Seat of the Pants Blogging

Lately I find myself blogging just for the sake of blogging. Meaning I don't really have a good poker topic in mind. It's just that I haven't written for a while, so I make a new post without really knowing what I want to write about.

This post is a very good example of this kind of blogging. I am just winging it from whatever weird idea that's currently swimming on the top of my head. Hehehe. Let's call it seat-of-the-pants blogging for lack of a better word.

Actually, I think the reasons behind it are quite simple. April for me is a busy month both in terms of the things that I have to do in the office, the trips abroad that I have to make, plus the fact that April is also the period where we would usually schedule family and company outings. So it's just less time for everything.

I would also blame the evil XBOX 360 for some of this lethargic writing. I'm currently in the middle of Resident Evil 5 and its taking quite a chunk of the usual time reserved for poker and blogging. (DIE ... you motherfucking zombies). Add to this the fact that my brother would also suddenly drop by for extended NBA 2k9 sessions.

So less poker means less poker stuff to write about.

Anyhow, the Pokermanila regulars seem to be of the consensus that April is a bad month in terms of poker playing. I have heard numerous sob stories about variance rearing its ugly head this April. And for me it's no different. Haven't really won anything significant this month. Just when I think I'm on a roll and on my way to a final table, some weird thing happens. You know what I mean. Getting Aces and having them cracked by somebody who played Q2. Getting your stack way ahead and runner runner flush kills you. Mind boggling events that make you want to tear your hair out and punch a hole on the LCD monitor with your fist.

And so it happens to the best of us. We always feel we have enough skill to beat this silly 2 card game, but we still end up eating some donkey shit every few months or so.

So how does one deal with it? The obvious and most common answer is of course Bankroll management.

Bankroll management is an easy concept to understand and I'm sure most of you have read enough that you don't need another nerdy blogger like me lecturing you on it. Do not play beyond your means. Always make sure you have enough buy-ins to withstand variance, blah blah blah ..... It's been discussed to death by pros, semi-pros and pro wannabees. Nobody denies its effectiveness and there are different rules advocated from making sure you have 50 buy ins to staking only a small % of your bankroll.

Everybody knows it, everbody is trying to adhere to it, everbody believes its one of the golden rules of effective poker playing. But why do good players still seem to lose their bankrolls?

I think its because some poker players (me included) have big egos. After a certain number of years playing this game and more often showing good results, one tends to develop this kind of high and mighty ego. So even if you're losing big, you still think you're just being outdrawn. It never crosses your mind that you're actually being outplayed by smarter & better players.

And sometimes what's worse is you may say to yourself that Bankroll management is for sissy beginners. You're already too good to be affected by something as common and pedestrian as variance. So instead of realizing that you're way in over your head and humbly going down levels. You insist on playing at a level that in your mind you should be beating. But in reality is way above what your bankroll dictates. And much worse, it could even be beyond your skill level.

You may think you're good just because you won a big tournament before or cleaned up the same cash game level last month, but long term results is what eventually matters. You cannot proclaim yourself to be the best player in the world but show squat in your balance sheet at the end of the day.

So that's basically my convoluted point. A good poker player is humble enough to know when they're beat and will show willingness to go back to the drawing board to plug the leaks. More than bankroll management. Sometimes, it's actually more ego management that is needed by most of us.