Unintended consequences

Why isn't life ever simple? In my last entry, more than two months ago for goodness' sake, I wrote the following.

Now I’m able to play poker in the lounge, be part of the family and get more volume in. There may be a slight loss in edge as there are distractions, but overall it’s working well.

Hmmmm...nice in theory. In reality a poker nightmare. As time went by I started looking forward to certain TV programmes. I've watched Larkrise to Candleford (FFS!!!), Hustle, Spooks re-runs, even Waterloo flipping Road. I had avoided the addiction of television for so many years I forgot how easy it is to get hooked back in. And it's killed my poker game.

In the beginning I was in the lounge, but I wasn't really there. I was a corporal presence but my mind was on the tables. However as my wife became used to this strange person being sat on the opposite sofa so she started talking to me. I talked back. We discussed plotlines (so far as there is one in Waterloo Road). Perish the thought we started talking about our days, what we were going to do at the weekend. Put simply we interacted like man and wife, rather than being strangers who went our seperate ways once we had dinner.

Good thing, right? Well yeah, but poisonous for poker. I'll give you one example. I'm dealt aces. Standard raise pre-flop. Called by one player. I flop another ace but there are two clubs on the board. He checks and I put out a bet just above the pot size to discourage villain from the draw. If he has a lower set then bring it on!

Villain calls. The turn is a blank for me and for the draw. He checks and I put in another pot sized bet just as my wife asks me some trivial question about my plans for the weekend. I say I haven't really thought about it and she tells me that I really need to because...blah...blah...villain calls...WTF?

Now my Spider sense doesn't like what I see. In the back of my mind I now know he's on a club draw, or a donk who simply wants to donate his stack to me.

Blah...blah...blah...I have no idea what I'm doing this weekend...can I just finish this hand...club on river...shit!...well we need to sort it out because your Mum & D...villain goes all in...ad are coming...Noooooooooooooo...now I'm flustered to hell because I KNOW that I'm beat, but he could also have a set. So I replay the hand in my head...beep beep beeeeeeeeeeepppppppppp...Stars is getting impatient...I'm impatient. I snap back. She snaps at me...beeeeeeepppppp...beeeepppppp......beeeeeeepppppppp
I press call...knowing I'm beaten but too stubborn and distracted to be disciplined enough to fold.

I lose to the 3,4 of clubs. I'm incandescent because I put him on the draw, but he called me all the way with crap, and I read it perfectly. But because of the white noise, the lack of concentration, the disorientation...I make the call and look exactly what I was. A donk.

I closed the table. Well I say closed it...I clicked the X on the Stars software without even bbothering to actually leave the table (your hand will be folded, do you still want to leave, the little message on the other table pleaded) and slammed the laptop shut, thanking my wife for losing me a full buy in. Actually I don't think she'd describe it as thanks...more like borderline abuse.

Yeah, I apologised and I'm so lucky that she is totally with me on this poker lark because at least deep down she understood.

But it's tainted things for me. That's not what was supposed to happen. I was supposed to sail the clear blue seas, continue my upward progress and rediscover what it's like to talk to my wife having hidden myself away for the best part of three years after 9pm.

What's happened is that my concentration is shot, and although I'm $50 up since January my normal results pattern should see me $150 up by now, and that's no mean difference at NL5.

Dotting the Is and crossing the Ts it's not hard to work out that I've barely read anyone's blogs (banned at work) and have lost touch with the poker world.

I still do love the game, but I think that I'm simply going to have to withdraw from the lounge whenever I want to play a serious session and just donk around with some double or nothings when I'm downstairs. I'm not even sure that my wife would complain. For years she's watched whatever telly she wants to without me pursing my lips of telling her how crap the plotlines are in some of her favourite programmes ;).

And so it is that I'm upstairs on the main PC now. Time to write my blog, to play sensibly. Just like the good old, bad old days :).