Conflicting Rules

Man. I't s 2:56 in the afternoon and I just got done waking up. Insomnia really sucks. It's been a few weeks now - just on and off sleeping. The worst part is that just when I think that I'm getting over it (like 3 or 4 days in a row of good sleep), it just strikes back. Annoying. Of course, I've got this bottle of sleeping pills that was prescribed for me that I still haven't taken because I don't want to be dependent on them. Instead, I'm just not sleeping, wandering around on the internet, and making random comments on random people's blogs.

On the bright side, while I couldn't sleep, I decided to jump online and play some poker. I was able to flip $30 into $190 in about an hour and a half at the .50/1 tables. Normally, this violates my rule of, "never play poker when you're tired," but this was superceded by the rule of, "stretch yourself when you're playing good." I've been on a roll of late at the poker table, so I figured that I'd be okay.

Of course, this begs the question of when your tiredness overwhelms the hot streak that you're on. Which is really the point of the post today.

So, I'm playing great. I get lucky once and take my stack from 60 to 100, and then I'm just dominating, going from 100 to 225 over the stretch of about 30 minutes. At this point, I find myself getting really tired. And that's when I realize that it was about time to stop. But only, I decided to play one more hand. I pulled a medium pocket pair, but 2 people called my raise. Instead of just laying it down after a bad flop, I get cute and try to steal the pot. Long story short, I end up losing 35 on the last hand, and I finally quit and go to bed.

Why does this matter? Well, keeping with the life and poker theme, I think that you rarely have the "perfect" situation where everything is aligned. If you wait for that (Mikey, you need to be listening right now), you'll never see an acceptable chance to make a move. This doesn't suggest that we're supposed to be reckless and dive headfirst into shallow waters, or anything. I think that how you should live is by seeing the positives and negatives clearly and then moving forward appropriately.
And once we've tasted success, there's a fine balance between getting the most of your situation and hanging around a little too long. We'll have situation where we're on top of the world. I think that it's crucial that we figure out when that's going to change and then to stop aside gracefully, rather than get knocked off our perch. Some of the falls are just minor stumbles. But others can be straight off of a cliff.

My poker story was just a minor stumble. At that point I was on a freeroll. Normally, when I'm up at a table, I would never leave. I mean, if I'm up big, that probably means that I'm better than the players there. But I was so tired that I knew that I shouldn't have lost that big pot. I should have only lost 5, instead of 35. That was my signal that I was off of my perch. I've had previous experiences where I kept on playing, with an arrogant attitude of, "I can't believe that scrub took that pot from me... I'm going to get my money back and more..." That usually doesn't work too well. I had to convince myself that I was headed for the cliff. It was time to go to bed.

-Chairman