As the poker world is wondering whether or not Pokerstars has bought Full Tilt or not, I've been thinking about a lot of different things and how perspective and attitude matters... not just in poker but in life.
I watched a pretty cool TEDtalk;
http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html
People hate being wrong. They see it as being a failure, a sign of weakness, of stupidity. But it is this fear that we have of being wrong that can potentially stop us from taking worthwhile risks, of which lead to more and more opportunities.
So for myself in Poker, I have certainly discovered that even though I know that there is a certain play that is good, and that will make me money in the long run, I chose not to do it in fear of the worst case scenario, like running into a big hand and getting knocked out.
If we say that we go all in with 58s but we are scared of being called by a better hand and being knocked out. But running some hypothetical numbers say that if you shove that hand now, you will win 80% of the time, does that change anything in your mind? To an untrained person, it doesn't. Even if we bump it up to 99% chance of winning and 1% chance of losing to only AA? Still doesn't feel much safer. Why?
Emotion.
We have wire tapped our brains into giving us negative emotions when something is wrong. When we lose, our automatic thought is that we had done something wrong. This response is actually normal, and for humans we use this to warn ourselves from certain situations.
But this also stems from a life of being told that wrong is bad, and right is good, in a very black and white fashion. When I was at school we took tests and did projects, but the enthuses was always on the right and wrong answers, not the effort or process that was taken. This is something that needs to be changed in society. As these kids become seperated by rights and wrongs, only the rights move on, whilst the wrongs lose hope and confidence and spiral downhill.
In the workplace, many people choose jobs that they don't like, maybe do things in fear of being fired. But if they treat everything as a learning process and accept the mistakes then you can only keep moving on up. Maybe being fired was the best thing that could happen to someone who needed that kick up the backside to pursue their dream career? Who knows...
I <3 Steak
I mean, honestly who doesn't??!
ut ya, I've actually decided to be staked in poker to learn more and to take some of the risk away. I had been really stubborn about giving away my equity, but I have this opportunity to be taught by the best, and in this period I will learn so much in the long run.
However, I am still playing 9 mans with my own money.... hypers!! So fun! ALLLLL IN ALL DA TIME!! I just wish that Pokerstars could introduce a $15 stake coz right now they only do a $7 stake and then it jumps to $30 O_o. Kinda hard to jump from the recommended 100 buy in rule of $700 to $3000 in order to move up.
I have been told that the 6 max hypers are staked "appropriately" however I dunno if I wanna play them because I think that the multi tabling is gonna be a nightmare because you will have to play a lot more hands short handed. So dunno...
I'm Silver!
I have finally made it out of the infamous Bronze league in Starcraft 2. It actually seemed to be mainly getting points more then anything else rather then getting 1st in your league. Which meant that I had to play a lot of games, but that's ok I enjoy it so much.
The new season has started and there are a lot more maps in the ladderpool and they've changed the MMR (Opponent Chooser) so that you now play people who are a lot higher or lower then you. Maybe they introduced it to make the searches faster, but in some ways I'm a bit disappointed coz now when I lose I get completely P-Owned lol.
My favourite player MarineKingPrime has totally dominated this first quarter of the year by winning MLG Winter Arena, MLG Columbas, and coming runner up in the Spring Arena. I'm like so addicted to watching his games, he has so many different builds, but they all work under the same theme... being aggressive as hell!!
It really amazes me how after all this time I'm still so interested in this game, especially watching matches. I remember how interested I was in it when I didn't know what the hell was going on, but I remember that it looked cool and was interesting. I think that Starcraft 2 really has that openness to people who don't play the game, to still roughly understand what is going on and appreciate the high skill level the players have.
I'm so obsessed with it I'll put a player's stream on in the background or something... one of my favourite streams is VileIllusion, who is a USA 16 year old kid killing it on ladder and upcoming on tournaments. With the streaming technology now so easy to use, its the perfect timing for these pro gamers to get their limelight and it really does seem like 2012 is gonna be a good year for esports!
I will be streaming regularly so keep a look out on twitch.tv/puyanwei
