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My Game Would Be Much Better (If I Gave A Damn About It)
Tuesday, April 28, 2009


You may not have noticed (you non-eagle eye you), but I haven't played poker lately.  In fact, I have yet to play a single BBT4 event.  I'm not happy about this, but there's not much I could do about it to this point.  I did happen to log in to Full Tilt Poker tonight and play one single solitary heads-up match.  It was all I could muster.  And for the record, yes, I lost.

Though I've pretty much been a tuckfard for poker lately, I think I may spend my remaining couple hundy chasing some 2009 WSoP events.  Generally I shy away from Vegas this time of year as I'm usually planning to be audited at any moment these next few months, but since I was surprise audited this past week, I no longer have that hanging over my head.  That said, I'd love to satellite into a WSoP freebie paid by a poker site.  Also I'd love to attend THIS if I have some cashola leftover from my 10 year anniversary Hawaii trip coming up in a few weeks.  Fucking Hawaii..can't...wait.  I hope the swine and flu stay away from my trip.


And, again, how about Okie Fucking Vegas .  I really hope I can make it.

TBD.

In the meantime, while I was driving home from work today I happened upon a band and song I love, which inspired my title.  To that end, I offer the videos below.  To quote(ish) a Charles Barkley, "the songs, theys great, but the videos...they's turrible.  Straight up turrible"  Now beat it.

Until next time, may the felt be with you.






* Favorite title and song I couldn't find a video of..."You Can Lick It (If You Try)." Go find it.

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posted by TripJax @ 10:54 PM, ,




Weak...Last Week

I generally try to leave work at work and not bring it home or to this here blog, but occasionally I'll spit out some craptastic non-pokery work texticles here.  Should you choose to proceed, you my friend, are the recipient of my blog stank.

I've worked as a manager/supervisor in the financial services industry for the last 10 years as of a couple of weeks ago.  Like most who have worked for their fair share, I've been through some shit over that time.  I can safely say last week was one of - if not the - toughest week of my career to date.  On Monday we hired 8 high profile financial advisors from a local competitor.  While this went well, it was quite mind numbing and had its moments.  I wish it ended there as that would have been nothing.

On Tuesday we were met with a surprise internal audit.  This audit took 4 straight days and was one of the toughest ever.  The end result went well, but the day-to-day (and night) prep was brutal.  Even when you do your work correctly, it's an ugly thing to have people you don't know rifling through your shit looking for anything and everything they can call you out on.

Again, I wish it stopped there, but on Thursday we ended up laying off 7 people.  I had never laid off more than 1 person on a particular day (or year for that matter) and here I was having to deal with laying off 7 folks in the same week as an audit and a recruit team hire were taking place.  I think by Friday I was a zombie.

Anyway, enough with the woe is me, but occasionally I like the folks who read this and know me to understand why I was pretty much whack last week.  I was averaging 19-20 hour work days and it ultimately showed.

As for this week, the sun is shining and everything feels brighter and happier, but I still feel for the 7 who no longer have a job with us.  When added to the national number, it is tiny, but locally it means something.  I'm sorry to see them go.

I think I'll go ahead and qualify this as a poker post before I go...

Poker.

Until next time, may the felt be with you.

posted by TripJax @ 9:01 PM, ,




For "Real"
Saturday, April 25, 2009


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posted by TripJax @ 7:25 PM, ,




Poker And The Luck Factor, Part Two
Sunday, April 19, 2009

A while back I wrote about a short article dubbed The Luck Factor, by Richard Wiseman.  In my post I noted I would try and delve deeper into the article at some point.  I somehow managed to motivate and write Poker and The Luck Factor, Part One last month.  Normally I would flake out and not finish what I started, but I need some motivation to write here, so let's trudge forward, shall we?
  
As you may recall from my previous post, I'm breaking up the four quotes into four posts as I don't have a very long attention span.  With that, I'll go ahead and post the whole quote, but let's focus on the second principle underlined and in bold below:
"...lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles.  They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good."

Lucky people make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition.

When I first started my current job over 10 years ago and began studying for the Series 7, I recall several Financial Advisors advising I should eliminate the obvious incorrect answers, then quickly answer from the remaining options.  Most importantly though, they said I needed to go with my initial gut feeling.  In other words, use the knowledge and insight I've gained over the years - and during my studies - to go with the answer that felt right.  It's not rocket surgery here, but when you second guess yourself over and over, you are not using intuition to your advantage.  This thinking reminded me of the SAT in high school.  For all the timed tests I have taken for my job so far (Series 7, 63, 65, 9, 10 and Insurance), whenever I didn't know the answer for sure, I quickly eliminated the tard answers, then went with my intuition.  Ultimately this worked well as I passed every test above.
Intuition obviously goes way beyond test taking.  It is an innate ability to use pure knowledge from within to come to a realization and act accordingly.  This holds true at the poker table when a person goes beyond the mathematics of the game and makes a decision that feels right based on insight and keen perception, not just numbers.  There is a video I'm sure most of my readers have seen before, but I think it bears showing again as a reminder of amazing intuition on the felt.  It should be no surprise that Phil Ivey is involved.  Update:  Had to move video to bottom of post.


When you can notice chance opportunities on the felt and subsequently act on those opportunities with immediate cognition, you are putting intuition to work (and alos using the first two quotes from the article so far!).  You can read every poker book on the planet, but if you don't have at least some insight beyond pure numbers, you will probably not succeed in poker.  I believe this is what makes poker an amazing game; it marries mathematics with cognitive thinking and splashes in some luck (or lack there of) to make a truly fascinating game.

Next up I will discuss the power of positive expectations in poker.  And I'll do my best to not make it take a month to write Part Three.  What can I say, I'm a busy guy these days.
To be continued...



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posted by TripJax @ 10:21 AM, ,