"Why I Suck At Poker"
If any of you read a few blogs back, I mention how my brother's poker show is hosting a contest to bring a person to Vegas and enroll them into the World Series of Poker Boot Camp. Their contest involves writing a 250 word essay on why you suck at poker and who ever writes the best essay wins the free trip and training in Las Vegas. I can't submit into the contest because it would look rigged if I won, but I'm going to write this blog on why I suck at poker. It will mostly be about things I need to work on and maybe mistakes I've done in the past.. I'm not really sure, I'm just going to start typing and we'll see what comes of it.
"Why I Suck At Poker"
By: Jay Pizzo
Motivation
During my poker career I've always had trouble with motivation. You would think the money would be enough, but sometimes it's not. My biggest problem is when I see other players I know I'm better than making a lot more money than me. Even if it's just at that moment. When someone I know that is horrible at poker goes and wins tournament or goes on a sick cash game rush and wins a shit load of money, I really steam. Yeah it could be just jealousy or me possibly thinking I may not be as good as I think. I'm not really sure. At the end of the day I do know these players will eventually go broke and I do know that poker is based on long term success and not short term. Yet these things do seem to get at me sometimes. This is a terrible trait to have and I plan to not let it rear its ugly head any time in the future.
Personal
At the table taking things personal is never a profitable way to approach things. Unfortunately this is another flaw I find myself running into. When a player continues to raise me over and over or bluffs me non-stop, I find myself thinking I'm going to do everything in my power to grab that guy. I blame this mentality on being an athlete my whole life. I always had a bit of a hot temper as a hockey player and always retaliated when provoked. This did at times lead to stupid penalties but I never wanted to back down. This mentality has leaked into my poker especially when playing heads-up. I've mentioned before that my ego gets in the way when playing sometimes and when I'm losing during a heads-up match I always find myself wanting to fight to get my chips back. Sometimes I get into a mode like I'm in a fight. No one ever wants to lose a fight and will try anything to win. But sometimes you're just outmatched and need to move on and learn before playing another tough opponent.
Tilt
Although I do pride myself in having good tilt control and do think this has won me lots of money in the past, I'm going to look back on the times I have tilted. A couple years back I was playing primarily live games and just deposited a little bit online to play around with. I ended up winning some tournament for like $5,000 and decided to play around in some cash games. At the time I knew absolutely nothing about bankroll management and jumped into some big Hold'em and Omaha cash games thinking I was going to turn it into like twenty grand. Being on a rush from winning the tournament I thought I was the best player in the world and could play whatever I wanted. I started playing 5/10NL and was getting rocked so thought it was a good idea to start playing some 10/20 Pot Limit Omaha with some well known pros. I'm laughing thinking about this now, but I remember being so tilted at the time I would of played Phil Ivey if I had the chance. I remember getting into a huge pot where I flopped the nut straight with the royal flush draw and got it all in against top set. The pot total was about $6,000-$7,000 (one of my largest to date) and the guy ended up making quads on the river just demolishing everything I won in that tournament in one night.
Now that was a severe case of tilt and to tell you the truth I'm glad it happened. Poker is one of those things where no matter how much you are told what not to do, you need to encounter it once to and feel the pain to truly learn from it. Kind of like touching a hot stove. As a kid you are told never to go near it, but one day you don't listen and touch it. Well you get that point from there.
Learning
One of my biggest regrets to date is not signing up to a for a online training site years ago. Back in the day I did read every book possible and tried to learn as much as I could. But signing up with cardrunners.com and learning from the best online players in the world, really opened my eyes. It was a good and bad feeling. You know that feeling you get when you think you know something really well only to have someone show you something different and you wonder how the hell you got by all this time without knowing this information? Thats kind of how I felt after studying these guys play. I started to recall hands in my head from the past and think, 'holy shit I must of looked like a complete idiot'. Or started to add up the money in my mind I shouldn't of lost from playing hands certain ways. The reason why it's my biggest regret is because I feel at this very moment, I'm the best player I've ever been and I realize I could have been this good years ago. To be honest, the reason I never signed up for these sites in the past comes back to my ego. Especially referring to tournament poker. I kept thinking 'I play with these guys every day in big tournaments and have done quite well, why the hell do I need to learn from them'. It kinda felt like being on a sports team and having a better team come and say they want to teach you. I would of told them to fuck off. I'll learn and beat these guys on my own. What a big mistake. It took me moving to cash game poker to check my ego aside and learn from these guys and it was by far the best and most profitable decision I've ever made in my poker career.
Now as I go back to read what I wrote, I keep thinking how if someone I don't know reads this they'll think I'm an awful poker player. This obviously isn't the case. I've made great sums of money playing poker and plan on making much more in the future. I don't plan on just writing about all my poker accomplishments and the cash I've won. But I feel good to be in the small percentile of poker players who are actually winning ones. I read once from a top pro that he thinks only 5% of poker players are winning poker players at the end of the year and out of the 4 years I've been playing I can say I've had 3 out of 4 winning years. My only losing year was the first year I started playing. And at the time if you asked the players I played against who was the biggest winner at that game, 9 out of 10 of them would of said me. Yet learning the game does pay its price.... but I've been able to learn from my mistakes and have become more of a complete player.
******************************************************************************************
Alright guys, I think I'm pretty sick of typing right now and all this bashing on myself makes me feel like playing..lol..
Later
Jay
"Why I Suck At Poker"
By: Jay Pizzo
Motivation
During my poker career I've always had trouble with motivation. You would think the money would be enough, but sometimes it's not. My biggest problem is when I see other players I know I'm better than making a lot more money than me. Even if it's just at that moment. When someone I know that is horrible at poker goes and wins tournament or goes on a sick cash game rush and wins a shit load of money, I really steam. Yeah it could be just jealousy or me possibly thinking I may not be as good as I think. I'm not really sure. At the end of the day I do know these players will eventually go broke and I do know that poker is based on long term success and not short term. Yet these things do seem to get at me sometimes. This is a terrible trait to have and I plan to not let it rear its ugly head any time in the future.
Personal
At the table taking things personal is never a profitable way to approach things. Unfortunately this is another flaw I find myself running into. When a player continues to raise me over and over or bluffs me non-stop, I find myself thinking I'm going to do everything in my power to grab that guy. I blame this mentality on being an athlete my whole life. I always had a bit of a hot temper as a hockey player and always retaliated when provoked. This did at times lead to stupid penalties but I never wanted to back down. This mentality has leaked into my poker especially when playing heads-up. I've mentioned before that my ego gets in the way when playing sometimes and when I'm losing during a heads-up match I always find myself wanting to fight to get my chips back. Sometimes I get into a mode like I'm in a fight. No one ever wants to lose a fight and will try anything to win. But sometimes you're just outmatched and need to move on and learn before playing another tough opponent.
Tilt
Although I do pride myself in having good tilt control and do think this has won me lots of money in the past, I'm going to look back on the times I have tilted. A couple years back I was playing primarily live games and just deposited a little bit online to play around with. I ended up winning some tournament for like $5,000 and decided to play around in some cash games. At the time I knew absolutely nothing about bankroll management and jumped into some big Hold'em and Omaha cash games thinking I was going to turn it into like twenty grand. Being on a rush from winning the tournament I thought I was the best player in the world and could play whatever I wanted. I started playing 5/10NL and was getting rocked so thought it was a good idea to start playing some 10/20 Pot Limit Omaha with some well known pros. I'm laughing thinking about this now, but I remember being so tilted at the time I would of played Phil Ivey if I had the chance. I remember getting into a huge pot where I flopped the nut straight with the royal flush draw and got it all in against top set. The pot total was about $6,000-$7,000 (one of my largest to date) and the guy ended up making quads on the river just demolishing everything I won in that tournament in one night.
Now that was a severe case of tilt and to tell you the truth I'm glad it happened. Poker is one of those things where no matter how much you are told what not to do, you need to encounter it once to and feel the pain to truly learn from it. Kind of like touching a hot stove. As a kid you are told never to go near it, but one day you don't listen and touch it. Well you get that point from there.
Learning
One of my biggest regrets to date is not signing up to a for a online training site years ago. Back in the day I did read every book possible and tried to learn as much as I could. But signing up with cardrunners.com and learning from the best online players in the world, really opened my eyes. It was a good and bad feeling. You know that feeling you get when you think you know something really well only to have someone show you something different and you wonder how the hell you got by all this time without knowing this information? Thats kind of how I felt after studying these guys play. I started to recall hands in my head from the past and think, 'holy shit I must of looked like a complete idiot'. Or started to add up the money in my mind I shouldn't of lost from playing hands certain ways. The reason why it's my biggest regret is because I feel at this very moment, I'm the best player I've ever been and I realize I could have been this good years ago. To be honest, the reason I never signed up for these sites in the past comes back to my ego. Especially referring to tournament poker. I kept thinking 'I play with these guys every day in big tournaments and have done quite well, why the hell do I need to learn from them'. It kinda felt like being on a sports team and having a better team come and say they want to teach you. I would of told them to fuck off. I'll learn and beat these guys on my own. What a big mistake. It took me moving to cash game poker to check my ego aside and learn from these guys and it was by far the best and most profitable decision I've ever made in my poker career.
Now as I go back to read what I wrote, I keep thinking how if someone I don't know reads this they'll think I'm an awful poker player. This obviously isn't the case. I've made great sums of money playing poker and plan on making much more in the future. I don't plan on just writing about all my poker accomplishments and the cash I've won. But I feel good to be in the small percentile of poker players who are actually winning ones. I read once from a top pro that he thinks only 5% of poker players are winning poker players at the end of the year and out of the 4 years I've been playing I can say I've had 3 out of 4 winning years. My only losing year was the first year I started playing. And at the time if you asked the players I played against who was the biggest winner at that game, 9 out of 10 of them would of said me. Yet learning the game does pay its price.... but I've been able to learn from my mistakes and have become more of a complete player.
******************************************************************************************
Alright guys, I think I'm pretty sick of typing right now and all this bashing on myself makes me feel like playing..lol..
Later
Jay
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