pokershaman

Yesterday I went to Bay 101 to play in the WPT Championship main event megasatellite. Because of a comedy of errors in the morning, I was not able to get to Bay 101 until just before re-entry closed at 12:35 PM - it had started at 9:30 AM.

Late registration had been part of the plan; in his book with Barry Carter on playing satellites, Dara O'Kearney calls out the overlay/ICM edge one gets by joining a satellite late. He notes, of course, that this is a high-variance approach.

So it proved for me. I started play with twenty big blinds under the gun. After folding my way through the blinds, I had 17.3bb, and found myself on the button with a hand I thought I could shove over the hijack open-limper. Of course, the big blind woke up with a premium pocket pair and flatted. They flopped top set, leaving me drawing completely dead, and out of the satellite after just four hands.

Shrug, that's max late reg for you. I got on the long lists for cash games, and got lunch in the restaurant.

After lunch, I spent fifteen minutes in a 15-30 limit holdem game (ah, nostalgia), before I was called to a 2-3-5 NL game.

I was card-dead for the longest time, throwing away junk hand after junk hand, and very likely exhibiting the image of a dreadful nit. I tried to compensate by taking part in the table conversation.

Opening in early position, getting flatted by half the table, and shutting down on a flop that misses me completely does nothing to dispel a nitty image. Three-betting an EP opener and then folding to their substantial four-bet might be nitty, or it might look like an action player getting caught speeding.

I take the position that I play my cards and my circumstances and let my image take care of itself., although it is good to be mindful of what that image might be.

Eventually I began to regress to the mean, and picked up some hands. I took down the blinds with AKo. ("Pot A!" I announced to the table.) I opened with KTs and got action on a K98 flop, checking the J turn and betting 70% on the river, getting called. ("He checked the turn because of the straight," the action player said. In fact, I checked the turn because I felt I had only a two-street hand and I did not want to get blown off my equity with a raise. I said nothing of the sort, of course.)

Then came the hand of the afternoon: 8-handed, villain has around $800, I cover. Villain is to my immediate right, in the spot I call the farjack and is UTG+1 in an 8-handed game. Villain opens for $25, which is not out of line for how people were playing. I squeezed my cards, saw AdJd, and 3-bet to $75. Everyone else gets out of the way, and the villain calls after tanking for a moment or two. There is $153 in the pot after the $6+1 drop.

The flop comes 9d8d7c, giving me the nut flush draw and a gutshot to the big end of a one-card straight. Villain could conceivably have all the sets, but the way this game has been playing I would expect a lot of limping with middling pocket pairs. The only set in my range here is 99, but I do have all the overpairs, and I do in fact have TJs in my range. It is close to even in nut advantage, but I very definitely have range advantage and a draw to the nuts.

Villain checks, I bet $50, 1/3 pot. Villain pauses, and then calls. $253 in the pot, villain has ~$675 remaining.

The turn is the Th. The board is 9d8d7c Th, and I have the Jd in my hand. To my surprise, the villain leads out for $200, leaving $475 behind.

What's the strongest hand that I beat in the villain's range. Maybe 66. Maybe a set or two pair. But unless it is specifically T9s, I think sets and two pair would raise that extremely wet flop. Does the villain have QJs. There are only three combos. I chop with TJs, but I have a nutted redraw.
If the flush hits, I might not get any more money. Likewise with a broadway card. If I raise now, I can get paid off by his draws. The SPR would be low if I call in any event.

"I'm all-in."

The villain tanks for longer this time, and flicks in a chip. "Do you want to run it twice?" he asks.

I agree. The rule at Bay 101 is that when all-in heads up in a pot greater than $1000, players can agree to run it twice. Both hands must be exposed.

"Sure, run it twice," I said.

The villain turned over his hand: KdQd, dominated by my nut flush draw, drawing dead to three jacks.

The first river card was th 5c; the second the 7s. I scoop the pot.

This put me well up for the day, not only for the game itself, but it was enough to cover the cost of my satellite loss and a little more.

I think I played well. I give myself good marks for focus, power, and discipline.

At the same time, the only thing that separates this win, my first live cash win in a couple of months, from my losses is my having won that big pot. I got lucky.

The downswing doubt is still in my mind: If the only way to win is by getting lucky, what is the point of playinig well?

Writing that down, I can see the obvious answer. It is not the case that the only way to win is by getting lucky. What makes poker poker is the fact that there are two ways to win, by showing down the best hand, or by taking down the pot unopposed. This is the foundation of the raise-and-c-bet hustle that makes live cash so profitable.

I

I started meditating in 2003. I did not really know what I was doing, except that I had an understanding that it involved clearing one’s mind. One book that I had read had described an “advanced form of meditation” that consisted of, when a thought appeared in one’s mind, noticing it and telling oneself, “This is a thought,” and letting go of it. I read various things about meditation from time to time, and my meditation practice strengthened.

In the fall of 2004 I entered a psychologically based master’s degree program in conflict facilitation and organizational change, from the Process Work Center of Portland (now the Process Work Institute). One of the classes I took that fall, taught by the late Sara Halprin, focused on inner work, examining and working with one’s own psyche without the assistance of an outside therapist or counselor.

Halprin’s teaching included meditation, and in describing the practice and utility of meditation, she quoted Saint Francis de Sales, a Catholic bishop who wrote and taught extensively on the living of a spiritual life:

When your heart is wandering and distracted, bring it back quietly to its point, restore it tenderly to its Master's side; and if you did nothing the whole of your hour but bring back your heart patiently and put it near Our Lord again, and every time you put it back it turned away again, your hour would be well employed. . . . (Library of St. Francis de Sales, Vol IV - Letters to Persons in Religion, translated by Rev. Henry Benedict Mackey, O.S.B., 1888, Burns & Oates, Ltd., London.)

De Sales was writing in a specifically Catholic, Christian context, but his advice is widely recognized as applying to many forms of meditation, including Vipassana and Zen.

This particular teaching struck me deeply at the time, and it has stuck with me over the decades since. This is what meditation is.

Another aspect that strikes me is its kindness and gentleness, its forgiveness. The meditator does not waste time or mental energy on blaming the wandering mind, nor on punishment for straying. De Sales counsels patience.

Meditation like Vipassana or zazen consists of focusing one’s attention one one’s breath as it goes in and out of one’s nostrils. Monkey mind cannot help but wander, as if jumping from branch to branch in a big tree. That is what it does. When it inevitably happens, notice it and return attention to breath through the nostrils. It happens again; notice it, and return to breath. Again, and return to breath.

It is the core skill of meditation, that of returning the wandering mind to its intended focus. One could argue that this is what meditation is: not laserlike focus of attention upon its object, but continual returning of wandering attention back to its object. The essential heart of meditation is returning one’s mind to the meditative state.

From the beginning of my career as a meditator, I had the intention, the idealization, of meditating every day. Life, though, has a way of not cooperating with our intentions. I would miss a day. Occasionally I would miss two or three days. A week. A month.

Facing a hiatus like this, I had an inspiration: my life wandering away from daily meditation was, in an important way, just the same as my mind wandering while I am meditating, and it warrants the same response: gently returning to the desired state of focus. Did I miss a day yesterday? Never mind; come back to meditating today. Have I missed a whole week? It does not matter; come back to meditating today. This inspiration removed an obstacle to coming back to meditating after a break: it removed the guilt and self-criticism.

It was only a small step from here to the next inspiration, and this is the big one: this was not just about meditation, but it applied to many different things. Did I omit going out for a walk for exercise yesterday? Never mind; today is a good day for a walk. Have I been neglecting my guitar recently? No matter, just pick it up right now, tune it up, and run through some scales and chords. Did I blow my diet yesterday? That was yesterday; today we are eating right.

Distilled to a single sentence, my latest inspiration was this:

The essence of practice is the return to practice.

II

What does it mean to practice? Think about a musical instrument, say, a piano. You could sit down at a piano bench, raise the cover off of the keyboard, and put your fingers on the keys. You can press down on some keys to make some musical sounds. This is not practicing. You can look at some sheet music on the stand and try to hit the notes written on the sheet in the order that they are written. This is not practice.

It does not become practice until you do it more than once. Practice of an activity is repeating that activity with the intention of getting better at that activity. Repetition means doing it again, and again.

The essence of practice is the return to practice. It is playing that difficult phrase one more time, to try to iron out the rough spots. It is playing through the composition again and again.

It is coming back tomorrow to once again iron out those rough spots and play through the composition.
What about that gentleness and kindness that de Sales recommends one use to guide the stray back to where it belongs? In the context of any practice, it means encouraging the wayward practitioner to come back without guilt or shame. The teacher accepts the return of the student with a nod, and tells them kindly to begin again. Play the phrase of music. Run the pattern with the football. Sit on the cushion and take another breath. And so on.

This is how I deal with interruptions of a practice, of falling away. I come back to it and resume. Did I omit my poker opening range drill yesterday morning? That was yesterday. I only have today to work with, and so let me go through my drill once more. The essence of practice is the return to practice. The practice missed yesterday does not matter. What matters is the practice exercised today.

We cannot do anything about our omissions or failures yesterday. Yesterday is gone, and nothing can be done about it. We can only work with today.

And when we work with today, we can also form an intention to work with tomorrow as well. We can make a plan to practice tomorrow, even as we are practicing today.

III

Many writers and teachers of daily meditation, or of any daily practice or habit, emphasize the difficulty of restarting the practice after time off, even a single day. It is more difficult to restart a practice, they tell us, than it is to continue, even if there are obstacles in the moment that get in the way of continuing. The feeling of disappointment, and perhaps guilt or shame, they say, even after missing a single day, can get in the way of coming back again.

The attitude of loving and gentle guidance can greatly reduce the effort of restarting. When that loving part of yourself tells you that all that really matters is returning to your practice today, it can relieve that disappointment, that guilt, that shame, and reduce the problem of restarting to one of simply doing it. You are not restarting, you are continuing, just as you had continued before you had missed that day of practice, that week, that month, that year.

This can lead to a healthier relationship towards mistakes in general. Recrimination and blame are a waste of effort. When you, or anyone, makes a mistake, what matters most is how to move forward from that mistake. Perhaps it means cleaning up a mess. Perhaps it means simply learning from the mistake how not to do it next time, and moving on.

I find myself wanting to have some sort of public-facing platform for writing. I want to be writing in longer form than in Shitter X. Facebook is out of the question for a number of reasons, the least of which is their unwillingness to show postings in chronological order. I do not have the wherewithal to set up hosting with our ISP. wordweaverlynn told me that she has been posting here from time to time, and so at length I decided that this was a good option.

What to Expect

While I reserve the right to write about whatever I want, my writing here, as with most of the rest of my life, will be focused upon poker and my efforts to become a better player. I have reasons to want my poker writing to be world-readable, and so I will not be able to create a filter that my readers can opt into. As with anyone on your reading list, if you would rather not read this stuff, feel fee to drop me from your reading list (no blame).

I make no promises about frequency. I have a personal intention to post at least once per week, but this is aspirational.

And my having just written that, the back of my mind is poking me about MTO goal-setting that Phil Galfond has been promoting recently. There are three layers to MTO goals: Minimal, Target, and Outrageous. The Outrageous goal is to leave room for aiming high.

I am now setting as my Minimal posting goal as once per month, my Target of once per week, and an Outrageous goal of daily.

It pleases me to be turning my Dreamwidth account back into a going concern.