I Have Run Out

Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.
Brian Adams

I know it seems I have been talking a lot lately about patience in your game. Waiting for the right opportunity and taking advantage. Most of it stems from me coming to the realization that I am losing mine.

"Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure" - That discribes a lot of my game right now. I have a very lackluster attitude towards playing and can't keep the intensity up. I'm pushing hands to hard and just not picking the right spots.

I read in a post or article or something about online players see twice as many hands as live players so that equates to playing twice as long. He goes on to explain that 1 year online play would equal 2 years of live play and so on. I have been playing full time now for 10 months. So, extrapulating that out using the above information means almost two years worth of poker with no extended break. That's not counting the reading, studying, web site, blog and other poker related time I have spent.

Iggy as well as others have written about the drudgery of poker for a living. Thats what it really is to me right now, a drudgery. I know have a luxury though that I didn't have before. That is money coming in (good money) from my wife going back to work. So it is almost time for an extended break. I have 270 points left to get from the last Poker Stars reload and then I will stop for a while. Atleast till school for the kids starts back up.

I have ordered two more books: Internet Poker by Lou Krieger (Poker Stars Points to good use?) and the H/L Split Poker book by Ray Zee. Good reading for my hiatus. Harrington on Holdem II is on that list also but will have to wait a while. Can't go TOTALLY pokerless....that would be bad :) .

I like to set goals for myself and I beleive when I come back in a couple weeks I will set some new ones. This time though it will include many more breaks away from poker than before. I am not down on poker full time. I would still recommend it to anyone in the right situation. Just like anything you do for the first time, I need to tweek the overall operation and adjust for some more quality time away from the tables as well.


Till Next Time!