My Need To Apologise...

Runadrum, you are a player and a person who I have a massive amount of respect for. So I feel I owe you an explanation.

I am not a good loser.
:-)

I should be, as I've plenty of practice, but as you know from my blog poker is my replacement for football, a sport where I was terribly competitive and driven.

During the 90 minutes of play I was totally focused on my team winning, to the point where I detested every single player on the opposition, until the final whistle, and I'd change back into the good-natured 'nice' person that I think I am normally.

The problem that I have when I play poker, is there is no final whistle. I need to find a way to swtitch off the 'nasty' competitive me in the same way I could when footballing. I should realise that you make your decisions with your cards and your stacks, and I have no right to expect you to play by 'my rules' (in other words, let me win).

When I go out of a tourney though, the last thing I want to say is "nice hand" or "well played" or "good game", regardless of the person who beats me. The game is not finished, so how can my nice side materialise... So when you knocked me out of the PL Virgin tourney last week, for 5 minutes after the river on my last hand, I couldn't accept that I was not playing, and so the nasty side of me made that embaressing post. In fact the reason it has not been deleted is to shame myself, and to remember that when you get the message saying 'you finished in xxth position' that is my 'final whistle'.

Maybe then I can post what I really want to say, instead of looking like an immature fool.

What I really wanted to say was, 'you lucky person, you. You'd better go on and win it'. Maybe next time I can...

Anyway you deserve credit, as you've been playing well and getting some good results! Well done.

Please accept my apology, mate.

P.S. I notice in your blog that all the articles are in a different coloured text, and I wondered why mine wasn't. Well... tonight I found the text colour button.

A Point Proved?

Below I questioned the psychological effect of playing on different networks, and in this past week I have had a run on 4 MTT wins on Mansion. Unfortunately, because of the lack of players one of those wins can only be loosely described as an MTT, with 18 runners.

The only fly in the ointment was yesterday playing in a short-handed rebuy. I survived the rebuy period without adding to my original buy-in, and started the final table in 2nd place. With 3 paid I proceeded to throw my chips away in a terrible manner, and busted out in 5th.

Pride before a fall, I suppose, but I still have more confidence in my play on Mansion than on Boss Media. It is something I MUST address if I hope to grow as a player.

Poker Psychology

Something that interests me is how ones outlook can change depending on the game or site one is playing.

I say this because I have had a lot of success on a new poker site (Mansion), and as a result when I am playing on that site I make my plays full of confidence, and seem unaffected by the beats that I suffer. The ability to confidently make the right decision should be one which is learnt and should stay inside you, but I'm finding that mental scars run deeper than I realise, as I can be in two identical situations on two different sites, and the fact remains that one site I play correctly, and on the other I play incorrectly, or badly, purely because I know that I have been 'hurt' by a site (or in this case a network) far too often, and badly.

I suppose the solution would be to walk away from the network until the wounds have healed, but that almost seems like admitting defeat, which I'm not prepared to do.

Another WSoP Opportunity

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 2676873