From Silo’s excellent, "mini ship-it" thread...
ok i'll ask
the comma day ?? for £/$1,000+ yah?
The phrase came from around about the time of 2006.
Not sure if I coined it or nicked it from somebody else, but I certainly used it fairly often. Perhaps it added a bit of spice, and made the reporting of results from grinding single table poker tournaments sound a little less dull.
It made the grind feel a little less dull for me too. Perhaps to too great an extent.
When I was on the last game of that 24 hour session in April of that year, where I needed a cash for a comma, I was more nervous than I was when I’ve been near the bubbles of big satellites, or on the final tables of MTTs.
Nowadays I don't usually check my results till end of session to avoid exactly this sort of scenario, it can change your play to the detriment of your EV. You're liable to start playing scared to try and lock in a profit, or a certain amount of profit.
It’s one of many changes, great and small, that I’ve made to my game over the last six months. Ironically, now that I’m a full time student and only a part time poker player, my approach to the game is far more ‘professional’ than it ever was when I was playing professionally.Rules are still occasionally broken though, the little ones anyway. I was naughty and checked how I was doing while I was still playing the last 3 tables of my session on Wednesday night.
I was up around $1,100 according to sharkscope. A comma!
Sharkscope would not yet have accounted for the the buy-ins in those last three games though, if I donked out of them all out of the money, my profit for the day would only be around $950. Not a comma!
I donked out of the first two in 4th and 5th place, so again, I was down to the last game of the session needing a cash for a comma.
This brought back memories of that night in 2006, hence me mentioning it here, pardon the nostalgia.
After a long and tense bubble struggle on the last tournament, the other three players and I were all evenly stacked as I open pushed KQo from the small blind. The big blind was a regular who thought for a time and eventually called. He had me covered by like 60 chips.
My heart just sank. I had been nit-rolled by AKo.
I'd had a pretty shitty couple of months, experiencing a 1,500 game breakeven stretch, watching my overall ROI sink from a healthy double figured amount (which I was kinda proud of after all the work I’d done on my game) to the relatively mediocre 7%.
I wanted the comma pretty bad, I would still be down $250 or something in January, but it would be something to get a little chuffed about. $950 is useful, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t feel like a winner that night if I choked on the comma after coming so close.
Now don’t you fret readers. These are donk and go’s we’re talking about here, so of course I binked the Queen and sent down, sent him down to bubble town while I was living it up in comma central.
So there it is... that’s a comma day.
The expression never really filled a lexical gap in online poker lingo, not too surprising, as for the serious player, winning $1,000+ in a day is really not too big a deal.
For low/mid stakes grinders who put in a low/mid amount of volume (such as myself:) ) it's still a rare enough occasion to be a minor cause for celebration.
Having said that, occasionally someone playing a small-ish MTT will mention how they have “locked in a comma” as they ladder up the final table payout structure and have guaranteed themselves a four figured payday.
This always makes me smile. Big shout out to comma hunters everywhere, grab ‘em while they’re hot!
It’s not my first comma day since the start of this staking venture, but it’s certainly my first of 2009. Followed it up with a decent sesh tonight, and it looks like I’ll be able to return another month of profit. (albeit a lean one) to all my backers.
I know I said I wasn’t going to update. I haven’t even responded to the “banter” on here in the hope that the “where’s the updates tank” gags would get old as soon as possible, and the thread would die.
I think updating or blogging, for me personally, is –EV for the following reasons.
- I have really enjoyed writing these things in the past, putting some effort into trying to make them as fun to read as possible. This will bring about the occasional –EV situation like in above. (ended up finishing 2nd in that last game. I probably could have played the heads up better, perhaps made a couple of errors while too busy booyahkashaying, and pelvic thrusting)
- Can also lead to the odd hugely –EV situation. (such as accepting a volume prop bet with someone because “it’ll make a good thread either way”)
- It's an indulgence. Writing these things take time, and while I don't consider that time wasted, I do get plenty out of it, it doesn't really help me improve my game. I prefer now to spend that same time talking and writing about strategy instead.
- I need to keep my ego in check, I think that in the past ego been one of my biggest leaks. It stops you from wanting to learn new things. The act of blogging my results, and the reception these writings have recieved, perhaps encouraged me to place undue significance on my own thoughts and actions, ergo, not condusive for keeping aforementioned ego in check.
- It can encourage the odd person here and there to try playing the same games (GTFO and let a fish sit down tyvm.) If you're chirping too much, especially if you're placing emphasis on the dramatic and fleshing things out to be more exciting than they perhaps truly are, I guess you can't complain about this, you bring it on yourself.
- Personal reasons.
So isn't this a pretty long post for someone who's not updating?
As I mentioned above, the little rules we set ourselves occasionally get broken. Maybe I’ll be naughty and update again some day, then again, maybe not.
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