What time is it?

Over the last few days I have been looking back at how I do at various times of the days and I am definitely noticing a trend. My game seems to suffer either late at night or right after work. (not too surprising) I can see the effect of this in 3 places: limping in on questionable draws, continuing semi-bluffs after several calls, and misreading the board (not seeing the flush that beats my two pair, etc.) The last of these is clearly the most troubling and costly. I continue betting into someone who is sitting pretty on the nuts. Interestingly this does not seem to happen in tournament play.

The other problem is that I see myself trying to continue my plays later and later as I try to recoup earlier losses, not wanting to leave on such a low note. This, of course, leads to more and more questionable play.

On the other side of the coin, it looks like my best play comes at off hours. A few weeks ago, I came back from a business trip in Europe and was jet lagged so I kept waking up at 4-5 AM and playing for a while before work. These games and some of my other off hour games seem to be some of my best play. I find myself playing tighter and more willing to wait out for the good cards. Though I also think that a good portion of this "better" play is the poor play of some of the others who are up at some of these hours.

All in all, I need to make it more of a point to make sure I am at my best before continuing my play and being aware of the time. Also, I must learn to accept a bad day for what it is and move on to play another day.

Little Ones

After reading Sean's post about the effects of television on children, I started looking around for any other news or academic articles. I was very surprised at all the writing out there about how TV brings kids to the tables. I always figured that some kids got through to registering or there parents signed up for them but I did not think the problem was that widespread. I mean it takes quite some effort to start up as it is. Setting up a neteller account, depositing some cash, setting up an account with one of the rooms (yeah, this part is probably a joke). I find it hard to believe that this is so simple. A while back a friend of mine (well over age) tried to get his account going on PokerStars and it took him quite sometime getting his neteller account verified.

The question then becomes, even if kids get lured to the sites, can they sign up? News organizations seem to think so but is this just an emotional ploy to evoke a reaction? I looked for any academic articles or in depth research but never found one. Has anyone ever seen real research or evidence that this is a widespread problem?

Dealer's Choice

This weekend I went down to Miami for my cousins wedding.  Amid all the standard small talk and "I haven't seen you since you were this big" (referring to the size of a small dog) conversations, I ran into a couple of guys who were "really into poker."  You know these guys.  They are at every party.  They are just itching to tell you about how good they are at poker and how they play all the time.  At this point I am hopeful that maybe they are actually referring to poker but of course this becomes painfully obvious as they respond that they usually play a Dealer's Choice kind of game involving such favorites as Guts, Follow the Bitch, Anaconda, etc.  There we had it.  There went all chance of actually having a good conversation about poker.  I would think that with the recent poker explosion you would get more people who knew what they were talking about and had begun to play real poker games.  I don't want to sound elitist here or anything but while those games may be fun over a bunch of beer to screw around with they are not poker.  After a while I tried to convince them that there is a lot more to poker in Hold em, Omaha, Stud etc.  Through all this, they mention that they have played a few times on PartyPoker.  I would love to meet these guys at a game online.  I guess its time to refund that account.  Candy from a baby.

All in all though, the trip was great.  I mean I can't complain about a couple of days on the beach in beautiful weather.  Anyway, now that I am back in New York, hopefully I can turn my attention back and start to post some more interesting topics.  More to come on that soon...