Getting Distracted

Using my basic knowledge of military history, together with the historical documentaries that were the Indiana Jones films, it seems that key Nazi goals during the war were: (in no particular order)

Invasion of Poland
Genocide
Opening Ark of the Covenant
Occupation of France
Blitzkreig of the Netherlands
Recovery of Holy Grail

Now call me a conservative war stategist, but I imagine Hitler’s WWII plans would have stood a greater chance of succeeding if he was not continually redeploying troops from outside Paris to a distant arabic desert to search for the cup of life. I also note from the films that these were not rank and file soldiers either, but in fact some of the top SS brass. No wonder the German war effort fell short.

Distraction can undermine everyone’s best efforts, and so it proved on Saturday night, while I was playing a raft of online tournaments for the first time in several months.

At about 11pm I was playing the pokerstars $50 event, alongside two Full Tilt tournaments. Things had not been going well throughout the evening. I had not flopped a single set, which ruined my standard strategy of “flop set/bust overpair”. I had got the money all in twice in previous tournaments with flopped open-ended straight flush draws, but missed all the outs when called by the top pair. My mid tournament resteals had been called in numerous spots by people raising with AT and AJ, and my 40% chances were not saving me.

It was fair to say I was in a pretty dark mood, so it was the perfect time to run into my favourite opponent - the young, niggly, online US/Canadian player.

I am playing 8k from a 3k starting stack in the Stars tournament, and am above average. I re-raise a raiser with A♦K♦ on the button and get called by the big blind as well as the original raiser (standard).

Flop comes King high but all clubs.

I check, to avoid being flush bluffed. Turn is a blank

Checked to me so I lead for 2/3 of the pot. The big blind sticks around.

River is a blank so I call down his 1/2 pot bet on the river and am shown the flopped 8 high flush.

“Good call - thank you” he types in the chatbox.

Clearly, this lights the touchpaper and I waste about 5 minutes lauching a tirade against the perpetrator, and am playing scant attention to the other two games.

He is giving it the big one, about his tournament wins/cash prowess when the next hand occurs.

I value bet TPTK on the river against someone else, and get called by top two pair to move down to average stack.

“Lol - you should come and watch me play live and take notes donk” types the villain from the flush hand.

I am now INCANDESCENT with rage. I decide enough is enough.

I put myself in “Sit out” mode from all tournaments, and actually go to the effort of subsribing to two online rankings websites and pull up the stats on this player. It turns out this guy has a return on investment of negative 49% and has a list of tournament non-cashes as long as the River Nile.

I am just about to use my new found knowledge to give him a keyboard beating, when I get moved to a new table. INFURIATING. At this point I decide, I better re-focus on the tournaments in hand, only to discover I only have 4 big blinds on one of the FT tournaments while this virtual warfare has been going on. In the pokerstars tournament, I hover over my avatar to see that I have just auto-folded pocket Queens. Marvellous.

I didn’t cash in a single tournament this Saturday - my worst online performance for a long time. A $700 loss registered for the night, and perhaps a lesson learned to switch off the chat box in future.

So, distraction was fatal for me in these tournaments as it was for the Nazis in the 1940s. Imagine if, back in WWII, the Allies had combined their war efforts with searching for the Lost City of Atlantis. Perhaps all of us European players would be listening to oom-pah bands on our iPods… ;)

PROFIT/(LOSS) USD 2008
LIVE HOLDEM TOURNAMENTS	4,125
LIVE HOLDEM CASH	(965)
LIVE OMAHA	(290)
LIVE “PROFESSIONAL” TOURNAMENTS	(6,316)
HOME GAMES	(460)
ONLINE HOLDEM TOURNAMENTS	55,678
ONLINE HOLDEM CASH	17,026
ONLINE OMAHA	930
SUNDRY	934
RAKE	(4,317)
Total	65,080