Growth and the Poker Player

I often find myself daydreaming about where this whole Poker adventure started a year ago. My first ever LHE session where I left up 28$ in less than hour or my 5 straight cashes in 5$ SNG’s. Feeling on top of the world when my bankroll finally reached the 100$ mark.

And yet, more often than not, it’s not those modest successes that have me reminiscing of times past but the progress and strides that I have made in my play. Fact is, I was a complete bot back then. I did “things” because books instructed me to do said “things” . In a sense, that was the right way to get started since anything else than a really strict template will lead you down a path of confusion and many headaches and heartaches throughout your initial learning process.

For me, the formula use to be: Win a big pot = Happy, Lose a big pot = devastation.

Needless to say, that shit got old fast.

Of course, losing sessions still suck, the penultimate goal of the game is to make money after all. But enjoying the game strictly from the decision making aspect makes it *that* much better.

Having played so many hands and having seen so many flops, my Poker instincts are now getting more refined. The area of my game that’s benefited the most from this is my hand reading ability. To put it bluntly, I can now smell bullshit from a mile away and I can often enough put a player on a specific hand with pinpoint accuracy.

The bad beats still sting, yes, but I still get some kind of satisfaction when I realize that my read was correct and my opponent caught up/sucked out on the river and my play was fine.

And that, is growth in a Poker player.