I'm a wuss.

Clearly, I'm a wuss. Why? Because I'm considering ditching my self-inflicted Betway challenge. For two good reasons. Maybe three. We'll see if I come up with a third one after I write about the two big ones.

1. I'm not a professional poker player. I'm a recreational poker player who likes making a little bit of extra money off of poker. I work full time and I have quite a few other social activities that I like to keep outside of poker. Setting a goal of playing a large volume of hands has effectively made me feel stressed whenever I'm not playing poker and the whole point with being a recreational poker player is that I'm supposed to be able to not play poker at all and not even think about it, and this has certainly not been the case in the last week. See, I'm a bit obsessive about efficiency. I get restless when just sitting about doing nothing. If I'm at an airport, I get very very bothered by not having a book to read, because I feel like hours of my life are just draining away and I'm not spending them wisely. If we're watching a TV show and there's a commercial break I start to look around the room for stuff to do. Like watering plants. Maybe tidying up a bit. Or playing with the cat. Or anything. Because even a few minutes not spent doing something means I'm wasting my life.

That's the kind of mentality my poor wife has to live with.

So, throw an artificial goal of playing "as many hands of poker as possible in the next three months" into the mix, and you have a very stressed individual. Every time I'm at home and technically have some spare time, I feel like I have to play poker. Yes, have to. Not a healthy attitude. Not a social attitude.

Not a good attitude.

And it's self-inflicted, and I knew it would be this way. I knew this, because I essentially made the same mistake last year when I was going for Supernova status at Stars. And it's dumb, dumb, dumb. Like, really dumb.

So, to sum up reason #1: The way my brain works means that taking on any task that makes my time efficiency obsession go into manic Gremlin mode is a bad idea.

2. Game selection isn't that great at Betway.

It's just that easy. I play chiefly $100NL, and some $200NL when I find good tables. And while there's no doubt that there are bad players at Betway, and I believe I have an edge on most of my opponents and can mostly avoid the ones I don't have an edge on, the truth of it is that there are better games on other sites. There are typically 6 $200NL games going, usually with 4-5 people in line, and most of them are regulars of varying skill. And even if I have an edge on a regular player, I'd rather play someone clueless.

I've yet to make a definitive decision, but I've taken a poker timeout for two days now (and I won't play tonight either because of a party that my company is throwing) and I guess I'll see how I feel about it after that. No matter what happens, I've cleared $1,000 of the deposit bonus, so there's always that boon.

I want to take this opportunity to reiterate what I've said many times before: Thank god I'm not an online pro.

That is all.

PS.
Reason #3: I don't like their software. It's not "bad" per se, it just doesn't stand up to Stars. Why can't all sites be like Stars? *cries a bitter tear*