Winter is over, the weather is getting warmer the spring flowers are in bloom and I've finished working on my winter season poker summary. The results however, are not great. It appears that I'm still in the middle of a massive downswing and my poker bankroll balance continues to drop faster than a gannet diving on a fish. So I figured that I'd better take a closer look and see if I could find some sort of clue as to what is going on. I went back into my records over the last six years and crunched a few numbers and then distilled the numbers down into a few simple conclusions in an effort to make some sort of sense of it all. Here's what I came up with:
* I showed a small (2%) loss in 2015 but 2014, 16 and 17 were all profitable years. 2018 was the first year that showed a significant loss.
* There were 3 negative seasons out of 16 in the four years from 2014 to 2017, then 5 losing seasons out of 7 in the last two years.
* The biggest contributors to losses over the last two years have been live tournaments, casino ring games and live re-buys.
* In spring 2018 and winter 2019 all game types were showing losses.
* Of all the online game types I've played over the last six years, only the low buy-in tournaments have shown a profit, along with a few seasons of micro stakes cashies.
* Live tournaments were mostly a winning game type up until late 2017/early 2018, when they became mostly losers.
* Live re-buy tournaments were doing okay in 2016, then became 50/50 propositions at best in 2017/18.
* All short-stack casino ring game seasons were in the negative.
* The downswing started in August 2017 and continued through to August 2019 with two short upswings between. In this period my bankroll dropped by nearly half.
Looking at this, it seems obvious that something drastic happened to my poker games some time in 2018 and has continued to this day. There are three possible explanations for this. Either I really am experiencing the mother of all downswings, or I've somehow changed my game for the worse, or the opposition is getting better. The trick is to figure out which of these is the most likely.
The Friday night live tournament is the one that I've been playing the most during this period, playing every week, 45 weeks per year for many years. It's fair to say that I have made a few changes to my game plan over the last couple of years, but I don't believe these adjustments have been significant enough to change my outcomes so drastically. Over the last year or so I've started following a policy of playing the 'big four' (aces, kings, queens and AK) much harder and faster in an effort to combat the extremely loose calling frenzy that you get in this game. I've also dropped the threshold at which I start playing a tighter game, giving me a little more time to play ABC poker in the early stages before I have to tighten up. I don't see either of these changes affecting my game negatively and besides that, they are both relatively recent adjustments that were begun long after my bankroll started its downhill slide.
As for the possibility of the opposition getting better, I don't think so. There are still about ten regulars who have been playing this game for years along with a motley crew of casual players who come and go as the whim takes them. The table dynamic is still much the same as it a has been for the last six plus years: one or two tight players who play a decent game with the rest of the table generally consisting of chronic and persistent calling stations. I suppose it's possible that some of the regulars have come to know my playing style and found ways to exploit it but the opposite is also true; a lot of the time I have a pretty good idea of what these guys are doing and where I am at in a hand.
The other live game that I play on a regular basis is the $20 re-buy tournament at the Landmark Bar. I usually play in this game twice a month, although the frequency dropped off a little this year because of my failed experiment with playing ring games at the casino. Although I've cashed occasionally at the Landmark over the last couple of years I haven't actually won this tournament outright for 36 games. Yes, that's right: 36 games! Bearing in mind that there is a maximum of 18 players in this tournament, this is an appallingly bad record. Looking at the stats, the results for this game are not nearly as bad as they are for the Friday nighter, but they have still definitely taken a turn for the worse in recent times.
There is some possibility that I'm now up against tougher opposition than previously at the Landmark. The regular player base has certainly changed and I think it's true that at least some of the new regulars are more solid players. But it's also true that the bulk of the players are still the usual assortment of casual loose-passive calling stations. Maybe it's just a matter of perception; as this is a turbo style re-buy tournament the variance is bound to be higher. I think, in balance, that my loss of form is most likely the result of a bad run of cards but there is always the possibility that I'm also getting outplayed to some extent.
That brings me to the Deep Stack Tournament, which is played once a month. Not only do I play in this tournament, but I also run it, which is an important factor. Unfortunately, I have lumped the results for this tournament in with the Friday night tournaments, so I don't have separate statistics available. But I do know that cashes have been few and far between over the last couple of years and I haven't had an outright win for a very long time. I went back and had a look at previous results a few months ago and noticed that my best results came a few years back when I was still only getting one table of players. Cashes dropped off noticeably once I started getting larger fields of players.
It seems to me that I may be a victim of my own success regarding this tournament. For years I was trying to get the player numbers up and now I have finally succeeded, getting an average of 20 players each month. But some of these new players come from outside the pub/club scene and are actually pretty good at the game. As well as that I am running this tournament single-handedly while also playing, which means that I'm not able to properly concentrate on my game, especially in the early stages. As if that wasn't enough, my bankroll has now dropped to a point where the $50 buy-in for this tournament is now outside my maximum buy-in level. In short, the Deep Stack Tournament is no longer an optimal game for me.
This year I've also been playing a few short stack ring games up at the casino. I was trying out the Short Stack Strategy, buying in for 25 big blinds and playing super tight and looking for a good opportunity to get all my chips in the middle. Although there was one occasion where I made a bad decision and lost all my chips as a result, I don't think I can ascribe my lack of success in this game to playing badly. Most of the time I was just following the SSS plan; basically playing by the numbers. The fact that I lost money in nearly every session can only mean one of two things: either the Short Stack Strategy just doesn't work, or my losses are part of the Great Downswing. The latter seems more likely.
Looking at my overall results, the losses in the casino games have definitely made a difference to my bankroll balance. But the cashies were never responsible for the primary loss in any season. So if I hadn't played in these games I would have been better off, but I still would have been looking at a loss. As it happens, I always had an exit strategy in place for these games if they turned out to be losers, so the door is now closed on these casino ring games (well, almost closed).
As for my online poker games, it's harder to find patterns from these games. That's because I've played a variety of different games over the last six years and it's hard to know whether I've played enough games to be able to draw conclusions. I certainly believe that online games are tougher and as a consequence I generally play at the micro stakes level. Looking at the figures in more detail I can come to a few conclusions. Sit and Go tournaments have been just plain awful. The ring games I played 5 or 6 years ago had more negative than positive seasons but the ones I've played this year have been slightly better. Most of the tournaments I've played in the last three years have shown negative results, but the lower buy-in games I played in 2016 were actually pretty successful.
Those results in 2016 suggest that I should go back to the low buy-in tournaments on 888poker. At the moment I'm playing in micro stakes ring games, playing a minimum stack of 40 big blinds. I'm deliberately keeping the buy-in low to minimise any losses. At the end of this year I'll take another look at online games and make a decision. Unless I start showing some spectacular results from the cashies the message is clear; I should go back to the micro tournaments.
After all that, what conclusions can I come to? Well, I don't believe that conditions at my main live games have changed significantly enough to affect my overall results. I would say that I'm still 60% confident that I am in the middle of a downswing rather than a sudden and catastrophic loss of form in these games. But as far as the Deep Stack Tournament goes, I think this game is no longer optimal for me so, reluctantly, I need to stop playing in it. However, as I'm the organiser, I'll at least have to play out the last two games for the year. Then, next year, I won't be running it and even if someone else takes it over, I'll still be giving it a miss.
The more I think about it, the more I come to the realisation that it doesn't really matter whether I'm being toyed with by the gods of chance or whether I've somehow lost my poker mojo; the solution is the same. If I'm on a downswing then all I can really do is keep playing the game as well as I can. And to make sure that I am doing that, I need to keep analysing my game. I need to keep looking at sample hands and determining whether I am making the correct decisions, regardless of the results. And if I'm on a downhill slide as a result of bad play then the same applies; keep looking at my game and checking that I'm making correct decisions. In other words, analyse, analyse, analyse. It's something that I've been trying to do more of anyway and this just makes me realise how important it is to keep analysing my game.
I've been reading a bit of advice on handling downswings recently and one of the commonest pieces of advice is to take a break from poker. I tried this when I had a rough patch a few years ago and it seemed to work. But I'm not contemplating doing that this time, at least not in the immediate future. This is mainly because of the Friday night tournament. Firstly because this is mine and my wife's regular weekly night out; it's more than just a poker game. The other reason is the yearly points prize. I figure I still have an outside chance of getting my points up and getting close to the $1000 top prize, or at least the $500 for second. So I plan to keep playing poker to the end of the year, regardless of the results.
Having said that, the Friday nighter usually has a break of a few weeks over the holiday period so, if my bankroll has continued to decline at that point then I will probably take the opportunity to take an extended break from all poker. A few weeks lying on the beach or firing up the barbecue instead of looking for the next game to play could be just what I need. Come to think of it, maybe I'll do that anyway, regardless.
Friday, 20 September 2019
Friday, 5 July 2019
Highs and Lows
I started my dedicated poker bankroll in October of 2008, more than 10 years ago now. I guess that more or less marks the point at which I started taking my poker games seriously. Since then there have been many high and low points. Here are a few examples:
Biggest win. A few years ago I played in a cash game at Sky City Casino. I bought in for $100 and came out a few hours later with about $600. However, this was a casual game, not played using my poker bankroll, so it doesn't really count. My best bankroll result was from a tournament played during the Clubs NZ North Island Championships. I won $620 after splitting the prize pool with one other player. The buy-in was $40 so that makes for a tidy $580 profit. This is way ahead of my other big cashes, which mostly sit at around $200 to $300.
Biggest loss. Most of the games I play in have a reasonably modest buy-in so the potential losses are limited. But I tried my hand at a few casino cash games a couple of years ago, buying in for $180 each time. I had mixed results from these games but the worst result came in the very first game when I busted out and lost my $180 buy-in with top pair/top kicker against a flopped two pair.
Biggest lesson. I've done a lot of reading about poker over the last ten or so years but the most important lesson has come fairly recently. On reading Dan Harrington's books on tournament and cash game strategy I've finally realised how important the odds are in making decisions. In the end it all comes down whether or not the pot odds are better than the odds being offered. In other words whether you are facing a positive expected value situation or not. It's taken a long, long time but I've finally realised that you win at poker by taking bets where the odds are in your favour and by making bets that give your opponent unfavourable odds.
Longest downswing. Taking a look at my profit/loss graph for the last ten years I see that I've had a number of downswings that have interrupted the otherwise upward flow of the line. There was one that started in October 2014, recovered a little early the following year, then levelled out until August before starting to climb again. This was nearly a year of poor results. But the worst drop is the one that I am currently experiencing. My bankroll decreased steadily from August 2017 through to June 2018. This was followed by a brief increase then another steeper drop until February this year. So that amounts to nearly 18 months of losses. I had a small increase in April but then it started dropping again. I'm about 78% sure that this is a temporary state of affairs, but only time will tell.
Biggest hand. The biggest hand I've ever had was a long time ago. This was at a home game of Texas Hold'em where I hit a ten high straight flush. The only other straight flush I've ever had was a couple of years later at a pub game where I had one that was five high. After thousands of hours of play since then the best I've been able to manage is to hit quads from time to time.
Most Memorable Bad Beat (subtitle: 'My best bad beat story'). This happened a couple of years ago in a live tournament. I raised pre-flop with AK and got a couple of callers. The flop was A K 7. I bet a significant amount and was called by a notorious calling station. The turn was a 2 and we both ended up all-in. She turned over 7 2. She'd called my pre-fop raise with the worst hand in poker, then called my flop bet, almost certain that she was behind, with bottom pair and no draw. You know how this story ends, right? The river was a 2.
Worst game type. I've tried a number of different game types over the years but no-limit Texas Hold'em tournaments and ring games have been the only ones that I've had any success in. It's hard to say which of the others has been the worst to play. Sit and Go tournaments started out well but they have now descended into the realm of poker unplayability. Fixed limit ring games and pot limit Omaha were both pretty awful games to play. But I think that Seven Card Stud takes the prize. No matter how hard I tried I just could not get my head around this game. The six months or so I spent playing this game was a massive waste of my precious poker-playing time. Never again.
Dodgiest live game. Playing in pub and club games that are run by amateurs has its problems. Some of them are run in a less than professional manner and a few don't appear to be entirely honest. There's a club here in Auckland that runs regular games and some of their procedures can be lacking in transparency. At least one person has told me that he's seen players end up with more chips than they should have after the colour-up. But the worst example of crooked dealings I've seen was in a local NPPL game where the organiser coloured up and members of her family who were also playing ended up with suspiciously large chip stacks. I've heard other stories about this same person from time to time. She now runs a game not far from where I currently play on Friday nights. Needless to say, I'll never play in that game.
Biggest field in a live game. Most of the tournaments I play in involve 20 to 30 players but I've occasionally played in bigger fields. The Interclub tournament that I play every month now has a field of around 40 but it used to be higher. We used to have up to 11 tables so there must have been at least 70 players involved. But the biggest tournament I've been involved in is the annual Clubs New Zealand Tournament. The most recent one was just a few weeks ago in Hamilton. The Friday night game featured a field of about 144 players, then on Saturday there was a total of 200 players involved.
Best Website. I've looked at plenty of poker websites through the years but I've tended to drift from one to the other taking advice on particular topics wherever I could find out. But the one site that really stood out was Poker School Online. It has a wealth of information on poker strategy set out in a step by step format that appeals to me.
Best YouTube channel. Honourable mention goes to Gripsed.com's tournament tutorials but I really enjoy watching the School of Cards videos. They cover a variety of topics mostly to do with the psychology of poker. Highly recommended.
Best Book. I've read a few poker books but for me the books by Dan Harrington really outshine the rest. The two volumes of Harrington on Hold'em go into great detail on tournament strategy, from the opening stages through to heads up play, covering hand selection, calculating pot odds, blind/stack ratio and a whole lot more. The sample hands at the end of each chapter, where the reader is invited to make decisions as an actual hand unfolds, are particularly useful. Sometime soon I'm going to get a copy of the third volume, which consists entirely of sample exercises, and work my way through that. The two books on cash games are written in a similar way and are also recommended reading.
Best article. The best article on poker strategy I've ever come across was when I was looking for advice on coping with my recent downswing. There was an article on the Poker Listings website called 'How to Win at Poker: It's About Decisions, Not Results' by Arthur Reber. I found this article to be incredibly useful, so much so that it's bookmarked on my phone and I've re-read it multiple times.
Goal not Achieved. It would have been nice to have been able to get into a strip poker game with Jessica Alba but that was probably not a realistic goal. So that leaves winning Sit and Go games as my goal yet to be achieved. These games have been bugging me for years. It wouldn't have been such a problem if I hadn't had such good results early in my poker career. But since then it's just been a long downhill ride with this game type, despite my best efforts. So Sit and Go tournaments are on the back burner now; in fact they may have fallen off the back of the stove.
Goal Achieved. From time to time I've listed my poker goals in this blog. Of those goals that I've managed to achieve there are three that stand out. Opening up a dedicated bank account for my poker bankroll was one; a step that confirmed my competence in playing the game. The second was playing in the Sky City Casino Deep Stack Tournament a few years back. Although I'd listed playing in a big buy-in tournament as a goal, I never realistically expected it to happen, so that was a big achievement for me. But as good as that was, I'm happiest about the fact that I've managed to turn the 50/50 tournament at the Onehunga Club into a viable event. I've been trying for a few years to kick-start this tourney and now it's reached the point where I'm regularly getting three to four tables of players. Even though I haven't cashed for a while, this is exactly the type of tournament I like to play in, so I intend to keep running it for the foreseeable future.
Biggest Disappointment. The one thing that's missing from my poker schedule is live ring games. I just love to play in cashies but the only ones available to me are the $300 buy-in games at the casino. I have tried playing short-stacked in these games a few times recently but with a notable lack of success. The other option would be to find a local game at a lower buy-in but the only ones I know of are Omaha games and the Texas Hold'em players only want to play tournaments. Oh well, maybe one day.
Light Bulb Moment. There have been a couple of times when I've adopted some aspect of overall strategy that has turned out to be crucial to my success. The first of these was when I adopted Chris Fergusson's bankroll management plan. I've been sticking to these rules for years now and they have proved very effective in keeping me on the right side of the profit/loss ledger. But I think that adopting game selection principals has been even more important. Over the last few years I've been regularly checking my results and using that information to decide which games I should be playing and, even more importantly, which games I should be dropping. Nothing is more important than game selection. Nothing.
Biggest win. A few years ago I played in a cash game at Sky City Casino. I bought in for $100 and came out a few hours later with about $600. However, this was a casual game, not played using my poker bankroll, so it doesn't really count. My best bankroll result was from a tournament played during the Clubs NZ North Island Championships. I won $620 after splitting the prize pool with one other player. The buy-in was $40 so that makes for a tidy $580 profit. This is way ahead of my other big cashes, which mostly sit at around $200 to $300.
Biggest loss. Most of the games I play in have a reasonably modest buy-in so the potential losses are limited. But I tried my hand at a few casino cash games a couple of years ago, buying in for $180 each time. I had mixed results from these games but the worst result came in the very first game when I busted out and lost my $180 buy-in with top pair/top kicker against a flopped two pair.
Biggest lesson. I've done a lot of reading about poker over the last ten or so years but the most important lesson has come fairly recently. On reading Dan Harrington's books on tournament and cash game strategy I've finally realised how important the odds are in making decisions. In the end it all comes down whether or not the pot odds are better than the odds being offered. In other words whether you are facing a positive expected value situation or not. It's taken a long, long time but I've finally realised that you win at poker by taking bets where the odds are in your favour and by making bets that give your opponent unfavourable odds.
Longest downswing. Taking a look at my profit/loss graph for the last ten years I see that I've had a number of downswings that have interrupted the otherwise upward flow of the line. There was one that started in October 2014, recovered a little early the following year, then levelled out until August before starting to climb again. This was nearly a year of poor results. But the worst drop is the one that I am currently experiencing. My bankroll decreased steadily from August 2017 through to June 2018. This was followed by a brief increase then another steeper drop until February this year. So that amounts to nearly 18 months of losses. I had a small increase in April but then it started dropping again. I'm about 78% sure that this is a temporary state of affairs, but only time will tell.
Biggest hand. The biggest hand I've ever had was a long time ago. This was at a home game of Texas Hold'em where I hit a ten high straight flush. The only other straight flush I've ever had was a couple of years later at a pub game where I had one that was five high. After thousands of hours of play since then the best I've been able to manage is to hit quads from time to time.
Most Memorable Bad Beat (subtitle: 'My best bad beat story'). This happened a couple of years ago in a live tournament. I raised pre-flop with AK and got a couple of callers. The flop was A K 7. I bet a significant amount and was called by a notorious calling station. The turn was a 2 and we both ended up all-in. She turned over 7 2. She'd called my pre-fop raise with the worst hand in poker, then called my flop bet, almost certain that she was behind, with bottom pair and no draw. You know how this story ends, right? The river was a 2.
Worst game type. I've tried a number of different game types over the years but no-limit Texas Hold'em tournaments and ring games have been the only ones that I've had any success in. It's hard to say which of the others has been the worst to play. Sit and Go tournaments started out well but they have now descended into the realm of poker unplayability. Fixed limit ring games and pot limit Omaha were both pretty awful games to play. But I think that Seven Card Stud takes the prize. No matter how hard I tried I just could not get my head around this game. The six months or so I spent playing this game was a massive waste of my precious poker-playing time. Never again.
Dodgiest live game. Playing in pub and club games that are run by amateurs has its problems. Some of them are run in a less than professional manner and a few don't appear to be entirely honest. There's a club here in Auckland that runs regular games and some of their procedures can be lacking in transparency. At least one person has told me that he's seen players end up with more chips than they should have after the colour-up. But the worst example of crooked dealings I've seen was in a local NPPL game where the organiser coloured up and members of her family who were also playing ended up with suspiciously large chip stacks. I've heard other stories about this same person from time to time. She now runs a game not far from where I currently play on Friday nights. Needless to say, I'll never play in that game.
Biggest field in a live game. Most of the tournaments I play in involve 20 to 30 players but I've occasionally played in bigger fields. The Interclub tournament that I play every month now has a field of around 40 but it used to be higher. We used to have up to 11 tables so there must have been at least 70 players involved. But the biggest tournament I've been involved in is the annual Clubs New Zealand Tournament. The most recent one was just a few weeks ago in Hamilton. The Friday night game featured a field of about 144 players, then on Saturday there was a total of 200 players involved.
Best Website. I've looked at plenty of poker websites through the years but I've tended to drift from one to the other taking advice on particular topics wherever I could find out. But the one site that really stood out was Poker School Online. It has a wealth of information on poker strategy set out in a step by step format that appeals to me.
Best YouTube channel. Honourable mention goes to Gripsed.com's tournament tutorials but I really enjoy watching the School of Cards videos. They cover a variety of topics mostly to do with the psychology of poker. Highly recommended.
Best Book. I've read a few poker books but for me the books by Dan Harrington really outshine the rest. The two volumes of Harrington on Hold'em go into great detail on tournament strategy, from the opening stages through to heads up play, covering hand selection, calculating pot odds, blind/stack ratio and a whole lot more. The sample hands at the end of each chapter, where the reader is invited to make decisions as an actual hand unfolds, are particularly useful. Sometime soon I'm going to get a copy of the third volume, which consists entirely of sample exercises, and work my way through that. The two books on cash games are written in a similar way and are also recommended reading.
Best article. The best article on poker strategy I've ever come across was when I was looking for advice on coping with my recent downswing. There was an article on the Poker Listings website called 'How to Win at Poker: It's About Decisions, Not Results' by Arthur Reber. I found this article to be incredibly useful, so much so that it's bookmarked on my phone and I've re-read it multiple times.
Goal not Achieved. It would have been nice to have been able to get into a strip poker game with Jessica Alba but that was probably not a realistic goal. So that leaves winning Sit and Go games as my goal yet to be achieved. These games have been bugging me for years. It wouldn't have been such a problem if I hadn't had such good results early in my poker career. But since then it's just been a long downhill ride with this game type, despite my best efforts. So Sit and Go tournaments are on the back burner now; in fact they may have fallen off the back of the stove.
Goal Achieved. From time to time I've listed my poker goals in this blog. Of those goals that I've managed to achieve there are three that stand out. Opening up a dedicated bank account for my poker bankroll was one; a step that confirmed my competence in playing the game. The second was playing in the Sky City Casino Deep Stack Tournament a few years back. Although I'd listed playing in a big buy-in tournament as a goal, I never realistically expected it to happen, so that was a big achievement for me. But as good as that was, I'm happiest about the fact that I've managed to turn the 50/50 tournament at the Onehunga Club into a viable event. I've been trying for a few years to kick-start this tourney and now it's reached the point where I'm regularly getting three to four tables of players. Even though I haven't cashed for a while, this is exactly the type of tournament I like to play in, so I intend to keep running it for the foreseeable future.
Biggest Disappointment. The one thing that's missing from my poker schedule is live ring games. I just love to play in cashies but the only ones available to me are the $300 buy-in games at the casino. I have tried playing short-stacked in these games a few times recently but with a notable lack of success. The other option would be to find a local game at a lower buy-in but the only ones I know of are Omaha games and the Texas Hold'em players only want to play tournaments. Oh well, maybe one day.
Light Bulb Moment. There have been a couple of times when I've adopted some aspect of overall strategy that has turned out to be crucial to my success. The first of these was when I adopted Chris Fergusson's bankroll management plan. I've been sticking to these rules for years now and they have proved very effective in keeping me on the right side of the profit/loss ledger. But I think that adopting game selection principals has been even more important. Over the last few years I've been regularly checking my results and using that information to decide which games I should be playing and, even more importantly, which games I should be dropping. Nothing is more important than game selection. Nothing.
Monday, 13 May 2019
Then and Now
I started this blog in May of 2012, almost exactly seven years ago. At the time I was playing online on an old desktop computer and I had a dial-up connection so there were occasional disconnection problems. In fact my first few posts were concerned with my difficulties with managing software updates. I was playing exclusively on 888Poker back then. I'd originally started playing on Full Tilt but then after Black Friday when Full Tilt was shut down I moved on to 888. There were no live games available so I was playing online games only, two or three times a week.
Back then I was playing three game types on 888. I was continuing to play in multi-table tournaments, the format that I'd had the most success in playing the previous year. I'd also started playing in fixed limit Texas Holdem 6-max ring games, a new game type for me. This was part of my plan to try a different game type every year. In addition, I was also playing occasional Sit and Go tournaments as a fill-in game for when the others were not available. SitNGos were going pretty well for me at the time and were showing a healthy profit.
I'd been playing in regular $10 rebuy tournaments at a local pub during 2011 but those games had come to an end and I had no other live options. There were some National Pub Poker League games around but these were free entry games played for bar tab prizes and by then I was only interested in money games. So it was online poker only in 2012.
I had recently adopted poker pro Chris Ferguson's bankroll management plan, so playing in the low buy-in games available online made it easier to follow this plan. This was because my poker bankroll was sitting at around $500. About $350 of this was cash that I had paid in, leaving only $150 of actual profit. Even so, I was happy to just be in the black. I'd only moved from a net loss to a net profit the year before, then dropped back into the red and then struggled back into profit in May. So that was my poker situation back in 2012, after about 560 hours of play.
Seven years later things have changed a lot. For a start, I've got a decent computer now, and more importantly, a proper broadband connection. So disconnections are a thing of the past and software updates happen in a few minutes. I'm still playing on 888Poker and also on PokerStars.
At the moment I am playing one online session every week, divided between two game types. I play a big field tournament on PokerStars, which usually involves around 1000 players. I've also recently started playing in low buy-in no limit ring games on 888. These games replace the SitNGos that I'd been plugging away at for a few years. The good results I was getting in this game type back in 2012 have long since faded into the past.
These days I have a lot more live game options available. Every Friday night I play in a $25 freeze-out tournament at a local club; a game that I've been playing in for years. I also play in one other live game every week. There's the $50 freeze-out that I run (and play in) every month, the monthly Interclub teams tournament, and also the Wednesday night rebuy tournament played at a local pub. On top of all this I've recently been trying my hand at playing short stack ring games up at the casino.
The increased number of live games is a big difference between now and 2012. Although a couple of pub poker leagues have recently fallen apart there are still a lot of other games going on now in various pubs and clubs. Even the NPPL is playing tournaments for cash nowadays, or so I've been told. The only thing is, you have to be a little bit selective. Some of the games have strange structures and some are run in a less than ideal way. But I'd rather have the problem of finding the right game among many than to not have any games at all. It's a good problem to have.
As for my bankroll, it's looking a lot healthier now. The amount in my poker bankroll is substantially more than it was back then; enough to allow me to play in pretty much any of the available live poker games around. In fact I now have a separate poker bank account, as it's a bit too much to have lying around in the bottom of the sock drawer. But the most positive thing is that my overall profit is higher than my bankroll level. This is because I've long since paid back the money I put in and occasionally paid myself a 'dividend' when I've had a profitable season.
So after 3600 plus hours of playing poker things are looking pretty good. However, over the last year or so my overall results have been poor. After a long period of profit things went into a bit of a decline and I lost a significant amount of money. But I've been playing long enough now to realise that this is almost certainly just a downswing. In fact the last few months have shown some encouraging signs that the profit/loss graph is moving back into its usual upward direction. This is probably the most significant difference between then and now. If this downswing had happened a few years ago I would have been plagued with doubts. I would have been asking that old question: 'am I good player who is having a bad run, or am I a bad player who was just getting lucky for a while?' Now I'm about 98.6% certain that it's the former, not the latter. I'm quietly confident that I'm on the right track for my poker journey. I'm ready for the next 3600 hours.
Back then I was playing three game types on 888. I was continuing to play in multi-table tournaments, the format that I'd had the most success in playing the previous year. I'd also started playing in fixed limit Texas Holdem 6-max ring games, a new game type for me. This was part of my plan to try a different game type every year. In addition, I was also playing occasional Sit and Go tournaments as a fill-in game for when the others were not available. SitNGos were going pretty well for me at the time and were showing a healthy profit.
I'd been playing in regular $10 rebuy tournaments at a local pub during 2011 but those games had come to an end and I had no other live options. There were some National Pub Poker League games around but these were free entry games played for bar tab prizes and by then I was only interested in money games. So it was online poker only in 2012.
I had recently adopted poker pro Chris Ferguson's bankroll management plan, so playing in the low buy-in games available online made it easier to follow this plan. This was because my poker bankroll was sitting at around $500. About $350 of this was cash that I had paid in, leaving only $150 of actual profit. Even so, I was happy to just be in the black. I'd only moved from a net loss to a net profit the year before, then dropped back into the red and then struggled back into profit in May. So that was my poker situation back in 2012, after about 560 hours of play.
Seven years later things have changed a lot. For a start, I've got a decent computer now, and more importantly, a proper broadband connection. So disconnections are a thing of the past and software updates happen in a few minutes. I'm still playing on 888Poker and also on PokerStars.
At the moment I am playing one online session every week, divided between two game types. I play a big field tournament on PokerStars, which usually involves around 1000 players. I've also recently started playing in low buy-in no limit ring games on 888. These games replace the SitNGos that I'd been plugging away at for a few years. The good results I was getting in this game type back in 2012 have long since faded into the past.
These days I have a lot more live game options available. Every Friday night I play in a $25 freeze-out tournament at a local club; a game that I've been playing in for years. I also play in one other live game every week. There's the $50 freeze-out that I run (and play in) every month, the monthly Interclub teams tournament, and also the Wednesday night rebuy tournament played at a local pub. On top of all this I've recently been trying my hand at playing short stack ring games up at the casino.
The increased number of live games is a big difference between now and 2012. Although a couple of pub poker leagues have recently fallen apart there are still a lot of other games going on now in various pubs and clubs. Even the NPPL is playing tournaments for cash nowadays, or so I've been told. The only thing is, you have to be a little bit selective. Some of the games have strange structures and some are run in a less than ideal way. But I'd rather have the problem of finding the right game among many than to not have any games at all. It's a good problem to have.
As for my bankroll, it's looking a lot healthier now. The amount in my poker bankroll is substantially more than it was back then; enough to allow me to play in pretty much any of the available live poker games around. In fact I now have a separate poker bank account, as it's a bit too much to have lying around in the bottom of the sock drawer. But the most positive thing is that my overall profit is higher than my bankroll level. This is because I've long since paid back the money I put in and occasionally paid myself a 'dividend' when I've had a profitable season.
So after 3600 plus hours of playing poker things are looking pretty good. However, over the last year or so my overall results have been poor. After a long period of profit things went into a bit of a decline and I lost a significant amount of money. But I've been playing long enough now to realise that this is almost certainly just a downswing. In fact the last few months have shown some encouraging signs that the profit/loss graph is moving back into its usual upward direction. This is probably the most significant difference between then and now. If this downswing had happened a few years ago I would have been plagued with doubts. I would have been asking that old question: 'am I good player who is having a bad run, or am I a bad player who was just getting lucky for a while?' Now I'm about 98.6% certain that it's the former, not the latter. I'm quietly confident that I'm on the right track for my poker journey. I'm ready for the next 3600 hours.
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