$10KPC Part I - "Not that you need my opinion..."

Patience -->Stress-->Relief/Pain-->Patience.  

...this loop pretty much sums up my experience over the weekend. 

For me, that is full-ring poker in a nutshell. That is: 

1) Wait patiently for what I assess to be "a profitable situation." 

2) Wager as much money as necessary in a way so as to maximize said "profitable situation." This is usually the most stressful part of poker. 

3) Win or lose depending on how accurate my assessment of the situation was, how skillfully I acted on it, and how lucky or unlucky I got. Winning is typically met with feelings of relief, while losing is met with feelings of brief pain.

4) Go back to waiting patiently. 

…it's not exactly the most glamorous or alluring thing, tbh. Why bother? 

A small part of me still doesn't believe it's actually possible to win at poker in any reliable sense. There are, without a doubt, thousands of actual people who have made very good money playing poker. A lot more have lost. A lot of "undeserving" (strategically unsound) people have made far more than their fair share, while a lot of extremely skilled players have made far less than "they should" have. 

Poker is a mixture of luck and skill. A skillful player will win against players who are less skillful over the long run. The only way to minimize the luck factor in poker (or anything else) is to overwhelm it with sheer numbers/math. Take the example of two people picking sides of a coinflip. Assuming it is a fair coin, of course one would expect to win close to half the time, or, 50 percent. Over one sample that's obviously impossible - someone is going to get lucky. Over 10 samples, using a coinflip simulator found here, it's still pretty common to be far away from the expected 50 percent. Over 1,000? A million? As you go higher, you are almost certainly going to be very close to 50 percent. Point being, the more samples there are, the less luck is a factor on the end result.

Having said that, luck will absolutely be a large factor on how well (or poorly) this challenge plays out. The required amount of hands to be played in order to succeed or fail the challenge (relative to the stakes I'm playing) will simply be too low to think otherwise. In poker, you can only put yourself in situations wherein you are a favorite to win as many times as possible while also avoiding bad situations (doing this successfully relative to your opponents is the skill part). Favorite =/= guarantee. 

So again, why bother? Winning money is nice...but doesn't quite make up for the fact that losing money sucks (this can only be said since I don't depend on poker as a source of income). It's the challenge. It's the desire to gain experience. Poker is, if nothing else, a source of novel situations that demand attention. I appreciate that. 

Back to my weekend. 

Friday

I arrived "late" to play on Friday. Maybe around 1pm. All the games were full and I had no choice but to be put on a waiting list. And wait I did... 

...for three hours. 

I'm not complaining...or am I? It wasn't so bad. I just sat in my car and read/listened to podcasts.

The game I am primarily aiming to play throughout the challenge is $3-$5 no limit Texas Hold'em. The buy in for this game is between $300 and $1000. 

When I finally got into a game, it was filled with what I affectionately call "happy jovial nits." They're pleasant players who generally play poker to be social with other players and pass the time...not with the expectation of winning money. In a lot of ways, they're my least favorite opponents. It's not because I think they make the game unprofitable (far from it); it's because I feel like I am raining on their parade. 

Good poker is aggressive poker. That means when you get involved in a hand, you are generally betting and raising. Happy jovial nits typically don't like this. They prefer seeing flops as cheaply as possible and tend to play "fit-or-fold" poker (they don't bluff). When someone plays counter to that, it takes them out of their comfort zone. The worst is when you win a big pot against them, and they give you a sincere comment of "nice hand" and rap the table. I'd rather win money from a sore loser...

It was an abridged session. Just five hours. Nothing too exciting. I won and lost a series of small-to-medium-sized pot and got lucky to cooler someone with 67 vs my KK on a K6697 runout. 

+$380

Saturday

Unfortunately, despite my effort to show up at 10am on Saturday, I was again waitlisted. This time for two hours. Ouch. Am I really going to have to show up and play poker at 9am to avoid waiting? It appears so. 

Before this challenge, my average poker session was probably around four hours, largely due to "lock-in-a-win-itis" (the illogical urge to quit a game when you're up money to "secure" a win). It's something that will persist in my psyche, but resisting that feeling is part of what makes this a challenge. Now I'm faced with an average session length of just over eight hours. Woe is me. /s

I wrote down several hands I played, but I'm leaning towards keeping challenge updates relatively low on hand-histories. I'm also trying to recap my thoughts/feelings from the entire weekend from memory today (mistake). I'm gonna write this in daily chunks moving forward before publishing. 

The 10-hour session featured a random assortment of characters. Nothing really jumps out. There was a surprising lack of interest in the Seahawks game (at least on my table). Maybe that was for the best...

I also have written down, "resisting urge to check phone." On numerous occasions I had to stop myself after reaching into my pocket. It's a full-blown (and damn near unconscious) habit to grab my phone the second I'm not actively engaged in something else. "Just focus on the (poker) game."

Somehow, the time actually flew by once I did this. I wish I could say the same for Sunday...

Again, nothing too exciting. Most pots I played were medium-to-small and I was on the right side of AA vs AK all in preflop. That's lucky. 

Who needs green ($25) chips?

"The office" (it's actually a large tent)
...and about how I'd expect to look on my 10th hour of poker.

+$506

Sunday

Woof. 

Despite very mediocre sleep, I was determined to be at the tables by 9am. And I was...but at what cost?

I do not function well on low sleep. At all. Some people pride themselves on being able to thrive with little sleep. First off - I don't believe you. Secondly - how? Not having a set schedule for the past year has given me a lot of time to experiment. I can tell you without a shadow-of-a-doubt that I function/feel best with eight to nine hours of sleep. I wish this wasn't the case sometimes, but it is...and aside from that - sleep feels damn good. 

All of that wasn't a set up to justify a losing day. In fact, I actually managed to play the full 10 hours needed to fulfill my challenge rules and still eek out a win. I was dangerously close to failing the challenge (already) so I could head home early. I felt lack-of-sleep induced nausea (I swear that's a thing) for the first several hours, which wasn't helped by the fact that I ate a "yogurt parfait" that tasted as if half a plastic bear of honey were squeezed into it. But I ate it anyways because I'm a dummy. Once I survived until noon, I felt better for the remainder of the day.

Two notes:

 - Early on, some young guy got moved to my table and sat with almost $6,000 in front of him. Given that the max buy in is $1,000, he was apparently having a legendary day. He left soon after. Must be nice...

- A middle-aged-man tapped my shoulder from behind and said, "Not that you need my opinion, but you're a good player. I saw you play one hand," before returning to different table. I awkwardly and somewhat confusedly replied, "Thanks." He seemed genuine. This isn't a humble brag. I'm not even sure what that means. Hell, he could have meant it as a thinly-veiled needle. At the point he said this, I probably really only had voluntarily played one hand. What's more likely is that he noticed how tight I was playing and that reaffirmed what he thought was good poker. 🤷

For a while I couldn't hit a flop...most of which were going multiway, which limits bluffing opportunities. At my low I was down $500, but a late-day rush got me back into the green. 

I was definitely watching the clock closely for the last two hours. I felt super done for the weekend. 

Pro tip: when you want time to go by faster, pay it no attention...😒

+$315

Weekend Total: +$1,201

Bankroll after 25 hours and 5 minutes: $11,201.