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.
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