Thursday, February 02, 2006

Some Habits are Hard to Break

Like any addiction, quitting cold turkey can be a very difficult thing to do. Well, that was my intention so that I could rest the strain on my wrist... you know Doctor's orders. Not so fast, my friend. So last night.... watched my school (Missouri State.. formally Southwest Missouri State) whip up on the Bulldogs from Drake... I, then, plan on going to watch Lost with Mrs Wonka... Repeat!!! Doh!!! Don't do repeats so I then watched the end of the Texas game where they beat Mizzou by double digits...

Now what? Nothing else really on TV. OK, OK, off to the tables I go to get a small hit of my addiction. I'm playing on a new site this month (more on this later in the next few days) so I opened up 2 3/6 tables... yep, standard operating procedures... I'm not looking for any big gains; just looking to get my "fix". So barring in big losses, I should be playing less than an hour.

As it turns out, I only played 32 minutes... 91 hands for a $182.50 profit. This site definitely has some potential. Some of the stats look pretty standard (26.37 VPIP, 14.29PFR, 3.40 AF); but others were not normal (w$wsf 57.69, w$sd 88.89, bb/hr 57.03). These stats definitely do not help my case for not playing to rest my wrist.

I still need to and plan to play less often and for not as long for the short term because the meds don't seem to be helping much so it seems that my destiny includes a probably not too pleasant shot of Cortisone.

-----------

Well, the results are in from my first poll. Many thanks to those who voted and commented. It really does help to know what kind of players are reading.

Again, the question was what type/levels of Poker do you play. Out of 61 responses, here is the final results:

Limit Holdem 1/2 or less - 15 votes or 25%
Limit Holdem 2/4 - 5/10 - 19 votes or 31%
Limit Holdem over 5/10 - 4 votes or 7%
No/Pot Limit 1/2 or less - 12 votes or 20%
No/Pot Limit over 1/2 - 0 votes or 0%
Mostly Omaha or other Non Holdem Games - 7 votes or 11%
Mostly Tournaments - 4 votes or 7%

So along with me at the current moment, the majority seems to be in the lower limits which is pretty much what I expected. There were a lot more Non Holdem players than I thought which is cool. I need to start diversifying. I was thinking that there would possibly be a few more NL players. Shows what I know. For the record, I fell into the Limit Holdem 2/4 - 5/10 category which was the big winner so we have that going for us.... We are the majority.

Now, I would like to dig a little deeper into the play of the Ring Players. As I have be saying over the last month or so, Short Handed has really treated me right. I was a full ring player for a really long time and was never really a winner. It was more like my tournaments were funding my ring play. So, having said that, Do you find yourself playing shorthanded more than full ring or the other way around. Or is it that you pretty much play them both equally. Like my first poll, this will be a week long poll.




Create polls and vote for free. dPolls.com

----------

And finally, did anybody else see the High Stakes poker episode where Daniel Negreanu (sp) flopped the 2nd nut flush and bet a $1 million (really $250 K since that is all that Barry Greenstein had at the table) and got called by BG with nothing more than a nut flush draw.... and then spiking it on the river. That had to be painful. Perhaps, if Daniel had slowed it down a little and made the big bet on the turn, BG would have layed it down; but of course, DN doesn't want him to lay it down so I guess that why he over bet the pot to look like he was buying it.

That should do it for today.

Peace!!!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Maybe you should write a post on the merits of limit. I play NL all the time but would possibly like to play limit (that could help me move up) if I could be convinced to in a blog.
I think limit has many flaws, such as the inability to get someone off a hand, and the inability to push monsters when you get them, but maybe these also work to your advantage, such as its cheaper to draw, and it could be you get more for your monsters because more people stay in them (but it's hard to protect them).

The Happy Rock said...

Will,

Either I missed the problems you are having with the your wrist, or you didn't mention it, but I know about a year two years ago, I was having wrist pains. I am a Software Eng, and spend a lot of off time on the comp.

I found this idea/method was invaluable.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553380524/sr=1-1/qid=1138909815/ref=sr_1_1/103-8897936-0435017?%5Fencoding=UTF8
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553379887/sr=1-2/qid=1138909815/ref=sr_1_2/103-8897936-0435017?%5Fencoding=UTF8


The idea is that weakness and pain most times occur when our bodies aren't properly aligned, and that ergonomics and 'medicine'/surgery doesn't cure the problem only the symptom. I was too lazy to spend all the time, but I did incorporate some streches during work, and went to the gym more regularly, and within a few weeks, I felt amazing. Not just my wrists, but in genral. I found the problem was tightness in my hanstrings and high back.

Thought you may be interested.....


On poker note, Limit is awesome NL stinks. Mainly because I am not that good at NL ring games. And peaker you are right, you have to adapt you playing style to the odds and play of the type of game. It is often correct to play more draws in limit, and you also learn to value bet/raise so that when draw outs occur you get the most value.

Littleacornman said...

I'm starting to get a few wrist pains too.

I'm not all techy but I'm sure I read Matt at Pokerchronicles mention the possibilty of using voice commands to check,bet and fold.Key scripts were mentioned.Way above my e-tard head and not sure what the product is
but maybe worth seeking out.

Anonymous said...

Use an off-table trackball mouse, or "finger" mouse. There's no issues with the wrist.

Gnome said...

Take care of that wrist. I guess if you can do that well in short sessions, you'll have nothing to worry about.

Who links to my website?