The Loneliness of the Short Distance Runner

Made a little (emphasis on “little”) joke over on PokerSift a week or so ago where I goofed on the old “out like a lion, in like a lamb” adage about the calendar turning from March to April. I wrote that, for me, “March came in like a lion, grazed around a bit like a wayward calf, swung back and forth like an orangutan, laid down for a while and hibernated like a black bear, got spooked like a horse after a car backfires, then went out like a screaming cheetah.”

It was an up-and-down month, and in fact ended a tad down overall (after both January and February had been winners). After that last push to reach the Silver Star on PokerStars, I didn’t feel like playing at all on Monday, then only put in short sessions here and there during the week. If we’re talking results, the first week of April has been terrific for me, actually (more than making up for the small loss in March). But the fact is I’ve only been dabbling, playing a bit of Stud/8, a bit of PLO, and a bit of LHE. Meaning I ain’t exactly taking advantage of that shiny new star at the moment.

I’ve come to recognize something about myself as a poker player that I think might make me different from a lot of folks -- at least the ones who keep blogs, post to forums, and in other ways communicate to the rest of the world about their poker-playing. I love the game, and while I’ll put in a long session now and then, I’m starting to realize I often just don’t want to sit there and play for more than a couple of hours, even if I can. I even felt that urge to leave when playing the live session a couple of weeks ago over at the Oaks Card Club in California. Even though the game was fun and reasonably comfortable for me, after a couple of hours I just wanted to move.

Hard to tell, really, if what I’m describing is a product of nature or nurture. In other words, I don’t know for sure whether my lack of desire to put in the marathon sessions is an expression of some innate character trait I had before coming to poker or a result of my schedule (usually) forcing me to squeeze in hands between other obligations. Whatever the cause, I know that keeping sessions brief helps me (1) enjoy the game more, and (2) enjoy a higher success rate.

Discipline was once a fairly serious problem for me. A long time back (in December ’06) I wrote a post where I mentioned a CardPlayer article by Steve Zolotow about discipline. In the article, Zolotow made a recommendation to “Look at your five biggest wins and five biggest losses. If you played significantly more hours during those losses than you did during your wins, you have a major discipline problem.” I followed his advice, and realized pretty quickly that the superlong sessions were almost always the ones where I’d gotten stuck and was trying to get it back, whereas most of the big winning sessions were much briefer.

Not saying I’ve overcome that difficulty entirely, but I have noticed those protracted sessions are becoming less and less frequent. Probably experiencing something like a runner figuring out if he’s a sprinter, a quarter-miler, or a cross-country guy, I guess. In any case, when I consider both the amount of time I’ve played and my desire to play over the last week or two, March really has gone out like a lion and April in like a lamb.

“M”

Got the opportunity to catch up on a few of the podcasts I missed last week. Most interesting among them was Dan Harrington’s appearance over on the Two Plus Two Pokercast.

“Action Dan” is an intriguing figure. Particularly notable is his overall lack of gamble -- i.e., his aversion to taking unnecessary risks -- perhaps the only trait he possesses that I can reasonably claim to share. Definitely distinguishes him from yr average poker pro. Also enjoyed the discussion of pot limit Omaha at the end of the show with Ian “iggymcfly” Gordon, frequent contributor to the 2+2 Omaha forum.

Of course, everyone’s currently a-buzz over the new Harrington books on NLHE cash games. Can’t say I’m as excited as most (since I’m not really playing NLHE these days), but I may still have to have a look. Harrington himself admitted on the show that while he believes the new books are even better written than the famed Harrington on Hold ’em series, they aren’t likely to be regarded as ground-breaking as the tourney books were.

Probably the single most-cited concept from the Harrington on Hold ’em series is the idea of “M” or “M-ratio” -- that figure intended to represent the number of rounds a player can survive in a tournament without voluntarily putting any chips into the middle. One’s “M” equals the size of one’s stack divided by the blinds and antes required per round. Harrington explains at length in the second HOH volume how changes in one’s “M” should affect one’s starting hand requirements and other decisions.

Listening to the other podcasts reminded me that even though Harrington is often lauded with having been a pioneer of sorts for having presenting the idea of “M,” he didn’t really originate it. In fact, in the book Harrington himself credits the concept to fellow backgammon whiz Paul Magriel (to whom the “M” refers). Couple of other references in the other shows from last week also indicated the idea had made the rounds a bit before finding its way into HOH.

On Ante Up! last week, Kill Everyone co-author Steven Heston talked about the circumstances under which the new book and its predecessor, Kill Phil were composed. Heston claims that he and his co-contributors had been speaking of a couple of different ideas -- referred to in the books as “CPR” (“cost per round”) and “CSI” (“chip status index”) -- even before Harrington’s books had come out. Indeed, if I understand the term correctly, “CSI” is essentially the same thing as Harrington’s “M.”

Also heard Kirk Morrison make reference last week to “CPR” on Phil Gordon’s podcast, The Poker Edge. Morrison, of course, was a successful tourney player in the 1990s, then took a hiatus until a couple of years ago when he made a triumphant return to the circuit. Although he didn’t specify it on the podcast, his use of “CPR” seems as though it might’ve dated from his earlier time on the tour. Steve Zolotow, in his CardPlayer articles about “CPR” from the summer of 2006 (Part I & Part II), says he’d “used the abbreviation CPR for years, and was surprised to learn that Blair ‘Kill Phil’ Rodman had independently started using it.” Harrington actually mentions Zolotow on the Two Plus Two show as a fellow member of the old Mayfair Poker Group (along with Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, and Jay Heimowitz).

Of course, even if the groundwork for Harrington’s “M” was laid well before he spelled out the theory in the second volume of HOH, he deserves a lot of credit for helping elevate the concept to such an significant status in discussions of tourney poker strategy and theory. Indeed, one cannot reasonably enter such discussions without at least acknowledging the concept, regardless of what significance one does or does not ascribe to it.

Will be interesting to see if the Harrington on Cash Games books provide any ideas that even come close to rivalling the popularity of “M.” (Would bet against it.)