Good News and Bad News

I feel like most of my posts have been bad news lately so that's what I'll start with. I'm continuing to struggle and the more and more time that goes by without any progress in the winning department the more I'm starting to panic. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I'm sure it doesn't help that my confidence is approaching an all time low.

Taking emotion out of the picture is critical for playing your best and I'm doing a terrible job of controlling mine. Every time something significantly bad happens to me I'm getting upset and believe me, you can't play a few thousand hands a day without a boatload of bad stuff happening.

I tried shifting gears a little today and played a combination of about a dozen SNG's and multitable tournaments in addition to some cash games. I lost at everything.

I think the stress of these past few weeks along with the anticipation of having a baby any day now is really catching up with me. I'm starting to feel tense all the time. I've been pretty good about exercising and I think that's helping a little, but I'm really just not feeling great.

Now for the good news which requires a little background! One of the major effects of the anti gambling legislation from last September was the end of Neteller in the US. Neteller was the main intermediary between the banks and the gambling websites. With Neteller not only could you move money from your bank to the websites and vice versa electronically, but it also made it easy to move money between various websites. Also once you had your bank account verified you could make instant (I'm talking 60 seconds) deposits to any and every gambling website, even if you'd never used that site before. To my recollection in 2006 they processed over 5 billion dollars in transactions, 80% of which were for US customers.

Even though the law passed in September of 2006, the shit didn't hit the fan until January of this year. Pending legal action against the top Neteller executives (who had been charged with money laundering) somehow the US government froze most of their assets even though they are an international company. With no warning the company instantly stopped serving US customers and put all deposits, withdrawals, and transfers on hold indefinitely.

I had about $3,700 in my Neteller account when all of this happened. At the time I wasn't upset or worried at all, because they weren't really forthcoming about what was going on. I knew they fired about 3/4 of their workforce in one day so I figured there was going to be some delay in the processing. As the days turned into weeks I sent a few e-mails and basically got the reply that they still had my money and didn't know how long it was going to be before I got it. As the weeks turned into months I pretty much forgot about that money and figured if I ever got it back I'd be happy, but if I didn't it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Today, seemingly out of nowhere, I got the following e-mail:

The NETELLER Plc Group has announced that the distribution of funds to its US members will begin on July 30, 2007.

You are receiving this e-mail because our records reflect that you are a US member who may request funds from NETELLER. As of July 30, you will be able to make a request for funds on NETELLER’s website by signing in to your account. In the meantime, you should visit our online FAQs for more information about the distribution plan.

Please note that US members will not be able to request funds from the NETELLER website after January 26.

I caught this e-mail about 60 seconds after it had been sent and figuring that everyone and their mother would soon be logging on to their account to request their money I instantly signed on (luckily I knew where I'd written my log in info - you need a 12 digit account number, a 6 digit ID, and a password to log in so there was no way I could have remembered it) and requested my withdrawal. I'm hoping that they're going to process the requests in the order that they were received.

I got a little conflicting info on how long it will be before I actually get my money. At one point they said three business days, but they also said they'd be sending 94 million dollars to an untold number of US customers and there might be delays. Regardless it looks like I've got $3,700 coming to me in the next week or two. The timing couldn't be better!

I think I'm going to take a few days off. I just feel totally lost at the tables and I'm hoping a short break will allow me to cool off a little and somehow straighten myself out.

Good News for Online Poker

Usually I like to write about whatever topic I've come up with for my entry and then tell you about my recent results. Today I'm going to lead with results. I finally had a reasonable winning day and picked up a little over $600 over the course of 2,500 hands. Normally this would be nothing more than a par for the course win, but since I've really had my ass handed to me over the past few weeks, it felt a little sweeter.

Now on to the good news for online poker. I'd read here and there recently that there were a few bills in the house having to do with online poker. More specifically, having to do with licensing and regulating online poker so it would be legal to own and operate a poker site based in the U.S. I didn't know too much about them, other than the fact that the first was introduced in April and that no matter what they said they were a potential massive blessing for all of Huffland.

Today I got an e-mail from 2004 World Champion Greg Raymer (actually it was from Pokerstars, but it had his name on it) which said the following:

I am writing to you on behalf of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) because we need your help. Congress is currently considering a bill which would clarify the legality of online poker in the United States by creating a regulatory and licensing framework. Please join me in supporting the "Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act".

The early support of many Congressional Representatives is crucial to the success of this bill. Please call your Representative Fortney Stark today in his Washington, D.C office 202-225-5065. Ask him to cosponsor H.R. 2046 before the August Congressional recess.

Your support is vital. Please take a moment and call today. If you wish to read more about this bill, or to get more information about the Poker Players Alliance, please visit www.pokerplayersalliance.org Thank you for your time, and your support of poker in the United States.

Sincerely,

Greg Raymer PPA Board of Directors WSOP 2004 World Champion and Member of Team PokerStars

I also got a similar e-mail from someone at full tilt and I wouldn't be surprised if I get a few more from other websites. The best news is that there's a chance that the bill could be making it's way through congress before the August recess!!! I thought it would be closer to a year before anything at all would happen so this is great news.

More good news is that the Poker Players Alliance is gaining strength everyday. About a year ago there were fewer than 100,000 members and currently there are over 615,000. I'm hoping that this group (of which I am a member) is going to become a significant lobbying force (former senator Al D'Amato is the chairman).

If you're interested in doing me a favor you can go to the PPA website and right in the middle they have a button you can click on to write your congressperson. If you click on it you'll find three links: one for each of two house resolutions and one where you can thank your congressperson for protecting your rights. Click on one or both of the links regarding the HR's and it will prompt you to enter your zip code so they can have the letter sent to your specific congressperson. Once you enter your zip code you can read over the letter that will be sent in your name, enter your address and e-mail and through the magic of the internet this message will zip off to a congressperson who represents you! For those of you without scruples (Cough, Brain Ridgeway, Cough) you might want to see about sending a pie or some other kind of bribe to add a little weight to your message.

I'm not sure what impact this might have, but it couldn't hurt and if you're anything but a total dunce (Cough, Ridgeway, Cough) it should take you about 3 minutes. I've heard in the past that for every letter that Time magazine gets they assume that 10,000 people have the same thoughts as the letter writer. Of course an electronically generated form letter is going to have about 1% of the impact of a snail mail letter, but I figured I'd ask for your help anyway.

Why would it be such a big deal for there to be fully licensed, legal and regulated poker in the US, you ask? Well let me tell you. First and foremost it would pump literally BILLIONS of dollars into play. The vast majority of people aren't willing to trust a company based in some country they've barely heard of with their money. They think (correctly) that if they website wanted to screw them over and take their money they'd have no recourse. If all of a sudden the MGM corporation opens a poker site they know that their money is safe.

Maybe more importantly the websites could advertise and tell people how awesome it is to be able to play poker in their own home for any amount of money from pennies to hundreds of thousands of dollars 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year.

The number of new players will skyrocket. People love to gamble, they love to compete and they love to think that they are better than other people at something that matters. Online poker gives people the chance to do all of those things. Of course all of these new players, no matter how smart or how good they think they are, will have 7 years less experience than I do. It will be like a bunch of dudes with swords charging at me when I'm holding one of those machine guns with the six spinning barrels that former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura used in Predator and current California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used in Terminator 2.

Another benefit will be increased competition between the poker sites. Right now there are only a few big websites and while they have some level of competition it's not anything close to what we'd see if the American floodgates opened. Dozens of websites would offer crazy promotions as they clawed for market share and I would take advantage of all of them.

At a minimum it would be worth an extra $5,000 a month to me for these bills to go through congress. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

Still Struggling

Yesterday I was determined to have a winning day. I dropped down a limit where playing for half the stakes I was hoping to run over the weaker players. I lost a few significant hands as soon as I sat down and spent the entire day playing from behind. Normally in a full day I try to play 3,000 hands. When that mark came and I found myself losing about $100 I decided to keep playing to try to book any kind of win. Around hand 4200 I found myself ahead $7 (yep, seven dollars) and I was prepared to quit. But I got a few good hands which I had to play right after. I lost them as well as a few others and by the time hand 4500 rolled around I was behind about $300 with nothing left in the tank. At that point I'd been playing a new hand (which might require a half dozen decisions or more) every 8.8 seconds for 11 hours (It actually took 12 hours because I took an hour for lunch). That's a real mental workout.

4,500 hands is a ton of hands. To put it in perspective, imagine that you had a fairly serious home game with your friends. Every Saturday you get together and play for 5 hours and since you're all paying attention, but you don't have a professional dealer it takes 3 minutes on average to play each hand. Remember someone has to shuffle and deal the cards every time in addition to playing out the hand. In this scenario you're looking at 20 hands an hour (if you played like they do on TV or in the movies it would be more like 10 hands an hour). If you never missed a Saturday (or a hand) it would take you more than 10 months to play 4,500 hands.

In the main event of the WSOP the winner of the main event played around 3,000 hands by my estimation after a week and a half of starting at noon and going until after 2 am on a daily basis.

The point is 4,500 hands is a long time in the poker world and as someone who had been a poker pro for 4 years now, I should be able to beat a bunch of second rate players over the course of 4,500 hands with any run of cards that isn't totally fucked. With the exception of maybe the first or second time I ever lost $300 in a day (6+ years ago), this was the most disappointing $300 loss I can remember. Even though it wasn't a major amount of money it still felt like a crushing defeat.

I played at the lower limit again today and after about 2,500 hands I managed to win $17. The good news is at least I broke my losing streak. The bad news is at that rate it's going to take me 82 days (with no days off) to get back what I lost in the preceding two days.

Actually the best news is that one of my strengths in bounce back. While I might be really feeling it after a big loss (or a string of losses), by the next morning I'm almost always back in a good frame of mind. That's probably because despite any complaining I might do about bad luck I have about as good a life and any reasonable person could ever hope for.

What It's Like

Imagine that you have a normal office job (this won't be so hard for some of you). You like your job and you feel like you do it pretty well (this will be more of a stretch for a few of you :). When you show your boss (Mr. Bossy) your work he tells you what a great job you've been doing. You are proud of your work.

Then one day you come into work and for no reason at all things have drastically changed. You feel like your work is the same, but when you show it to your boss he tells you it's crap. You are surprised, but are willing to accept that maybe you had an off day. So you work harder. But, still your Mr. Bossy isn't happy at all with your work. You try even harder, but if anything the results are even worse. To add insult to injury you notice that one of your coworkers Mick Moron who you were sure would be fired any day is getting loads of praise from Mr. Bossy. The company is going to give him a big raise and a promotion even though you know for a fact that your work is much better than his.

"Well," you think. "This is hard to put up with, but at least I'm still getting paid." WRONG! When you look at your check you discover that the company claims they've over paid you so not only are you not getting paid for the past two weeks, you now owe them $5,000! It sure seems like it would be hard to go back to work the next day when you have no idea if it's going to be fine and you're going to get paid or if it's going to be miserable and it's going to cost you even more.

In March 2006 I lost just over $11,000. I had one day where I actually won $10,000 and somehow I lost $21,000 over the other 30 days. That was by far the worst run of my poker career and certainly not a month I'd like to relive. These past two weeks have been the second worst run of my career. I sat down today after taking a few days off to try to regroup, feeling like I'd be fine with a break even day. Instead I lost $1,100. I can't remember the last time I was this frustrated.

A Comment Response

My friend Mike left an interesting comment after my last post which read:

Hey Dave,

I think you probably know more about this than I do, but I'm pretty sure that it's statistically valid for "luck" to clump into cycles. Regardless of skill I think it would be impossible for any professional to play full time without slipping into the occasional slump. Even the top players in the world.

So, hopefully you can stay focused on your long term results. As long as you are able to reach your overall goals, I assume it's part of any up and down profession to save up during the feast and draw on that during the famine.

In the meantime, I wonder if any pros consider it a good idea to switch gears a little during apparent downturns? Maybe play some limit so that bad beats aren't so costly? Or play some tournaments which limit your risk to a fixed amount while offering you better payoffs for hitting? Maybe not big MTTs but a two or three table SnG? Even just for a day or two to break the rhythm a little, to a layman like me it seems worth considering. Is there a prevailing wisdom about that?

It's certainly true that every poker pro goes into slumps and part of the job is peaks and valleys. What's interesting is the people who we think of as "The best players in the world" have enormous swings in their fortunes because they're playing big multi table tournaments. These guys will probably have 9 or 10 losing months every year, but their wining months in most years will be so big that they more than make up for all the losing. I've had 3 losing months in my 48 as a poker pro and all of them have come on the heals of some major winning months. In every case I took some extra chances and more drastic risks in an effort to hit it big and it ended up costing me. I don't feel the least bit bad about it though, because part of improving is testing your limits.

As far as feast and famine goes, I feel like I've done a good, but not great job of putting away my winnings for a rainy day. It's hard to not spend a little more when you've been winning like crazy because it feels like it's going to continue that way forever. But I have been smart enough to never make any major purchases just because I had a big win (with the exception of my wife's engagement ring).

As far as switching gears goes, I think whenever you've been losing it's important to go back to whatever it is that you do best. I'm sure some people would wonder why wouldn't a pro always play what he was best at. The issue there is, the form of poker that's makes you the most money isn't always the one that's the most fun. The problem I'm having is I'm not sure what my best bet is anymore. I used to think it was SNG's, but my results over my last few thousand SNG's aren't great. On the other hand my NL cash game numbers over the past 4 months are very good, but I just can't seem to make it work lately. I can say for sure that I need to avoid the fluctuations with multi table tournaments (even though that's what I enjoy the most) and I have no business playing limit cash games for any serious amount of money online.

What's interesting is other good players go through phases where they play different games at different limits as well. If other pros decide that they're going to play 8-10 $2/$4 blind NL cash games every day at the same times as me for a month, even though I'll end up playing against well over a hundred opponents every day, having those two or three guys in all of my games (you can't dodge them if they're in every game!) can severely impact my bottom line. On the other hand if they all decide for whatever reason to all of a sudden start playing tournaments or bigger or smaller games, instantly my expectation goes up.

I decided to take today off to relax and regroup. Happily, since I've had a few nice months recently the immediate reserves we're topped off so even if I break even or lose a little bit for the rest of the month we won't have to dip in the major back up reserves which are all in the stock market.

Totally Stalled

I won about $200 yesterday, but I managed to lose $500 today. I was ahead $300 when I took my lunch break (about 2/3 of the way through my work day) and feeling like I'd turned the corner and was back on track. Then I came back and all of a sudden I couldn't win a hand. At one point I had $400 evaporate in the span of literally 45 seconds when I lost three significant hands on three different tables simultaneously. On one of them I was an 11 to 1 favorite when all the money when in on the turn, in another I was a 5 to 1 favorite on the flop and on the third there was only one card in the deck that would complete my flush draw and make my opponent a full house and that's the one that came on the river (if any other card comes at least I wouldn't lose all my chips and there were 8 that would have made me a winner).

It sounds like terrible luck, and it is, but at this point I'm starting to think that I'm doing something horribly wrong. I just can't seem to win. Like I mentioned in my previous post it makes no sense! I've been winning steadily since the middle of March when I switched to cash games, but for some reason I just can't make it happen lately. I'm trying to have a good attitude and tell myself that it's going to turn around. But after ten days of punishment it's hard to feel anything but frustrated and upset.

I'm sure part of the problem is I'm losing my composure much more quickly than I normally would. I do my best to not let it impact my play and for the most part I feel like I'm doing a good job, but there's no doubt that my emotions are not helping. Another downside is it sucks to end my workday feeling really pissed.

My goal tomorrow is to win $1. We'll start with that and see what happens.

One Step Forward, two steps back

In the immortal words of Will Ferrel in the movie Zoolander, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" After winning $5,300 in the first 9 days of July without a losing day, all of a sudden I'm getting smoked every time I pick up the mouse. In the last 8 days I've dropped $3,300 playing the same way in the same games. It makes no sense!

The only explanation I have is I'm in the midst of a massive run of bad luck. Either that or on July 10th someone stole my brain and replaced it with a bowl of oatmeal. What I could really use (in addition to a stiff drink) is a total no brainer good day tomorrow. A day where I'm faced with almost no tough decisions, my cards are so good that I couldn't possibly screw it up and my opponents do a bunch of stupid shit that works to my advantage. I've had plenty of days like that in my career and what I really want is one of those days tomorrow. Not the next day, not on Saturday, but tomorrow! Because I'm getting really frustrated and not only is this bad run getting expensive, but it also makes working a miserable chore.

The World Championship of Onine Poker (WCOOP)

The WCOOP is the largest and most prestigious set of poker tournaments in online poker. Much like the WSOP the, WCOOP grows a little bit every year. When they started running the WCOOP in 2002 there were only a handful of events and first place in the main event was only $65,000. Two years ago, the first year that I played, there were 15 events and last year there were 18 with a main event first prize of over $600,000. This year there will be 23 tournaments (starting on September 14th) with buy ins ranging from $215 on up to $5,200. Here is a link to the full schedule of events.

I'm not sure how much I'm going to invest in this years WCOOP or how many events I'm going to play. Some of it will depend on how my results are between now and the middle of September and we'll have to see how having a new baby around impacts our finances. If someone dropped $100,000 in my lap right now, I'd play 15 events with buy ins totaling about $8,000. If I don't have anyone investing, I'll probably play 7 events with buy ins totaling around $2,000.

I expect that other people will have some interest in betting on me, even though I haven't exactly brought home the bacon for my backers in the past. Since I'm interested in playing as many events as possible, I'll gladly except backing from anyone for pretty much any amount. If you're someone out there like Tom (Hey Tom) and you want to take a $100 shot so that reading this blog is more interesting for a few weeks in September, send me an e-mail (wesdave1279@yahoo.com) and you can join the team of people with financial interest my 2007 WCOOP.

Unlike the WSOP where I've pretty much gotten my ass handed to me, I've done pretty well in the WCOOP in the past. I've made the money in about 20% of the events I've entered and I've had a few where I was knocking on the door of the big money when I got eliminated. It's important for my long term career to keep trying with these big tournaments and if I keep trying eventually I'll have another really big hit like I did in August 2005. It would also be nice to win some money for the poor saps who've been striking out along with me for the past few sets of big tournaments. I'll have more on the WCOOP and my plan when the time gets a little closer.

Thinking Long Term

I am terrible at thinking long term. When I'm having a losing day (or sometimes even a losing hour) it gives me almost no comfort to think back on all the success I've had in the past and all the money I've won in my lifetime. I want to win now and as soon as the dollars hit my account I feel like that's where they should stay. Lately, I've been avoiding looking at my account balance as I play during the day so while I usually have a sense of how I've been doing, I don't know exactly how much I'm winning or losing. This seems to keep me in a better frame of mind and stops me from sweating every dollar. Even though I know I shouldn't look, it's almost impossible to stave off curiosity for more than a few hours.

Today, I had a somewhat shocking and perplexing day. After starting the month off with 7 straight good winning days (and two days off), I had my worst day of the year today. Where the hell did this run of terrible luck come from? I don't feel like I played any different today although I'm sure I made my share of mistakes. For the most part it just seemed like every time I made a good hand, someone else made a great one. Unfortunately, making big lay downs isn't one of my strengths and I really got punished my making second best hands.

At the start of July if you told me I'd be winning as much as I am for the month at this point, I gladly would have taken it. But, since I had so much more 8 hours ago it really doesn't make me feel much better to think about the fact that I'm still having a very good month so far. It's critical that I book a win tomorrow even if it's a small one otherwise my morale is going to start suffering and when that happens it becomes really difficult to play all day and play well. It seems like whenever I go into a day thinking that I lose 2 or 3 big hands in the first 10 minutes of my day. Hopefully, tomorrow will be the start of new streak.

This and That

One of the things that sucks about my job is I don't get holidays off. I read an article in the paper the other day that said that most people in France get 20 f-ing holidays a year on top of whatever other vacation they get. Lucky bastards! With the exception of the major holidays, I usually discover that I'm in the midst of a holiday at 1:00 p.m. when I check to see how our stocks did and I see that the market was closed.

Today it took me a few minutes to figure out why there were twice as many games running as there would be on a normal Wednesday. Of course, almost everyone was home from work and what better way to kill some time than with a little online poker. I've learned over the past few years that the 4th of July is one of the days when the total nut balls come flying out of the wood work. With the exception of the day after Thanksgiving, you'll find more people who don't have a clue what the hell they are doing playing poker on the 4th. While it makes the games a little better, it also makes them more volatile and a little more stressful. At the very least I hope the other regular players got their bankrolls beefed up today with a bit of extra dough so they can slowly lose it back to me in the coming weeks.

In online poker ban news, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a huge article that took up 3/4 of the front of the technology section a few days ago. What was great about it was based on how the article read it seemed like the paper was in favor of fully legal online gambling and that anyone who opposed it was a freedom hating idiot. It wasn't until close to the end of the article that they even mentioned the reasoning behind the ban and they did it in a lackluster way. I've discovered that the most recent rallying cry of the Poker Players Alliance as other opponents of the ban as well as the congressmen who've written bills to repeal the ban is "Adult Americans should be able to spend their money however they want." Makes perfect sense to me. Apparently the first bill (I think there are actually a few) to repeal the ban and make online poker totally legal and regulated in the U.S. was submitted in April and is in committee , but there wasn't any mention of when the house will vote on it.

I don't want to get too riled up and go on and on, but I will mention one more thing about the ban. One of the main things that the opponents of online poker say over and over is that young people are the real victims. They're damaging their financial future and losing what little money they have gambling and the government needs to save them. I've read this a few places and I always think that credit cards are 10 times worse than gambling. How many people do you know who've lost any significant amount of money gambling? Probably not too many. Now how many people do you know (especially young people) who have bought a ton of shit they can't afford using their credit card and spent thousands of dollars on interest in the following years? Almost everyone falls into that trap at some point, but I don't see the government trying to save us all from ourselves by making it hard to get a credit card.

Now that I have my little rant out of the way I can tell you I actually had a pretty nice day today winning just under $500. What makes it all the sweeter is I was losing over $700 at one point early in the day. So far July is looking nice.

A Strong Poker Day

The system I've been using over the past few months is pretty simple. I've made a few adjustments here and there and found that my best bet seems to be playing in $2/$4 blinds games, buying in for $125 (the max buy in is $400 and that's what the majority of the other players do), and leaving if I get my stack up over $200. There are usually 10-15 games running at the $2/$4 limit and after being out of a game for 30 minutes you can rejoin a game you've already played in and buy in for any amount (If you wand to return earlier than 30 minutes you're forced to buy in for at least the amount you left with).

Normally there are plenty of games going, but to make sure I don't end up on a waiting list for a game I've just been in I make a note on my dry erase board of the time and the table name every time I leave a game. Usually I've got two or three names on my board and sometimes if things are going really well I'll have 4 or 5 tables that I've left within 30 minutes. Today I looked over at my board during a crazy hot stretch and saw that I'd left TEN tables in a twenty minute span and even more amazingly I had at least $250 in all of them when I got up.

When I stopped for lunch today I'd played 1,800 hands and I was up about $50. I played another 1,200 hands and finished the day ahead $1,700. It was a sweet run and a great day overall. Also if you look at the post below you can read an article I wrote for Cardschat.com (it's not up yet) which explains a little more of the logic behind buying in short.

How Much Should I Buy in for in a No Limit Cash Game?

The vast majority of online no limit cash games have a maximum buy in, a minimum buy in and what amounts to a suggested buy in. When you sit down there are usually two check boxes: one that conveniently allows you to buy in for the maximum (usually 100 times the big blind) and one where you can type in another amount. The “other amount” area usually has a number that’s equal to 60 big blinds pre-entered which the websites have put in as a suggested amount that you buy in for. Of course if you try to buy in for a minuscule amount you’ll be kindly informed that you are below the minimum which is almost always 20 times the big blind.

So which amount is right and additionally should you leave if you hit a certain amount? The answer is the same as the answer to many other poker questions; it depends. Some players will have the best results buying in for the maximum and others will have better results buying in for less. Some players should hit the road when they reach a certain amount and others should never get up because they’ve accumulated a given number of chips. The important part is to do some critical thinking about what your strengths and weaknesses are and decide what works best for you.

Conventional wisdom says that you should buy in for the maximum and accumulate as many chips as you can in an effort to have every other player covered. The thinking here is that when you get that big hand that you’ve been dreaming about and someone else makes a slightly worse hand (or tries an ill-advised bluff) you’ll make the most you could possibly make. The main disadvantage is sometimes you’ll be the one with the second best hand that’s tough or impossible to fold and you’ll end up losing more than if you had fewer chips. The questions is, will there be more times that you double up or take an opponents entire stack than times that you lose all of your chips or allow an opponent to double up?

There are other advantages to having a huge pile of chips in front of you. While it’s nice to have people bluff at you when you’ve got a great hand, in general it’s easier to beat opponents who straightforwardly bet their good hands and check their weak ones. When you have a ton of chips your opponents will be less likely to bluff at you because they’ll think you can afford to call them down. On the other side of the coin, your bluffs will be more effective on earlier betting rounds because even if you’re betting relatively small amounts, your opponents know that in order to call you all the way down they might have to put in more chips than they want to. Frequently they’ll decide it’s not worth it and give up when they may have called you down if you had fewer chips.

Another strategy is to buy in for a smaller amount to limit your risk. In the old days before online poker, if you were winning you’d be stuck with whatever amount you had in front of you since you couldn’t take chips off the table. Now there are so many games that if you want to, you can leave one game if you’re ahead and immediately buy into another for a lesser amount. For example, if you decide that it makes sense for you to always have between 40 and 70 big blinds, you can buy in for 40 and if you find yourself with more than 70 you can leave that game and buy into another for 40. The main advantage of this strategy is limiting your fluctuations. No one terrible hand is going to wipe out an entire great day’s worth of profit or put you in a huge hole.

Of course there are other advantages for buying in small. You’ll find that it’s easier to get paid off on your good hands. Since your opponents will know they’re only liable for the amount you have in front of you, often times they’ll take ill-advised risks. Furthermore, many players have the perception that if you haven’t bought in for the maximum then you must be a weak player. Anytime your opponents have misconceptions about your abilities, it works to your advantage. It can be less stressful when you have less on the line and it can make those small pots and blind steals seem more significant.

Deciding how much to buy in for requires that you look at your strengths and weaknesses. If one of your strengths is making big lay downs, then having more chips is less dangerous than if you’re a player who’s never folded top pair in your life. Maybe chopping out a bunch of small pots with well timed bluffs is what you do best. In that case there’s no reason to open yourself up to more risk by having a big stack. If you go on tilt every time you lose a huge pot, you’ll be better off having fewer chips and keeping the pots smaller. While half the players in every game think they’re the best player in the game, actually being the best player in the game means you’ll be better off with more chips. Another factor in this decision is the size of your bankroll in relation to what size games you find interesting. You can play in bigger games with a smaller bankroll if you buy in small.

If you buy in for the maximum is it still possible to have so many chips that you should get up? Sure it is. Most players have a range in which they feel comfortable. Maybe that range is 100 to 200 times the big blind for you or maybe it’s anything up to 500 times the big blind. When you start playing hands differently than you would strictly because you’re worried about losing all of the chips in front of you than it’s best to get up and jump into another game for a lesser amount. For example, if you’ve decided that raising to 3 times the big blind when you’re first in with pocket aces is the best way to play them and all of a sudden you decide to open raise to 6 times the big blind because you’re worried about taking a bad beat, you’ve got a problem. You don’t want to give up equity because having so many chips is making you nervous.

When you look at a typical online no limit game you’ll find that most players buy in for the maximum, but many of them would be better off buying in for less. Don’t let your ego get the best of you and buy in for more than the optimal amount just because you feel like you have to. On the other hand, if you’re used to buying in for less, maybe you’d be better off buying in for the maximum. The important thing is to think about why you’re buying in for the amount you do. If you’re not sure how much is right for you (and probably even if think you’re sure) try experimenting with various amounts and let your results dictate what you should do in the future.

June Recap and July Goals

June turned out to be a pretty good month. I effectively won the same amount that I did in May (which was my best month so far this year) but I took the first 5 days off for my trip to the WSOP and another 3 days for our baby shower weekend extravaganza. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that making the same amount of money while working 3/4 the time is a good thing. I ended up falling a little short of my goals, but ended up playing about 45,000 hands for the month.

In July, I'll once again try to hit 60,000 hands in a month. My wife Jen and I are due to have our first baby on August 2nd so there's a fair chance that I'll get derailed by an early baby arrival. If the baby comes in early August I should be able to hit my target without too much trouble. I'm a little disappointed in myself that I can't seem to quite hit the hand goals that I've been setting for myself, but I'm pleased that I've been doing better than I thought I might be able to do in terms of dollars per hand. Hopefully I can continue to improve on both an knock out a $10,000 month.

Hours Not Results

I had a strong day today. I played over 3,500 hands (a ton for one day) and won back about 80% of the money I lost on Saturday. Here's another article that I wrote for Cardschat.com. For those of you who were there you'll realize that the events that I talk about didn't really go down how I described and are rather a combination of my first trip to the Oaks and my first trip to Cache Creek.

When to Stay and When to Leave

I clearly remember the first time I played poker in a casino. I was 20 years old and I was heading to an Indian casino to play $3/$6 limit hold ‘em when my regular game was a 20 cent/ 40 cent game with my buddies. I made the trip with my first poker mentor who was my friend’s boss. His normal game was $15/$30 or $30/$60 and as we walked in the door he asked me, “Are you going to play until you win or lose a certain amount or are you going to play for a given amount of time?” I was so terrified and excited by the anticipation of playing in such a “big game” that I really didn’t have any clue what to say. But after a minute I replied, “If I get to the point where I’m ahead $100 I think I’ll get up.” To my credit $100 would have increased my bankroll by 50%, but I was still making a mistake that many players make. You want to play hours, not results.

We’ve all been guilty of using the “hit and run” or “stop win” strategy. After jumping into a game and picking up a few quick pots it can be tempting to lock up that profit and go do something else, but there are a few reasons why you should keep playing. The first and most important reason is that it’s much easier to play your best when you’re winning. Generally you’ll be more patient, more confident, and probably be having more fun. No one is 100% tilt proof and most of us have some significant trouble keeping our emotions in check. It’s much, much easier to stay on track when you’re ahead as opposed to behind.

Furthermore, winning is a sign that you’re in a game you can beat. Of course if you’ve just sat down and made two full houses and a flush in the first five hands then who knows. But if you’ve been playing for two or three hours and have significantly more than you started with then it’s more likely that you’re in a good game than a tough game.

On the other hand, if you’re losing, it’s easy to convince yourself that it’s okay to make plays that you know deep down are losing plays. When you’re losing it’s harder to stay patient, losing is never fun, and you might be in a game that you have little chance of beating.

The same players who tend to hit and run don’t like to call it quits when they’re losing. We’ve all thought to ourselves, “If I could just get even I’d leave this game in a second,” but you don’t want to play for hours and hours longer than you’d planned in a quest to get even for that one session.

The best thing to do is decide about how long you want to play and play for about that long. You don’t need to say “I’m going to play for exactly 8 hours today” and quit the second those 8 hours are up. But if that’s your plan you shouldn’t leave after 4 hours or shouldn’t stay for 12.

Of course, there are a few exceptions. The first one is while you don’t want to set a limit on your wins, setting a limit on your losses can be a good idea. My personal threshold when I’m playing limit hold’em is 50 big bets. While it’s very rare that I find myself down that much, when it happens I know that I won’t be in a state of mind to play my best and I’m better off calling it a day. If you’re more tilt prone, 35 big bets might be a better guideline. The key is that you don’t want to bury yourself so much in one session that it takes you several great winning sessions to dig yourself out.

Another exception is when you’ve been on an extended losing streak. No matter how skilled, every player runs into some significant losing streaks and sometimes it feels like you can’t win no matter what you do. If you’ve been getting killed for a string of sessions in a row, sometimes it can help your state of mind to book a win.

You might also push the limits of how long you’re willing to stay if you are in a fantastic game. If you’re just about to leave and all of a sudden one of the worst players in town sits down with two of his equally skilled friends, they all order a shot of tequila and tell you about how they just hit it big betting on a horse race then it’s time to call home and say you won’t be back for a while. On the other hand if you feel irritable, you have something on your mind, or you just can’t play your best for whatever reason, then leaving early should be something to consider.

While there are a few exceptions, your best bet is playing hours not results. It would be great if we could only play when we’re ahead, but playing while you’re behind is part of the game. Don’t sell yourself short and leave a good situation too early and don’t bury yourself with such a big loss that it takes you weeks to recover.

What happened to me in my first trip to play $3/$6? It turned out the decision on when to leave was easy. When I ran out of chips and opened my wallet only to discover there wasn’t any money left, they wouldn’t let me play anymore. :)

Playing for a living

I've written a few more articles that I've gotten paid for over the past couple months. Rather than give you a link I figured I'd just cut and paste so anyone who happens who searches for key words on Google or Yahoo will find their way to my blog. I'm going to try to put one up every day this week since I've gotten at least 5 more published online and I haven't included anything about them. Here is the first which might be the best.

10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Going Pro

Almost everyone who has played poker seriously and doesn’t love their job has at least thought about playing for a living. For me, it was the best decision I ever made. For other players attempting to play for a living is detrimental. If you’re thinking about going pro there are 10 key questions to ask yourself:

How thick is my bankroll?

What are my expenses?

How easy would it be to return to my old job?

Do I have a strong support system in place?

What are the consequences of failure?

How much data do I have about my past results?

Is playing for a living going to have a negative impact on my health or social life?

Can I handle the pressure?

Am I ready to write the IRS a check every three months?

How much do I love to play?

How thick is my bankroll?

Debate is always raging about how much money you need to play at a given level without a significant risk of going broke. While most casual players completely ignore bankroll requirements, if you’re going to play for a living you need to have enough money in reserve to ride out the short term fluctuations. In my opinion a solid bankroll for limit hold’em is about 300 big bets, for NL hold’em about 5,000 big blinds, for SNGs it’s about 100 buy-ins, and for multi-table tournaments it’s around 250 buy-ins. Of course having more is always better than having less. The most important thing is to have enough money so you feel comfortable and don’t feel like you’re in danger of going broke.

What are my expenses?

This question can be a little tricky. When most people are working out a budget, they have a tendency to include only the bear minimum. It’s important that you make a realistic list of your monthly expenses that includes some margin for unexpected events and splurging. Remember this is your life we’re talking about here. You’re still going to want to buy new things and go out and have fun. You’re still going to buy birthday gifts and holiday presents and take vacations. You might also have to pay for private health insurance. If you’re living on cold cereal and don’t have an extra ten bucks to go to the movies you’ll be better off with a traditional job. A good way to come up with an assessment is to look back at your bank statements and credit card bills (I know you won’t have them, but if you call your bank and credit card company or go online you should be able to get those records easily) and find out how much you actually spent in the past 6 months or year. Use that number as a baseline.

How easy would it be to return to my old job?

If your boss is one of your best friends and you expect she’ll say “you’ll always have a job here” as she wipes away a tear and hugs you as you leave on your last day of work, you can stretch it a little more on some of the other 9 questions. On the other hand, if you know your boss is going to kick you in the butt and say “you’ll never work in this town again!” as you leave, you better be sure you’re going to make it as a poker player. Everyone has some sense about how marketable their job skill set is, and if it’s going to be hard for you to find another job as good as the one you have, then you should be much more cautious before quitting.

Do I have a strong support system in place?

Part of playing poker is having losing sessions. Sometimes when those losing sessions get strung together it can very difficult emotionally. Having a supportive spouse or group of friends can make a big difference in your mental health when you’re getting killed at the tables. Conversely, if every time you come home after a loss your spouse says “Oh no! You lost again! How could you do that you idiot?” it will be tough to keep yourself in a positive, confident frame of mind. Of course, if you happen to be someone who’s very even keeled and takes losses very logically as part of the game, then having a strong support system is less important.

What are the consequences of failure?

Think about what’s going to happen if you don’t make it. No one goes into professional poker thinking that they are going to fail, but plenty of people who try just can’t make enough money to live on. If you go broke are you going to find yourself $10,000 in debt working at a fast food job wondering what the hell went wrong? Or are you going to be disappointed (but not crushed) having blown through your bankroll, but otherwise be in good financial shape with a solid job? If you’re supporting a family think about what the consequences will be for them if things don’t go how you hope they will. You should always have a backup plan and decide how far you’re going to go. If you decide that you’re going to try to play poker for a living even if it means blowing through every dime you can get your hands on then at least acknowledge that fact. A healthier option would be to decide how much of your net worth you’re willing to commit or how far you’ll go into debt ahead of time. When you hit that limit, it’s time to get a job. Remember you don’t just get one shot. If you go broke, you can always rebuild and try again somewhere down the road. Don’t bury yourself so much that you can never recover just because you can’t admit that you’re not good enough yet to play poker for a living. Go back to the drawing board, work on your game and when you have enough money saved again, give it another shot.

How much data do I have about my past results?

The longer I play the longer I find it takes to get a realistic assessment of your hourly rates. If you’re winning over a short stretch it’s more likely that you’re a winner and if you’re losing it’s more likely that you’re a losing player, but to be able to predict your future results with any precision you need a ton of data. If you’ve been playing 20 hours a week for 5 years and have a spreadsheet with the exact amount of every win and loss then it’s a good bet that you know how much you can expect to make. If you’ve been playing every other Saturday for 6 months and don’t have any written records who knows what you can expect. Make sure you have records that back up what you think about your abilities and don’t jump to any conclusions because you’ve hit a hot streak. When some players win a tournament or have a few winning sessions in a row all of a sudden they think they’re Phil Ivey. Don’t get swept up and do something rash because you’ve been running good.

Is playing for a living going to have an impact on my health or social life?

Playing poker for a living can be hard on your body as well as your mind. It’s a pretty sedentary job and if you’re not careful you could find yourself putting on a few pounds. It doesn’t help that finding healthy food options in and around casinos can be a challenging task. Furthermore, poker can be a high stress business and if you don’t manage that stress well it can have a negative effect on your health.

Your social life might be affected as well. If the best games are on Friday and Saturday nights (or at night on the weekdays) you may find yourself having to choose between making strong money and spending time with your friends and family. Make sure you’re willing to play at the times it’s best to play, not just the times that are most convenient

Can I handle the pressure?

Losing is never fun. But when you’re counting on your winnings to pay your everyday expenses, losing or even breaking even can be a disaster. The mailbox doesn’t stop filling up with bills, just because you haven’t made a flush draw it what seems like a month. If you keep losing it can feel like a tremendous weight and it’s hard to play your best when you feel like you have to win. Having a solid bankroll and some savings beyond that can help alleviate some of this pressure.

Am I ready to write the IRS a check every three months?

YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR TAXES! Sure with all those cash transactions you could fudge things a little, but is it worth it? If the IRS nails you for income tax evasion (a felony) you will wish you’d never been born. Part of playing for a living is making quarterly payments to the IRS. It’s never fun and I’m sure if most people had to pay out of their pockets instead of getting the money withheld from their checks, they’d storm the capital building and we’d all have lower taxes. The good news is you get to deduct all kinds of stuff as business expenses. Get yourself a good accountant, keep a log of everything that could be remotely related to your playing career, and it doesn’t seem so bad. Make sure you can afford to pay your taxes and still make enough to live on.

How much do I love to play?

In my mind this is the most important question. If you’re going to play for a living you better L-O-V-E to play. You can’t kind of like to play or think poker is interesting. You’ve got to love it. Poker is a business where self motivation is a must. No one is going to make you play or tell you to go play. You have to do it on your own and it’s much, much easier if playing is what you want to do anyway. If you have a job and can think of two or three things that you’d rather do with your free time then play poker, you probably don’t love it enough. The reason why this is so important is no matter how much you like to play now, after playing everyday for 6 months or a year or 5 years it won’t be nearly as interesting and stimulating. So if you just like it now, in a year it will turn into a real grind. If you’re good at it, but don’t really enjoy playing, you’ll totally hate it in 6 months.

You don’t have to find yourself in the best case scenario with a huge bankroll, low expenses, a loving a supportive spouse, a steel will, years of records, and an intense passion for poker to make it work. But if you find yourself lacking in a few of these categories you might want to rethink going pro. They say “playing poker is a tough way to make an easy living.” There are plenty of pitfalls and traps, but if you’re good at it and enjoy it, it can be the best job in the world. If playing poker for a living is your dream, go for it! Just make sure you’re smart enough to go after that dream at the right time with the right preparation.

A massive correction

The streak is over in a big way. I had a fairly substantial loss on Friday and got totally rocked today. I can't even begin to describe the kind of bad luck I had today. It may have been the worst luck I've ever had over the span of 1,000 hands in my entire career. It was looking like this was going to be a banner month and it should still end up being good, but I'm feeling a little in shock right now. I'm taking the rest of the day off and tomorrow as well.

For the last 6 days of the month I am going to set a few goals and while I haven't been so good at hitting my goals in the past I am going to make these happen no matter what it takes! After all they're not that hard. The first part of the goal is to play 17,500 hands which works out to 3,500 hands a day for 5 days and one day off with one little caveat. If I hit plus $2,000 or minus $1,500 I'll stop for the day and count it as a full 3,500 hands. The second part of the plan is I'm going to work out 4 times during the 6 days. It shouldn't be too hard, but I always rationalize not working out when I spend all day playing and I've really been slacking off on my exercise regimen. Also, no drinking for the week. Between Vegas and Napa and having people over frequently and whatever I've been drinking too much lately and a week without having a drop seems like a good idea.

The best part about these goals is they aren't too much for me to handle. I feel like I should be able to do that much every week, but in practice I'm not particularly self motivated. Hopefully I'll be able to recover the money I've lost in the past two days over the next week and take a small step forward towards a healthier me.

Another Good Day

I had another winning day today. In fact it looked like it was going to be a monster day. Normally I win about one in every 11 pots. Nominally I should win one in every 9 pots since I'm one of nine players and we all get dealt the same cards in the long run. But since I'm more patient and selective, in practice it seems like I win about one in every 11. Another thing I've noticed after looking at the statistics that Pokerstars keeps track of is when I win more than 50% of the hands that go all the way to the showdown I'm usually ahead and when it's less than 50% I'm usually behind. On average I only make it to the showdown about 1 hand in 40.

With those things in mind the start that I had today was pretty amazing. After 100 hands (about 12 minutes) I looked at my stats and saw that I'd won 6 of 7 pots at the showdown and 25 pots overall! This put me ahead over $500 and for a while the good luck kept on coming. At one point I was ahead over $1,500, but after a few bad plays and a little bad luck I ended up finishing the day ahead $900.

This is my 11th winning day in a row the smallest of which was almost $200. I'm starting to think crazy thoughts like maybe I can go the whole month without having a losing day. I'm planning to play 8 more days this month so it seems very unlikely, but you never know.

I've played 14,000 hands of $2/$4 blinds this month and I'm winning 29 cents a hand (I've also played about 12,000 hands of $3/$6 which haven't gone as well, but have still been good)! If I could do that over the long run I could work 35 hours a week, take 8 weeks of vacation a year and make a quarter of a million dollars a year!!!

What's amazing is 29 cents a hand is nothing compared to the amount of money in play. If I could steal the blinds in a $2/$4 game (which nets me a whopping sum of $6) once every two rounds and then break even on everything else that would be 33 cents a hand. Pokerstars keeps track of and lists the average pot size for each individual game for the $2/$4 games it's usually in the $50 range and in the $3/$6 game it's usually in the $75 range. All I need is 30 cents a hand to drag $250,000 a year. It's possible that while I think I've been running good these past few months, maybe I've been running bad and now I'm hitting an average run of luck!

Just Like Keanu Reeves

What does Keanu Reeves have to do with poker? Nothing! But I did feel like I did a little Matrix Style bullet dodging today. My morning session was tough and it seemed like I kept going broke in spots where I was fully expecting to win. After lunch it wasn't much better. 2600 hands into the day I was down a little over $700 and doing my best to remind myself that I'd just won about the same amount yesterday. I accepted the fact that my streak of winning days would be coming to an end and even though I didn't really feel like it I decided to play to 3,000 hands before calling it a day.

Then I went on a nice rush. I picked up Aces, got three way action and won a huge pot. I flopped a straight against a player who had aces and doubled up. I picked up a few other modest pots and before I knew it I was about $100 short of even! All I needed was one more big pot to make it happen. Then I lost a big pot and found myself stuck $250. Crap!

I still had a few hands to go and I kept thinking if I could make a couple of nice hands I could keep the streak alive. I managed to win a few mid size pots in a row and when I checked my balance I saw that I was about $50 away from even. I kept thinking "Come on you bastards, just give me one decent pot!" When I crossed over the 3,000 hand mark I decided to keep playing until I lost all of my chips in one game or until I was ahead for the day.

300 hands later I was still about $50 from even and starting to get impatient when I picked up AQ in the small blind. "Ah ha!" I thought for the 50th time in the past half hour "This could be the one that does it for me!" Everyone folded to me, I raised and the big blind called. The flop came down AQ9. Ah ha! I bet and my opponent called. Ah ha again!The turn was a 10 which seemed like a good card. If my opponent had one pair he easily could have made two pair worse than my own or picked up a draw that would encourage him to pay me off. I bet and my opponent made a big raise. Uh Oh. Even though that's exactly what I wanted him to do, I couldn't help but think that he might have KJ and made a straight. It didn't really matter what I thought he had because there was no way I was folding. I put in the rest of my chips and thought "Don't have KJ, Don't have KJ, Don't have KJ" like I was the little engine that could. And then the river came out...BING! Q on the river! Full House! SEND IT! It turned out that my opponent did have KJ, but obviously I still won the pot.

I picked up a few other small pots as I played to my blinds in all of my games and ended up winning just under $200 today. The streak is still alive!

Technical Difficulties Make Me Nuts

There's a great scene in the movie Office Space where one of the main characters (Who's name is Michael Bolton - no relation to the singer) is trying to print something and the printer jams. You just see him standing at the printer and he says "P.C. load letter? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Then as he struggles with the paper stuck in the machine he says "This is just what I need right now. Come on you little bitch let's go!" Eventually one of his co-workers pulls him away. Later in the movie, Michael and his buddies exact their revenge on the printer (which they all hate so, so much) with a baseball bat, a few drop kicks, and even their bare fists. After they get their fill of pounding on it they leave it broken into a thousand (by my count) pieces in a deserted field. This is often what I feel like doing to my technology when it doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

I had a little scare when my Internet cut out today in the middle of a significant hand. The hand in question took place in a $3/$6 blinds NL cash game where I had about $175 in front of me. I open raised to $18 with KK and got called by both of the blinds. The flop came down with three unconnected cards below 9. Both of my opponents checked, I bet $36 and the player in the small blind moved all in. I clicked on call and...nothing happened. ACK! My Internet connection failed and I wasn't sure if the software had registered the call. If it didn't, my hand would be folded if I wasn't able to log back on in time. After about 10 seconds of staring blankly at my blinking but inactive screen I ran down stairs to jump on one of the laptops.

Jen's laptop was on, but closed. When I opened it up the area that reports the status of the wireless connection said "limited or no connectivity." My first thought was "This is just what I need right now. Come on you little bitch let's go!" Luckily, when I ran back upstairs my computer had reconnected and I'd won the hand. But it wasn't exactly the fun positive experience that I normally get from doubling up.

At that point I spent about an hour screwing with a myriad of things trying to make my connection more reliable. I thought my best bet was switching out my wireless USB network adapter with another one we had lying around that looks like a satellite dish compared to the stupid little stick I've been using. But, of course after 30 minutes of restarting, configuring, swearing and sweating, I couldn't get that piece of shit to work the way it's supposed to.

I think the main source of my connectivity problems was that our wireless router had been moved over the weekend and was in a spot that blocked some not insignificant portion of the signal. I think I have the problem solved, but tomorrow I'm investing in some new equipment to receive the signal on this end just to be sure.

Happily, despite the various malfunctions I had another nice winning day. With a late start and all the time I spent messing with stuff today, I only managed 2,000 hands (I've reduced my goal for the month from 60,000 hands to a more realistic 50,000 which is still a lot given the 8 vacation days I've taken so far this month), but I did win a little over seven hundred. That makes 9 winning days in a row. I'll try to make it 10 tomorrow.

The Blood Bath Continues

About thousand hands into the day today my Internet locked up on me (which isn't all that unusual), but instead of popping back after 15 or 20 seconds like it normally does, it stayed disconnected. After checking the status of my wireless network connection my computer told me that everything should be working fine. I restarted my computer. Nothing. I reset my router and cable modem. Still nothing.

I was then forced to take the only course of action I had left...I cooked half a hot link and some eggs and put them on an English muffin with some cheese, had a cup of coffee and some Orange juice and watched the 1988 movie Alien Nation staring James Caan. Amazingly this did not fix my Internet problem!

Then I used some highly technical techniques that I learned while studying mechanical engineering at U.C. Berkeley. I unplugged everything and let it "rest" for about a half an hour while I watched the U.S. open. When I plugged everything back in everything worked just fine.

When I logged back on to pokerstars I discovered that I was ahead $420 instead of the $300 that I thought I was up. Over the course of the next 400 hands my opponents came at me like a bunch of flying squirrels plunging into a wood chipper. The kept bluffing into my made hands! It was great. While I probably should have kept at it and played at least another 1,000 hands, I'm having some mental fatigue problems after playing 8 of the past 9 days so I called it a day early.

I had a modest but not insignificant win yesterday and I ended up winning a little over a thousand today which brings my winning streak to 8 days straight. My only regret is that I didn't shift back to playing these cash games sooner.

The Streak is Still Alive

I picked up another $750 over about 3,000 hands today. That makes six straight winning days! I'm not quite sure what my record is in terms of most winning days in a row. I think it's 9 or 10. I know I've done 8 a few times and my best run in terms of winning days with one miss was 14 out of 15 when I was proping at the Oaks. Hopefully I can keep playing well, running good and kicking ass!

Back on Track

After taking the first 5 days of the month off and losing my ass in the process I knew that I was going to have to put in a little extra effort for the rest of the month. In May, which turned out to be my best month of the year by a significant margin, I set the goal of playing 60,000 hands. As it turned out on May 31st I needed to play about 2,000 hands to make my goal. Not surprisingly I fell into a classic trap. I won on the 30th and when I woke up on the 31st I thought to myself "I'm going to Vegas tonight! I don't want to have a total collapse today and break the momentum I have going into the WSOP (total B.S.). I''ll just start my vacation early! YAY!"

58,000 poker hands in a month is nothing to sneeze at, and it's light years better than the 45,000 or so hands that I played in April. This month I'm going to try again to hit the 60,000 hand mark. So far I've knocked out 13,000 after working 4 full days and 1 half day in the 6 days that I've been back from Vegas. I'm going to have to step up the production a little to make it. My plan is to work a little harder than normal and play 3,500 hands a day 5 days a week instead of 2,500 a day 6 days a week which is what I might normally do. If I can do that every Monday through Thursday plus Saturdays for the rest of the month I'll end up with 62,000 hands.

One problem I have though, is when I'm doing well I have a tendency to take my foot off the gas. When I've got the money set aside for next months bills half way through the month and I find myself up $500 for the day it's hard to keep playing when I don't really feel like it. On the other hand when things haven't been going well, I really put my nose to the grindstone because I feel the pressure.

With that said, the good news (and the bad news for me hitting my goal) is I've been doing really well. (Prepare for the massive jinx) I've won all five days that I've played in June and while none of them have been four digit wins they've all been in the middle three digits. I've moved up from playing a mix of $1/$2 and $2/$4 blinds no limit cash games to three $2/$4 NL games and three $3/$6 NL games. I'm making about 18.5 cents per hand in the $3/$6 games and while it's really too early to draw any conclusions, I'm feeling confident that I can keep winning a solid amount at that level. The fluctuations have been much larger as you might expect, but so far I've been handling it well.

Also on Saturday I confirmed that I don't totally suck at tournaments. I finished 13th out of 780 in the $50,000 weekly supernova freeroll and picked up $525. I was 11 spots away from $4,000 and 12 spots away from $10,500, but $525 isn't exactly a pile of nickles.

WSOP Recap II

When we last left our hero he was battling the forces of doom and it looked like he was down but not out! Actually we knew he would eventually be down and out, but we didn't know exactly how it would happen.

The night before the $1,500 limit event I was at the Paris with Jean and E.B. playing Pai Gow and trying to turn my luck around. Jake and Chrissy had just left for the airport and while I was having a good time I was worried about blowing even more money playing stupid casino games. I decided to let the gambling gods give me a sign! To this point I had ignored the signs from the gods which in huge neon lights the size of the Titanic all said "STOP GAMBLING!!!" While I was busy covering my eyes to avoid reading those signs I was also repeatedly thinking the mantra of all losing gamblers, "It has to turn around sometime!"

But now I was looking for a real sign. Instead if betting $25 on one hand I went to $50 on each of two hands. I decided if I won both hands, I'd finish my drink, order a shot of whiskey and take one last gasping, hacking, coughing attempt at winning back some of my money. If I lost both, I'd call it a night and leave with whatever money (and dignity) I had left. I got one terrible hand, and one OK hand, but they both got squashed by a monster hand from the dealer. Horsefeathers!

I made my way back to Harrah's and was in my room by 8 p.m. I had the thought that if my 21 year old self was there he slap me in the face, pour a bucket of ice down my pants, and give me an atomic wedgie. He'd say, "You're in Vegas, you fool! It's only 8 o'clock! Why aren't you out there gambling and drinking!" And I'd say, "But, I'm tired and I have a tournament tomorrow and..." SLAP! "You're not 77, you're 27! Now get out there and booze it up! You've got money in your pocket don't you? I never stopped gambling until I was on the plane back to California or I didn't have a penny left on me. Don't you know it has to turn around sometime?"

Anyway I woke up well rested and headed off to the Rio to play my 15th career WSOP event. When I sat down at my table, I noticed Rafe Furst who has 1 WSOP bracelet was sitting two spots to my left. I'd never played against him before and I hadn't seen him play on TV so I didn't really know what to expect, but it turns out that while I was there he was playing a very conservative style and didn't give me any trouble.

I got a fair number of playable hands early and ended up taking my stack from 3,000 up to about 5,000 sometime during the 3rd level. But by the end of the 4th level I was back down under 3,000. When we got back from our second break a little more than 4 and half hours after we started, I knew I would need to make some progress soon.

Around that time a new player got moved to our table. I got the vibe that he was a strong and accomplished player and it wasn't until I was leaving the tournament area later and picked up a bluff magazine that I figured out who he was. He was on the cover with 7 or 8 other players (Doyle Brunson, Jennifer Harmon, and Phil Ivey to name a few) with the headline "Players to Watch at this Years WSOP." It turns out it was Jeff Madsen who won two bracelets last year and in the process became the youngest player in WSOP history to win an event.

When Madsen sat down he said hello to Rafe Furst and within seconds they'd agreed to a $100 best two out of three rock, paper, scissors match. While the dealer was shuffling, bang, bang, bang they knocked out three rounds and a $100 bill came flying across the table to Rafe. I find it interesting to be around people who bet three digit amounts on stupid shit like rock, paper, scissors. Doing that kind of thing has never appealed me, but I find it interesting none the less.

It turns out that the tournaments were maybe the least interesting part of the trip from a blogging standpoint. I had a few hands go against me in unspectacular fashion and I was out. I didn't feel bad about it, because I knew that I had played my best. Not just pretty good, or OK, but my actual best. I was focused, I wasn't the least bit nervous and I felt almost positive that every move I made was the right one given the circumstances. It just didn't work out. For better or for worse, that's poker.

WSOP Recap (and massive complaining)

First of all, thanks to Jen for the updates that she posted to the blog. Not surprisingly I wasn't in the mood to rehash the details of my defeats right after they happened.


If I had to sum up my trip to Vegas in one brief phrase it would be: IT SUCKED! In the past 6 years I've made roughly 15 trips to Vegas, 10 gambling trips to Reno or Lake Tahoe, and 2 trips to Atlantic City. I have NEVER had worse luck. I've had trips where I lost more money on the whole, but I've never lost so much betting so little.


When it comes to gambling on stupid casino games I am a realist. I know in the long run I am going to lose. In fact I can probably tell you more about the math of exactly how much I can expect to lose over a given period of time with a given bet size than anyone you know. I've decided the entertainment value is worth more than cost, but man I have never had a trip where I've been so universally screwed. Not once in the 5 days that I was in Vegas did I leave any table with more than I started with. No matter how bad things are going, you should run into a little streak of good or even average luck somewhere.



I'll try not to bore you too much with the details, but I will point out a few of the low lights. The game of choice for our group is Pai Gow Poker. I won't explain too much about it, but the important point is you're playing against the dealer and it's a very slow game (speed is your enemy in the casino) with a small house edge. In this game 28.61% of the hands the player will win, 29.91% of the hands the house will win and 41.48% of the hands will be a push (or a tie) and no money changes hands.



When we made it to our hotel (The MGM) around midnight my good friend Chrissy and I immediately sat down at the Pai Gow table each with $500 and each betting $25 a hand. By 2:30 we were both down to the felt. At a Pai Gow table you get dealt 25-30 hands an hour so at most we saw 75 hands. If you played an infinite number of groups of 75 hands on average you'd lose 1.84 betting units. Yet somehow we managed to both lose 20 betting units (well over 10 times the expectation) in that time (it's not surprising that we shared the same fate since while we each have our own hand we're both playing against the same dealer hand). This was pretty extraordinary.

I lost $300 playing at a $5 craps table in about 45 minutes. Enough said.


In another Pai Gow session at The Mandalay Bay I sat down and immediately lost 6 hands in a row with no wins and no ties. The chance of losing 6 in a row like that are 1 in 1397.



Now that I've got that out of the way I can talk about the poker aspect of the trip. I got to Vegas late Thursday and my plan was to head to the Rio on Friday to sign up for my first tournament which wouldn't start until Saturday at noon. I knew from past experience that the line to register for tournaments is crazy in the hour or two before the event and I wanted to bypass that entirely.



After that my plan was to head to Treasure Island to meet with the folks from pokerstars. Since I paid for one of my entries with FPP's I had to sign a contract and pick up a load of Pokerstars gear which I was supposed to wear during the tournament. In order to ensure that I did what they wanted, pokerstars only gave me 85% of my buy in initially and once I proved that I actually played or was going to play in the event (by showing them by nonrefundable tournament entry card with my name and the event # on it) they gave me the rest.



Unfortunately when I made it to the Rio, I discovered a line so long that looked like they were holding American Idol auditions inside. Some people were sitting in chairs that they'd found someplace which to me meant that not only was the line crazy long, but it was also slow. The slowness made no sense to me since last year the longest I had to wait to sign up for an event was about 20 minutes and even then the line was moving quickly. I decided that my best bet was to wait until the middle of the night or early the next morning and come back. I had my fingers crossed that there was some reason other than massive incompetence for the delay and whatever it was would get resolved quickly.



So I went on with my general misfortune had a bunch of drinks and went to sleep by midnight. At 3:30, POW! I was wide awake. So I decided to head over to the Rio, sort out my business and then head back to the MGM for some more sleep. When I got there I saw that while the line was shorter, it was still fairly substantial. I went to the front of the line and asked one of the guys standing there how long he'd been in line. Immediately a half dozen people chimed in, said that it had been three hours and talked about how pissed they all were. To make it worse one of registration windows had just closed leaving only 4 left, meaning it could take even longer to make it through the line. If it had been my first year at the WSOP I would have manned up and waited, but for my 14th career event it wasn't worth it.

The next day (Saturday) I decided I would just have to brave the line and sign up. While the rest of the gang went to dinner I headed off to the Rio to wait for hours in a slow moving line. When I walked in the door and looked down the loooooong hallway to where the end of the line should have been I didn't see anything. So far so good. I turned a corner and still didn't see anything. Great! Then I walked into the tournament area and right up to the cage where there were THREE OPEN WINDOWS with people waiting to sign me up! It was like a Christmas miracle. After planning on skipping dinner I made it back to The Mandalay Bay where I'd just been 20 minutes earlier and sat down at dinner before anyone had even ordered.


I'd had a couple of snifters of Grand Mariner starting about 3 in the afternoon so after dinner I was ready to call it a night. We all made it back to the MGM and while most of the group hit the tables I watched a movie in my room by 10 p.m and asleep a little after midnight.

The next day I got up started my parade of visiting 5 hotels in 7 hours, 4 of them with my luggage in tow. I left the MGM (#1) a little before 11 (While waiting in the cab line I did see a guy who I can only assume was crazy rich or who just won a ton of money or both get into the back of a shiny new Maybach and tip the bell hop $100 for putting his two bags in the trunk). I made a brief stop at The Treasure Island (#2) to meet with the pokerstars people who gave me a very nice set of two shirts, a hat and a jacket which went directly into my suitcase where they remain at this very moment. I got a splash of VIP treatment when one of the people in the makeshift office told me that because I was a P0kerstars Supernova if I wanted to eat at a particular restaurant in the Rio anytime during the WSOP they she would make reservations for me or if I was in a hurry I could call her ahead of time and she'd order me whatever I wanted ahead of time.

Then I hauled my ass (and my suitcase) over to the Rio (#3) where I dropped my stuff off in my friend Matt's room. The I actually played in a poker tournament. Crazy I know. Interestingly enough the poker tournament was totally uninteresting. I think Jen did a nice job of summing it up. I was at a great table with a bunch of week players for about 2 hours where I ran my stack up to about 5,000 after starting with 3,000. Then I got moved to a new table with better players and ran into two tough spots.

On the first hand that led to my demise I had 4,500 chips with blinds of 75/150. Two players called the 150 chip big blind, I looked down at KK and raised to 600. To my surprise the first player who just called the big blind reraised all in to 1,800. Of course I called and was not please to see that my opponent had the only hand I was worried about - AA. I lost that hand and was back under where I started.

I dribbled away chips for a while and found myself with about 1,500 on the button with blinds of 100/200 when the following hand came up. The first player to act, who was probably the worst at the table made it 600 to go. The next player to act who was a very tight player immediately went all in for about 2,000. I could tell he really liked his hand, but when I looked down at QQ I knew I couldn't throw it away when I had a stack that was about 1/4th of average. The player in the small blind who had been left with around 300 chips after losing the previous hand called and after about 60 seconds of thought the original raiser also called. The small blind turned over 99, the original raiser turned over K-10 and sadly the other player turned over AA. When the flop came with three spades I was left with only one card in the deck that could make me the best hand. Unfortunately a 4th spade came out on the turn and the player with K-10 made a flush with the K of spades and took the whole pot.

I trudged over to the tournament registration area, signed up for the next day's tournament and after getting my bags from Matt's room I left the Rio. After waiting in yet another cab line I headed to Harrah's (#4) and checked in to the room I'd be staying in for the next two nights. After a quick turn around I made about a 10 minute walk over to the Paris (#5) to play some more Pai Gow with my friends.

I'll pick up here in my next post (this one is getting crazy long!) which should be coming in two or three days (I'm very busy tomorrow).

Bad News

Well, Dave got eliminated. I didn't hear any of the story because I was at the grocery store when he called. He changed his flight to come home tonight instead of tomorrow, so he'll probably be telling you all about his trip tomorrow morning.

Update

Dave just called in on his second break. Over the last two hours he's built his stack up from $2800 to $2825. Ha! When they go back after the break they'll be playing $200/$400 so he's starting to get a little short stacked, but is still just one hand away from being comfortable. He says he hasn't had a decent hand in an hour, so if he can just get one or two good hands things should start to turn around.

Poker Pages posted the payout structure, here it is:

1st	$280,715
2nd	$177,627
3rd	$114,278
4th	$75,771
5th	$53,412
6th	$40,991
7th	$30,433
8th	$22,359
9th	$16,148
10th-12th	$11,552
13th-15th	$10,310
16th-18th	$9,068
19th-27th	$7,826
28th-36th	$6,708
37th-45th	$5,714
46th-54th	$4,844
55th-63rd	$3,975
64th-72nd	$3,292
73rd-81st	$2,795
82nd-90th	$2,360

The next break will be the dinner break, and that will be around 6:45 or 7. Hopefully we don't hear anything until then!

Event 06 - $1,500 Limit Hold'em

I just got off the phone with Dave, who is on the first break of today's event, Limit Hold 'Em, which started with 910 players. Limit moves a lot slower than No Limit, so not too much has happened so far. He started with $3000 in chips and now has about $2800. When he gets back from break the limits will be $100/$200.

Here are the live update links:

Card Player
Poker Pages

He says he likes his table a lot, and is playing with Rafe Furst, who he says is a nice guy.

Eliminated!

I just got a call from Dave saying he got eliminated. I only got the short story, which was that he lost half his chips with KK against AA, and then the rest with QQ against AA. Yuck! I'm sure he'll have more to tell you about it later.

Event 04 - $1,500 Pot Limit Hold’em

Dave successfully got registered in today's event which started at noon (PST).

According to cardplayer.com there were about 900 entrants, which is a little smaller than last year. Dave just gave me a call on his first break saying they started out with 3,000 in chips and he had gotten up to around 5,000 but has since slipped back to around 3,500. All in all, he says things are going well and he'll update me again in a few hours.

Here are some sites with live updates of the action:
Card Player
Poker Pages

They usually talk about big hands between famous players and will give you some updates on how the limits are going up and about how many people are left. At some point they should post what the prize structure will be which will tell us how many people they need to play to before ending the day.