I feel fear. I’ve just made an outrageous play, squeezing then barreling off into two players. I’m drawing to three outs – I hope.
The enemy unit is taking a lot of time. That’s fine, the game is in the mind, not the plastic rectangles on the felt. However, while I’m waiting to see how the officers respond to the turn shove, I tell myself I will simply flee, much like a Looney Tunes character, like a deserter, if I am somehow gifted this pot. I feel out of control.
Or is that really the story? After all, I feel fear all the time at the table. So why am I so bothered? Because this fear is different, I suppose. It’s so conspicuous, so sticky, so in my fingers and eyes. It’s like an animal I was supposed to lock up and is now terrorizing the house. I feel it, I think, not because the game is too big for me but because I am suddenly so aware of it.
How do I gamble with so little in the bank? How have I been doing any of this? Stripped of bravery, everything I do seems insane. I recall a somewhat analogous play against Moo at the Red Rock. I had underestimated his hand strength – two queens flatting my ambitious three-bet. (After all, he calls with everything.) He then called off against my flop float, turn shove. We ran it twice and I hit the three-out miracle to chop. He took it so strangely well – peaceful times for both of us in spite of our natural selves. Yes, he allowed this play to pass, whereas when I had limp raised him and showed him eight-deuce, he had lost his mind. Nuances of circumstance, mood. Maybe the moon in the sky, for all I know.
Why did I not feel fear in those circumstances? Was I so much better off? The answer is no. I was prepared, however. That’s the difference. I had told myself coaxing things. I always tell myself coaxing things. I usually convince myself of what I must do and have a plan if it fails. Sometimes it takes entire days to reach this state. I’ll become inert. I’ll cook, write, think, all while waiting to gamble with my fungible roll. There will be a moment when I am ready.
But maybe that’s wrong, too. Ah, what it really is, all this fear, is a natural reaction to what I’ve done. This play just might not be good. The fear in this case is knowing I was about to have my fingers cut off by strong ranges. These aren’t balanced players – they start with the goods and hold on like mother hyenas on the plains. The fear is playing like this.
Yet isn’t that how I played when I was winning? Soon I will make an awesome fold, as in shockingly wrong. Against an under-bluffed line versus a pro-level player, I’ll let go of an overpair to a single lead. Just like that. And be proud of it. With action behind and insanity ahead, it’s an expert play that has saved me through the years and helps account for all the minor success I have lived on. That is, until I’m shown some goofy favorite hand that references some earlier goofy hand: I’ve been bluffed out and badly so.
This must be the story, this is why I now feel fear. I’d forgotten my read on the player entirely. He was a tournament pro-level player. He doesn’t really know the risk reward like I do. He does things based on stack preservation, not equities math. He is a reverse-implied odds machine, a daredevil who lands his motorcycle on the final table. So I gave up the kind of massively profitable spot that I have been seeking for months. Yes, I can bluff off my roll but can’t make a single street call with a crushing hand, in position to the enemy.
The fear is the fear of me. I’m afraid of what I can and will do.
The first player has assembled the call. I can already see the blank space in front of me. I could have just kept all that money. It’s not like I’ve been crushing. People congratulate me on coming back – what? I’ve just not shit the bed this month, that’s all I’ve done. I’m down about thirty thousand since March and I’m adding to my credit card debt like Reagan is cracking one-liners. The car, the restaurant, the furniture, the travel; now the dentist. I’ve been hemorrhaging money, as Tom Wolfe memorably wrote.
How is bluffing three times into the field possibly going to end except with me in the streets?
Yet the first player folds. What was the story? I knew he was at the bottom of his continuing range. Something about the open and all the tanking spoke to me. The button skipped an easy squeeze with anything better than nines and now has come along for the party beating my ace highs. The button, we’ll say, has sixes or such. The turn queen won’t help her either. The turn is my card. I’m playing the game. My chips are all in the center and it makes some kind of sense. I’m in control.
The fear isn’t even what I think it is at all: I’ve been wrong all session. The fear is a signal I am playing well. That I am present and active and alive.
The button folds and I win.
+2495
Happy 4th and good luck in the Main. Thanks for being here.
