A clear-cut quit signal

When I made my brief sojourn into the world of online chess earlier this year, I became aware of the fractal nature of chess eventualities. Good or bad outcomes can appear at many different magnification levels, and tend to match their counterparts at those other levels. The same is true, of course, of online poker. Indeed, life itself can be seen to have a fractal nature.

Poker often gives me a clear-cut signal to quit a session. I don't always heed the signal, but I almost always hear it :-) Last night, poker gave me a clear-cut signal to stop playing tournaments of any description, for a good long while. Here's how poker told me:

- the first tournament I entered was an MTT 8-game. I got ousted on hand 31 when my two pair of tens and sevens ran into a full house of aces full of sevens. My hole cards were pocket tens and the winner's hole cards were pocket aces.

- the next tournament I entered was a sit and go no limit hold'em. I got ousted on hand 15 when my full house of kings full of aces lost to four of a kind, kings. My hole cards were an ace seven offsuit and the winner's hole cards were king eight offsuit. I didn't manage to win a single hand.

- the next tournament I entered was another sit and go no limit hold'em. I got ousted on hand 24 when my two pair of tens and sixes ran into a two pair of aces and tens. My hole cards were ace six offsuit and the winner's hole cards were pocket aces.

Did I listen? No. I entered one more tournament, an MTT HORSE, and almost made it to the money. However, looking back at those first three tournaments, it's clear that poker was telling me to go back to cash games for a while :-)

buy_in entry_fee num_players num_hands place winnings

  4500       500           6        31    61        0
  4500       500           6        15     5        0
  4500       500           6        24     5        0
  4500       500           6        64    20        0

delta: $-20,000
MTT HORSE balance: $-5,600
balance: $9,345,490