Brand New All Over Again

I picked up poker again. It was the culmination of two things. One: watching the world series of poker and realizing how much I loved the game. I remember sitting in Dunn Hall and playing in the tournament I had started. I loved seeing how people reacted, studying it, and finding out why they did what they did. Human behavior is something I find captivating. What causes people to act in certain ways? That always drove my interest in poker. I wanted to beat them because I knew why they were playing the way that they did. You can read more about my poker past here and here.

Two: poker is a game that falls into my skillset. I’m not very emotional at all. I stay even keeled regardless of the circumstances. Poker favors the calm; you will lose pots you should win and vice versa. It’s not something for the faint of heart. As long as I make the right play I’m not disappointed because I know over the long term it will pay off. I have a logical mind, and at the simplest level poker is a game of logical math. Calculating odds is relatively simple and pairing that with your observations is how you become successful. I don’t know what level of success I can achieve, but I want to give it one more try. My beginning goal is to play for a month and assess where I stand at that point. My bankroll is $600.

I’ve been playing since Monday now and have played approximately 800 hands and made$63 in cash games netted against 40 or so in tourney entries. Took me about a day to get back into the flow of the game. I won’t go into the details because it’s not relevant to most of you. Though I have been blogging on a daily basis my poker hijinks and keeping in depth records of my progress. If I decide to post them I will create a new blog to do so. I still have made some frustrating mistakes that have hampered my progress. I’ll start playing live tournaments soon.

I’ve always stressed to find something you are good with and then develop the skill. I got away from poker at the time because I had to in order to be successful in school. I’m not in the same life position I was then. As with all my experiments I will perform an assessment in thirty days to decide if I want to continue playing. So far I’m able to balance my time with it well and am committing between an hour and two hours a day.

Do you have an activity that you used to do well? Could it be profitable for you?

Lucid Dream Update
I am still trying to lucid dream and recording my dreams. My dreams still come and go. I’m recalling perhaps 2-4 dreams a week. I hope to improve that number. I’ve achieved lucidity once, but was woken up shortly after doing so. I haven’t tried any of the lucid techniques yet, but hopefully can over vacation when I don’t have to risk losing sleep.