Why I Love and Hate Poker

I was just like everyone else I jumped on the poker bandwagon after Chris Moneymaker the amateur accountant defied all odds and became the World Series of Poker champion. Watched the movie Rounder’s several times and thought wow this could be an easy way to make money. I read all the books Doyle Brunson’s Power Poker, David Sklanksy’s Theory of Poker book which I highly recommend, probably the best book on poker I have read.

I have played in tournaments in Tampa’s Hard Rock casino, Derby Lane Poker Room in St Petersburg and many Las Vegas poker rooms. Have played online poker mostly at Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars. At the peak of poker’s popularity thought I would never lose the desire to play it. I never made it to a level that I could even come close to making a living so I can appreciate the Poker pro’s who play poker for a living. it really is a tough way to make an easy living.

The biggest reason I lost the desire to play poker was all the wannabe poker players that thought they were pros and watched and try to emulate the Poker Pro’s they would see on ESPN. I just want to shake these people and say dude wake up man you are getting mad because you lost $100 to someone that should have not called you and now you are throwing a Phil Hellmuth and chastising the player for calling.

You know what buddy your playing in a low limit game you should expect people to play loose, if you expect everyone at a low limit game to play like Johnny Chan and Daniel Negreanu it ain’t happening. The reason you are also playing in a low limit game just like everyone at the table is because you are not Daniel Negreanu so don’t act like you are.

That is another thing that drives me crazy, He is chastising a bad player. Heck that is exactly the kind of player I want at the table. You need to know you are going to lose some pots and take some bad losses against a bad player but in the long run if you play good poker you are going to come on top. It is the same as playing against the house(casino) at a table game in the short term you may win but if you play over the long haul the house is always going to win, the math is on their side.

Finally the biggest thing that drives me crazy about poker are all the bad beat stories I hear from players, I wouldn’t mind if they were really bad beats like having 4 of kind and losing to a straight flush but these are stories of how they had a straight and got rivered and lost to someone who got lucky and pulled a flush, heck that ain’t even close to a bad beat man.

However for all the things I hate about poker, The love of playing the game trumps all the bad things and although I don’t play as much as I once did I really have the bug to play again. So I would love to hear from my audience what do you love and hate about poker.