Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Go cry emo fishies

So yeah, I'll tap the fishbowl a bit here.

Recently there have been a slew of forums popping up on 2p2 talking about how online poker is dead and you just can't make a living off of it anymore. Now sure, I have a bias obviously since I am writing this blog, but I just can't stand some of the perspectives presented there.

Nothing, and I mean literally nothing in poker, is impossible. Hard? Sure, without a doubt. Harder than working for someone else for 40 years making their dreams come true? Harder than 60 hour work weeks getting stuck in rush hour traffic? That I doubt.

I didn't play back in the hay day of online poker where 16 year old high school students binked a freeroll and ramped it up to six figures before they were 18. I didn't play back in the day where reading a couple books and figuring out starting hand ranges was all it took to grind out the mid stakes. I started where you are likely to find 4-5 decent regs at every $1.50 nine man SNG at any given time. The point being here is the people who played back in 2006 and made tons of easy money fell into the complacency mind set.

It is too much of a shot to the ego for these people to admit they fell behind the game. It is too scary, too hard for people to admit they are nowhere near as good as they think they are. Maybe some people are just lazy and don't care to put the needed effort into their games. Who knows? But one thing that I know for sure is with proper planning, tireless study and determined execution anything is possible.

Job mentality, I feel, has penetrated the minds of these people who choose to whine on internet poker forums. That is, the job mentality of doing the least amount of work possible for the biggest return. Think about it, really that is what the governing principle is between employees and employers. The employee wants to do as little as possible and get paid as much as possible. The employer wants to squeeze as much effort from the worker as possible while paying them the least. Might be a bit of an extreme way to put it, but that is the paradigm we face today.

Some people just apply this philosophy to everything in life, including poker. And it is easy to see how that sets you up for failure in poker as well as almost every other area in life. I fall subject to that same mentality while putting in the hours at my job. I want to do just enough to fly under the radar and keep my job. I don't want to get more projects and more responsibility without guarantee of increased pay. I don't want my boss trying to get me to do more with less. If my job would allow me the freedom, and same pay, to leave as soon as I have my list of tasks complete, I would work my ass off for however long it took to do the job right and then take off. That is because I would have incentive to do so. The result would be the same amount of work completed to the same level of excellence, and maybe even better, in a much shorter time. Now if that isn't efficiency then I don't know what it. That is the way I approach poker. I work my ass off doing everything I can to grow as a player knowing the results will show when I have earned them.

So sure, it is hard. No way is poker as soft as it used to be and will likely get harder for the next several years to come. But I know that if I put my best effort forward I will overcome the average expected results and stamp my name amongst my poker heroes. Or at least replace my income and take control of my life not living up to the 50 hour work week demand society has placed upon me.

As Norman Chad said in the recent WSOP main event replay, "Winners win, whiners whine".

Now I'll get back to winning

/rant

BR ~$250

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