From Busto to Robusto

http://vimeo.com/3124662
I saw this documentary about a year ago and thought it was really good. I’m not sure if that is because I’m an online poker player or not.
-It was very interesting when some of the poker players were talking about the dollar amounts that they play. The biggest online poker players can lose over a million in a day. I just can’t get my head around that. But anyway, I think I’m a pretty good player and have played the $20-30 for the last 2 years. I think my game has gotten better in the past 2 years. But I haven’t made any big jump in stakes. I think the reason is because of my view of money. In the documentary, Phil Galfond (who just won 1.6 million in a single session yesterday) said that you can’t think of the money in terms of what you can buy. But instead, think of the dollar amounts as just a say of “keeping score.” But I do just the opposite. When I win or lose $150 in a day, I think about what I just won or lost. In a sense, I think this is good and bad.

For example, in my case, I’m pretty disciplined. As far as bankroll management goes, I’m pretty conservative. I have lots of medium to small wins. But when I’m getting unlucky or playing badly, I have the ability to quit or switch sites. In a sense, I don’t go on monkey tilt. However, I do tilt and I’ll discuss that in another blog. But anyway, the bad side of this mentality is that I’m not taking any risks. This is exactly why I haven’t moved up to the $50 HU sngs as my regular game. I’m confident that I can beat this level, and my results have showed that I can beat these games. But, it’s inevitable that sometimes you are going to lose 4 or 5 games in a row, no matter how good you play. The feeling of being down $200 will definitely affect my game. I have thought about looking for a stake from someone, and could possibly look more into it in the future. To explain, if I do receive a stake, I would be playing with half my money, half my staker’s money. In effect, the variance would be lowered. But that would take a lot of time, trust, and pressure.

In the other case, where someone does not respect the value of the dollar, it’s completely different. This person thinks of dollars as points in a video game. This allows the player to play fearlessly at higher stakes and possibly win more money. The typical routine for this player would be to win big, but slowly or quickly lose all of it back. And repeat. Tilt would also be a bigger issue. So there’s definitely positives and negatives for each type of player.
But anyway,the next episode comes out in 3 days with Andrew Robl as the subject.