Session # 1: Yaaaaaawn

Starting balance: $100.00

All too many years ago, when a certain noted law firm was trying -- successfully, I should add -- to convert me into a machine that churned out billable hours in much the way that this extrudes sausages, I was taken to some elaborate party at Sotheby's. It was there, as I viewed $200 million worth of Klimts and Chagalls, and trampled all over my incipient career by downing wine as if I were tricked by the Giant King into quaffing the oceans and snarfing mini-quiches with a gusto that would have shamed Takeru Kobayashi, that I unexpectedly came to this enduring insight:

"There is art that makes you go 'hmmm,' and art that makes you go 'feh.'" I then added, by way of Rabbi Akivah, that "all the rest is commentary."

Why bring this up? Because I was very mindful of the Hmmm/Feh divide this holiday season as I inaugurated our little year-long poker challenge with upwards of 12 hours of the most spectacularly uninspired poker imaginable. I planted my landing on the Feh side of the line with a grace that even the Romanian judges would have approved of.

I did start off intelligently. I limited myself almost exclusively to micro-stake one-table SNG's -- I like the one table games because my patience begins to run on fumes after an hour. And I stuck to the micro-stakes (i.e., under $5) bcause (i) I had hopes -- hahaha -- of emulating Chris Ferguson's discipline at least a little bit, and (ii) the shame of rebuying on Day 1 was more than even I, whose shame center was apparently discarded with his foreskin some seven days into this world, could bear.

I split my games roughly between NLHE and Omaha Hi/Lo (a game for which I have an overweaning affection ever since some tilting Russian once bet $500 into my quad 8's). I started patiently, with the first NLHE game yielding more rags than that fateful day at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. As much as it killed me, I folded, folded, folded, before finally going all in short-stacked with JTh and getting fairly busted out by AJos.

Poker Lesson# 1: View rags like junk mail or spam. Throw out, delete, don't even consider, no matter how many you rag hands you get. As per the below, I find it very difficult to follow this.

Poker Lesson# 2: The universe owes you nothing. It is utterly indifferent to you and your fate. When I get crap cards after crap cards, my id sets up this incessant whine of "when the @&#*@ is it MY turn??," which only makes adhering to Poker Tip # 1 all the more difficult. I have to force myself to remember that God/Pangaea/the Great Hollow Void fundamentally does not give a rat's ass about either my chip stack or my perceived notions of fairness.

This was not the glorious up-up-and-away beginning that I hoped for, but it fairly captured much of what was to come. The next NLHE game I went from big dog to busted out on two nearly back-to-back bad beats against the same player: My KK getting cracked by KQh by a river straight, and my JJ getting cracked by KJos by a river K.

Poker Lesson# 3: Unless you are going to give back chips that you won by sucking out, shut the #$&* up when you get sucked out on. This is, in fact, one tiny bit of self-control I am able to exercise.

But other than that, it was the usual: I won with good cards and lost with bad ones, which betokens ill for my chances of making $10K by the end of the year. Other than chasing gutshots or 3-flushes, I committed almost every poker sin that I can think of: overplayed weak hands, failed to extract max value from monsters, failed to take advantage of my opponents when they telegraphed their weaknesses, called small bets down to the river on draws, etc., etc.

The two most immediate things to work on, though, are this: (1) I personalize my resentment against chronic raisers, chronic pot-buyers and other would-be table captains, and (2) I stay interested in pots that I am not involved in.

Poker Lesson# 4: Hating a fellow player is just bone stupid, although it is a bone-stupidity to which I am uncommonly prone. Chalk it up to an undersized childhood fleeing bullies, but I draw a crosshairs on every steamrolling monitor lizard, and it never serves me well. It takes me off my game by making me play theirs, and it makes me susceptible to playing crap just for the hoped-for romantic narrative: "I am going to raise with this 83os because when the flop comes 833 I am going to bust that mother#&$^# OUT!" Um, this never happens. Not rarely. Never.

Poker Lesson # 5: This feature that lets me keep viewing my cards after I've folded is NOT. MY. FRIEND. When I get priced out of a pot with 88 by 99 and the flop comes 8xx, I go into a frenzy. It's like a new species of tilt I've managed to invent. I find that I am all too tempted, when in a similar situation, to do the stupid thing and call because, obviously, the flop will come exacltly the same. Yes, it is exhausting being this moronic.

So, for next time my mantras are: Don't Be a Hata, and Be Here Now.

I am not holding out high hopes, but wish me luck. At least I did only minimal damage to my bankroll:

Ending balance: $95.60

Wishing you better discipline at the tables,

I remain,

Your Self-Honest Correspondent,

V.