Guilt...

[Talking Poker]

Yup... as soon as the ATM left, the table broke up. I've seen that happen before, but never quite like last night, where everyone apparently turned off the "Auto Post Blind" as he was getting all in, and then one at a time sat out when asked to post the BB.

"Guilt" isn't the best word to describe what I was feeling. Maybe "sympathy." Like, I knew how bad he was and that he was going to lose all his money, but he didn't know I knew. Not only that, but he didn't even know himself.

[Boobie Lover]

I've seen this happen various times. It can be humbling to understand that to be profitable I have to prey on those that play worse, or have less emotional control than myself.

[melioris]

When you strip it bare to the core, poker is a cruel heartless bitch of a game. And to succeed you got to be as close to that core as possible. As you know this is something I struggle with.

For what it is worth, check out nature. The cold-hearted cruelty required to survive in the wild makes poker look like a cupcake.

[Talking Poker]

That's a good point... but in nature, you don't see the predator being all buddy buddy with the prey, while attacking him. The prey knows he's prey and knows the predator doesn't have his best interests in mind.

It's not the predatory nature of the game that I have any problems with - because I don't. In order for me to win, I need others to lose. I know this. The other night though, it was just a weird situation, since he had no idea what was happening and liked me for some reason.

[Spidey44]

What limit were you playing? I assume way above what I play so I'm assuming (probably bad assumption concerning the degerate-ness possibilities involving gambling) he has the cash to lose. Thinking it over, he probably doesn't

[Talking Poker]

The limit he was playing has absolutely nothing to do with being able to afford to lose the cash, especially when you are talking about a bad player who is admittedly playing WAY over his bankroll (he started with $30). You know that.

This was $5/$10 though. I've decided to go back to what used to be my personal momeymaker for a while and see how I do. I've had success as high as $15/30 (dabbled in the $30$60, but that's outside my comfort zone), but decided to move down and see how I'd do at this level again. It's weird - at first all the numbers seemed so small, but I've gotten used to them again already. $10/$20, which is lower than I was playing a few months ago, actually seem like big numbers to me now. Funny how that works.

[bdawg31]

Yeah, i am doing the same thing - getting back to basics. The system we used to call 'Moneymaker' before Chris Moneymaker stole that name. I have dropped to 3/6 short-seated for a while to regroup. So far, so good (its only been a week though). At first, the numbers seemed low to me too - but i have gotten used to them. And i have logged two winning sessions that rival my bigger sessions of 5/10. I did the same thing in NL cash games - dropped down. Same deal - i adapted to the low numbers relatively quickly.

I have to say that if you are ever running bad - there is nothing like dropping down a level or two to log a few wins and get the bankroll back in order.

[bdawg31]

I think you just experienced getting a 'face' associated with one of the many losing players. Its usually pretty easy to not think about all the money being lost by people to make it so there can be winning players. But, if you really think about ALL THE MONEY LOST in poker, its crazy.

Think about some of the bigger winners that post here. Say we have 10 people that have netted 10k each on avg during the entire poker 'career' (that is probably a low number if you were to take the top 10 netting players that post on this site). That doesn't just mean that other players out there have lost $100,000 - they have lost a lot more of that to make up for the rake.

Now, think about when someone wins a million dollars in a tournament - that means that over one million dollars was lost by other players at some point.

That is a lot of people losing a lot of money. Maybe a lot of that is spread out over a ton of people losing small amounts, but i suspect that a fair amount is also made up of some players losing quite a bit.

Getting off-topic a bit - its hard for me to wrap my brain around that many people losing that much money. I guess since i have been a winning player, and the people i talk to are generally winning players at some level (i.e. my friends or members of this site) i literally can not relate to who is losing that much money. But, evidently people do.

Just like i can not relate to the way some of the people online play. Its like, at some point one would think that people would wake up and read one of the gazillion books and/or articles on basic poker strategy.

[Talking Poker]

You would think. But that goes against the following principles:

1. People are lazy.
2. People gamble to try to make a quick buck. People LOVE the idea of money for nothing.
3. People consider poker to be "gambling" - after all, any two cards can win!

And yes, the amount of money people are losing playing poker is astounding. Thanks to the rake, something like 2 out of 5 players are profitable, meaning 3 out of 5 are losers. That's 60%.....

When you step back and look at poker numbers as a whole, they can be shocking.