I returned from my Card Player Cruises poker vacation reasonably well rested, as 9 sea days out of two weeks allow your body clock to slow down nicely. I had lots of time to read, play, and ruminate.

One of my ruminations brought me back to my computer career days. When I started, I was heavily involved in computer design. I participated in the inception, design, development, build, and ship of several computers for three different companies. Afterwards, in perhaps not the greatest career move, I segued into computer engineering support management, where I supervised several departments that provided numerous services to design engineers.

(Poker coming up in a couple of more paragraphs. Hang in there.) After a while, I noticed something. The product groups, worked under severe time pressure. but eventually had an endpoint (generally when the product finally shipped). There were parties, celebrations, promotions, and rewards for the hard-working participants.

The support groups, however, were process oriented. They always had stuff in the inbox (from several projects at once) and never reached an endpoint. It was SSDD (same stuff, different day) no matter what program had reached completion, and who else was celebrating. Sure, the work of our groups had contributed materially to the success of every one of the shipping products, but, because no one was specifically identified with any, the parties and so on largely eluded them.

So what does this have to do with poker? (Remember, plenty of time to ruminate here.) Consider the difference between tournaments and cash games. Tournaments are analogous to product (or line) groups. Players work under severe time pressure to achieve a specific short-term goal, which, if they achieve, is followed by parties and sometimes other rewards.

Cash games are far more like support tasks. Every minute or so, there is a new hand in the inbox to be processed. No end. No celebration point. No huge reward.

In industry, people in line jobs are often inspired and committed. They will kill themselves to meet the deadline, because A - there is a deadline, and B - the rewards are great for meeting it. Support people tend to become complacent. No matter what happens, no matter who else’s deadline they are being pushed to meet, they know that in the end, there will just be more of the same work tomorrow.

Tournament players understand what is at stake. They can see the prize in front of them. Cash game players, unless terrifically self-motivated, can easily fall into a form of ennui, where they just go through he motions, play formulaically, and do not pay much attention. There is no set amount to be won, they never get knocked out and forced to rethink their strategy, errors are frequently invisible.

Consider, for example, a bluff you did not make that would have won. You miss a cue, never know that, and fold. You think you played fine, but a more observant or committed player in your spot might make a different play and win.

To counter this, you need to do two things. One, and most important, establish and celebrate some goals, even if they are fake ones. If you win a set amount per hour over six months, arrange a special reward. If you make some particularly good plays, have nice dinner with someone special. You can invent your own, but you get the idea. You must find a way to give the monotonous “here comes another hand” cash game syndrome some extra meaning.

Two, change something up. Play a different game, a different limit, a different club, a different time. Oh, taking a poker cruise might be just the thing. And it will give you plenty of time to think of weird stuff, too