Old Student, New Student

This is a tale about two old students.


This morning I got a call from one of my first Poker Trainees - and possibly one of my favorite converts.  Let's call him Excitaboy.

Excitaboy was the biggest fish around.  He had no respect for the game.  While everyone tried to play well, he would laugh and say "you all are trying to win, I'm the only one having fun!"

This line best delivered after laying a bad beat on somebody.

He was always first out of a tourney, and he would cover up the shame by saying he had to go leave anyway.  But we knew he wanted to keep playing.  And I knew that deep inside, he wanted to win.

Long story short, I changed his way of thinking by bombarding him with sports analogies.  As a very competitive athlete, Excitaboy could never again look at poker and willingly lose because "it was more fun."  Playing well was more fun.  Winning was more fun.

Cut to many years later, and Excitaboy is known as one of the tightest guys around, although still tilty when his wife calls and he is at a poker table (he is, after all, a guy).  I introduce him to the online cash game grind and sell the idea to him that it made way more sense than a tourney grind - especially for the casual amounts of time he spared - about a couple of hours on some nights of the week.

But Excitaboy - like many casual players - wanted to just play tourneys.  His money, his business, we left it at that.  After all, half of everyone else was just playing tourneys.  And logging on and jumping into a Sit and Go was so easy.


So this morning he calls me and wants to share a realization.  It took him this long, he started to confess, to realize that he was wasting his time and money with Sit and Go grinding.  We broke down the math in the most simplistic manner, just to share the point he was making:

Sit and Go's pay the top three players.  Since they are ten seaters, if all things are equal, all he needs to do is finish in the top three.  Basically, if everyone gets their fair share of luck and skill, if he plays ten games, he will finish once in every position.  So let's say he plays $10+1 buyin SNG's...

--> Buyins = $110
--> Finishes paid = $20 + $30 + $50 = $100
--> Net Loss $10

Now Excitaboy is tight and loves the game and is always learning, but he has no illusions about being the best player at the table.  He can appreciate when something might be bad business.  He's Chinese after all.  And he knows Kung Fu.

We move on from the simplistic math and he talks about the investment of time.  We talk about the feeling that once you buy into a tourney, that money is a sunk cost.  That money is gone, and you are pressured to play hard for a full 45 minutes to two hours just to see some of it back.  He talks about the stress of having to ebat every-fucking-body at the table.  Worst of all, as a nitty player, he talks about the inevitable coin flips - half the time behind, and nothing he can do about it because, well, "you gotta make a stand because the blinds are too high."

So he tried playing a few cash games again some days ago and finally got the idea I was selling him years ago when he first started training.  You control how long you play, you can leave anytime, you don't have to go into coinflips, you can wait for a hand, and, most of all, your buyin is NOT a sunk cost.  As long as it is in your stack, you can leave with it.

In a Sit and Go, he spends $11, and either leaves with $20, $30, $50, or a big fat zero and two hours of his life gone.  In a cash game, he can buyin for $10 and leave as soon as he is up one cent if he wants to.  And believe me, Excitaboy is the kind of player who can leave with any kind of small profit.

And Excitaboy does not have to be the best player - nor the luckiest - to win money playing cash games.  He does nto have to beat everybody - which is great because he doesn't have an ego that needs to beat everybody.  He can just be an above-average slightly-more-informed poker player and get paid by the one or two worse players at the table.


I tell you all this to get to what he says towards the tail end of his sharing:  "I know you told me all this before, but I was never going to know it without personally seeing for myself."

Which is funny, that the world works that way.

My father - in his forty years or so of conducting workshops, training, teambuilding, and shifting paradigms - almost always ended his speeched with this disclaimer:  "...but don't take my word for it, see for yourself."

He would reveal the secrets of life, the power of prayer, the keys to love and happiness, and the pitfalls of conventional programming.  Then after all that he would recommend that he not be believed.  because, well, some things in life (most, I think) are just not believable.

I can tell you all about getting wet, and you're going to know about it.  But you don't understand till you fall into the pool.

I once asked my father where the line was.  I mean, some things you tell people, and they had better believe, right?  I mean, you don't tell someone that cyanide will kill you and then say "but go see for yourself"...or do you?

I think women have the line closer to safe, while men have our lines closer to cyanide.  We will stick our finger in the socket.  We will lick a 9-volt battery.  We will eat red meat till the day we die.

We can mismanage our bankroll despite everything we've read.  We can tilt till we are busto even after seeing and hearing about a hundred cautionary tales.

We will see for ourselves what the red button does, and no amount of information will stop us from ordering chicharon bulaklak.  We will make disastrous choices (but never let it be labelled as "wrong choices").

I think for most men, anal sex is the line.  But I digress.


Elsie is reading a poker book.  I think it might be more than intermediate stuff.  He asks me about the book, and I tell him "don't worry about it, you're going to have to read it again anyway."

I think most of my poker books I read at least twice.  The first reading is strictly informational, and it's an aphrodisiac.  Then I play a few thousand hands for a few hundred hours.  Then the bulbs in my head go off - "Oh, I think THAT's what the book was talking about!"

So I read it again.


Never forget: We are allowed to make mistakes.  Yes, even after reading the fucking manual.  We are allowed to change our minds.  We are allowed to keep learning.  we are allowed to start from the beginning if we must.


Which brings me to the tale of an even older student.

This one learned the game around 2004 or 2005, I forget exactly.  This one had a natural knack for it and finally trained formally in 2009.  This one became a full-time poker pro.  This one lived off Limit Holdem.  Then he lived off Full-Ring No Limit Holdem.  Then he trained to coach the game and teach others.

This one became great at helping other players improve their game.  This one spent more time coaching and less time playing.

One by one, the Full-Ring tables were closing.  This one had to learn to play the 6-max game.  But the game had quite possibly already left him behind.  This one felt...well, that something was up.  I finally I found the word I was looking for a few days ago:

I felt antiquated.


So I had to make an effort to become a new student again.  I spent years studying to be of service to other players, but nobody was servicing me.  I tried to find leaks in my own game, but my efforts all seemed myopic:  I could see small flaws here and there, but I was too close to the picture to see the big flaws.

I didn't want to be one of those guys who slowly run out of people to look up to.  I promised myself that I would always always always have mentors.  I haven't had one in a while.  Outside of saying "I read it in a book" or "I saw a great video about it,"  I haven't really had the chance to learn from someone else in direct fashion.  I haven't taken a tongue-lashng and been called a nitty numbnut for too long.  I haven't had many chances to say the words "Thanks for pointing that out man, I never would have thought of that."

I wanted to be coached again.  An opportunity knocked, so I took it.

I am now some three or four weeks into a training program designed for beginners.  One of the trainers is an abrasive drill sergeant.  Seriously, if R. Lee Ermey taught poker, he would be this guy.  At the beginning, I find myself struggling to constantly keep my cup empty - as my ego constantly threatens to flare up:  "Dude, you've been there, done that!"

Well, ego, I haven't been here and done this in a long long time.  Maybe I can't just take your word for it anymore.  Maybe I have to see for myself.

Ego says "Dude, my game ain't broken, these guys are going to dismantle it!"

Well ego, I'm going to let these top-notch coaches go ahead and dismantle your crushing "unbroken" 1bb/100 6max game.  What do you say to that?

Yesterday I hit paydirt big time, but I will tell you about it tomorrow, because that is another story.

This one is about an Old Student who is now a New Student.