Gaining

Building $50 into over $300, playing no higher than .05/.10 shorthanded NL, in a little over 3 months, feels good. Solid.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the way a poker player progresses... how all those wins and losses and hands pile up, and over and over the player is faced with epiphanies and realizations. Every time I get a strong feeling that I'm moving forward, that I've taken another step as a player... when I have one of those lightbulb moments... behind it is a deeper understanding of just how damn tough the task is.

There's a story floating around about someone giving Chris Ferguson $1, and him turning that into over $20k within a few months online, largely as a challenge/experiment. Maybe it's true. It could be. If it is, even for as experienced and skilled a player as he is, I'm sure that was no easy nut to crack. Poker is long, tedious, tiring work. To paraphrase The Tao of Poker, if you find poker exhilarating and exciting, you're probably doing it wrong.

Sure it's just a game with some cards. Sure there are bigger things in my life... in every self-proclaimed poker player's life. Poker has social aspects... effects on the ego... sometimes it's just a time filler or an excuse to drink and smoke or bully around someone you'd never bully around away from the table. Sometimes it's serious. Sometimes it's entertainment, of a sort. But I think the true magnet for most of us is the challenge... the realization that for every step forward we take, we get to glimpse five more beyond. It's a moving target.

Kinda like, life?

Patience. Discipline. $200 more. And then .10/.25.