When Good Whiskey Goes Bad
or Ignorance is Monies

I spent a nice long stint after my last poker vacation taking it easy on my favorite game. Sure, I was still playing regularly, but only a game or two a night each weeknight instead of the usual....fuck, I don't even know what the usual was. I'd say 3-4 tournaments, but I'm sure it's higher. I am not the sort to track stats or worry about silly bullshit like a true professional would. I'm a hobbiest. I'm happy as long as I'm not making any fresh deposits online.

I advised Mezz0, some time ago, that when I was drinking excessively and found myself on a losing poker streak, verging on tilt, I learned that it was best to cut myself off from poker. Instead, I'd indulge in video games for the remainder of the night. It's a great way to avoid losing the money that I typically blow on tilt. Plus there's the added bonus that I almost exclusively play games which involve killing objects or people or generally causing some sort of destruction. It's what the psychologists call transference, I think. I take my rage out on sniping Nazis in WWII or saving the world from invading aliens hellbent on collecting our earth's tiberium. If I lose or die in those games, I can just load up the last save point and perform better. I learn from my mistakes immediately. I test different strategies. I learn and advance and make measurable progress.

Having grown up in the age of computer games, I have realized that different people employ different playing styles in video games. My personal approach is rarely tame, calculated, strategic, or planned. I prefer instead for the run n' gun approach. I like to launch myself unguarded into whatever situation the game puts me in, exposing myself to gunfire and direct attack. I test my reflexes to see if I can react quickly enough to advance. When I do advance, it's an exhilaratingly thrill. When I fail, I recall my mistakes, memorize my enemy's positions and employ a slightly more strategic approach. If that fails, I regroup, study, and become more and more reliant on calculated strategy instead of my preferred method of chaos and reflex.

I realize these tendencies, not just because I spend a lot of time playing (video) games, but because I have spent a lot of time playing games with different people. For example, during my life I have spent more time playing video games with Master P, who I met in middle school, than I have studying for school outside of class for my entire life...kindergarten....high school...college...the whole bit. This may partially explain why neither of us have graduated college.

Master P's tendencies are almost completely opposite from mine. Instead of using my preferred run n' gun technique, he would rather begin with strategy and only rely on chaos and reflexes if it is absolutely required. He automatically maps out the structure of each level that is presented to him. He has an uncanny ability to find hidden treasure and solve strange riddles by utilizing the lessons that he has learned from previous gaming experiences. Somehow he knows where that next enemy is hiding. I consistently rely on him to give me the logistics of the level, knowing that he is studying the details much more closely than I am.

For Master P, success is measured by perfection. He will systematically scan every scene and destroy every wooden crate or clay pot because every 20 or 30 that are destroyed will present a gaming advantage. If, at the end of the level, the game shows that something has been missed....it is not comfortable for Master P to continue. He plays a deliberate, patient game. This is why I think he'd be a fucking amazing poker player if he applied himself a little.

For me, measuring success is a simple matter of passing the level. Fuck if I got everything, I'm advancing and advancing a level means that I'm that much closer to winning the game. What's interesting is that I play games with P completely differently than how I play them alone. When we are playing a game as a team, I prefer that he approaches levels first and fails. That way I can see how he fucked up and I can collect all the goodies that he methodically discovered...it pains me like a motherfucker to attend to the OCD approach of looking everywhere and testing everything.

Anyway, the impetus of this dissertation($5+$5=$10) was poker. I went on a terrible, drunken tilt few nights ago and blew through $100 or so. Last night I focused, won a couple nice games, made up a bit of my loss, got drunk (the parents are out of town!) and then proceeded to lose everything that I had won that night. I made up those games tonight, drinking steadily, taking 4th in a $3.00 90 person tournament, knocking out 8 players at $.50/per, and then I started into Pot Limit Omaha o8. I blew a quick $15 in a few games and loaded up the final drunken table of the night.

I thought it was Omaha o8 (hi/lo)

It was actually just hi, but that didn't stop me from winning a massive pot on the 2nd hand...which resulted in me talking drunken, aggressive smack...oblivious to the fact that I thought I was playing a completely different poker game than I was. The plays that I was making were absolutely nonsensical to anybody playing standard omaha poker. I kept scooping pots while watching our darling American Olympians capture gold and silver in the individual all-around gymnastics, so it never occurred to me to analyze any hand after it was played. I developed a massive early chip lead and employed standard tag poker techniques to bet my opponents off of hands and get crazy lucky.

I was betting the pot on hands where I had the nut low + weak flush draw...and my weak flush would come through and beat their flopped set.

...and I kept talking smack, which had to make me look like the biggest jackass at the table. But my ultimate point is, I guess, that my instinctual run n' gun technique worked in this game. I won.

It's kind of like showing up to a job as an inadequate roofer. All these fellow roofers are wearing knee pads and using pneumatic nail guns to attach the shingles to the roof, and I show up in a pair of swimming trunks with a bunch of thumb tacks and a plumber's wrench. They look at me like I'm a fucking jackass and let me do my thing. By the time lunch comes around, I've hammered in 3x the number of tiles that they have...just using a wrench and tacks. So I start talking shit and making fun of them.

At the end of the day, the foreman has shown up and paid me the money for the entire crew.

"Hell of a roofing job you did today, son."
"Roofing? I thought I was plumbing..."

The rest of the gang is broke, looking at their pneumatic nail guns like, "Dude, what the fuck? How did that happen."

I wave my wrench at them and yell, "Suck it, bitches!!1! Pwnd"

....and that was my night of poker.