Thought of the Week 8/15 - 8/21: Am I Compulsive?

AM I COMPULSIVE?

Good Question and one that I've been thinking about for some time now. According to Dictionary.com the definition of compulsive is:

–noun

Psychology. a person whose behavior is governed by a compulsion.

Ok, that wasn't too insightful, let's try this again by delving into the meaning of compulsion:

–noun

Psychology. a strong, usually irresistible impulse to perform an act, esp. one that is irrational or contrary to one's will.

Good, now we're getting somewhere. Some might say that my need to make a living by playing poker would be good a representation of the psychological definition of compulsion. But honestly that's not what's on my mind today as I sit down to write this column. And maybe, just maybe, the fact that I am not considering what I do for a living, though it is highly irrational and most likely contrary to at least the good will of my life when I talk about my compulsive behaviors might sum it up.

Ahh, but I digress. If you stumbled upon my last thought of the week (albeit it was two weeks ago - so much for the title of the column) you will see that I am working on self actualization and becoming a better human being and all that kind of stuff. And believe you me, I need to be working on living a better life. And that's what got me to thinking about being compulsive. See, ever since I got here to Vegas, I have kind of let myself slip into some very bad and destructive habits. Especially with my consumption of alcohol. And my consumption became compulsive, much like it did when I lived in Orlando, FL for 9 months. I moved down there right after I finished my undergrad degree and I really fell off the deep end. Moving away from home a second time and reaching the same result made me realize that I have this self destruct gene hiding somewhere in me. And when my life lacks structure, that demon likes to slowly poke his head out and go on to consume my life. I honestly think I don't have a drinking problem, but I'm sure 99.99% of problem drinkers feel that way. I think my problem stems back to feelings of self worth and symptoms of depression. Things I really don't want to delve into here and now, I just reference them for the basis why I repeatedly have self destructed. And if that is one form of compulsion, then I figured there must be a flip side to it as well.

I go through these spurts in life where I just degen it up for a period of time and then I totally flip the script and start living life the way I really feel it should be lived. I've entered that period in my life once again. As I sit here and write this today, I have achieved my daily goals for the past 3 days of working out. Sounds silly and simple but believe me when you go from drinking almost every day to putting the stuff down, not thinking about, and having most of your waking thoughts consumed by planning your training sessions it's like I've gone through an exorcism of sorts. I make it sound more dramatic than what it actually is, but I'm a writer so deal with it. I need to use imagery every now and then God damnit. Anyway, I'm like totally addicted to working out now. I went through this stage about 2 years back when I signed on to manage a small gym in Bellmawr, NJ and went on to get into maybe the best shape of my life. Rebecca deserves that guy back in her life, so I am going to use my compulsion for good not evil and hopefully with the support and backing of my friends I'll be able to walk the line.

An added bonus is I feel so much better about myself and it will reflect in my play. When you build self confidence, it transcends the gym. I know I will begin to trust my reads more and have the follow through to make a risky play when I believe it is the right time to do so. Also, being in better shape with help with my stamina and mental focus. In essence, this should help my career. At the very least, in a couple of months I'll be able to sit by the pool and look good while doing so.

Oh, did I mention I weighed in at 195.8 lbs yesterday. I should be at 165 lbs for my height and build. Guess I got a lot of work to do. I'll keep you up to date on my progress and I am now accountable to all of you that read this. Feel free to kick me in the ass when I slack and slap me on the back when the boy done good.

The DMV and Taking Chinners

In my attempt to get myself right I've been working on getting everything away from the felt straightened out so that I can focus while I'm playing. That meant getting my smog check done yesterday and then sitting at the DMV for 3 hours. We all have DMV stories and they all suck. However, I still can't help but share mine. At the Nevada DMV in Henderson, I'm sure like DMV's all around the country, you must first go to the "Information Desk" to tell them why you have graced them with your presence and to insure you have all necessary documentation prior to taking up the time of one of the clerks. So after my 15 minutes in line waiting I finally get to see an information specialist. I always try to be kind to anyone working a shitty job because from what I can tell people take out their frustrations on these people regularly. With that in mind I get to the desk and proceed to explain that I am here to register my car (which I just had shipped here from Jersey, wink wink) and that I need to change the address on my license. I show him that I've done my homework and that I've compiled all required documentation to make this a smooth and hopefully effortless experience. He is a nice guy and seems pleased I'm not a jackass who hasn't come unprepared. He does however inquire if I've had my VIN inspection completed yet. Well, no I have not but I was told that the inspection happens here. He replies that indeed it does but I will have to go back out to my car and take it around the corner to the place where the inspection happens. He does kindly provide me with my ticket which is G463. They are only on G325 at this point so I figure I have time to kill. The bitch of the matter is I got lucky when I got there and found a parking spot which is no simple task. The DMV has about 200 spots and about 400 people are in the building at any given time. I get the test done rather quickly and proceed to drive around for a half hour until another spot opens up. I get back in the building and they are on G375. Hey great, I've made pretty much no progress.

Fast forward an hour and I am about 25 spots away from getting this taken care of when I finally believe there truly is a God...and he hates me. The fire alarm goes off. I am sitting in a chair about 5 feet from the exit and I proceed not to move until told to do so. Hell, I'm a gambling man and I place the odds at about 100 - 1 that this is a real fire. After a couple of minutes one of the clerks yells at us, "The fire alarm is going off. What is wrong with you people! You have to get out of the building!" What's wrong with us? We've been waiting here for 2 hours while you see 4 people an hour at your station. I don't see any smoke or flames my ass wasn't going anywhere until yours did. We proceed to make it outside and across the street where I bake in the 109 degree sun for 15 minutes until they determine it was a false alarm. We get back inside and I finally get my shit squared away and pay the state $155. The whole DMV system is enough to put the most even keel person on tilt. I commented to wifey via text that I am surprised you don't hear about people going postal at DMV's and shooting the places up. It sucks all the way down the line. You have to wait forever, you have to pay way too much, and then you take it out on the people that work there. Or, if you work there, you deal with the same shit day and day out for however many years until you retire. It's enough to drive anyone insane. Anyway, I'm legit now so no fear of getting pulled over with my unregistered vehicle with Jersey tags on it anymore.

Wifey has been getting toothaches and went to the dentist today. He told her she needed to get a root canal. This is her second one. WTF? He is going to fit her in today and the out of pocket expense is $500. Again, WTF? He works at a hospital for Christ sake, she should have the best insurance around. I hope she isn't in too much pain afterwards because we have a comped room at Bally's tonight. Hopefully a little proseco and time away from the cat will work wonders for her. Actually, I just hope she can eat tonight because I want Maggiano's lobster ravioli. Chinner after chinner around here. No poker this week, Chuck and family get into town on Tuesday so I have to make sure everything here is in order. Can't let the real world think we actually live like this.

Have a great weekend everyone and I'll get back to my exploits soon. Talk to you then

Thought Of The Week 8/1 - 8/7: Living Right

LIVING RIGHT

When you do something for a living like play poker, it opens up many avenues for you in your spare time since you are your own boss. Like yesterday, instead of playing on Sunday during the football offseason (something I should be doing since I won't be playing Sundays once the NFL kicks off) I decided to head down to the M Resort, sit at their draft beer bar, and drink while watching the Phils and playing video poker. Fortunately I won a little cash while drinking for free and unfortunately the Phils lost. However, I know to video poker to be a leak. It's something I should only partake in after I have consistently proved I can win money week in week out playing hold'em. I knew this was not "living right" and it's something I am going to be working on from this point forward. Rebecca deserves better from me. Getting tuned up once in a while is ok, doing it on a frequent basis like I have been for quite a while is not. In the following I am going to detail the things I feel like I should be doing off the felt so that when I do sit down and go to war everything else in my life has been taken care of. I keep telling myself I am capable of living the life of my dreams, meaning achieving success at poker while getting in great shape and maintaining an awesome relationship. I have 3 Cantonese symbols on my right lat which are supposed to represent my mantra on life. They state desire, devotion, and discipline. Desire represents that thirst you can't quench. It used to be for me becoming the best possible soccer player I could be. I had this mindset that if I wasn't training, someone else was, and when we met on the field he would get the better of me. So I trained constantly. In the offseason in high school, I would come home, change, and head directly outside to train with the ball until my mother would call me in for dinner. Nowadays, poker has taken over, though lately I have not been training the way I did when I was working on my soccer skills. Every morning that I wake up I need to be reading chapters in books or articles and forums on the internet to help me to improve my game each day. If I do that, I know I will be able to consistently beat the tourists for a real profit and I will be able to beat the locals a majority of the time as well. This leads me into devotion. Devotion to me means each action I take has to point me in the direction of success. So I need to keep reading and taking notes. I need to discuss hands with my friends from back home and the compatriots I am meeting out here who are also trying to do this for a living. Devotion is the burning desire in action. Finally, discipline means keeping on that path and not going astray. Discipline is what I have been lacking for quite some time now. It also means playing enough hours to make a living, playing at the right times (read: a night,) and playing in good games and getting out of bad ones so that I maximize the time I have available to me.

Off the felt there are many things I want to accomplish to better my quality of life.

• First, I need to quit boozing. Period. It's ruining my health. Once I put the bottle down, I need to pick the weights up and start hitting the gym on a regularly scheduled basis. As my health improves, I know my stamina will increase giving me an edge in late night sessions when others' concentration will start to slack. Hand in hand with this is eating right. Right now I eat like shit. This needs to change. I will start eating lean meats and fresh veggies.
  
  
• I need to go to church every Sunday morning. Whether or not I believe in God has yet to be determined. However, I do enjoy the lessons and teachings of the Bible. I do not necessarily agree with the Catholic Church's societal views. However, I can mentally separate the two. Besides, going to church makes me feel good and I know somewhere my grandfather is watching me and it will make him proud as well.
  
  
• I need to complete my final project for my master's degree. This is something I am going to strive to do this week. No more putting it off. No more when I speak to my folks will I have to skirt the issue. Completing this program and graduating with honors will make my parents so proud. Even if I am discouraged with working in sports after my experience with the Camden Riversharks minor league baseball team, completing this degree to the best of my ability and graduating with honors is something no one can take from me. I want that piece of paper on my wall.

I think this is a good start to getting back on the right track. I will focus on these 3 things off the felt and I know by doing so everything in my life will get better. I'm going to keep in mind what I used to tell my patrons at the gym when they were working on losing weight or gaining muscle. Focus on progress, not perfection. I plan on making some progress this week. I'll keep you posted.

Thought Of The Week 3/23 - 3/29: Soft Playing

This is a new weekly feature I am staring on The Vegas Experiment blog. I will provide my own commentary on the things I see at the tables, or life in general, that give me pause for concern or just piss me off in some way, shape, or form. This week's thought involves friends soft playing each other at the tables.

FRIENDS SOFT PLAYING EACH OTHER

This shit would never fly with my friends back home. My buddy B. Litty just the other day informed me of an $800 pot in a local NL hold'em home game that I've been known to frequent when I'm in town. Furthermore, it was against both his and my good buddy Duck. There was no remorse in the tone of his email about the hand. Just told it like it was. He knows someday or another, he will lose in that spot. That's what makes the game such a challenge and so much fun. In fact, everyone I know would take it as a sign of disrespect, not only towards each other, but also towards all other players at the table. I believe in the saying handed down by one of the poker legends (not sure if it was Baldwin or Brunson, or was it someone else?) that goes something along the lines of "I would be willing to break my grandmother for her prescription money if she was sitting at the same table as me." Instead, the same boobs sit around and play the same lousy poker day and day out and when the pot gets heads up between them, they check it down between each other, one of them shows the nuts, and they both have a good laugh. Fuck that! Hell, that is borderline collusion. How do I know they are not working to trap me when I am in a hand that includes both of them? I believe in playing everyone as hard as possible. I mean, if we were all on the basketball court, would they take it easy on each other? Probably not. And why is that? Because they are competing and what good is competing if you don't play as hard as possible? Throw some money into the equation and I guess that principle flies out the window for some people.

I wanted to voice my concerns, but I honestly felt it would do no good. I mean, let's think about the repercussions.

1) I piss off my fishy opponents by calling bullshit. I do not think they are clever enough to collude and work together so accusing them of this would not be smart. Furthermore, they seem like fine gentlemen otherwise and the thought of working together probably never crossed their minds. All I could do is call into question how such play affects the integrity of the game, but my feeling is this ruins the friendly atmosphere that surrounds this game.

2) If I called the floor over, how exactly would I voice my concern? I mean, I know what's going on, but to tell the floor that the guy checking the nuts down to his buddy isn't going to fly. Maybe he was afraid of the flush draw or whatever that the board was showing. You can't make a guy bet his hand, and most times you don't want him to if you're behind and drawing to a probable winner.

So, instead I bite my tongue and grin and bear it. Sometimes I wish other players recognized the spirit of the game and played accordingly. On the other hand, because players do not recognize this, amongst a plethoria of other things surrounding the game, I make long term profits from their bad decisions at the table.

Go ahead and post some feedback on your thoughts on this issue. Have you ever come across this sort of thing in public card rooms or private home games? How did you or would you have handled it?