brother-in-law showed me that you could play Zynga poker on Facebook. I quickly became hooked, and after about 6 weeks could even reliably remember that a full house beats a flush. I have a shed load of books on chess, so it seemed only natural to get some on poker. Started with the books by Harrington (brilliant!) and Moshman (also brilliant, but what a dreadful writer. His style makes the average scientific paper look like it was written by Nick Hornby.). Then found I could win tons of chips on Zynga using Moshman's SnG tactics. I decided it was time to play for money. I deposited $50 on 888 poker, nearly lost all of it immediately, but fluked my way into 3rd place in a new depositer's freeroll for $50. Managed to build my BR up to $100 playing cash and SnGs, then withdrew my initial $50, and haven't deposited since. This is an essential element, as my wife thought I was going to become addicted to gambling and throw away all our money. I assured her that I am addicted to poker, not gambling. This does however mean that my BR management is very conservative, as I will be in big trouble with her if I ever have to redeposit, and I want to keep my gonads intact for now. Discovered pokerstrategy.com last November, eagerly claimed my $50, and started playing on FT. I've tried lots of different games on there and had some success with super turbos, rush and steps. I also continued playing on 888 and came 2nd for $150 in a $2 MTT. Once my bankroll reached $350, I deposited on Pokerstars and, inspired by chenny's TableNinja video, have been 12 tabling $3.40 SnGs to try to clear my bonus ($110 so far, and as a nice side effect, gold status. I'm going to have a break to read some gold articles and watch some gold videos over the next couple of weeks). After trying lots of different formats, I feel I want to concentrate on SnGs and MTTs...

Schris7

Joined: 15.01.2007

Posts: 730

25.06.2010, 09:43 0

nice blog there ,its prolly more interesting from other blogs that write only for poker stuff but since its actually a poker blog i ll give u some advice for sng poker (since i ve played some of them for a while)that maybe help u improve your game .

First get skype and find similar or better players than you and help each other,it will really help u improve faster .
Second , just dont play when u know u wont find a peace in your mind , you will suffer both u and your kids/wife since if u loose cause of them or even badbeats you will def tilt at some point either at the tables or in real life and that will make things worse(i was doing that a lot when my gf was around and it wasnt the right thing to do). One suggestion if u still want to do something poker related and u dont have a peaceful time for yourself, is to play less tables or having a hand review session with one of your skype buddies(when u get them ).

Oh and cause i read somewhere in your blog that u want to play nl10-25 so u have get a better postlfop play early game i suggest u to stick to abc tight game early on and dont do any fancy plays in early game cause u will be surprised how bad the people are and how donkie moves they do even in low stakes not only micro and doubling up with a flip early game will damage only the players that takes the flip and benefit the rest players on the table(if u ve read moshman's sng book then u will know that ♦ )

ps sorry for the long post

ps2 sorry for the bad english i am not a native english speaker ♦

ps3 keep going and gl at your tables

:heart: :heart: schris sng blog :heart: :heart:

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Quote

jbpatzer Topic starter

Joined: 23.11.2009

Posts: 6,972

25.06.2010, 10:08 0

Originally posted by Schris7

First get skype and find similar or better players than you and help each other,it will really help u improve faster .
Second , just dont play when u know u wont find a peace in your mind , you will suffer both u and your kids/wife since if u loose cause of them or even badbeats you will def tilt at some point either at the tables or in real life and that will make things worse(i was doing that a lot when my gf was around and it wasnt the right thing to do). One suggestion if u still want to do something poker related and u dont have a peaceful time for yourself, is to play less tables or having a hand review session with one of your skype buddies(when u get them ).

The hand review session by skype idea sounds interesting. Anyone want to do this with me? How do you make these things work exactly? What software do you need to do a joint hand review? I've read about 'sweat sessions' in other posts, but this always makes me think of fat blokes in a sauna. Am I on the wrong track there? And yes, I know I should find a peaceful time away from the wife and kids to play poker. But you know what? In my life such a time doesn't exist (or only very, very rarely). That's the point. Unless I follow hacacare's suggestion and play at 4am. Hmmmmm!

Oh and cause i read somewhere in your blog that u want to play nl10-25 so u have get a better postlfop play early game i suggest u to stick to abc tight game early on and dont do any fancy plays in early game cause u will be surprised how bad the people are and how donkie moves they do even in low stakes not only micro and doubling up with a flip early game will damage only the players that takes the flip and benefit the rest players on the table(if u ve read moshman's sng book then u will know that ♦ )

ps sorry for the long post

ps2 sorry for the bad english i am not a native english speaker ♦

ps3 keep going and gl at your tables

Sound advice I think. And don't worry about your English. I studied German and Russian at school, and now barely speak a word of them. I probably have more French having worked for a French company a few years ago (I wasn't always an academic. I have had a real job!). Whenever I go abroad, people always want to practice their English on me, so I just get lazy.

Minus sign update: Found what I had was correct, so search over! Just means I have to do another nasty calculation to finish things off.

By the way, can anyone tell me how I make my signature into a link to this blog? Every time I try to do this in the editor, I just end up with a big splat of html.