This time a slightly longer entry than normal, but I"ve been thinking. Before any smart alec says anything, yes, it did hurt.
Mikeyboy9361 (or whatever the actual number is) recently started a thread elsewhere on this site asking what motivated people to play poker and what they got out of it. I"ve been mulling this over quite a bit and it has had a small influence for my plans for the coming weeks.
Firstly, what do I get from poker? Its partly something to occupy my free time, I"ve got a competitive streak a mile wide so I love winning tournaments, a small amount of recognition is fine, a collection of APAT medals is great, but what it really boils down to is money. If I go into Norwich City Centre on a friday night, have a few beers, head off to a club, stagger out to a taxi rank in the early hours then find my way home, I will have enjoyed myself, but I"m not going to see the money I"ve spent again. If I sit myself in front of my computer screen to play poker, not only will I have a steady supply of refreshments to hand , I won"t have to worry about "friends" putting pictures of me dancing on Facebook, I may well never see the money again but there is a chance I may make a profit.
With this in mind, I"ve started to think a bit more about game selection, or more specifically, site selection. If you were to ask me what I thought the best poker site was, I would probably say Full Tilt marginally ahead of Pokerstars. This does not however mean they are my favourite sites. For that I would have to look at where my profits generally come from. My returns on Partypoker have always been good and my Sharkscope graph on that site looks extremely healthy, so although I tend to stick to a very simple playing style when playing there, it has to be a favourite. My main area of disappointment with the Ipoker network is the lack of deepstack events. However, I"ve got a very good rate of return across the network as a whole (playing under different names on different sites) so, controversial this may be, but I love Ipoker simply because I make money there and that"s the bottom line.
My lack of live poker experience has been well recorded throughout this blog. I"ve been to Vegas a couple of times, played six APAT nationals and apart from a handful of local pub games, that"s pretty much it. My attitude has come about because of focussing too intensely on the money aspect of playing. Why should I leave my house, pay a tournament entry fee and have the expense of a night out, when I could just switch on my PC and have a choice of games? There is an enormous flaw in that particular line of thinking and that is that I"ve come to the conclusion that there is a much bigger difference between internet and live play than I originally believed. Therefore, if I"m half the player I sometimes like to kid myself that I am, I absolutely have to get off my fat backside, get out the door and play live more. Until Bolton, I used to exist in some kind of fantasy world where I could turn up at an APAT national and because I"d done well in the equivalent online events, it was only a matter of time before I"d catch a few decent cards and breeze into the money. Bull****. A record of six nationals and no day twos tells its own story. Yes there have been bad luck stories ( aces cracked, QQ rivered by AQ), but the truth is that my play simply hasn"t been up to scratch. Far from improving, I think my performances have actually got worse and my play in Bolton absolutely stunk the place out. Maybe, just maybe, what I need to do is view a night out playing live poker as an pleasant night out, rather than solely as a money-making exercise. That way, I might actually enjoy myself and iron out a lot of my flaws at the same time. I think I could be onto something here........
