Well, it has been a week now since PokerStars ran out their last satellite to the World Series of Poker.  Plenty of money spent, and tons of heartbreak later; I sit here today dealing with the realization that I am not going to the 2010 WSOP.

I ended up spending nearly enough in these satellites that I could have just bought into the tournament myself, which has a $10,000 entry fee.  I am so frustrated with tournament poker right now, I don’t know where to begin.

Nothing seems to be going right for me right now.  I know I might have complained about a bad beat or two in the past.  I am really much better today at realizing it is a part of this sick game we call poker, but this is just cruel. 

I had quite a few good shots to win a seat, one of which I already posted about.  But to spare my readers (at the time) the agonies of other bad beat stories I refrained from posting others.

I made it heads-up where there was one seat up for grabs with a 2:1 chip lead just to see it thrown out the window on what was an 80 percent favorite on the river.  I made it 4 handed with 2 seats up for grabs where I got all my chips in as a dominating favorite (A9 vs A3) only to lose that one.  Had I won that hand, I would have had a huge chiplead and we would have been 3 handed where 2 seats were up for grabs.  I came in 4th-9th WAY too much.  Often times should I have won the hand I was knocked out in, I would have been chipleader.  I am not going to sit here and say that I was huge favorite in every instance, but I would say about 60 percent of these hands it was a coinflip.  30 percent of the time I was a huge favorite that didn’t come through.  Then there was also the 10 percent of the time where I got my money in bad.

I even have the stats to back it up.  Looking over my tracking software, Holdem Manager, it shows I am running WAY below expectation.  My cEV in all-ins is at just below +2 million.  Where as my actual is at -4 million.  A difference of 6 million!

So for those that I just lost in translation, I have been extremely unlucky!

Just looking at it from a certain perspective.  I think I should have won at least one seat better than 90% of the time.  I should have won two seats about 65% of the time.  I should have won three seats about 40% of the time.  I can only imagine how many I could have won should I actually had ran good and not just at par with expected value!  I am not just floating random numbers out there either.   

I get a sick feeling just writing this post.  I feel as though I got mugged out in the street and the theif took at the minimum $24,000 dollars from me. 

My tournament game feels so lost right now, I feel like a complete newbie.  Nothing I do seems to work.  It is really making me question if I am doing things right or wrong.  I have reached a low point in my tournament confidence that is just hard to shake off. 

But I got to keep on keeping on I guess. 

Oh and by the way, this whole mess of not winning a WSOP seat has me motivated to climb out of the hole I have dug myself into in a fashion that I have never attempted before.  More on that in the next couple of days.

So since my big win I have been playing more steps. I have been running slightly below expectation. That is I am barely showing profit as far as the cost of the steps go. But all is good. Technically I haven’t really spent any money yet. Because a week or two ago I managed to final table a multi-table-tournament. That was good enough to boost my BR another 1k.

I am happy with the way my bankroll is turning out but my luck has really got me feeling down in these steps. Then today I saw a video at PokerRoad that made me crack up and feel all better (since I definitely feel like I can relate).  I am sure all poker players have felt this way at one time or another. 

Beware HIGH level of profanity:

The following article, originally published in Cardplayer Magazine, was written by Eric “Rizen” Lynch.  Rizen is a professional poker player from Olathe, Kansas.  I can personally say that his first video series for PokerXFactor was probably one of the biggest eye-openers for me as a poker player.  I have read where some publications consider Rizen a timid personality; well his poker playing is nothing short of audacious.  I hope you enjoy his writing.  I know I do.

One of the toughest things about poker is that the variance that the luck factor brings to the game can really mess with your short-term results. I often receive questions like the following from readers of both this column and my blog: “Could you fold aces here?” “Can I get away from a set here?” There are some rare instances when I can, but for the most part, these are just inexperienced players who suffered a bad fate (their aces or sets got cracked), and since they lost the pot, they’re desperately trying to figure out what they did wrong.

Poker is a funny game that way. Some players are always blaming luck when they lose a pot, while others are always looking for what they should have done differently. The truth is, we measure our success in the game by our profit, so we should be results-oriented, right? Well, yes, we should be long-term results-oriented, but in the shorter term, we should expect some variance within the game and realize that sometimes we’re going to make good decisions that lead to bad results, and sometimes we’ll make bad decisions and still get rewarded.

The key to evaluating your game and not letting short-term fluctuations lead you to alter your game in negative ways is being able to evaluate situations and hands after they’re over without being results-oriented. Have confidence in your game and look back at the decisions you made. If you believe they were correct, move on even if the result wasn’t positive.

I’ve found that it also helps if you have some friends you trust from both a skill perspective and an honesty perspective with whom you can discuss hands or situations. Lay the situation out for them and ask them what they would do. Make sure not to tell them the results of the hand, though; that way, they can just look at the situation in isolation and give feedback. Also, when approaching your peers, make sure that you ask not only about hands in which the results where unfavorable, but ones in which the results were favorable, as well. Maybe it’s a hand in which you drew out but the decision was close, or a situation in which you thought it was a real close decision and you ended up having the best hand, but you’re not positive that your play had a positive expectation against your opponent’s hand range.

Book co-authored by Rizen, Pearljammer, and Apestyles

As an example, I recently played a hand in which I raised with the Q 10 from the button. The big blind flat-called. The flop was K 9 2 , a dream flop for me. The big blind checked to me, I made a standard continuation bet, and he made a decent-sized raise. Looking at our stack sizes, I knew that if I flat-called and he bet the turn, he would be committing himself to the pot. I wanted to play for his stack, so I just flat-called. Sure enough, on the turn, he put the rest of his chips in and I gladly called, only to see him turn over the A 5 for the nut flush.

Now, if I were being results-oriented, it would be very easy for me to look back on this hand and try to figure out a point where I could have laid it down. The truth is, though, that the stacks weren’t deep enough for me to ever really get an indication that I was beat. I very easily could have been up against something like the A K, a naked A , or even a set. A vast majority of the time, I end up with this guy’s entire stack and don’t think twice about it. There are times when situations arise and there is really very little you can do to avoid them. It’s key to be able to recognize these situations and not let the results impact future plays. I’d be making a huge mistake if the next time I was faced with that exact situation, I folded my queen-high flush out of fear that my opponent held the only hand that beat me.

The bottom line is that in the longer term, we need to be focused on producing results. However, in the shorter term, we need to be more focused on making good decisions than on the outcome of those decisions. That can be a constant challenge, since poker can throw some real curveballs at you at times. The good news for us poker players is that it is this very form of short-term variance that leads bad players to give us their money. They’re often having bad decisions positively reinforced in the short term when they get lucky, and they’re always able to blame the bad results on luck.

After a couple more days off, just working on this site and trying to catch up at work, (yes I do have a daytime job, though I would like to change that one day) I decided to go back to the usual tournaments. I just STILL can not catch a break.

The mathematical definition of variance from Wikipedia:

In probability theory and statistics, the variance of a random variable, probability distribution, or sample is one measure of statistical dispersion, averaging the squared distance of its possible values from the expected value (mean). Whereas the mean is a way to describe the location of a distribution, the variance is a way to capture its scale or degree of being spread out. The unit of variance is the square of the unit of the original variable. The positive square root of the variance, called the standard deviation, has the same units as the original variable and can be easier to interpret for this reason.

In poker Lehman’s terms, it is the luck factor that could make one win or lose more than expected over a specific sample size (ex: 20 tournaments) as compared to what the expected Return on Investment (ROI) from a given game is for that player.

To say the least, I am on the wrong end of variance when it comes to tournaments since before my break and again today. I could sit here and give you a laundry list of what I am talking about, but I don’t want to go there. This is not meant to be a “bad beat” blog. I just have recently really questioned why I spend all the time I do thinking about the game and if this time would be better served thinking about something else. Especially when some clueless guy, probably playing poker for the first time, beats me out of another pot on some crazy luck.

I have sat here and erased at least 3 paragraphs as I decide which direction to take this blog post. I really am at a loss for words. I currently just don’t play enough to let these beats not bother me. If I could play more games at a time, and be more encouraged to do so, then maybe the skill factor will overturn the bad luck at the tables.

After all, the saying is “anyone one can win any given night, but the better players will win over the course of a month, a year or 10 years.”

I really need to take a more objective view with my poker playing. I need to be less results-oriented and be happy when I get my money in ahead. I have been listening to some cash plays recently and I really admire the way Bart Hanson is able to take the point of view he does and be completely deterred from being results-oriented. That outlook is one I am trying to reach, and I hope that I can get there one day.

It is just another thing to add to the “need to learn” list before I can become the player I strive to be.

Until next time, I hope you are running better than me.