Thursday, March 5, 2009

Patience

One of the truest test of patience in poker is being seated with a player or players that are playing poorly when you are card dead.

For a long time, my
lack of patience in this situation was probably my biggest leak.

I believe that every player has a notion of how they're going to play that day. And as you can read in one of my earlier blogs, I actually write down my goals for each session before starting. I'm fairly certain that I never wrote down, "Today, I will spew chips trying to show a donkey who's boss!"

That said, sometimes I would find myself just salivating to get involved with a player that I knew was playing badly, and would end up playing badly myself. Maybe even going on tilt as my frustration mounted over not being able to felt the shmuck.

Fact is, this is a combo-leak. Caused by ego and impatience.

Look, when I go fishing, I want to catch fish! Sure, the water is pretty, the scenery is nice, blah blah blah. But who are we kidding? I want a fish on my line! I want to feel the bite, set the hook, and reel that sucker in! Good times!

But, sometimes the fish aren't biting so you just have to wait.

Yesterday I had position on a player that was pretty much involved in every hand. His stack went up and down as he chased and hit and chased and missed. He over-valued hands and I knew that at some point I was going to be able to stack him off. Problem was, I couldn't hit anything and all I could do was watch as he kept spewing and reloading.

Previously, this would've driven me nuts and I probably would've been reloading myself. But, I waited....and waited....and waited. Picking up just enough small pots to keep my stack right around my buy-in. Finally, after 3 hours I hit the hand I wanted. Then, not only did I stack the donk, but also got another player to come along with his stack! Bonus!

Ahh..Patience...Worth every minute.

Good luck and don't suck,

-QAsRevenge


PS. If the photo at the beginning of this post bothers you, look into www.one.org to see what you can do.