L8Bloomer

When you start playing poker, one of the first things you try to do when you decide this is something you want to take seriously is you seek out others who can help you improve your game.   Naturally, we want to hit the jackpot and become friends with some established players.  Typically, that is not going to happen.  I am beginning to find that this is with good reason. I have had the good fortune of having valuable friendships with players who wanted to grow in the game with me.

I have also had one extremely valuable friendship with a player who taught me to live a normal life while playing poker.  He did this by showing me the realities of the game.  He showed me on my PokerTracker how to tell that the online game was not rigged  (simply put, my hands won about as much as they were supposed to across the board).   This is what I try to teach the friends I have made in poker.  

Over the years that I have played, many friends have come and gone.  Relationships have changed, and people have decided to leave poker behind.  Knowing how brutal the game can be, I am not surprised.  it is always with a bit of melancholy that I part with old poker friends, especially when I am the one who has decided to leave.  Your poker friends become a part of who you are, and when you or they leave the game, it is all part of the withdrawal that goes along with this crazy game called poker.

I consider myself a decent poker player, and I occasionally develop friendships with players who are not at my level.  I think it is part of my nature as a teacher to do that.  I think I have helped around a handful of players become not only better players, but winning ones, too.  This is not to say that I am this amazing poker coach – because I think it is less about the game than it is about the attitude one has towards the game.  If one can withstand the bad beats, the negative variance, and the long dry spells, as long as one has their head screwed on straight and is consistently learning the game, one can beat this game.  If any of those things are absent, it is better to not play.  Or, if one wants to play, then it is better to give yourself a good long break and make sure you are ready mentally for what it takes to make it in this game.  Most of all, if you are not having fun, get out.

Incidentally, in all the years that I have played, I have only been close friends with only one other player that I thought was better than me at the beginning of our friendship.  Mind you, I have many acquaintances who are most certainly better players than me now.  I even have some acquaintances who have played in WSOPs for years.  I envy them a bit, yes – I will admit it!  After all, it is one of my dreams to play in the WSOP.

But I have had a handful of friends who have gone on to become better players than me.  Initially, I admit that I was bitter about this.  But then, I realized this is pretty much a golden opportunity for me.  Especially since I know them so well, already.

Well, in the past month or so, one of my closest poker friends suddenly became a better player than me.  Missythemoo started chatting with me in an MTT. This was in the summer 2010.  Now, I wasn’t much better, but I’d certainly put up better past results.  He also had a particularly horrid run of brutal finishes.  But one thing that I admired throughout – he never blamed to software, or the site, or anything.  He just kept educating himself.  Now I am finding out some of the things he did to become a better player, and wishing I had done them, too.  For example, he spends a lot of time watching the best players play.  He takes advantage of the free replays that both PokerStars and FullTilt offer.  He also goes to any number of high stakes MTTs and just watches.  He can’t see hole cards, but he can still get a decent idea of how they play from when their hands bust.

My favorite thing about “missy” is that he doesn’t rant and rave about bad beats all the time.  When I came to the realization that online poker was not rigged, I stopped being friends with some good players because of the way they complained about their luck.  One of these players was even in the top 100 on the PocketFives.com leaderboard. His rants left an extremely bad taste in my mouth.

I think I have helped at least one player realize that ranting and raving is all for naught. It certainly doesn’t make one a better player. When the ranting and raving stops, then the searching begins – the searching for the best ways to win begin.

Because that is where I am, I can do the things that helped my successful friends become better players. And now I have the doubly good fortune of being able to find out those things first hand.

It can be very easy to become jealous of friends who become better players than you, but if you set your jealousy aside, then you will be able to reap the rewards!