Friday, April 15, 2011

Online Poker Goes KA-BOOM!

It only took 4.5 years for the federal government to act on the bullshit, confusing legislation they passed in late 2006. Legislation that was 40 pages long and didn't define anything. Honestly a better bill could have been written by most college freshman.

In a speedy 4.5 years the fuckheads in Washington finally decided to do something to shut down online poker in the U.S. They froze all of the payment processor accounts and more importantly seized the domain names of Fulltilt, AP, Pokerstars and others.

You can read the whole indictment here: INDICTMENT!

The software still works and you can still go to the website, but you can't sit in a real money game and I hear that you can't cashout from some sites.

Personally, I did however manage to cash out the last $500 bucks I still had sitting on AP (luckily I cashed out everything but that last week and the money hit my bank account today), but that doesn't mean I'll get it anytime soon or ever.

I have about $100 on Bodog and just to test the waters I put down a $10 bet that Derek Rose would average less than 25 points per game in the 1st round of the NBA playoffs. Surprisingly everything seems normal there.

The dream is that online poker will be 100% destroyed in the U.S. and will then come back with U.S. based poker rooms. If the day comes when average Joe USA can deposit with a credit card and feel sure that his money is safe, the cash is going to start pouring down from the heavens for people like me.

If I could go back to early 2004 with the skills I have now I could make $200 an hour. Full blown U.S. based online poker could bring games as good as those of that era.

My condolences go out to everyone playing online poker for a living. It's a sad day for all of you and best of luck in the transition to the next chapter of your professional lives. And a BIG fuck you to the handful of people that tacked the UIGEA onto the Safe Port Act of 2006. You're all a bunch of cowards.

Now that I've taken some time off I'm actually excited to play some poker every now and then. I imagine I'll join the ranks of the weekend warriors at the Oaks club and other bay area card rooms. I think the 2.5 million hands I've played online might give me a small advantage. :)

Sunday, April 03, 2011

Beating the Shit Out of Low Stakes Players

While writing my last post I jumped into two $10 multitables, and one $20. I cashed in all three for a net of about $75, and then took $150 off the $1/$2 tables on bodog and AP in about 200 hands. $150 isn't exactly a ton of money, but it is 75 big bets which is a beatdown no matter how you spin it.

$1,000 bankroll increased by more than 20% and up to $1,225. Suck it low stakes jerks!

Rebuilding

My bankroll is at it's lowest point in 10 years. I was a skinny, wide eyed 21 year old (OK not that skinny and maybe more squinty and shifty than wide eyed) playing $3/$6 limit hold'em 10 handed at the Oaks club about 10 hours a week the last time I had this little to work with.

But I don't really need a bankroll anymore. The crushing vise of monthly expenses is now being held open by a paycheck. A paycheck that comes in good times and bad and reads exactly the same, down to the cent, every month.

I've seen a few of the top pros start with very small bankrolls (orders of magnitude less than I have) and turn them into something significant as a personal challenge. The point is to prove to others and themselves that they could start from scratch and make it all over again.

I've forgotten his name, but one of the top SNG players set a goal to take $5 and turn it into $10,000 in one month. One thing he had going for him was that he was a mental freak of nature and had an ideal set up in terms of many huge monitors allowing him to play up to 300 SNGs in a day.

Also he cheated. He lost his $5 bankroll many times and simply started again with another $5. I could make $5 Keno bets until one hit big and then say "Look! I turned $5 into $1,000 playing Keno! In the end, if you ignore the cheating aspect, he did it.

More impressive was Chris Ferguson turning *zero* dollars into $10,000. He started with freerolls only until he could scrape together a couple dollars and then shifted to playing at the micro stakes. Once he had $50 or $100 it didn't take him long to go the rest of the way.

I had about $3,000 when I started my career as a prop player in July of 2003. In April of 2004 when I went off totally on my own and starting playing 90% online I had about $10,000. In the good times from 2005-mid 2008 I kept at least $30,000 to work with and made a great living working about 30 hours a week. From the end of the flush years until the fall of 2010 I typically had a $10,000 bankroll and was still able to support my family of three entirely from poker winnings.

Now I have a job and a $1,000 bankroll. The job pays for the 3 bedroom house in Northern California, keeps the lights on and puts food on the table, but not much else. Playing poker is going to be the difference between bud lite and burgers or pinot noir and filets for a while.

For some people it might be hard to drop so far down in stakes. After all, I've played 6 tournaments with buy ins of $5,000+, 75-100 with buy ins of $1,000+, I have no idea how many $200-$500 buy in tournaments, and now I'll be locking horns with the $10 and $20 players. For me, I don't really care. It's not about the thrill of victory or getting in Carplayer magazine any more. It's mostly about dollars, partially about about fun, and a little bit about delivering soul crushing beats to egomaniacal college kids (You know who you are! I'm coming to crush you!).

My new job has exposed me to google analytics and I've discovered that I have about 500 people visit my blog each month which is more than I thought and makes me feel like I should get back to writing at least weekly.

I'm not sure what I can do with $1,000 playing 10 hours a week, but I'll try to keep you posted. Hopefully it will all be good news.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

On to the Next Chapter

After about 3 months of part time consulting, I started working full time at www.hitfix.com last week. If you haven't heard of HitFix it's an entertainment news website with about 1.3 million unique users a month that covers music, movies and TV without the gossip.

HitFix has about 20 employees and I've been hired to be the Business Development Manager. Essentially I'll be finding and negotiating with new partners, offering input on how HitFix does everything from the smallest details to the long term strategy, and doing everything the CEO needs to get done, but doesn't have time for.

So far it's been great. I'm still working from home and I've really been enjoying using my brain in new ways. Of course getting paid every day - even on the bad days - feels like a special treat after 7 years of ups and downs.

Looking back I can't believe the amounts of money I had on the line day in and day out. I lost enough to pay my mortgage for 3 months in an hour once. Of course there were a handful of times that I won enough in a day to pay my mortgage for a year or more.

I'm going to miss those days walking around with a stack of hundreds in my front pocket so thick that it looked like I had two decks of cards in there. But I can't remember ever being so relaxed.

Amazingly I think I am gambled out. It took 10 years, of poker 6 days a week and 25 days a year in Vegas, but I've finally had enough.

I'm sure I'll eventually get back to playing somewhat regularly. When that happens I'll try to get back to posting about my experiences at what will be comparatively low stakes.

The best part is if I do play and win, I can spend that money without having to worry about saving it for my next big loss.

Thanks for reading!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Semi-retired

I started playing poker for a living in July 2003 and after more than 7 years of working for myself I got a job.

September was the worst month I ever had as a poker player. I got totally crushed and flushed the vase majority of my bankroll. I tried to recover in October, but my confidence was at an all time low and no matter how far I dropped in stakes I couldn't seem to make it work. I didn't play for any significant stakes in November or December and my action was limited to a few dozen $20-$50 multitalbes, 2 or 3 $200 tournaments in person and a half dozen sessions at the Oaks Club.

Sometime in October my wife and I decided that one of use needed to get a job. Since she has a mechanical engineering degree from Berkeley she was the prime candidate, but as we all know this is a terrible time to be looking for work.

I applied to a few jobs as well. The most interesting by far has been ring games manager at pokerstars. If you look at the list of qualifications and skills required I am a slam dunk candidate, but the guy in charge of hiring is in no hurry to hire anyone so that is still pending. Even if I get offered the job I'm not likely to take it since it would require moving to the Isle of Mann (really!). I've spent the time since I applied trying to decide the dollar about it would take to get me and my family to move 6,000 miles. It's a lot, but not so much that I think there's zero chance that I'll be offered that much.

But as I said above I actually have a job right now. I'm working in a two tiered capacity at entertainment website www.HitFix.com. The first part is developing a game that is the bastard cousin of fantasy sports but for reality TV. Our first show is going to be American Idol and the game should be up and running for the top 20 show on February 24th.

On top of that I've been working in a business development capacity generating leads for partnerships as well as doing some general quality control for the website as a whole. Some of you might be thinking "What the hell do you know about working for an entertainment website? You're full of shit!" All I can say is so far I know a lot more than I thought. We'll see how it goes.

As far as poker goes, this year I've made about $700 in 10 hours playing $13 Ultra Turbo tournaments on Absolute, but we all know that that's just running crazy hot at those stakes.

For now poker is on the backburner as I dive headfirst into the world of entertainment news!

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Let's Oak it Up!

After my recent online woes, I've been taking a break and spending a fair amount of time at the Oaks club playing against live opponents. The 15 minute commute isn't as fun as the 10 second commute from my bed to my computer, but I guess I can't complain.

The biggest game at the Oaks is $30/$60 limit hold'em and there are a few solid regulars. I have my eye on that game, but for now I'm sticking to $15/$30 where it seems not a single player is any better than just average.

Most players let their ego get in the way of making the best decisions in spots like these. Do I think I can beat the Oaks club $30/$60? I'm 99% sure that I can. But that doesn't mean it's the most profitable thing to do. Even if I'm the best player in the game, if everyone else is pretty good, I'd rather play for less money against a bunch of greatly inferior players. Even if the money is the same long term it's better to win one big bet per hour at $15/$30 than half a big bet per hour at $30/$60 because you'll face smaller fluctuations and less stress.

I've played 6 sessions averaging about 5 hours apiece and picked up $1,743 in the process. This is a very, very small set of data, but it's not an accident. There are no pros in the $15/$30 game and recreational players just can't keep up with someone who has played well over a million hands of limit hold'em against tough competition.

Another thing that's great about playing in person is players can't dodge me. Players mainly stick to one stakes and if there is only one game going they are stuck. No one is going to leave the game just because I joined and it got tougher. Whereas online there are a zillion games going and it takes 30 seconds to get into a new one.

Hopefully I can keep the money rolling in from the Oaks players for a while.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

When to Go For It and When to Hold Back

I wrote this post on 10/20, but didn't finish it until 10/24. Rather than fix stuff like "yesterday" or "last Saturday" I just put this little sentence in.

I've been playing a lot of small stakes multitable tournaments lately with some success. In fact I keep cashing for about $1,200.

Shortly after my last post I finished 2nd in a $55 tournament with 100 or so entrants on Absolute which paid $1,150. Then on Saturday I had a $2,000 day, $1,175 of which came from winning a $22 tournament with about 200 entrants on Pokerstars. And yesterday I finished 3rd in a $55 tournament on Absolute with 241 entrants which paid $1,200. Of course I have been playing a lot of tournaments so it's not like that's all profit, but it has still been a good run.

During my time at the tables recently I came across a risky situation where going for it was clearly the thing to do in a spot where weaker players might not have and another where taking a very conservative approach was the way to go.

The first situation came in a $55 tournament on pokerstars with about 1,100 entrants that paid 153 spots. The blinds were 500/1,000, I was in the big blind with 14,000 chips behind, and we were down to 157 players. I got dealt AQ suited and when the action made it around to the small blind he moved all in for 20,000.

We'd started the tournament with 3,000 chips so I wasn't too far off of average which was about 21,000. The decision I was faces with was, fold and make the money for sure or call and potentially go broke.

Almost all pros would agree that if you can avoid risking your whole stack on one hand you should and anyone can tell you that going broke just short of the money totally sucks. Also often times when a player overbets the pot preflop like this they have AK which would completely dominate my AQ.

With that said, my opponent knows we're only a hand or two away from making the money and if I was in his shoes I'd be raising any two cards from the small blind (I wouldn't got all in with any two, but I'd raise something).

What was running though my mind was if I played this situation 100 times (or 1,000) would I make more by folding and bringing home at least the $75 for 153rd place 100% of the time or would I make more by sometimes going broke and losing my $55 but in but other times taking a stack of 31,000 (about 150% of average) into the money?

I'd be pretty close to even money against an underpair, but I'd be 3 to 2 against suited connectors, 2 to 1 against total garbage unders and 7 to 3 against a worse ace. Most importantly I thought the chance of being dominated by AA, KK, QQ or AK was negligible. Those hands make up about 2% of the starting card combinations and even with AK it would be a rare opponent who would move all in here.

Pile that all together and I figured I was at least 60% against his range. Now if you do a detailed analysis you might find that it's worth about $84 more to call than to fold. Of course you might not find that because you worked it out correctly and the shit I just did is total garbage loaded with fallacies. Which is why I deleted it out of frustration! With that said, $84 seems about right.

The brass tacks is, even though I was just short of the money it was still worth it to go for it. In the end I let my time bank run all the way down to give myself the best chance to sneak in to the money before I called. When the cards got turned over I was up against A6 off suit which meant I was 72% to win and 6% to tie.

A 6 came on the flop and I finished 155th, but despite that fact it would have been a major mistake to fold here.

At the same time I was playing in a $55 tournament on Absolute with about 100 entrants (I mentioned it above). I went into full on beast mode and by the time we were down to 5 players I was in first with 75,000 chips. The player dead to my left (let's call him Jerk Face) was in second with 70,000 and the other three players all had between 10,000 and 20,000.

One of my great strengths is finding situations where I can raise with any two cards and show positive expected value. After you've played a zillion tournament you get a sense for when other players are going to fold unless they find a total monster hand. At most final tables in tournaments of this size with players of this caliber playing loose aggressive is the only way to go. Every now and then you'll blow up an finish 8th or 9th, but much more often you'll end up at the top. When I get to a final table with an average stack or more I tend to win outright.

As per usual, in this case it was my aggressive style and not the cards I was getting that led to my sizable stack. But when we got to five handed I had to shift gears. On the first hand that we were down to five players I raised, and Jerk Face reraised me. I had total air so I folded. The next time I raised, he reraised me again and again I had to fold. The time after that he moved all in on me with no hesitation. Quit reraising me Jerk Face! At that point if I was going to play a hand it had to be one that could call a suspect all in reraise.

After those three hands the tables had turned a little bit. I was down to 50,000, Jerk Face was up to 95,000 and everyone else was under 15,000. Tough guys always say "I play for first" and generally that's what you should do, but in this case playing for 2nd was clearly the way to go.

Jerk Face was rolling over everyone and they were giving no resistance. While first place was just over $2,000 and that's what I was really shooting for, 2nd was almost $1,200 while 5th was only $500. My 3 short stacked opponents seemed committed to playing super tight and trying to move up one more spot.

I could stand up to Jerk Face with a hand that was better than average (like KJ or A9) since I knew he was on the "any two" track, or I could get blinded off a little and probably end up in 2nd place.

This was a rare situation where playing like a total pussy was actually the best way to go. I'm not saying I was folding premium hands, but I wasn't taking any chances. Just like clockwork, three of my opponent were ground down to a few big blinds, got their money in with Ax and went broke. By the time it was heads up I was down to 40,000 facing a stack of 160,000 which wasn't great, but anything can happen heads up. More importantly I had $1,150 locked up. I got it all in with A5 and lost to KJ, but I was still happy with the 2nd place. If I'd tried to be a tough guy I easily could have finished 4th or 5th and left a few hundred bucks on the table.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

How It's Been Going

I didn't quite hit my 500 SNG in a week goal, but I did play about 300 at the $60 level and 100 at the $38 level. I lost $350 at at the higher stakes and $650 at the lower.

This isn't a huge sample size, but I'm still losing confidence in this plan. Since my SNG rebirth I've played 608 tournaments at the $60 level and won $1,288 which is $2.12 per SNG. If you factor in the $997 I've earned in FPPs and other bonus I'm at almost $4 per. At 75 tournaments a day that's $300 a day or at least $6,000 a month.

That seems fine and it is. But I've having trouble trusting it. If you eliminate my first 100 tournaments (and look at the last 500 I've played) I'm only making 65 cents per. If you look at the last 400 I've played I'm losing 56 cents per.

Was I just running really hot in the beginning and now I'm performing at a level that I can expect long term or was I running a little above expectation at the start and a lot below it since?

I'm not really sure what to do. Should I keep plugging away? Should I drop down to the $24 level and just play an insane number of tournaments? Should I try switching to no limit cash games? Which site should I target? What about playing in person at the Oaks? Maybe I should try SNGs on other sites? Maybe I should just lay on the floor face down because I'm not sure I can handle any more losing? These are the thoughts that are rattling around my head all day every day.

To say it's stressful is a massive understatement. The major disadvantage I have over most of my competition is I'm supporting 3 people in Northern California. I can't just live cheap when things aren't going well. While my wife is doing a great job of supporting me however she can, I still have family obligations that get in the way of working all the time.

Part of me (a growing part) wishes we could just move to fucking Nebraska and work at a diner or something.

The other part of me says "Quit being such a pussy! Get back in there and kick some ass! Play better! Be Smarter! You can do it!"

So that's what I'm going to do. Let me see if I can break off 400 $38 tournaments between now and Saturday night. If I can make $3 per that will be $1,200. In the grand scheme of things that ain't much, but it's a start and right now I need some momentum. Also if I keep that goal in the forefront of my mind it will help me from getting overwhelmed. If I can get all my focus on hitting those targets maybe I can block out the panic that I'm constantly swallowing down and play my best.

Monday, October 04, 2010

500 SNG's This Week

I am believer in goals. I set goals all the time and even when I don't meet them (which to be honest is more often than not) I still make more progress than if I hadn't set any goals at all.

My current short term goal is to play 500 single table sit-n-go (SNG's) tournaments between Monday morning and Saturday night. More specifically I am going to play 100 $38 buy in 9 handed SNGs and 400 $60 buy in 9 handed SNGs all on pokerstars.

There is a good reason for this split - the Battle of the Planets leader board! Pokerstars SNG leader board is split into 8 divisions (all named for planets) based on stakes with each division having a "high orbit" and a "low orbit leader board". I'll briefly try to explain how it works.

Every time you finish in the money in an SNG you score points - for 9 handed SNGs it's 45 points for first, 27 for second and 18 for third. The low orbit leader board involves blocks of 20 tournaments and the high orbit leader board uses block of 100. Tournaments 1-20, 21-40, 41-60 etc. will be grouped together as will tournaments 1-100, 101-200, 201-300 etc. Only your first five blocks count for the low orbit leader board, but you can have as many blocks as you like for the high orbit.

Is this all for pride and glory? Of course not! It's for cash! In the "Uranus" division, (where the $60 tournaments fall) the top 15 scores of the week in the high orbit and the top 15 scores in the low orbit pay with 1st place of $1,000 and 15th place of $80 with everything else in between (it's much more of a linear payout schedule than a normal tournament - 2nd place is $700, 3rd is $500 etc.). In the Neptune division (where the $38 tournaments fall) 20 places pay with 1st place being $900 and 20th paying $60. I'm planning to play 100 $38 tournaments so I can have the maximum number of low orbit blocks and one high orbit block.

Of course it's not easy to win one of these leader boards with all of the players out there, but I expect to make some significant money out of this. Even if it's $80 or $100 a week on average that adds a lot to my bottom line over the course of the month and the year.

Maybe as important, this keeps me motivated. I want to win one of these leader boards! Last week I finished in 11th on the Uranus High orbit leader board which paid $80. This week I want to hit a top ten. I'll let you know how it goes.

Friday, October 01, 2010

WCOOP Final Thoughts and MORE!

The 2010 WCOOP came at kind of a bad time. I would have liked to play more events, but in the midst of the worst downswing on my poker life taking shots at a big payday didn't seem like the smartest move.

In the end I played 14 events and had 4 cashes which isn't too bad. Unfortunately it's not about having a good percentage of cashes, it's about hitting that one big one. I also went 0 for 2 in satellites and 0 fo 1 in second chance tournaments.

When all was said and done my $5,000 bankroll was down to $3,760.

I don't expect to be doing much in terms of multitable tournaments, with the exception for occasionally playing the pokerstars Sunday Million or Sunday Warm up.

For now I'm on the SNG grind. I've been peppering absolute and pokerstars playing everything from $35 six handed hyper-turbos to 45 player $60 tournaments to $114 9 player SNGs. All in all I've played about 500 tournaments in the last week. My best results have been coming in the $60, 9 handed turbo SNG's on pokerstars. I've played 228 so far and won $1,863 which is $8.17 per tournament. Factor in another $1.50 per SNG in FPPs and other bonuses and we're talking big bucks if I can keep that rate up. This is actually a pretty small sample size, but it's still promising. We'll see how I'm doing after 2,000 and that should give me a more precise feel for my long term prospects.

My WSOP 2023 Plans and Missions

After four and a half years working for StubHub I wrapped up my time there in March. I've been at the poker tables 3-4 days a week since...