Fingerfehler

I've talked about fingerfehlers in this space before. A fingerfelher is a German word for a slip of the finger. In the context of online poker, a fingerfehler is when you click on a button you didn't intend to click on. That happened to me last night, very early on - so early, in fact, that I hadn't yet played a hand. At the 7 card stud tables I like to join, the minimum buy-in is $16,000, and the maximum is $1,000,000. It's rather silly to have such a high maximum, since in the limit format, big stacks can't bully small stacks the way they can in the no limit format. From my no limit hold'em experience, I've very comfortable with buy-ins of $40,000, so that's what I've been choosing for limit stud as well. The problem is, to get that buy-in, I have to type that exact amount into a text box each time I join a stud table. Last night, for some reason, I selected the maximum and then clicked on the Okay button, all on autopilot. I guess that actually counts for two fingerfehlers. Maybe I was so impatient to start playing I unconsciously took the path of least resistance. I realized as the session wore on that there are two drawbacks to buying in for such a huge amount:

1. psychologically, a player with a big stack feels a heavier burden trying to protect it than he would feel trying to protect a smaller stack; any amount lost feels like a larger loss than it otherwise would, since it's hurting a bigger stack. This is illogical, but an actual phenomenon.

2. players with smaller stacks often play back harder at big stacks than they would at smaller ones; the reason is equally as illogical as the one in drawback 1, but just as real - if a smaller stack wins a hand against a big stack, the amount won feels larger than it otherwise would, since it came from a bigger stack.

With this in mind, I'll be sure to type "40000" into the text box tonight when I join my table :-)

During current Stud session you were dealt 122 hands and:
- saw fourth street 103 times (84%)
- saw fifth street 93 times (76%)
- saw sixth street 82 times (67%)
- reached showdown 40 times (32%)
 Pots won at showdown - 16 of 40 (40%)
 Pots won without showdown - 8

delta: $-27,178
cash game 7 card stud balance: $60,443
balance: $10,146,177