I don't blame anyone for the stakes they want to play at. No one owed me higher stakes.
But for me, what I want out of poker, it is not entertaining for me to play a social poker tournament. Well, that's not true. It is. But that's not what scratches that deeper itch.
A big reason I've hosted poker games, and I've said this before, was a sort of self help thing. I'm not very social. I don't delude myself into thinking that's healthy. I had enough of a passion for poker to get myself out of my comfort zone and invite strange people into my house. And despite being the host and everything else, many times I still managed to be the most awkward person in the room.
I have been greatly enriched by the experiences I've had hosting poker games. And besides the game I ran on the USS Nimitz, the jazzfanz games are my most cherished. I've met many awesome people. I've also benefited from those interactions far beyond poker. It has been well worth it. I hope all of you who have come know that. I've gotten everything out of hosting that I could have hoped for.
But as far as poker is concerned... I have never set out to host a social poker game. I have always endeavored to host a poker game that serious poker players would appreciate. Little things. I've said many times "I want to host a game that I would want to play in." I've done that.
Funny enough, the games that got sidetracked the most were the ones I enjoyed the most. But it was always a guilty pleasure because I knew there were people waiting to get back to poker, and I had committed to hosting a tightly ran poker game.
Poker, for me, is deeply interesting because people are placed in stressful situations and they need to make decisions under pressure with several eyes on them. That's what I love most about poker. I don't have to be in the hand. I love to watch someone struggling to decide what they should do. The stakes have damn near everything to do with how that works. Now for me, if I put $100 on a poker tournament, I care enough to get stressed about the decisions I'm making. At $20? Not really. And people willing to pay $20 because they enjoy the social aspect and don't care so much about poker? Yeah, the stress level isn't there for the really juicy stuff I crave. And that's what it comes down to, ultimately.
I'm kind of bouncing around in my own head right now, but I hope to host fun get together stuff at my house in the future. I've considered buying a shuffleboard table, or hosting a board game night, or a spades league. Stuff that isn't based on money to make the game interesting. Without sufficient stakes poker is just a card lotto. If no one cares about winning or losing enough to get worked up about it there is nothing intriguing about poker.
Anyway, bottom line, I love you guys. This isn't me telling BigB or anyone else they suck because they don't want to play at the stakes I want them to play at. I just don't think I'm interested in hosting poker tournaments anymore. I never built the player base for the game I wanted. The irony is that I could have played at the stakes I wanted and had players ready to play in that game... but they would have been players playing down to my game, players who normally played higher stakes than I was comfortable playing in. So I kind of was just in the wrong place as far as that's concerned.
I'm gonna end this, but the conflict between wanting to play poker and wanting to be a quality host could keep me going for several more paragraphs. It was just not right for me anymore and I couldn't figure out how to make it right.
