Of leaky roofs and muscle aches

There's an old joke about a guy whose wife nags him to fix the leak in the roof. If she mentions it while the water is pouring in, he says, "Well, I can't very well fix it now, with the rain coming down!" If she bugs him about it between storms, he says, "It's not leaking now, is it?"

(Hence the photo above.)

I have a sore muscle in my shoulder, or, more specifically, over the right shoulder blade. It's the muscle called the "infraspinatus," because it sits just below the ridge of bone, or "spine," of the scapula (the shoulder blade). You can see where it is in this photo (so that if you ever run into me, you'll know just where to offer to massage):




I don't know exactly what's wrong with my infraspinatus, but it hurts much of the time. It's been that way for several years now. It gets worse when I type a lot--just a nasty, dull, nagging, deep ache that distracts me from whatever else I'm trying to focus on.

The thing is, I don't have to live with this. A few years ago my doctor referred me to a very sharp physical therapist, who gave me a series of exercises to do. They're incredibly boring, but if I dedicate ten minutes twice a day to doing them, the pain goes away and stays away completely. It's like a miracle cure.

The problem is that the reward/punishment isn't immediate. When I'm hurting, it takes a couple of weeks of exercises before the pain stops, and when I'm feeling good and stop doing the exercises, it takes a couple of weeks before the pain comes back.

This makes it hard for me to maintain the motivation to do these stupid exercises. 20 minutes a day doesn't seem like much when it brings the promise of the rest of my 24 hours being pain-free. But the fact is that I can get away without doing them for quite a while without any obvious detriment. Sadly, though, as I start making excuses for skipping the exercises, the excuses get flimsier and flimsier, until I'm just not doing any exercising at all. And after a while, the pain comes back. Then I curse myself for not having kept it up, and I have to live with the pain for a couple of weeks while I reinstitute my daily discipline.

Poker is like that. I'm running good, outplaying opponents, winning most days, with only an occasional small loss as punctuation. I feel invincible, like this is the easiest way anybody has ever invented to make a living.

The cockiness makes me sloppy. I got lucky and hit a straight draw or flush draw for a big pot, and start to believe, against all evidence, that that will happen every time. So I start chasing when the pot odds aren't right, or when I suspect that even if I hit the draw I may be behind. I can also start succumbing to what Daniel Negreanu calls "fancy play syndrome," trying to play lots of tricky, disguised hands, rather than just make them an occasional variation on my usual tight-aggressive approach to the game. Or instead of playing a big hand in a straightforward way, I try to slow-play, and end up trapping myself. I get to thinking that I'm not playing cards, I'm playing people, and I'm smart enough to outplay them--until they turn over the best hand, at which point it is all about the cards.

I start to book losing sessions. I get depressed. I think that this is the stupidest, hardest way one could possible try to earn a living. I don't like going out the door to the poker rooms, because I sense I'm going to lose before I even start.

But after there has been enough pain, after I've been punished sufficiently for my bad calls, for my ill-advised bluffs, for my tricky plays that went unappreciated and unrewarded by the troglodytes I'm playing with, I realize what I have to do. I have to be disciplined again. I have to sit patiently, like the snake in its hole just waiting for the mouse to wander by unaware. I have to fold almost everything out of position, and the junk hands even with position. I have to be willing to abandon ship when I think I'm beat in a hand. I have to pick my spots carefully. I have to avoid coin flips for large pots, because with a little patience I can get the same chips in with a much greater statistical lead.

Just as importantly, I have to dedicate time to studying. I have literally dozens of poker books yet unread on my shelf--more unread than read, in fact, though I'm embarrassed to admit it. I include watching televised poker as part of my studying, because if I really pay attention to analyzing why the players are making particular decisions, I genuinely can learn a lot. These things I tend to set aside when I'm winning, because who needs them? I know how to play already, for heaven's sake--why waste time reading when I could be making money at the tables?

But when the rain comes, when the pain comes, when the losses come, I get reminded of what I haven't been doing. Of course, it's a lot easier to avoid going out to play when I've been hammered for five sessions in a row, so there is an element of avoidance to my study. Still, reading always manages to enlighten me on a point or two, and it slowly starts to re-energize my desire to go try to implement something new I've learned. The good books also pound back into my head the need to be focused and disciplined and thoughtful about how I play, rather than just counting on luck and/or being a little better than my average opponent.

When I boil it down, I have two principal advantages over most of the tourists I play against: (1) I'm more patient, because I'm here all the time, rather than for just a few days; I don't need to cram in as much fun playing and as many hands as I can before the trip is over, or put in insanely long sessions before the plane leaves. (2) Analytical ability. Whether by genetics or upbringing/training or both, I'm just habitually analytical about everything, always thinking and questioning and trying to understand, to unroot inconsistencies and fill voids in my knowledge of how the world works. This is an indispensible tool at the poker table. When I'm on my game, I'm constantly asking myself an endless series of questions. Why did he bet there? Why so much? What does his little speech there mean? Why does he look nervous? Why did he act so fast? Etc.

Reading good poker books strengthens this mental muscle. Even if I don't implement any particular bit of insight in the immediate aftermath of reading a good chapter or two, the exercise of dissecting the author's points and arguments and filing them away makes my general analytical ability at the table better and stronger.

When I'm off my game, it's invariably because I've decided, consciously or unconsciouly, to try to tackle poker without one or both of my main two advantages. It's not hard to predict the results.

I suppose that I've gone through at least as many cycles of up/down with poker as I have with pain/relief in my shoulder. Each time I vow to myself that it will be the last, that this time I'll stick with doing what I know keeps me winning, keeps me pain-free. I'll do my damn exercises, even when they bore me and I feel I have better things to do with that 20 minutes. I'll keep up with reading and studying, seeing it not as costing me time away from the table, but as an investment in keeping the hourly rate high when I do play. I'll play the way that a couple of years of evidence has shown keeps me winning when I stick to it.

But then the pain stops. It won't matter if I skip my exercises just today. The sun comes out, and who wants to work on the roof when it's a beautiful day and there's playing to be done? I'm on a hot poker streak, and that rather boring book will still be there to be read tomorrow, after I've pocketed another nice win or two. I'll get to it then--really I will. I promise.

Hey, is that a rain cloud I see in the sky?