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Affilliation
The Balance of Risk vs Hard Labor
Yesterday was not a good poker day. I lost 25% of my play money. The reason? I got carried away by the high pots.
Like I said, I don’t play roulette, but sometimes the pot gets so big the risk seems acceptable. Of course, everything is just chance then, so I ended up losing a lot. My background is basically conservative, so I was trying to balance the risk with the reward. I was doing a pretty good job at it too until the pot got the better of me. When I started losing, I got more desperate to get things back, and I lost my discipline.
Today, I tried to get the lost play money back. It was hard labor, an extreme exercise of patience. Did it pay off? Somewhat. I’m back where I started, I got as much play money as last Tuesday. A few notches below my target, but I got it sound. Hard labor.
I get really disappointed when the pot gets high, and thing turn out in my favor at the turn and river. That’s when I feel the urge to really gamble. This afternoon, however, in my attempt to force the patience back in me, I noticed that I made good decisions today overall. Many times I was tempted to take a risk, I held stopped myself and folded, controlling myself not to get disappointed at another lost opportunity. More often than not, my folds were good choices. Had I succumbed, I would have lost most of what I had left.
Balancing risk can be tough, but discipline increases the chances you’ll live another day. Once you have that, it’s time to analyze and learn to reduce the risk. Hard labor may be tough, but its odds of getting the job done are better than chance.
No tags for this post.Codename "Tambayan"!
I mentioned one of my project ideas before as “Tribu“. Tribu is a very big and ambitious idea, and it will be an integration of a lot parts. A difficult aspect with an idea that big is where to start so that you’ll have something feasible and workable to begin building the whole.
After pondering on this, it’s not so much of a eureka moment, but a realization on where things can begin. I was eating lunch when it hit me, and I think it’s a very scalable and reasonable way to get Tribu started. This new realization can pretty much stand on it’s own, but it was born from the Tribu idea, and can perhaps be an aspect of Tribu. Since it can stand on it’s own, however, I will be treating it as its own entity, it’s exact relationship with Tribu to be determined in the future.
For now, I will give this child of Tribu the codename “Tambayan”.
No tags for this post.Triplejack and Full Tilt
Given that Triplejack Poker is the flavor of the month, I’ve been surfing for poker related items on the ‘net. After following some chains search results and links, I ran into the the name “Phil Ivey“, which eventually landed me on “Full Tilt Poker“. It claims to be made with a lot of feedback from players, and it does appear to be one of the more popular means to play poker online. Like Triplejack Poker, it features “play money”, but it also supports real money.
What confused me was that there was also a “Full Tilt Poker .net“, with pretty much the same stuff. I was wondering if one of the sites is a fake, but based on the Wikipedia article about it, it appears that the .net site is “play money only”.
Since I have no intention of using real money, I got the play money only version of the software and tried it out. Here are some of the more significant things I noticed in the past few days of playing Full Tilt Poker .net:
- you can “re-buy” play money, and have a 5 minute waiting time like Triplejack Poker (re-buy is 1k though)
- although there are wacky avatars, in general, Full Tilt has a more serious feel
- people there don’t talk much
- few people there play roulette style (I don’t like roulette style, so its a plus for me)
- the entry level game is 1k buy in and 10/5 blinds, which makes a “re-buy” last longer theoretically (Triplejack Poker is 500 buy-in with with 20/10 blinds)
- you don’t feel you bet/gain a lot, even if you actually do (I feel like I’m rewarded or that I lose more in Triplejack Poker)
- I seem to be more aggressive when I play there
- I do feel that the players there are better in general
- when the showdown comes, the winning combination is not highlighted (I get confused ‘coz I don’t know how a particular player beat me)
- Triplejack Poker is more casual, and feels more “fun” to play
- I haven’t run into anyone I could say was a Filipino there
Given these, I think Full Tilt Poker .net is geared to the more serious type of player. The website, the “pro player chat” and other things makes Full Tilt Poker .net a good place to start learning poker. Their objective it to make poker popular, and given that pro poker players play there too and give advice, it seems to be the premiere place to learn and get into the poker bandwagon.
I can’t maximize what Full Tilt Poker .net has to offer since I don’t intend on playing with real money. However, it’s a good place to learn, and you’ll be playing against players of a different sort from that found in Triplejack Poker. If I want fun, though, I’m more in inclined to play in Triplejack Poker.
See you in either! 
