Thursday, April 1, 2010

March Recap and April goals

So I ended up at 1164 games in March which, isn't all that bad but, that number is going to seem very small compared to what I will be doing from now on.  I am finally in the swing of things and my attitude couldn't be better at this point.  This journey is really starting to have a big effect on me in ways I never thought possible.  When I sit alone and play I do not care what the cards are.  I make plays I know will make me money in the long run and if you looked at my graph today you would be very confused.  I have been going up and down like crazy the last 2 weeks but, I couldn't be happier. 

Although, a few days ago I was struggling with this concept and until last night I hadn't noticed the toll it was taking on me.  The more I lost the less I wanted to play.  I was being worn out by the game and even though I was playing very well.  I read chapter in FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS that really inspired me to start anew and care less about the past.  The chapter stated that a dentist (a very good investor) would spend all of his time watching his stock go up and down.  He loved the thrill of winning but, adversely he also felt a stinging pain when he saw the number turn red.  A chart was listed like I will show you right now of what kind of effect this had on the man.


                                                 Scale                                         Probability

                                                 1 year                                              93%
                                                 1 quarter                                        77%
                                                 1 month                                          67%
                                                 1 day                                                54%
                                                 1 hour                                              51.3%
                                                 1 minute                                          50.17%
                                                 1 second                                         50.02%

So if you really take in what this all means, you will understand that he was suffering from a ton of negative pains as well as a ton of positive thrills.  But, "At the end of every day the dentist will be emotionally drained. A minute-by-minute examination of his performance means that easy day (assuming eight hours per day) he will have 241 pleasurable minutes against 239 unpleasurable ones. These amount to 60,688 and 60,271, respectively, a year. Now realize that if the unpleasurable minute is worse in reverse pleasure than the pleasurable minute is in pleasure terms, then the dentist incurs a large deficit when examining his performance at a high frequency."  (Taleb 66) 

We as poker players have this even WORSE.  If you look at any of the Nick Rainey's students officialpokerrankings.com statistics you will see that we each cash in about 12-13% of all of our games.  This is a much much lower number than that of the dentist but, we seem to always make a profit when its all said and done and that is all that really matters.  We need to stop checking our bankroll and sharkscope.com and pokertracker3 +EV graphs to make ourselves feel better/worse.  Everything is relevant to time.  Volume is the key in poker we see it time and time again and it really is.  Our percentages don't go up as nicely as the dentist himself because our numbers are skewed more towards a very low percentage and when we actually get to a year's time we will have almost a 100% guarantee of money made over that period of time.  We are emotionally draining ourselves by watching our cashier go up and down so why do it?  

April is not only a new month but, a new beginning.  My volume for this month is planned to be upwards of 2300+ games so I can achieve supernova status by the end of the year.  GL at the tables.


2 comments:

  1. Great post rephorik! I just got the audiobook (I'm lazy when it comes to reading) for "Fooled by Randomness" yesterday and plan on listening to a couple chapters a night till I finish.

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  2. good read rephorik, some great points, gl

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