Another Game made me remember how to play This Game.

Often when we are stuck on an elusive thought, we are tempted to bruteforce our way through to come up with it.  It could be something as simple as the name of "that actor" in "that movie"...or something as frustratingly complex as "what the hell is wrong with my game?!?"

In the pre-google era (for those of you who are too young to recall such an era, respect your elders and just nod!) such thoughts led to sleepless nights.  I would look in the mirror to check the tip of my tongue.

"Who was that guy?  Argh!  His name started with the letter A...or wait, did it?  I KNOW it had an A in it.  But, well, what few names don't have an A..."

"Tom?  it rhymed with Tom.  Is he a Tom?  No.  It had an A... Tam...?"


And then one morning, while making orange juice and watching some guy on a Home-Shopping Channel try to sell me a gadget that will give me six-pack abs...

"Matt Damon!"


For poker leaks, there is pokertracker.  But even with such a powerful tool, I've had long long hours of staring at the screen and the stats and the replayed hands and thinking "What can be better?!?"

"How can I be better?"

I felt like Kevin Garnett:  still servicable and much-respected, but not quite the franchise player or the fantasy stud.  I had felt for sometime that my Holdem Game had peaked.  I sat in online games feeling like a dinosaur, and that anyone else on the table who wasn't an obvious fish was actually an Isildurrr just waiting to grind me down despite my best efforts.  It wasn't that I was losing or being outplayed every time - it was a more subtle feeling:  That I was due to make an adjustment, but could not figure out what it was supposed to be.

Ever drive to your friend's house for the second time after having driven there only once previously?  "I know we're supposed to make a right here somewhere, but I'm not sure which street!"

As I looked for ways to be sharper, I also honestly felt that perhaps my learning curve was at its apex.  had I Peter principled myself?  I decided that the best strategic move was to put myself in a situation where there was still a lot of curve for me to learn on.  In such a situation, I was counting on my reliable lightning-fast-learning-ability to put a profitable distance between myself and a (hopefully) still clueless recreational general population.

I made a transition to Pot-Limit Omaha.

To describe my experience so far simply, I felt like it was Holdem in 2008 all over again.  While a lot of players knew what they were doing, there was a greater number of players who just wanted to make hands.

I mean, with four hole cards, surely they could make some kind of strong hand...SURELY!  (Meanwhile I've had shots at a five-card Omaha game and failed to so much as hit a pair or a draw a few times - even when we ran it to the river.)

As I transitioned, I sought the wisdom of APA PLO Coach Gumaaa.  He has since said many things, but one of the first things he wanted me to remember was to play in position and respect the board.

It sounded like a truism - something someone says and you just laugh and think "duh!"

I personally recall thinking "of course, you don't need to tell me!"... and then weeks later kicking myself for check-calling a river bet on a flushing board with my nut straight.  I wake up every single day thinking I would be smarter than that - that position and board texture was supposed to be part of my subconscious competence by now.

Hero call. Nice try.

Not in this new game.  it turns out that Coach Gumaaa DID need to tell me.  With all my excitement to play the new game - I managed to forget things.  Not regularly, but enough to disappoint myself.  Words Coach Gumaaa had just thrown out like it was token advice suddenly found themselves on a post-it on my monitor.

"Play much much tighter EP, always always always respect the board."

It was so simple it clicked the tip of my tongue.  And suddenly I knew what to do with my Holdem Game.

Years of having a significant skill advantage had led me to ignore position more and more.  Years of betting with playmakers in shorter-handed games led me to call lighter.  Those became habits, because they worked often enough.

I knew the dynamics of the entire community had already shifted slightly.  It had taken a wild turn when HSP first came out on Television, then shifted from "wild" to just "wide" when people figured out how "wild" lost money.  The specific dynamics of the games I was in had also shifted slightly.  I had hero-called profitably so much that less players were bluffing me.  My hero calls had gone from massively profitable to just marginally +EV.

I thought I had Holdem all figured out, but I had to play PLO for an overdue adaptation - the adjustment that I was looking for but failed to make - to suddenly stare me in the face.

I am happy to report that my Holdem Game is back in the groove.  Which in turn has helped my fledgling venture into Cycling (a fancy pro-sounding term for riding a bike), as I learned that my bike chain falls off when I shift to a gear that is too low for the situation.

Now if only I can learn with absolute perpetual finality how to respect other peoples' worldviews.  I may have to transition into Mixed Martial Arts to conjure up some realizations.