Don't Call it a Comeback (Part 1)

After almost 2 years away from poker, I'm back!

I wasn't 100% away from poker all that time; I played a half dozen tournaments and another 4 or 5 sessions playing low stakes games mostly as something to do while a good friend of mine and I had a few drinks and caught up. But the door on making any kind of money or taking poker seriously in anyway was completely closed. I played fewer hands in those two years than I did on a typical Sunday during the prime of my career.

Black Friday came and went in April of 2011 and I was mostly unaffected. I was 4 months into my new job as Business Development Manager at HitFix.com and while I felt sad for a few of my friends who had been badly burned, the only immediate consequence for me was $500 I had languishing on Absolute Poker evaporating.

As time passed, I decompressed. I didn't realize how tightly I was wound until I had months away from the mania of playing 500+ hands an hour, day after day in a situation where I had to win to support my family.

I've read that how stressed you feel is not related to just things that have happened to you today or last week or last month, but events from the past two years. I'm not talking about major trauma, which of course can have permanent influence on your state of mind, but rather things like getting married, moving, the birth of a child or say a flood of two outters coming in against you that seems to never end.

It took 6 months of being totally away from the daily grind for me to feel totally relaxed and like my career was well behind me in the rear view mirror.

Having a standard job has some major benefits. I get paid the same amount every two weeks even if I have an off week. I can totally check out when the weekend arrives instead of feeling like I should always be working. I get paid holidays, sick leave, vacation pay, stock options, and when I have a really tough decision I ask my boss to make it for me.

But it's always that same amount of money coming in month after month. If I want to spend money on something I have to not spend money on something else. Once my life felt fully stabilized. I decided it was time to start adding to the cash flow.

I figured I could still beat the middle limit hold'em games in the bay area, but I didn't have a bankroll of any kind to start with. I was able to come up with $500 that if I lost wouldn't be a big deal and hoped that would be enough. More importantly for my state of mind, any amount of extra money I could bring in was all bonus money.

When my poker career was in full swing, a win or loss needed to be a few thousand dollars before it was at all noteworthy and anything less than plus or minus $500 felt almost like breaking even. Now I was thinking if I could go make $50 a session, it would be worth my time. I'd buy something with that $50 that otherwise I might not have instead of having it rolled into the pile that would pay for next months bills or be half a percent of the $10,000 budget I had for the next big series of tournaments. $50 or $100 was now an actual win in my mind and I was ready to give it everything I had to book this wins.

On August 8th I rolled into Oaks Club and took a very familiar seat at a $6/$12 limit hold'em game. It had been about 9 years since I played $6/$12 seriously - sober, well rested, focused, determined to win. I played 4 hours and won $5. Not exactly earth shattering. But over my next four sessions I had wins of $250, $160, $167 and $310 playing 3-4 hours each time. The old plays were coming back to me and I was started to get to know the new cast of Oaks $6/$12 players. I had a couple of losing sessions, but over the course of a month I ran my $500 up to a little over $2,000 playing three 4 hours sessions a week and sticking to $6/$12 exclusively.

My results got even better the following month, but that will have to wait for my next post which should be coming in the next day or two.

My plan is to return to blogging how I used to - sharing the ups and downs, talking about my results, specific hands, lessons learned and how I'm feeling about being back at the tables.

Add a comment if you're glad to hear I'm back.

The Best Day To Play

I remember when I was 21 and looking to take my first shot at the $15/$30 game at the Oaks Club. I asked one of the grizzled old veteran players who played a mix if $6/$12 and $15/$30 when the best time to take a shot was. "Holiday Weekends" were the first words out of his mouth.

I've confirmed that sentiment many, may times. In fact for my entire professional career, three day weekends were the exact opposite of time off. This weekend I had a half day on Friday, and with Monday being a holiday as well this was the most time I've taken off from working in I'm not sure how many years. It may stretch all the way back to my honeymoon in 2005.

Yesterday in the tradition of people who only play every now and then I took a trip to the Oaks to play for a few hours. It was the best game that I can remember. It seemed like every hand was 6 or 7 way action for one bet before the flop and anytime someone bet they had a hand and if they raised it meant a monster.

Most people think the best games are the ones with tons of ill advised raising and huge pots. Those games are good, but it's hard to extract maximum advantage when the clowns you are playing against could have anything and the fluctuations are off the charts. I'd greatly prefer everyone playing as straightforward and passive as possible. It's almost impossible to lose in those games over any significant length of time.

Family comes first these days and I wasn't playing for big money so I split a small winner after about 3 hours. But I did confirm one more time that hitting the tables over a three day weekend is never a bad idea.

Missing Poker

I've been missing poker lately. I've also missed writing in the blog. Hang tight poker fans, because eventually I'll get back to writing.

In the meantime, good luck to you all!

E-mail from Pokerstars

I have yet to investigate, but this leads me to believe that FullTilt is totally screwed:

We would like to bring your attention to the following two press releases:

PokerStars Official Statement, June 29 2011

In light of today's news that Alderney Gambling Control Commission has suspended Full Tilt Poker's license, PokerStars wishes to assure our customers that their funds are completely safe and that our operations are completely unaffected. The Isle of Man Gaming Commission today re-affirmed that PokerStars' worldwide licensing is intact and that our operations are in full compliance with all of its requirements. PokerStars' online operations continue as normal and all funds in players' accounts are safe and available for withdrawal as usual with no delays.

PokerStars also remains in full compliance with our licenses in other jurisdictions where we are regulated, including France, Italy and Estonia.

As provided under our licensing, PokerStars has always maintained the integrity and security of our players' funds, by keeping all such funds in segregated bank accounts, always available for immediate withdrawal.

Since the actions of US Department of Justice in April, we have returned more than $120 million to US players and continue to act upon requests as they are received. Players outside the US have not been affected and all cash-outs have been processed without delays. Further, PokerStars entered into an agreement with the Department of Justice which expressly confirmed the company's ability to operate outside the US.

We will continue to operate as a responsible corporate citizen and are committed to serving the needs of our customers in complete compliance with our regulatory requirements.

IOM Gambling Supervision Commission Statement, June 29 2011

The Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission wishes to make it clear that the licensing status of PokerStars in the Isle of Man remains unchanged following today's statement from the Gambling Control Commission in Alderney. Alderney is a separate jurisdiction from the Isle of Man and the operation in question is separate from PokerStars.

PokerStars continues to demonstrate compliance with its licence conditions in the Isle of Man. PokerStars continues to offer withdrawals to any players who wish to withdraw their funds, including players in the USAto whom PokerStars does not currently offer real-money gaming.

The official statement from the IOM Gambling Supervision Commission can be found here.

We would like to thank you for your continued support.

Best Regards,
The PokerStarsPartners Team

Dear WSOP: I Miss You!

I looked a twitter today and saw a post from Phil Helmuth that he'd finished 2nd to John Juanda in the $10,000 NL 2-7 event at the WSOP. My first thought was "Holy shit the WSOP is already underway? I guess it's the middle of June. I am really out of touch!"

I've played 3-10 events at the WSOP every year for the past 6 years cashing at least once every year except 2007. This year Vegas is not in my plans and it's really hitting me how over my poker career feels.

The time I spent in Vegas every summer taking my shot at the big time was always the most hopeful time of year for me. Every tournament buy in was the chance to win hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars and especially in the last few years I knew I was good enough to get the job done if I got a few breaks. I didn't need a Moneymaker miracle, just a few key hands to go my way and I could take care of the rest.

I'm missing that feeling of walking into the Rio with a roll of $100 bills so fat that I can't fit it into one pocket. I miss the feeling of making it to Day 2 after playing for 15 hours and sealing my chips in a tamper proof plastic bag. I miss the feeling of total calm that settles over you when you make the money and it's all gravy from that point on. I miss calling my backers to tell them the good news. A little piece of me even misses the soul crushing oh so long deep breath filled walk from the Amazon room back to my room at the Rio after getting busted.

I have no idea what the future holds for my WSOP career. Right now my bankroll is essentially zero. I burned off all buy a few thousand bucks paying bills during the 6 month transition between full time poker pro and full time Business Development Manager at HitFix. The rest has been absorbed into a standard bank account waiting to be spent on an unexpected car repair or some future vacation.

At this point I feel like there's a good chance that I won't play more than 1 or 2 events in the next 10 years and when I do play I'm probably going to be absolutely terrified.

Then again, maybe I'm not washed up just yet. As they say, there's always next year.

Poker Lessons and Poker Coaching with Dr. M

Over the years I've tried to help friends and family get the most out of their time spent playing poker. It's not always easy. Learning how to play poker is like learning anything else that has deep complexity. It takes time, it takes effort and it takes practice. Most beginners are looking for the secret code that's going to let them win like I do so they can dive into the deep end and try to swim.

At least a dozen times I've been faced with a situation where someone who has almost no poker knowledge beyond what beats what, wanting to know how to play because we are at a casino or they've decided to play online after watching me play. I could talk for days about just starting hands and now I have to condense 10 years of knowledge into 10 minutes?

On the other end of the spectrum is my only current student (I'll call him Dr. M). Dr. M is actually a doctor which is great because he can afford to pay me $50 an hour to help him and because it means he's spent a huge chunk of his life learning. Dr. M has read just about every poker book out there so if I tell him that with an M of 10 the implied odds are not there to limp in the hijack he knows what I mean without having to think about it.

I've found it interesting that what Dr. M needs is not lessons, but rather coaching. What's the different between lessons and coaching? You get golf lessons when you're shooting 110, take 3 shots to get out of a sand trap and couldn't read a putt if it was in neon block letters. You get coaching when you're shooting 75 and want to get it down to 72. With Dr. M all the pieces are there, the just need to be put in the right place.

At this point I've been coaching Dr. M for almost a year and a half, talking to him about every 3 weeks on average. In the past two months he's had 3 or 4 solid tournament scores so we've been talking more often (he's got the fever). Since I don't get to the tables much these days, I'm hoping to start sharing pieces of my conversations with Dr. M on this blog in the coming weeks and months.

Or I might totally forget and never share a single hand! That's sort of how I work. We'll see...

If you're interested in lessons, coaching or poker consulting please send me an e-mail at wdhuff@gmail.com.

Which U.S. Friendly Poker Site Will Be the New #1?

Rakebacknation.com is where I've always gotten my rakeback (I'll have to talk to them about ads since I'm always giving them free press) and also where I've gone to discover new reliable poker sites. Your money isn't 100% safe on any site since you never know when they'll go under, but at least if you choose one of the sites listed on RBN you know they've been thoroughly checked out.

Right now they have 7 U.S. friendly poker sites listed, all of which were barely an afterthought two weeks ago. Interestingly enough those 7 sites are under only two umbrellas: Merge and Cake.

It's fairly common for sites to join forces and start a network. In those situations both sites feature the same cash games, but if you log in from site A, site A gets any rake you pay even if you're playing against some players from site B. Usually sites in these networks run their own tournaments and sit-n-gos, but lumping cash game players together makes it easier to create the critical mass required to have games running regularly.

Apparently the Merge Network is currently the most trafficked in the US with Carbon Poker as it's flagship room and RPM coming in second. The Cake Network, made up of Cake Poker, Doyle's Room and a few smaller sites is the other major player in U.S. online poker today.

If you ask me it won't take long for Cake and Doyle to overtake Merge and get out to a large lead. In a business with choices brand recognition is huge. Doyle's Room and Cake have been blasting me in the face with images of Doyle's road worn mug and massive cakes for years now. Every time I turn my head Doyle Brunson is spitting out some stolen quote about champions and Cake is telling me to eat more cake or scarf more chips.

Their competition is not nearly as entrenched and while I've played on Carbon Poker it was only to target a specific promotion and while doing so I often asked myself "What they hell are you doing playing on this bullshit site!?"

Sometime next weekend I'm going to poke around on the remaining U.S. options and evaluate the possibilities. Be sure to check back for that report and if you don't want to forget, sign up for e-mail alerts on the right side of this page.

Who do you think will win in the end?

I've Updated My Blog Design!

After a few months in the website business I realized that my blog was an outdated eyesore! I've made a few adjustments, to give my blog a more modern feel and I'm going to try to start posting regularly again about all things poker.

In the right sidebar I've added a place to get notified every time I post and I'd encourage you all to enter your e-mail there so you don't miss any of my sometimes informative, slightly entertaining and occasionally obscene poker posts.

If you have any negative feed back please go stuff yourself and I hope you start losing all of your pocket aces to one outers. Actually I take that back. I hope you get hit in the face with an errant golf ball which is actually much more pleasant (I don't want to wish one outters on anyone).

Party Poker Making a Push?

I got an e-mail from someone at an ad network yesterday asking about advertising on my blog. In 5 years of posting this is the first time I've been contacted by an advertiser (not surprising given my very lite traffic).

I've had those silly banner ads for Pokerstars and FullTilt in my sidebar for years and never made a dime so when someone told me me they'd give me $250 to take those down and put up an ad for their client it took me all of 7 seconds to write them back and say yes.

I was guessing that I'd find myself with an ad for some small site I'd never heard of, but much to my shock it was Party Poker! Party left the US market within weeks of the UIGEA passing in 2006 and I'm sure they've been waiting eagerly for these past 4+ years to be rewarded for following the rules.

I see this as a good sign for the future of U.S. online poker. If Party thinks they'll be making a comeback and they're willing to bet on it by paying to get their name out there, then I tend to think they know what they're doing.

Right now I've got the over under for above board U.S. based pokersites launching at 24 months.

Were the Feds Bribed Into Shutting Down Major Online Companies?

When I originally heard the news that Pokerstars, Absolute Poker and FullTilt had been shutdown by the feds I assumed this meant curtains for the entire U.S. online poker industry. But so far that's not the case.

The big three had maybe 90% of the market share, but there are a half dozen other sites that have had small, but significant player bases. Is it possible that one of these sites will become the new leader in the U.S. market or will the rest of these sites get picked off as well?

I'm not one to put forth conspiracy theories and I don't spend much time thinking about what goes on behind the scenes in government, but something just doesn't add up here.

About a year ago the state of Kentucky tried to seize the domain names of a bunch of online casinos, poker sites, and sports betting sites just like the federal government did on Friday. They weren't able to do it because the state government just didn't have enough muscle behind it. But many of the sites took action and blocked users who lived in Kentucky so they wouldn't get sued.

Did Kentucky go after Pokerstars, FullTilt and Absolute? Of course they did. But here's where it gets interesting. They went after over 140 other sites as well. Online poker rooms and casinos are not trying to hide so I'm sure all it took was an afternoon pounding the keys on Google to generate that list.

There is a pretty big difference between 3 and 140. I get spam e-mail from 3 online casinos a day and you'll find ads for at least 7 or 8 in every issue of every poker magazine.

So why did the feds stop at the big 3 instead of going after everyone? Because someone at one of the other half dozen sites that has a chance to inherit the U.S. online poker kingdom bribed someone high up to make sure the shutdown only affected the big 3.

It's like in the movie Heat when Tone Loc trys to trade information about Robert De Niro's crew to Al Pacino in exchange for Pacino shutting down the chop shop across town so that Tone's chop shop can prosper. It was a minor sub plot at most, but you get the idea.

Pokerstars was making billions of dollars off the U.S. market. Not millions, not tens of millions, not hundreds of millions - BILLIONS! All that demand is still there and all you have to do is look at what happened in 2006 to see the effect of the industry leader stepping aside.

Party Poker was King in 2006, Pokerstars was a Duke and Fulltilt was more like the manager of the local brothel. But when the Unlawful Gaming Enforcement Act passed Party Poker left the U.S. market and in a matter of a few short months pokerstars had swallowed up most of their customer base with Fulltilt scooping in some sizable crumbs.

If things stand as they do today, one of these smaller sites like Cake Poker, Carbon Poker, Bodog or Doyle's Room is going to blow up and a handful of people are going to get very, very rich. Actually there's no chance of it being Bodog because their software is a steaming pile of shit.

Maybe these other dominos are going to fall...but maybe not.