Lessons Learned In Lockdown

With the return of major live poker events returning across the globe, it seems that we have finally put the global COVID pandemic behind us. Whether or not it is finished with us is debatable but at the very least we seem to have got bored of it and are moving on regardless.  

After 18 months of lockdowns, living like a high tech hyper connected hermit, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned in lockdown:

 

Government Policy

Before dealing with poker, just putting this out there, I was surprised by the Government’s disregard for the health and well-being of its people. There’s been some kind of ‘lets-try-pleasing-everyone-while-actually-pleasing-no-one’ approach to the pandemic, punctuated with jarring levels of corruption and incompetence.

 

Live Player Let Loose Online

The initial lockdowns closed casinos and with no other options, forced casual and regular poker players alike to compete online, creating a surge of players battling it out on the virtual felt. In this day and age, I had assumed most ‘live players’ would also be putting in a reasonable volume online anyways, right? It’s easy, if you like playing poker,  you can do it on your phone, a million different formats for any occasion, right there at your fingertips, so everybody’s doing it that, right. Apparently, I was wrong. The ‘new’ players changed the game. Not only did they arrive in numbers but they played… weird. One of the most obvious quirks that emerged was the prevalence of the 100bb open shove or 3bet. For a good chunk of 2020, it was commonplace, 1^st level of a tournament, open 2.5bb, ALL IN! I tried to build some kind of picture of the pool tendency for these but their 100bb manoeuvres seemed to be spilt 50/50 between two camps of thought: ‘Camp A’ shove, hoping for a flip with a decent enough hand, medium pocket pairs or decent Ax hands or ‘Camp B’ absolute premiums, relying on some idiot from ‘Camp A’ getting it in for a gamble. I tried to work out why this was happening because it doesn’t happen live so why does a live player do online? I concluded that blinded by the options on offer, players were hoping for an early double up, setting them up for deep run, otherwise moving on to another game? We seem to have moved past that now but I just have to hope when I make my first foray back into live poker, I’m not faced with these baffling moves once again.  

 

There Is Always More Poker

As a small stakes recreational veteran, I have spent most of my time at the tables, grinding out a small but ultimately unglamorous profit. Really just eeking out enough money to keep me in action and allowing me to take the occasional crack at something special. As a result, I am often guilty of becoming fixated on hitting my “one time” sun run on whatever big event has caught my eye. Normally, my poker calendar would focus on a couple of big series, an attempt at a live event package and then just smaller bankroll re/building in between. But last year, as all the operators attempted to cash in on the surge of new/live players, there was a never ending parade of back to back, often overlapping, guarantee smashing series after series, each bigger and bolder than the one before it as operators cashed in on the lockdown poker boom. I couldn’t keep up. What to play? I couldn’t decide, there was too much! The wealth of choice had me paralysed, and then I realised, there was no rush, no “one time” required to play the big one, because there’s a big one, every goddamn week. I am still guilty of fixating on the big events, even though I know that I really shouldn’t, but I think I’m getting there, I’m letting go. I’m still going to try the odd satellite for some marquee events but there’s no rush, they’re just for fun, for the daydreaming, and there’s always another just around the corner, so the dream forever lives on.

 

Back To The Office

With the great vaccine rollout, we begin to look forward to a return to normal. Well, maybe. I don’t want to go back to “normal”. Normal has changed. The “new normal” is working from home. Compared to rat race of office life, working from home and the difference it makes to the quality if my life and my family’s life is stark. But instead I have an employer hooked on returning to the old ways, who cares about the money saved, the time gained, cramming in work commutes and childcare, for hours on end every day, it’s absolute madness but irrelevant because… because… it’s not how we used to do things? I don’t even know why. I’m being hit with the notion of “collaboration” as the reason for it. But this has given me a new focus, I need to open up my options, adapt and change, I have to put myself in a place that gives me more freedom, more time, more money, like I had in back during the glorious lockdown.