Nick is a cash game player, content creator and part of 888poker’s Stream Team. Each week he shares his thoughts and experiences as a player dedicated to the daily grind. This week, as he sets off on the live tournament trail, he’s experiencing dangerous and unexpected feelings of hope…
This week is the start of a relentless poker schedule in the UK as 888LIVE comes to Manchester. Also within the next two months are UKPL stops in Leeds and Reading, before the grand finale in everyone’s favorite venue, Coventry’s CBS Arena. I spoke earlier in the year about my lack of success in almost any event over the past few years but, and I say this very tentatively, the packed timetable of tournaments has left me with that ever dangerous feeling: hope.
First and foremost, I’m happy feeling any sense of hope at all given the form I’ve shown at the tables since my return from Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker. If you’d asked me just after I’d gotten back, I’m pretty sure the general theme of this particular article would have been more expectation than hope. I felt at the top of my game, finding bluffs I never thought I was capable of, and for the most part being completely dialed in during the Main Event.
Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly a couple of hands I’d have back if I could, but that didn’t deter the sentiment that I was feeling really good about my game, and I was about ready to get the monkey off my back and put together a deep run in one of the upcoming 888 events. Unfortunately, as is often the case with this game, whenever you are feeling at your best, poker finds a way to bring you crashing back down.
Bruised confidence is still confidence
I’ve taken a battering of biblical proportions since I professed my new found confidence barely a month ago, and I have inevitably retreated into my shell. Not only have I not won a pot in about three weeks, but I feel like I can’t make a good decision to save my life. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the feeling when seemingly every button you press is the wrong move, and it can be hard for even the most optimistic among us (which I am unequivocally not), to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Thankfully I managed to at least stem the bleeding at the back end of last week with a breakeven session, which can feel like winning 10 buy-ins when all you’ve done is donate money for as long as you can remember. But one mediocre session certainly doesn’t have me believing that I’m back to my best.
The hope for success that I do cling onto over these next few months is from the dying embers of a flame that was lit back at the Horseshoe Casino when fighting it out in the biggest tournament in the world. I still remember what it felt like when my thought process was at its clearest, and I was firing off insane, yet calculated, bluffs for my whole stack. Even if a couple of them may have been ill-advised, I now know that I’m now capable of making whatever play I think is best, regardless of what's at stake, and I doubt I could have said that before.
First stop, Manchester
So even though I’ve taken a beating recently, my hope is that the live setting brings back some confidence to my game, and that I can convert that into a meaningfully deep run over the next few events. It’s obviously very helpful that there will be multiple opportunities to make it happen, as volume is the only antidote that’s been discovered for tournament variance so far, at least to my knowledge. Coupled with the feelgood factor that comes from spending time with the amazing team at 888poker and making some great content along the way, there’s no better environment to recapture my form.
I’ll be sure to let you know if something comes of my first stop on this UK tour this week in Manchester. Of course, as I have been so cruelly reminded over the last month or so, poker can be incredibly unforgiving. In fact, when all is said and done and I’ve battled (hopefully admirably) over the four separate events, it’s more than likely I’ll be repeating that age old saying: it’s the hope that kills you.
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Additional images courtesy of 888LIVE/Gema Cristobal
