Define Frustration

frus·tra·tion:
1. a. The act of frustrating or an instance of being frustrated.
b. The state of being frustrated.

frus·trate
1. a. To prevent from accomplishing a purpose or fulfilling a desire; thwart.
b. To cause feelings of discouragement or bafflement in.
2. To make ineffectual or invalid; nullify.



Ohhh limit poker, how I love you. I always tell people that I prefer live low stakes LHE because of the big pots, the multiway action, and the atmosphere. I'll hear things like "you can't bet a person off their hand," "my aces always get cracked," and "there's no skill in that game" and I almost never try and correct that person. You're right, getting people to put in four bets pre-flop with utter trash for a hand does not take skill, you definitely can't run a bluff in limit, and my aces have never won a huge pot in a limit game. Right.

Monday night I grabbed some free pizza with my brother and we talked a little about the game of poker and what I hoped to accomplish through playing. In short, I told him it wasn't as much about the money as it was the competition and the desire to play solid fundamental poker. I've been doing my best to seperate myself from the results and realize that as long as I make the best possible decisions, nothing else really matters. I work two jobs, I don't have any real kind of debt, the money doesn't matter.

I won't lie though, last night was the first time in a long time I had felt frustrated at a poker table. Seven hours of bad cards mixed in with terrible beats, a few awesome wins, and then terrible beats again. Perhaps it's because I've been fighting a cold the last week or so, maybe it's because I just like winning and the competitor in me just couldn't handle losing anymore that day...whatever it was the emotional highs and lows last night just kind of culminated into a moment of sheer frustration. I didn't yell at anyone or even appear to lose my temper I don't think...my biggest outbursts were a long quiet exhale (which felt really good at the time) and a quick standup to stretch my legs, put my hands above of my head, breathe a little then sit back down. I hate drawing attention to myself, so even these minute things seemed like I was being an idiot at the time.

Overall for the day I dropped close to a rack at 4/8 and then close to a rack at 6/12, the math says I'm still up money this week somehow, so not all is lost. I'm probably going to take the rest of the week off from poker and look to play again Sunday night or next Monday. Look for updates later this week that will break down a few hands I played last night and also an incident where a guy blatantly lied to a dealer's face and tried to cheat his way out of calling an $8 turn raise from me at 4/8. It was pretty pathetic, and I look forward to telling that story.