Acuity

I was eleven years old. It wasn't long after Christmas and I had asked my dad to play a game of baseball on my brand new Atari 5200. He agreed. We fired up the game and I soundly trounced his ass 12-0. He quit in the third inning when he couldn't figure out how to prevent me from stealing bases at will. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why he couldn't stop me nor why he got so frustrated. My dad left my room in a huff while I finished the game up against the computer opponent who replaced him.

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I have a PS3. I mainly use it for the Blu-Ray player, but have a couple of sports games too. Saturday I played my eight year old son in a game of Madden. I took the Pats, he took the Colts. Tom Brady threw 4 interceptions and miniBlood won the game 17-14.

He talked trash.

He did dances.

And I felt just like my dad did nearly 30 years earlier.

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I hate to admit it, let alone say it. My mental reflexes have diminished. I no longer possess the ability to rapidly process streams of visual data and make the proper decisions based on them.

Can you guess where such a skill might be valuable?

How about multi-tabling online poker.

I've made the decision that I'm just not as skillful any longer (if I ever were) at multi-tabling.

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I felt the need to multi-table just so I could get in enough hands. Based on research, and a careful perusal through the 2+2 forums, it seemed that tens of thousands of hands were required to be played each month just to determine what your win-rate might be. Oh yeah, don't forget about IronMan or SuperNova quests either.

Four-tabling turbo sit 'n go's has been profitable for me. But goddamn if it didn't seem like an incredible grind. There was simply no fun in that. If poking my eyes with a hot iron was profitable, I'd still opt out.

Multi-tabling cash games, while more fun, was an exercise in frustration. After careful consideration, I've determined that it's beyond my mental abilities at my advanced age. It's no coincidence that the professional multi-tablers are in their late-teens to mid-twenties.

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So I'm back to one table. Early prognosis is that I'm performing better. But again, small sample, low confidence.

We can debate for hours if online poker is the same game as its B&M counterpart. I maintain that it can be if you want it to be. But it can also be something else. It can be a video game, a challenge of reflex and response. For some people, the latter is most profitable. But for me, those years are long gone.

Sigh. Age. Pass the laxitives.