A Confusing, But Good Problem to Have

Over the past week I've continued my experiment with playing no limit cash games on pokerstars. So far my results have exceeded my expectations. After a few days of playing the $1/$2 blinds games I felt like I was doing a lot of breaking even with a little progress in the positive direction. So I decided to split the six games I was playing into three $1/$2 games and three $2/$4 games. Right away I made a few big hands in the $2/$4 games which made it easy to feel comfortable at the higher level (this is actually 1/5 the size of the biggest games I've played in, but that was over a year ago and it certainly wasn't while playing 6 games at a time).

It seemed like this was a good system so over the past several days I've been playing 3 games of each level. What's confusing to me is while I'm killing the $2/$4 games I'm breaking even in the $1/$2 games. When you double the stakes you're always going to have better players at the higher level so it doesn't make much sense that I should be winning WAY more than twice as much money against tougher players.

I have four theories, however, that might explain the disparity. The first is that while I feel I'm paying equal attention to all the games, I'm actually much more focused on the bigger games and thus able to make better decisions. The second is that the players at the higher level play much more how I'd expect them to. Perhaps at the lower level the players are playing so poorly that I'm having trouble figuring out what they have or I'm unable to manipulate them as well as better players who are thinking more. The third possibility is I might be unconsciously making riskier plays in the smaller games because the amount of money involved is less so I don't care as much if I lose. My fourth theory is that I've just been running really good in the bigger games and facing some short term bad luck in the smaller games. I suspect it's actually a combination of all of these aspects, but it still seems a little strange to me.

So how exactly have I been doing? Well over the course of 13,099 hands at the $1/$2 level I've lost $87. But, over the course of 4,373 hands of $2/$4 I've won $2,722 which is 62 cents a hand! I'm almost certain I can't keep that level of winning up in the long run, but if I could do even half that, I could make $4,500 a week. During the 17,000 plus hands I've played in the past 8 days I've also picked up about 40,000 FPP's which are worth $635 and I made a brief stop at the Oaks which netted me $375. All in all in the past 8 days I've won $3,732. SWEET!

The most important part is I've made a fundamental change in what I'm doing and that's what's bringing in all the money. If I'd just started winning more in the SNG's I wouldn't feel as good. It's the potential for future profits here that is so exciting.

NL Cash games

Over the past few days I've been playing some $1/$2 blinds no limit cash games. Some of you might be thinking "Wait a minute! Aren't you supposed to be some sort of super poker stud? What the hell are you doing playing anything that involves $1 or $2 anything?"

The size of NL cash games can be a little deceiving. What happens is you start with blinds of $1 and $2, but things escalate quickly because the size of the bets you make is tied to the size of the pot. For example, let's say you're playing in a $1/$2 blinds game, you raise to $6 and get called by both of the blinds. Now there's $18 in the pot when you see the flop. At this stage if anyone is going to bet it will be somewhere in the $10-$20 range (in most cases) because if they bet much more then that they're risking too much to win the $18 in the pot and if they but much less they're making it too cheap for their opponents to continue. So let's say you bet $15 and one of the other players calls. Now we've got $48 in the pot. If you bet $40 on the turn and get called you'll have $128 in the pot. On the river if you still like your hand you might bet $75. If you get called one of you is dragging a $278 pot which all started from a grand total of $3 in blinds in a hand that didn't even have any raising after the flop.

When I played the $10/$20 blinds no limit game at the Bellagio (which is 10 times the size of the game in the example) I bought in for $1,000 and had less in front of me than any of the other players (I ended up winning $2,000 in about 4 hours but almost had a heart attack every time I played a hand). Clearly these games are a little bigger then they sound.

Anyway over the past few days I've played 7112 hands and won $584 which is 8.2 cents per hand. I'm also earning FPP's at the rate of about 2.7 cents per hand so my net profit has been about 11 cents per hand. This sure doesn't sound like much, but if you do the math it's a nice living. I've found I can play 3,000 hands a day (playing six games at a time) in about 6.5 or 7 hours of playing time. Which means at 11 cents a hand I can make $330 a day. $330 a day times 20 days a month is $6,600 a month which is $79,200 a year.

Of course the end result gets REALLY interesting when you consider that I think my actual expectation might be in the 15-20 cent per hand range instead of 11 cents per hand. Last year in January I had a streak that lasted about 3 weeks where I was playing $3/$6 blinds games (four at a time) where I made over SEVENTY cents a hand. It was like money was falling from the sky.

Anyway for now I'm going to shoot for 10 cents a hand plus the 2.7 cents a hand in FPP's. While it may sound like a lot 7,000 hands isn't a big sample and I'll need to play more to come any remotely firm conclusions. I'm planning on taking tomorrow off, but between Saturday and next Friday I'm hoping to knock out close to 20,000 hands.

In other good and interesting news I got the following e-mail from pokerstars yesterday:

Hello,

PokerStars has become aware of two players who were working together in our Sit & Go tournaments to the detriment of other players. You were involved in at least one tournament with these players and as a result you may have been adversely affected.

The players' accounts were closed and their funds frozen pending a thorough investigation, which is now complete. Fortunately the problem was identified quickly and they had only played in a few tournaments before the accounts were closed.In a case such as this it is our policy to confiscate the colluders' winnings or balances and to distribute them to the players affected by their actions in as fair a way as possible.

I regret that we will be unable to answer questions as to how your specific credit amount was calculated. Likewise, we are not at liberty to identify the specific games or players in question. Suffice to say that they have been barred from the site and you will not encounter them again.

The integrity of the games at PokerStars is of paramount importance to us and we will not abide cheating or collusion in our games. We work hard to police our games and prevent such instances. In the rare cases where collusion has actually occurred, we make sure that any players affected are compensated appropriately.


After reading this I thought "Wow I hope those bastards really screwed me over! I might really cash in here!" My dreams of huge riches were dashed when I looked at my balance. But, while not a whopping sum, the $68 I got back was certainly as splash of icing on an altogether pleasant day.

Welcome Home! Here's a Kick in the Nuts!

Jen and I spent Friday through Monday in Mexico City for our friend Matt's Wedding. It was the most insane wedding that I've ever been too. You can read all about it in out family blog at http://www.thehuffs.wordpress.com/ (I'll get that post up today or tomorrow).

Today I got back to work with plans to kick ass through the end of March and into April. Unfortunately I had a terrible morning. I dropped about $800 in 3 hours over the course of 40 SNGs. At one point I had a streak of 19 straight tournaments out of the money! (my second longest streak ever). It felt like a kick in the nuts.

I had lunch and I thought "Maybe I should shift gears for a while." I decided to play 1000 hands of no limit cash games and see what happened. I jumped into six $1/$2 blinds ($200 buy-in) games. A few hours later after 1100 hands I cashed out up $500 for the afternoon and had my loss for the day down to a manageable amount. Everyone loses from time to time, but one of the keys to professional poker is not taking HUGE losses.

I can't quite recall why I haven't given the NL cash games another serious go. Last year I had my second and third best month ever playing these type of games. Of course, I followed those up with my worst month ever, but I think that was because I moved up limits too far too fast. I'm planning on playing 7500 hands in the next two days and hoping to make at least 10 cents a hand. I'll attempt to let you know what happens (the last time I promised to tell you what happened was my last post - the short version is the Sunday tournaments did not go well, sorry Matt).

In other news, my articles are up and you can read them at:
http://www.cardschat.com/poker-tells-advantage.php
http://www.cardschat.com/false-poker-tells.php

Some of you will notice the story in the second one (as well as a few other snippets) ripped off directly from this blog. I'll let you know when further writings of mine appear anywhere on the web.

Why haven't you posted is so long?

It's been over a month since my last post on this blog and I have a few good reasons. First and foremost I haven't had much exciting or good news to share. The first two months of 2007 have been a bit of a struggle and while I haven't been losing I haven't been winning as much as I'd like either.

This Monday I had an ephiney. I used to be better at this. I used to dominate. I used to kick everyone's ass every time I logged on. How did I used to play? Once I had this thought process I realized that over the past 6 months or so I've made too many adjustments and it's thrown me off. So I went back to the philosophies and strategies that worked so well for so many years and BING, I won $1900 in 4 days. When you throw in the $1500 FPP bonus that I'm going to unlock tomorrow it's going to be a good week.

Another reason why I haven't been posting is I've used my blogging time to write a few posts on our baby/family blog www.thehuffs.wordpress.com and I've written a few actual poker articles. After hearing for a few people that I should try to get something published I did a search for "poker articles wanted" on Yahoo. This lead me to contact a fellow who runs a website www.cardschat.com. After a little back and forth we agreed that I would write something about tells and send it to him. So after all of about 2 hours I cranked out 1,200 words (almost two pages single spaced) about tells. And then the next day for good measure I wrote another similarly sized article about using and avoiding false tells. I sent them in and Nick, the guy who runs the website paid me $35 for each one. Not a mind boggling amount of money, but being able to actually get paid for something I wrote is a very satisfying feeling.

My articles are not actually on the website yet for some reason, but I have my $70 so I'm not sweating it. Also writing so much so quickly makes me wonder why in high school and college I would have to struggle for hours and hours to write 500 words. I guess writing about literature or history or whatever isn't as easy as writing about something you enjoy and know plenty about.

Poker wise I have something of interest coming up. This Sunday my good friend Matt (who is getting married in Mexico on St. Patrick's day with both E.B. and I as groomsmen) has made the offer that for the day he'll put up all the money (and pay for any loss) for me to play a myriad of tournaments and I'll take 25% of any profits (if there are profits to be had). I plan to make him regret the moment that he made the offer and blow off a few thousand of his dollars! Not really. But, I will be playing in 15-20 multitable tournaments including three $215 buy in events, one of which should have over 7,500 entrants! Hopefully I'll make at least one final table. I'll write a post about what happened sometime on Monday.

Moving for Poker

In response to a recent post Jake asked: If online poker goes the way of the Dodo, do you think that you might move to the peninsula/south-bay to maximize the lucky chances/bay 101 nexus?

I would say that for now we're pretty happy where we are and my first step would be to see if I could make enough at The Oaks Club. Of course, I might make a trip here and there to Lucky Chances, but I don't see myself going to Bay 101 since they have instituted a few expensive changes. Instead of time collection or raking $3 a hand they've gone to $5 a hand which is the most expensive juice I've ever seen anywhere. Secondly they have a $3 penalty (which goes in the pot) every time you miss the blinds.

If we have to leave our current house I could see looking to move a little closer to Lucky Chances. Also moving to the L.A. area would be something we'd have to give a little more thought to.

A Quick answer or two to a comment question

In a recent comment my sister posted the question: In light of this post. 1) Does this mean the big carrot is moot? 2) If you play in person, will you play for higher stakes, since you'll be forced to play less hands per hour? 3) Once you've established a reputation in person, are you worried that people will start running for the hills once they see you heading for their table? As in, "It's Dave Huff! We can't beat him! Ahhh!" It sounds funny, but it's actually a serious question.

I would say that The Big Carrot (incentives for playing a given amount in a year on pokerstars) probably won't be my focus. I've figured that it's not worth busting my hump if there's a fair chance that I won't get the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Of course I'll continue to play online as long as I can and there's a good chance I'll hit a few yearly milestones, but I won't earn the supernova elite status.

When I play in person, not only is it for higher stakes, but it's a totally different game. In stead of playing no limit tournaments I'll be playing limit cash games. Since I'll only be playing in one game at a time I'll need to play much better relative to my opposition, but my focus will be undivided and I'll be doing much more of "playing the other player" instead of "playing the cards."

Of course, after a while some people will realize that I've been winning consistently. But, no one is going to avoid a game just because I'm in it. It's not like I'm going to sit down and immediately empty everyone's pockets. They might avoid a game if they saw only really good players playing in a game, but one player not matter how good they are isn't enough to have a big impact on someone else's bottom line.

Some bad news for online poker

In the past week or so online poker has taken another blow and this one has me more worried. About a week ago the two heads of Neteller (the leading third party that arranged transfers from banks to online poker sites) were arrested and charged with money laundering. A day or two after, Neteller stopped transactions to and from all gambling websites. Shorty after, a few other businesses that did roughly the same thing also stopped serving U.S. customers.

There are still a few ways to get your money in and out, but most of them involve a long wait instead of the instant transfers. I've had the websites mail me regular checks in the past and it's as easy as pie, but I can't see too many people making deposits via western union or money order. I suspect that pretty soon the games will start to dry up as the casual players decide that it's not worth the hassle.

While it felt for a while that the law that passed would be generally neglected, it now seems that it has some teeth. If I had to put a time table on it, I would say that by the end of the year online poker may cease to exist as we know it.

But, I'm feeling strangely fine. I'm going to try to spend most of next month back at the Oaks club and see how much I can make. I don't know how sharp my limit cash game skills are, but I used to kick ass a few years ago when I wasn't nearly as good of a poker players as I am now. And I've heard the players are much worse now than they used to be so hopefully I'll dominate from the start.

The Biggest Carrot of All Time

After about a month of not blogging I'm back to give you the latest poker news. I always look forward to the start of a new year, because it means I can give my self a clean poker slate. It's much like a professional athlete starting a new season. And frankly 2006 was a year that I'd like to forget pokerwise. After winning almost $30,000 in the first two months of the year, I lost $11,000 in March and struggled for most of the rest of the year. Luckily 2005 was a banner year and I was smart enough to save most of what I made so not having a great year in 2006 was OK.

On January 1st pokerstars dangled a huge carrot on the end of a stick in order to entice it's supernova players to take the next step in increasing the volume of their play. In order to become a supernova player you need to earn 100,000 VIP Player Points (VPP's) in a calender year. You get 5 VPP's for every dollar in tournament juice that you pay. There are a bunch of financial benefits to being a supernova such as: entry into freerolls, faster accumulation of FPP's, special deposit bonuses and other VIP treatment. In 2006 someone made it to supernova status in just 2 weeks and by the time I made it in June there were about 120 other supernovas. By the end of the year there were close to 1,000.

Pokerstars realized that they needed something bigger and better. So they created a new level of status called Supernova Elite. In order to achieve Supernova Elite status you have to earn 1,000,000 VPP's in a calender year! This is an insane amount. Notice that in order to earn 1,000,000 VPP's you have to pay $200,000 in tournament fees which means you've bought into more than $2,000,000 worth of tournaments in one year. In 2006 I accumulated roughly 250,000 VPP's, but I spent a good deal of time playing in ways that don't generate many points (ie multitables and cash games) so the notion of 1,000,000 VPP's in a year isn't totally unthinkable.

So what they hell do they give you that would make it worth it to trade time with your friends and family for time at your computer? To start, they give you 5 FPP's for every VPP instead of the 3.5 per VPP that you earn as a regular supernova. Not too exciting, but worth mentioning. Secondly you'll get entry into some freerolls with fat prize pools. Ok, a little better. But most importantly they'll give you FREE entry into the 2008 WSOP Main event AND your choice of a pokerstars package (entry fee, hotel, airfare for 2 etc.) to the 2008 Pokerstars Caribbean adventure (a $7500 tournament in the Bahamas) or the European Poker Tour Monte Carlo (a $10,000 tournament). They'll also give you FREE entry into the $5,000 WCOOP main event online. That's over thirty grand of goodness! Talk about a big carrot!

Right now I give myself about a one percent chance of making it. But the good news is pokerstars has put in a few other bonuses along the way. When you get to 200,000 VPP's they'll give you $2,000 (there are a few hoops to jump through in terms of playing a given amount in a certain period of time, but for me it's effectively free money). At 300,000 it's another $3,000 and at 500,000 and 750,000 it's another $5,000 and $7500 respectively.

I'm certain that I'll make it to 300,000 and shouldn't have too much trouble making it to 500,000, but I think more that that is too much for me to handle. To make it to 1,000,000 I'd have to start playing $225 SNG's, and play 1,112 every month. That's 56 a day, 20 days a month. Doesn't sound too bad. The problem comes in when you consider that I'll be facing much stiffer competition, and if I have a bad day I could lose four or five grand. Also this would be a big step up for me. While I've played a few hundred $225's and 25+ tournaments with $1,000 buys-ins or more it's always been taking shots here and there. I knew I could always come back to my bread and butter. Playing 60 $225 SNG's a day every day is a big step up and I don't know if I could handle the stress.

My plan for now is to work as hard as I can and make as much money as possible. If I could knock out a few $10,000 months all of a sudden I'd be much more willing to take some chances. I could see my self doing something like setting aside $3,000 and playing $225's until it's gone. If I do well early and have a strong streak I could continue to play at that level until I could make some good estimates about my long term expectation. If I could break even that would pretty much be good enough since I'd be earning an insane number of FPP's which I could then turn into cash (if I played 1,112 a month I'd get about $4,500 worth of FPP's)

The biggest and best reason why I almost certainly won't make it is that Baby Huff Version 1.0 will be arriving on or around August 2nd. I suspect that come summer time I'll be taking on more of the household duties and if I'm up all night changing poopie diapers (and mailing them to Chris Delauder's house) I don't think I'll want to tangle with top notch competition.

To date I'm ahead about $3,000 for 2007 which is a little behind pace for how much I've been playing. I'll keep you posted on what happens for the rest of the year (if your lucky). Also if your interested in more Huff blog posts check out our baby blog at thehuffs.wordpress.com where you can learn something about babies (my wife has written most of the posts so far) and hear about non poker related Huff Stuff.

A Kick in the Ass on the Way Out the Door

I'll be in Maryland where I grew up for 11 days starting tomorrow. Thankfully our dear friend Liz loves cats and has graciously offered to keep an eye on the house and Gus and Rio, so don't report us to the SPCA. Thanks Liz!

Since I've been working pretty hard the past month or two I've been ready for a vacation. Also I'd worked every day for 15 days straight between December 2nd and December 16th. So after a few hours on the morning of the 16th I mentally checked out. We had a Christmas party at our house that night and I spent all day Sunday glued to the couch watching football. I'd planned to get back to work on Monday, but instead Jen and I spent the day shopping, eating out and at the movies.

After spending the morning screwing around writing e-mails and generally wasting time I had to do some work to clear a $1,500 bonus before I left town. Things started out nicely as I found myself ahead $300 after 45 minutes. The terrible strain of this herculean effort required me to take a 2 hour lunch break.

I manged to haul myself back to my office at which point I experienced the second worst run of tournament finishes in my online career. The worst run I ever had was over 2 years ago when I had 23 straight SNG's in which I finished out of the money. If you assume that at worst I'm a player who makes the money 40% of the time then I can expect a stretch like that once every 126,625 tournaments. Of course after about 12 or 15 bricks in a row no one is playing their best so the chances of 23 misses in a row are a little better than that. Today I had a stretch that wasn't quite as bad, but still sucked. I had 12 misses in a row, then a 3rd and then 5 more misses.

The worst one was the 10th one in that stretch. Playing 4 handed with blinds of 100/200 and a 25 chip ante I had about 2,200 chips and was first to act. The player in the big blind had about 2,000 and the other two players each had just over 4,500. I raised to 600 with AK of spades and got called by the big blind. The flop came down 8 9 Q with 2 spades. While I didn't have a pair I was still in pretty good shape with two overcards and a flush draw and I knew I wouldn't be folding. In fact, I thought to myself "I hope this guy bluffs into me with a hand like AJ, that would be perfect." Sure enough, my opponent bet 700, I put in the rest of my chips and he called me with A10. "Ah ha!" I thought. Unless he manages to hit a J or a 10, THAT ISN'T A SPADE, I win and even if he does I can still hit a spade to win for sure. As you might have guessed a 10 came on the turn, I failed to hit a spade, or a J or a K on the river and I lost the pot.

But, that is not the end of the story. I still had 135 chips left. I went all in on the next two pots and split them both. Then I won a few pots and all of a sudden I was up to 1500 and back in it. The blinds had gone up to 200/400 and I found myself in the big blind with A4 of hearts. The player on the button inexplicably just called 400 as did the small blind who only had about 1500 total. I moved all in and the first player folded. The player in the small blind who was the same one who nailed me with the A10 earlier and had squandered some of my chips called me with Q8. The flop came down 3 4 J with 2 hearts. "Ha ha!" I thought. "This is just like before when I had WAY the best hand AND a flush draw covering some of my opponents outs. There's no way I can get totally screwed AGAIN after LOSING 9 STRAIGHT TOURNAMENTS." When the off suit Q came on the river and I lost the pot and my 10th straight tournament I was not happy.

Perhaps even more remarkable was the journey of the green dry erase marker that I grabbed off my desk at that moment. While a lengthy stream of F-bombs and other profanities came spewing forth at high volume from my very core, I threw the marker into the middle of the room with all my might. It glanced off a piece of furniture which cracked the marker and removed the cap. The now capless, split marker then managed to fly at a direct 90 degree angle to the direction in which I threw it where it came upon the intersection of a dresser and the wall. The dresser and the wall are also at 90 degrees to each other mind you. Yet somehow this single marker managed to make THREE concentric arcs of dots of ink on the dresser each at least 2 feet long AND a solid line of ink that was also in an arc shape on the wall. Talk about a magic marker!

Anyway I managed to lose about $600 on the day which wasn't how I wanted to go out on my last work day before my vacation, but I've certainly had worse days. I don't expect to write any posts while I'm in MD, but I have grandiose plans to work myself until I'm totally dead in January so that should lead to some interesting posts. Until then, have a merry Christmas and a Happy new year!

A brief comment answer

As I've said before I love comments (it makes me feel like people are actually reading my blog). In a recent comment Timm said "I'm no poker genius, and really not a computer genius either. have you thought about throwing a second video card in your computer so you could hook up a second monitor for dual desktops?"

This is something that I gave a fair amount of thought to when Jen and I moved into our current house in January. In the past I did all my playing on my laptop and was faced with VERY limited screen space so once we got a little more room I knew it was time to buy a desktop. I considered getting somewhat normal monitors and running them both off of one computer, but I instead opted to go for the 30 inch big ass monitor. I suppose, eventually I might want to get another one, but even though it's tax deductible I'm not ready to shell out another two grand for another one. Maybe when prices go down I'll reconsider. Another downside of adding an additional monitor is I need to be aware of what's going on in all of my games at all times and when you bring another monitor into the mix it means that instead of moving my eyes every half second I'll have to start moving my head as well.

If history has taught me anything it's that my super sweet $2,000 monitor will probably be gathering dust in the garage in 5 years rendered worthless by the new technology.