"227 Lears... 227 performances of King Lear and I can't remember the first line."
Albert Finney - The Dresser
Finney plays an aging, deteriorating theatre actor on the British circuit during WW2. Despite performing Shakespeare for most of his life, he is falling apart and in not much of a fit state to perform. He is dependent on his 'dresser' Tom Courtenay to get him on stage each night.*
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085461/
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When I make a very simple basic mistake in the a poker hand I think of this line. These are situations that I've been in many times before and know the correct/ideal way to approach, yet still I find myself making an error (as Snowie) would term it. The funny thing is I know almost straight away when I do it, its kind of a brain freeze. I wonder how I could have played so many hands and got so far and still made a trivial error.
The other interesting thing is it doesn't matter too much how many tables I am playing, although I'm sure I do it a little bit more with more tables. It is like a fog descends and I can't identify the precise situation and action required and with the action time ticking down I make a choice.
Every session of online poker requires thousands of decisions. Of course the majority of these decisions are automatic. If for example you can increase the number of automatic decisions from 98% to 99% then not only are you going to make less mistakes, you will be retaining your brain space and timebanks for those crucial close decisions which aren't so clearcut.
I will be trying to make less stupid mistakes this week when I play and focus on using my brain/focus to make the close/tough decisions as best as I can.
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*The parallels with poker are there if you look for them. Substitute the theatre dressing room for the poker table and have the poker player reliant oh his/her HUD, backer, riding positive variance but still putting on a show on stage each night (insert the name of your favourite TV poker livepro here)...
Sidenote
Both Finney and Courtenay were nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars and I've made my biggest bet for some time on Leo Di Caprio to win Best Actor at the Golden Globes and Oscars. I think he is a lock and this is printing money but let's see if I am right.
Last edited by bergeroo; 01-06-2016 at 06:20 AM.
Reason: layout