[Praxising]

Thanks, Andy, I think I get it, now. You know, I think I am finally starting to get kinda good at poker - well - at Razz. I find becoming acculturated to it to be most difficult. I really liked everyone's answers to the fantasy special powers question, helped me get the mindset.

I find that I am getting less and less empathetic to my competition and more and more - oh hell - greedy. It's antithetical to my nature, but all serves the truth, I guess. I kinda like it. Maybe being dedicated to being good at something that pays lots of money at the end IS my nature!

Razz is interesting in this light because it can be so incredibly obvious you are beaten. I called a hand today and I figured he had me boardlocked, but it was one of those where he knows I can't make better than a 7 to his made 6 on the river, but I couldn't know it yet. I called mostly because I didn't want him thinking he could bluff me off a 7 in future.

But sometimes EVERYBODY knows you are boardlocked. I used to feel bad for people who couldn't see it and not raise or reraise. Now I feel I am simply encouraging them to become more educated (gimmee your dough!!)

I write all this blather because I know there are a lot of new players like myself, who just have trouble getting with the program and keep losing their money because they were never taught to win. Not just women, either. Some of the distaff side are incredibly competitive.

Now - here's the fun part. This material I am reading describes one of the ESP researches that used an enhancement technique to increase the correct answers to a binary guessing game. Essentially they had a string of 1010101010000100111110010101001110001001010 and the participants had to guess which was next. The control runs were 51% accuracy, right in the expected range. The enhanced results over large number trials were over 70%. I haven't gotten to the appendices where the 'enhancements" are described - but if you could make the question binary: Is the card greater or lesser then 5? for instance, or just "helped him or hurt him" and if the enhancement is winning money...

These were gov't funded researches and after they got those amazing results, no one could figure out what possible use it could be, so they stopped working on it. Anyway, I've always been struck by Doyle Brunson's assertion in SS1 that a great poker player has ESP. And I am fascinated by the idea that it could be something like memory - no one knows how it works, but you can do things to make it better.