NL Experiment Day #2

I've made a small change to my game plan. I was realizing it would be stupid to skip out on the good limit games that the weekend tends to provide so I could play no limit games. So my new plan is to play ten 1,000 hand sessions.

Session #2 was a moderate success and consisted of 1,017 hands. I was ahead over $1,000 at one point, but gave most of it back. In the end I made a net profit of $159 which was surprising when I saw that I only won 26 of 64 (40%) hands that went to showdown. That seems like a recipe for disaster, but somehow I managed a win. I made .73 base FPPs per hand during this session which is pretty close to what I think I can expect long term.

My E-Mail

I've gotten a response from a few people who are interested in some professional poker coaching. If there is anyone else out there who is interested you can e-mail me at wesdave1279@yahoo.com.

No Limit Experiment Day 1

I couldn't sleep last night so I ended up sleeping until 1 in the afternoon. As a result my productivity was lacking today. I only played 1,000 hands and struggled from the start. I kept getting my whole stack in on the flop with 9, 12 or 15 out semibluffs, got called frequnbetly and caught a bunch of bricks.

I lost $769, but at one point I was stuck close to $2,000 and didn't get much help from the deck so I feel OK about it. Hopefully tomorrow I can get my ass out of bed and bust out at least 2,500 hands.

10,000 Hands of No Limit Cash Games

Anyone who plays poker seriously will tell you that the games are much better at night than during the day. Many of the pros want to live normal lives so they play during the day and relax at night (some of them are sickos who play just about every waking moment and play at all hours). On the other hand, for working people playing poker is the relaxing.

Of course things get a little hazy when you consider than when it's morning here it's evening in Europe and well while we're at it we can throw in the rest of the world too. But since 80%+ of the players on pokerstars are from the US for the most part thinking of day and night matters when you're trying to find the best games.

The point I'm getting to is my normal 6-max limit games suck in the morning! I need something else to do when the games are bad. European players almost always play no limit or pot limit games so getting the evening crowd from Paris, Amsterdam, London and Moscow is out of the question.

On top of that no limit hold'em is where all the newbies, rookies, and total novices are. That is where the growth of poker is right now.

I've had two stretches of four or five months where I played almost exclusively no limit cash games. The first time around I won $11,000 the first month and $17,000 the next. I'd thought I'd hit the big time. Then I lost $11,000 the next month (still my worst month ever) and broke even the month after that. The second time around I bailed out because I wanted to go for Supernova Elite and I calculated that 6 handed limit cash games were the best way to do that.

Now I'm thinking NL cash might be worth another shot. I've dabbled a little playing 500 hand blocks here and there this month and I've had some success. More importantly I'm shocked at how bad the play is and how unprepared the players at the mid stakes are for very aggressive play. Also the specific way that FPPs are computed has changed in the past two years so now I'll be able to make more points than I used to.

My plan is to do a little bit of a stronger testing of the waters. Between now and Sunday I'm going to play 10,000 hands of $2/$4 blinds 6 handed no limit cash buying into each game for $200 (half the max). If I run my stack up to $400 or more I'll jump out of that game and into a new one with a fresh $200 stack. This will hopefully keep me from facing the difficult decisions that come up playing deep stacked which can be extra tough when you don't know any of the players!

While 10,000 hands is a pretty small sample size and $2/$4 is pretty small stakes for me these days (I've played as high as $25/$50 blinds). But it's a good place to start and get acclimated to the style of play. Breaking even or having a small win or loss won't tell me much, but if I break off a $5,000 win that will tell me something. While this isn't nearly a sufficient sample size to precisely predict my long term results in terms of game play, it's plenty to tell me how many FPPS I can expect to make long term. I think it's going to be about .75 base FPPs per hand and I'm thinking 10 cents a hand (or $1,000 total for my experiment) is par for the course.

I'll try to keep you posted. I'll also try not to totally blow off this experiment which is the kind of thing I've done in the past. I'm trying to be a new man these days. A better man. And one of the things a better me is going to do is do what I say I'm going to do!

Taking it to the Next Level

Here is a comment that was left on my last post:

I have been reading your blog regularly since I learned about it from Sfgate. I am really passionate about the game but have had limited success so far despite reading a number of books and playing regularly. I am ~$5K up since starting to play in 04 primarily due to a few big multi table turny wins - otherwise I am pretty break even if not losing player. How do I take the game to the next level? Also, do you use any software or not of any software that is easy to use and is useful to categorize players or get guidance on your actions?
Thanks,
-IK

This is a great question and after a little thought I have a response. First of all let me say that while I don't regularly give poker lessons, I have in the past. If you want to do a few lessons for $50 an hour I'm sure I can help you to some extent. If you're interested you can e-mail me privately.

With that out of the way let me first of all say that there is no magic bullet. The top pros don't have secrets per se. To my knowledge there isn't any software that is so powerful that it will give you a massive edge. No one book has the answers.

The most important thing is experience. But I've seen the same mopes playing $3/$6 every day losing slowly at the Oaks club for the last 10 years. So clearly experience isn't everything.

Tactical knowledge that you get from books, articles, and discussion with other players is probably next on the list. But when you get to the higher levels most of the players have read a few books so that really just gets you to an even playing field with many of your opponents.

Emotional control is very important. One of my best friends is extremely smart. He is way smarter than I am and smarter than all of my friends (most of whom are Berkeley grads). He is extremely good at board games and has been playing poker seriously off and on for 20 years. He should be a great poker player. But he has no self control so he can't make any money playing poker. Losing makes him nuts so he starts playing too many hands, and moving up limits until he's lost so much that he has to quit. Last year he had 17 winning sessions in a row playing $5/$10 and won thousands of dollars. But then he had a session where he was losing badly so he jumped to $10/$20, and then to $30/$60 and lost $8,000 in a matter of hours. This same thing happened to him on 5 or 6 occasions over a year and a half where he'd win 80% of his sessions playing the smaller games, win $4,000 or $5,000 and then give it all back in one massive meltdown. He just couldn't stop himself.

I know it's stupid to chase your losses like that, but I still do the same thing sometimes! I've played in my share of marginal $50/$100 games and $100/$200 games hoping to get even. And we've all played hands in ways that aren't optimal because we're upset about losing. Self control is tough.

Fearlessness is very important too. You can't be afraid to lose. If conditions are right you have to be willing to risk more than you're really comfortable with.

On the other hand if conditions are poor you have to not play those stakes or games even if they are the most fun.

I could go on and on (I've actually gone on more than i planned to already) about what you need to be a great poker player. The point I wanted to get to is you have to put it all together.

Every time you play you have to take it seriously. Never screw around. Never play hands you shouldn't because you're bored or upset. Never give anything away or pass up an edge. Fight for every dollar, every time.

On top of that you need to specialize. Pick the game that is most profitable for your style of play and strengths and play that game almost all the time. Of course I do other things like play tournaments or mixed games, but 90% of my time is devoted to 6 handed limit cash games. When I was playing sit-n-goes for a living in 2004 and 2005 that's all I played. 9 handed, $114 SNGs, all day, every day. I played thousands and thousands of them. I've played millions of hands of 6 handed limit. So when someone who has read the books and played 50,000 hands sits down in my game thinking they are the shit, they have no chance against me.

On top of that, multitable tournaments are a real leak for most players. Even if you're playing with positive expectation that expectation is only realized when you finish in the top few spots. Most players can play well between hand one and the money or even well into the money. But when there are 20 players left in a 1,000 player tournament or they are at the final table, they lock up. Or they just don't have the experience or fearlessness is such a tough, stressful situation to seal the deal.

If you're playing against 1,000+ person fields it takes tens of thousands of tournaments for the luck factor to even out. Stick to tournaments that have smaller fields or play in special events (like the Sunday Million or WCOOP or whatever) that are loaded with satellite qualifiers.

Lastly, (this is very important) make sure you are getting rakeback (check out rakebacknation.com if you have no idea what I'm talking about) or making the most of other bonuses like FPPs, deposit and reload bonuses. I saw someone elses blog briefly who was playing SNGs for a living. He'd won $5,000 for the year in actual play and made $200,000 in bonuses and rakeback. More than half of my income is from FPPs and bonuses. It's a huge deal!

I'm not sure how helpful that was, but hopefully that at least made sense. I welcome any questions you might have or if anyone else wants to add their two cents feel free. Thanks for the comment!

What's Been Going On?

Nothing exciting! I went 0 for 6 in the FTOPS XIII and lost $2,214 which is no big deal. I have been a little fristrated that I haven't had a good result in a tournament in a long time. I've been playing a lot of $55-$215 multitables (a few almost every day) with fields that are usually 500-2,000 players (a few of the FTOPS tournaments were 5,000+) so of course I don't expect to be making final tables very often. But it still feels like it's been a long time since I've had a five figure or high four figure win and I haven't been cashing at the rate I'm used to either. I think it's just one of the natural lulls that comes when you've played thousands of tournaments.

Inspite of this constant drain on my bankroll, I have been winning steadily. Not counting FPPs and bonuses (which are significant) I'm ahead about $8,000 for the past 3 weeks. I played about 2,000 hands of no limit cash games last week and I've played a little 8-game mixed, but for the most part I've just been pounding away at the $10/$20-$50/$100 limit games.

WCOOP is right around the corner in September and after looking at the schedule I'm planning to play 31 of the 45 events with buy ins totaling $19,148. Unlike the FTOPS this is a once a year thing and a much bigger deal. It's the World Championship of Online Poker after all. More details on my schedule and other previews coming soon!

FTOPS Fizzle

I bricked in my last two FTOPS tournaments one of which was the $535 HORSE. I haven't lost the complete $3,000 that I had planned on using as my bankroll for the FTOSP, but my account is on zero and I think I'm just going to bail out at this point.

I know I have a positive expectation in these tournaments, but it just feels like I'm throwing money into the fire. I'll have a few other comments soon, but for now I think I'm just going to hold off and wait for the WCOOP.

FTOPS XIII Event #11 (1/2 PLO 1/2 PLH) underway

We started this one with 1,310 players each with 5,000 chips. I doubled up early with KK but gave some back in the Omaha when I got it all in with AAJ9 vs a shortish stack. After an hour of play I have 7,725.

The edge of the money is 135th which pays $340 and 1st is $57,640.

FTOPS Update

As you may have infered from my lack of post I didn't make the money in the $109 with rebuys. Got it all in with AQ vs JJ and lost. Eventually I'm going to win some of these races!

In the morning I have $216 half pot limit hold'em, half pot limit Omaha. It should be fun.

FTOPS XIII Event #7 ($109 NLH w rebuys) Underway!

2,316 players to start. I made it through the rebuy period only doing one rebuy and the add-on so I'm in for $309. After winning one big hand early I slowly gave back my profits and find myself with the 5,000 chips I paid for. The edge of the money is 234th which pays $696 and first place is $142,000.

I haven't done shit in a tournament in a long time so (in the words of all great losers) I'm due!