Reflections

During the 15 minute break between the final two levels yesterday (as I was folding my way into the money), I stood out on a terrace of the Monte Carlo Bay Resort overlooking a bay of the Mediterranean. The cliffs of Monaco which house many architectural miracles loomed in the background. I spent five minutes thinking about where poker has taken me, perhaps spurred a bit from Chris Moneymaker asking me where I thought I'd be had his WSOP ME win not incited the "poker boom" (this conversation sparked by my thanking him for said boom).

In February of 2008 I decided to put forth an effort to not suck at online poker and hopefully earn a little extra spending money. It is barely more than two years later. I've gone pro. I reached Supernova Elite in 2009. I've played three major live donkaments (2009 WSOP ME, 2010 PCA, and 2010 EPT Grand Final Monte Carlo). It's been quite a ride, and I wonder how long its going to last.

Moving on to something a little less emo, tournament poker sucks. It sucks because it glorifies variance to the extreme while almost every structure quickly diminishes the skill levels at play due to typical ranges of stack sizes. The only saving grace I see is that tournament play does introduce a significant amount of situational factors to consider that simply do not exist in cash games. I imagine after putting in a reasonable amount of tournament volume and doing a little learning, identifying and adjusting properly to these situations becomes pretty trivial however.

Live poker sucks too, not because it is live, but entirely because of the hands per hour limitation. I'm really not sure I could make it as a sponsored pro. If my contract stated I had to play ten events a year, I might snap. To clarify, this isn't a reaction to my EPT Grand Final experience, which was decidedly positive (I have ~$19.8k more USD than I came with and a day of chatting with a WSOP ME champion was great).

Thank God for cash games, and thank God for online poker and multitabling.