Important Observations

GOLD LEADER: I can't maneuver!
GOLD FIVE: Stay on target.
GOLD LEADER: We're too close.
GOLD FIVE: Stay on target!
GOLD LEADER: Loosen up!
[..!..]

GOLD FIVE: They came from behind.

In small stakes Poker, there is always someone in pursuit. It's unavoidable. In one of poker's great paradoxes , this pursuit is necessary in order to be profitable; however, if the subject of pursuit cannot fend off straight draws, flush draws or the ultimate anal probe that is the low-pair on the board pairing-up, then he'll suffer a fate much worse than a bad actor in an X-Wing cockpit.

When you play 5-10H/E, there is no compensation for bad or no luck. It is impossible. No skill in the world can overcome it. Enter the argument professing how in the long run, the bad and good luck tie one another up. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Hard to know being so young and stupid. But here's something: What if long term episodes of bad luck extend past one's own lifetime? In poker, is there really such a thing as a large enough sample size of hands to gage the type of luck one might expect to have had and anticipate in a given lifespan? I don't know.

Long term eh? Well, how's this for another philosophical consideration:

What if you happen to miss the game in which someone does catch their flush card that fills your boat? What if you fold the winning small blind hand with which you would have earned back a portion of those bad beats you took? What if you go smoke that cigarette or choose to eat your Mongolian Beef at the precise time you would have cracked a 4-of-a-kind with your straight flush? What if posting your big and small blind instead of waiting for it would have scored a huge pot with 9-2off.

Long term assumes that you play ever second of every day. Long term is apathetic to where in position you get to be dealt your A-6off. Long term is disaffected by position, pot-odds and loose cannons. Numbers hold up eventually. I have no doubt. But not necessarily in accordance to when you are actually seated and in a given hand. Somehow there's a pervasive perpetuation of the idea that "long term" equates to "redemption of skill". The casinos, yielding their relentless rake on & offline will gladly support whatever system we've rationalized for ourselves, helping us along with asinine bonuses, free parking, free drinks, comped rooms -- anything to ease the belief in this fairy tale of a system with one ATM/FirePay withdrawal after another.

As I reflect enviously back at my bankroll which sat earlier this morning at $900, (now at $436), I can't help but think that without a sustained drip of good luck and a ferocious antidote from bad luck, I might as well be playing roulette.

Ignoring the echoes I hear from Gold Leader telling me to "loosen up", I use whatever's left of my senses, my faith in statistics, and my distaste for variance to "stay on target" and blow the shit out of that fucking exhaust port.