Live Cash Update

Just a quick update from Saturday night. The house agreed to buy my action, but it turned out to not be necessary. They didn't have enough for a separate 2/5 table so we ended up playing a 1/2 game with a round of Hold'em, PLO and PLO8. It's funny though. The table hated when the Hold'em round came because they know that's my game. In 3 out of the first 4 orbits of Hold'em, I raised the first hand each time and of course they are all like, "ugh...back to Omaha please". It turned out to be a good night though. I felt a bit more comfortable with Omaha and made some better decisions. I crushed it in Hold'em though and took down a gigantic pot when someone misplayed their set vs. my flush draw and we got stacks in on the turn.

I bought an Omaha book and plan on putting some effort into gaining an edge in that as well. Hopefully they will run two tables next week though, as I need to stick with Hold'em since the WSOP is coming up. I'll have a pre-WSOP blog post coming soon.

Limited live options

So I put some $$ on Carbon Poker and last week more poker sites were shut down. Doyle's Room shared the same payment processor of some sports betting sites and then Carbon announced they were not allowing players in New York, Maryland, Missouri and France (huh?). New York was the state that busted Full Tilt and Stars and Maryland busted Doyle's Room.

So...I'm probably going to cash out of Carbon now. So frustrating!!! This basically means I'm limited to live play. So my options are:

1. Play the high rake/fast structure legion tournaments
2. Start running games on a regular schedule
3. Play more live cash

I'll probably do some combination of all three, but #3 is tough because the people that I know that run games, typically run mixed games OR want to start running 2/5 games. Trust me, I would LOVE to play 2/5 games because I feel I have a great edge and can make some good money playing. The only problem is bankroll. It's funny because most people that play around town wouldn't even understand the concept of having a separate poker bankroll. They might use the word, but they don't actually manage a separate poker bankroll.

For me, managing my bankroll is very important. I'm still at a point with my business where I'm certainly not rich and I can't replenish my roll with ease. Keeping my poker money separate from my life money has been something I've been proud of as I never want poker to interfere with my family's financial well being. So now I have a dilemma. Many of the cash games have moved to 2/5 and I don't know anyone who runs a 1/2 game. I'm sure they are out there, but I would need to be invited. I would personally rather play with people I know. Of course, I'm sure at any given game I would probably know someone, but I guess I'm a bit uncomfortable with seeking out a game.

The other thing is that I'm a little embarrassed that I'm not rolled for 2/5. I really shouldn't be since MY definition of being rolled for it is way different than most people who play the game. For me, I would feel much more comfortable having $10k - $15k. But the reality is that I'm still hovering around $2,500. That's only 5 buy-ins at 2/5. Yes, there are lots of people who will buy in for $200 and $300, but to play optimally I can't be worried about losing a couple of buy-ins. To me right now, losing $1,000 would be devastating. Not in terms of the value of the money, but in terms of the percentage of my bankroll. I'm already handicapped with what games I can play as it is.

Now the other side of me that wants to justify playing says "you can crush the game, don't worry...the money you start making playing 2/5 will build your roll up". Is this potentially true? Sure. But at the same time, I could hit a nasty patch of variance...or worse, I could nit up and make overly cautious decisions causing me to play bad and lose money that way. Now...am I a chronic worrier and overthinker? Yeah, at times. If I just stay confident and play a little lower variance style I could grind out some small winnings in the beginning. I may not have as much fun, but I could be profitable. I could also just give myself a 1 buy-in stop-loss. That certainly isn't optimal but it's a way to play.

OR I could talk to the house about buying part of my action. This would reduce my bankroll variance and allow me to play more comfortably. The down side of course is that I wouldn't make 100% of my winnings. But the profits at 2/5 will be greater than 1/2 and it would help me get started. I think they would be open to this as they already talked about staking me to be a house player if they started a 5/10 game. I've already had them stake me for things, but I also hate to always ask for money. We'll see. Maybe I'll float the idea by them to see what they say.

Anyway...that's enough rambling for now. There is a game tonight, so I'll report back as to my decision.

DP

Online play, determination & short stacked plays

So I deposited some money on Carbon Poker last week. While it is definitely NOT the same as PokerStars and Full Tilt, at least it is poker from the convenience of my own home.

The biggest difference really is just game selection and field sizes. I'm okay with the smaller fields since it helps reduce variance, but it does make it less likely to hit a big score. But the game selection at the mid stakes is pretty slim. There are plenty of $5 tournaments, but I prefer to play $20 - $50 games with deeper stacks. Hopefully this will improve over time, but I guess for now the role of online poker is to help me get reps for my live game.

I did just return from New Orleans at the WSOP Circuit event. I did well, placing 24th in a daily $355 and 5th in a nightly $185. But the friend of mine I went with ended up winning 2 rings for over $100k in 5 days. This was obviously a monster run, but he played great as well. He was fearless making big calls and bluffing in the right spots. He made up his mind before he went that he was winning a ring and that determination has inspired me. It's made me even more determined than ever to take down a big live tournament.

Biggest Leak - One thing I still need to work on is my fear of going bust early on in a tournament. I will often times fold in spots with the justification of "picking a better spot". Now I'm not saying that I do this all the time or even that folding in these spots is wrong, but I had a hand that bugged me from New Orleans. Long story short - An aggressive internet player raised in mp and I had TT on the button. I decided that 3betting was the best play...BUT, I did not have a very confident plan for the hand based on how he may respond. I probably even looked a little nervous. I raised 2.8x his raise and thought to myself "he probably thinks I'm 3 betting light here". He thought for a while and he 4bet me for a bit over 1/2 his stack. I considered all options and shoving was definitely in my mind...but then I talked myself out of it because he had put in so much of his stack and I didn't want to look like a fool shoving and him snapping me off with QQ or something. I folded and later on he told me he had A7s. Now he could have been lying of course, but that pot was significant in my momentum and his momentum in the tournament. I hit a downswing at that point and he continued to run over the table....it probably also made me gun shy. But had I won that pot, I would have had a lot more chips, but more importantly a ton of confidence. I still made day 2 and cashed, but I nursed a short stack for like 7 hours and never put myself in a position to win. So these are the ways I'm going to work on this leak:

1. Have a plan for all situations when making a decision so I'm not influenced by emotions
2. Be comfortable with going busto in big pots early IF I have strong reads

Now the good thing is, later that night in the nightly I played without fear and it paid off. I iso-shoved a big squeeze play vs. an aggro kid with 55 and I was right about flipping and won a big pot. I also raised blind with 4s2s and when I hit a flop of 4xKsJs, I raised someone's donk lead and got it in. I could have easily played it passive and just called the flop, but then I would have had to fold the turn. I felt like I had fold equity and the best hand so I took the aggressive route and it paid off on the river.

Goal Setting - So like I said, my friend's determination to win was inspiring and I know that it fueled his big week. He was not going to be satisfied without a win and it helped him have the strength to follow his gut without caring about being wrong. I am determined to win a big live tournament and it will happen soon.

New Desire - I've been thinking about this more lately and I want to back a small stable of players. I've always loved being a mentor and helping others become successful because of my influence. I also like the idea of spreading out my risk. Of course, the problem right now is that I don't have the bankroll to back others. If Full Tilt & PokerStars were still alive in the US, I could back players for micro-stakes online, but with that being dead there aren't as many people like me who are playing on the remaining US sites. So really I would be backing live players and I do have a concept for the Atlanta Poker Fund which would gather a group of investors together to back multiple players at the same tournaments. But that requires me to recruit others who are interested in staking and that is proving to be more difficult than I thought for myself at the main event (I have to shore that up this week...I probably have $6k locked up). Backing others is still something I am going to pursue.

New Strategies with 20-25bb stack - This is another part of my game that I need to keep working on. I sometimes feel crippled at this stage and end up waiting it out until I get shorter so I can 3bet shove. And while my arsenal might be limited with this stack, I need to have some plays I can utilize to keep chipping up here. Here are a few thoughts:

• Don't worry about a 3bet shove feeling like an overbet. If it's the most +EV decision then do it
• Delayed shove - interesting article on Cardplayer on this...basically call a raise in position with good, but not great holdings (i.e. KQ, KJ, AT/A9, etc. and shove over any c-bet). Sometimes you'll get called but they will whiff 2/3 of the time and they can't call. This is good against someone you think might call your pre-flop shove with small pairs or possibly better broadway cards, but will fold on the flop
• Inducing squeezes by flatting raises in lp with a more merged value range. This only applies vs. really aggro players in the blinds, but instead of just trapping with AA, KK, etc. I could consider flatting a raise with a hand like AJ with the intention of calling/shoving over a squeeze. Again, it is player specific and somewhat high variance but when you have someone squeezing with worse Aces and suited connectors, AJ turns into a big hand.
• Limp the button or cut-off vs. players who defend a lot, but won't raise from the blinds. This may seem a bit on the passive side, but it's really more about pot control and playing position. It is player specific and the plan is to bet almost any flop. This isn't a play I would do a lot, but in the right situations it can be the best choice with this stack size.

River plays - One other area I'm going to be thinking about is river plays. I tend to have a very limited bluffing arsenal on the river, but river bluffs can often be very believable. I probably need to find spots where I could bluff raise the river more (not that I need to be spewing rivers, but this is not in my arsenal that much). Obviously it needs to make sense for the hands I'm representing and board textures need to make sense.

Alright, that's it for the giant brain dump for now.

Adapting to Change

Ugghhhhh. So instead of firing up 8 tables last night, I went to the American Legion to play in one of their weekly live tournaments. Don't get me wrong. The field is super soft and I enjoy playing live poker a lot. But it just wasn't the same. Its a turbo structure so if you don't pick up some hands or good bluffing situations early it's just waiting for a good spot to push. And the field is full of old guy calling stations, so you have to be pretty selective about bluffing.

It was kind of frustrating last night because I finally worked out a nightly online schedule where I wasn't playing turbos and I was REALLY enjoying playing regardless of winning or not. I got to play a lot of post flop poker and I was building and keeping big stacks consistently. I finally felt like I wasn't nitting it up all the time and I was in full control. I was also getting very comfortable 8 tabling and getting in the zone.

The other thing that really sucks about Stars and Tilt shutting down is that I could play poker all from the comfort of my own home. I could put the kids to bed and not feel guilty about skirting my family responsibilities to play poker. Now I feel guilty or selfish anytime I want to play. The thing is, I've been playing poker 3-4 times a week for the last 6-7 years now. All of a sudden this freedom is ripped away from me and now I have to adapt to the change.

The thing is, I LOVE playing poker. This is my personal outlet to become really good at something and I have a burning passion for the competition and personal growth it provides an avenue for. This is something that I am not going to stop doing and I'm not going to stop striving to continuously improve and be great at it. If I did not have something to fuel this part of my personality, I would honestly go crazy and be crabby all day.

All that being said, I just need to work out a regular and predictable schedule that is fair to my family and so that I don't feel guilty every time I go play.

So what about the other US friendly poker sites? Honestly it's still too soon to tell in my opinion. I would love to put money on the Merge network sites but with a limited bankroll, anything I put on I would need to be prepared to have it potentially frozen. And honestly I'd be somewhat okay with that if my roll were still over $10k. But for me to deposit $500 right now and it to be frozen would be significant. I'm not going to put on $100 and play $1 tournaments. That just wouldn't be fun for me. I guess I'm still with the wait and see mentality. How long am I waiting and what I am waiting to see? That's a good question. I guess ideally I want the DOJ to publish a statement that says they aren't going after these sites. But obviously that's not going to happen. I think what I am realistically waiting for is either for Full Tilt or PokerStars to be cleared or some confident movement on regulation. Or maybe just for funds to be unfrozen. I think if funds are unfrozen in the relative short-term that will make me more confident that even if the Merge Network or other sites get shut down, that I can still get my money back.

So there it is I guess. Once there is positive word about funds being unfrozen from PokerStars and FTP then I will consider playing on other sites. Until then, I am a live player and I need to adapt to the change and play games where I will have fun and can capitalize on my skill edge (and obviously beat the rake).

Black Friday and Adjustments

So wow...online poker...yeah. I'm still in a bit of a state of shock about the FBI arresting the owners of Full Tilt and Poker Stars and virtually shutting down online poker to the US market. There are tons of articles out there on Pocket Fives, Poker News and other sites about the details so I'm not going to go into all of that.

What I'm going to do is give my thoughts about the potential landscape change and how I am going to personally adjust to everything.

Other US friendly sites

As of today, the Merge Poker network (Carbon Poker, Lock Poker, Hero Poker, etc.), Bodog and Cake Poker still serve the US market. How they process deposits and cashouts is unknown to me, but I imagine they are employing similar means as the big players. I WANT to believe that these sites somehow found a legal loophole for financial transactions and will continue to serve the US market. If they do I will move my money (even though their interfaces suck). The tough thing right now though is that there is A LOT of money tied up in accounts on PokerStars and FullTilt and it may be some time before that money can be moved to new sites. I am personally going to monitor the news for a few weeks and then make a decision.

Macro-economic Ramifications

Poker shows such as the Big Game, Poker After Dark and High Stakes poker will be affected and may even go away since the two major companies spending advertising dollars were Full Tilt and PokerStars. This could also lead to less new players entering the poker economy in the short-run and the overall skill edge decreasing.

Limbo & Resurgence

While there could be a long limbo period (1-2 years) for online poker in the US, 0ne possible positive outcome of all of this is that once things shake out and poker finally gets regulated that there will be a major influx of new players. New companies in the market such as Harrahs and MGM could pump a bunch of new advertising dollars and leverage their existing casinos to promote their online poker brands. This will bring in more casual players and those who stayed away from online poker because of barriers and fears about depositing. In the past, you had to really want to play online poker to put money on, which means people were more serious about wanting to play. While there were still definitely a lot of soft players, I think things will soften up even more.

In addition, more of the poker economy's advertising dollars will now be re-directed to foreign markets which will bring in more new players from other countries (and we all know how bad they play). In fact, if the limbo is this long it may also cause a large group of younger online pros to get "real jobs" and not be so saturated in the online poker world. These dynamics could cause the overall quality of poker play to go down, providing a more overall edge for skilled players.

Live Poker

I think live poker will now see a surge. People still want to play and if online is no longer an option, the traffic at home games, VFW games and local casinos will increase.

New Goals-New Focus

A lot of my poker goals were based on volume. IF the other US friendly sites do not become an option I will have to re-adjust my goals and where I focus my energy a bit. Tournament variance in 1,000 man fields means you have to put in a lot of volume for your skill edge to profit. If I will be focusing my attention on live games, then my volume goals will be different and I will need to place more emphasis on both cash games and Omaha (and other games).

I will need to work out a regular schedule of live tournaments and cash games and adjust my volume goals down accordingly since I can't multi-table. I will also need to re-assess my bankroll management needs. While there are regular live tournaments, most of them are super high "charity rake", so cash games will be in the mix more. The average buy-ins will be much higher now though since there are no live $20 tournaments. But, the field sizes will be much less and I will have a much greater edge on the overall field, so there should be less variance. I'm not exactly sure what this will mean yet but I will set my goals accordingly and work to move up in live stakes comfortably. I want to be comfortable bankroll wise to take at least 3-4 poker trips a year playing the $300 and $500 circuit events and eventually the main events.

How I'm going to study my game and improve now

The great thing about online poker is that you can get experience with a high repetition of similar situations and speed up the learning curve. You also have the ability to review hand histories after the fact and calculate the EV of each situation. This enables you to continuously study, learn and improve your game. If the other sites don't pan out and I end up focusing on live poker, I will need to devise a system for regularly improving my game. This may be taking notes on hand situations while I play for later review, more communication with poker friends about hands, etc. Obviously tools like Hold'em Manager become obsolete, but I still have a plethora of past hands to review. Hopefully, training sites like Cardrunners and PokerXFactor stay in business (and stay in English), so those can still be ways to stay in the mindset of thinking through hands. Obviously live betting patterns can sometimes vary but it's the regular conditioning of your thought process that is important.

Here are a list of things I will do to keep improving:

• Regular blog posts about hand situations and inflections in the game
• Monthly play recap like I've been doing
• Will still keep up with my play stats and volume
• Live hand discussions with poker friends who I respect
• More 2+2 forum reading/posting (since I will have less hands of my own than normal to review, this will increase my repetition of thinking through a hand)
• Possibly keep notes on regular live players, their tendencies and how to exploit them
• From a skill standpoint, I am going to really focus on playing full betting lines and having a plan for each hand, as well as assigning hand ranges. Online this was becoming very automatic and I will need to make sure I translate this to live play.
• I also plan on stepping up my Omaha & Omaha Hi/Lo game since a lot of cash games are mixed. I plan on making an investment in some video training with those games in order to get myself to a level where I am confident in all situations.

Bringing new players into the poker economy

There are definitely major soft spots in the live, local poker scene but over time if no new players are introduced then the regulars keep swapping money back and forth. I plan on keeping and widening my edge and finding more edges to exploit (this could be as simple as finding ways of staying alert when everyone else is tired and making mistakes or knowing when to stop playing)

But I firmly believe there needs to be a way to keep introducing new players into the local live poker economy. Maybe it's through bonuses for bringing a friend, smaller buy-in tournaments, etc. Not exactly sure what the strategy is yet but I feel some responsibility to make it happen.

So what can I do to keep poker going strong?

1. Host regular live tournaments
2. Attend regular events to keep numbers up
3. Host satellite events and set up the Atlanta Poker fund to send players to live circuit events
4. Support the organizers of local games by bringing them new players
5. Recruit new players to the game
6. Regular support of the Poker Players Alliance

Well those are my thoughts for now. We'll see how the next couple of weeks go for the other US sites and hopefully the government will move faster to regulate online poker.

Practicing Tilt Endurance

Wowowowow. Tonight started off as a major train wreck. I've still got 3 tables going and it's taking everything I have to stay focused. I mean I'm building stacks in a lot of the tournaments and then running into nasty spots and have been behind every time. I'm losing flips and my bust outs were all coming in groups.

I also think that playing until 2am last night is starting to affect my ability to recover right now (which I won my live tournament btw). I feel like I'm not fully thinking through situations now and I need to slow it down a bit. So, that's why I'm calling this practicing Tilt Endurance. I figure that if I can pull it together and focus on the proactive elements of the game after being in that many bad situations, it will make me stronger and more resilient for other times when this may happen.

So...right now I'm going to stop clicking buttons and start recognizing situations.

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Okay, good recovery. I ended up playing much better and cashed in two tournaments. Nothing big $$ wise, but I played well and put myself in a position to accumulate chips. Felt much better about the night and I think I successfully built up some tilt endurance.

March Recap

Since I've done some mid month progress reports for March already, I'll keep this post brief.

Goal: 100 tournaments
Actual: 53 tournaments played

With my own money
Played 43 (7 were turbo multi-table sngs)
$1,137.80 in buy-ins
$1,136.18 in cashes
- $1.62 in profit

Backed:
Played 10
$1,706 in buy-ins
$155.29 in cashes
- $1,600.85 in profit

Summary
Short month volume wise, but I knew that would be the case sense it was the end of wrestling season. Now that wrestling season is over, I'm working out a 4 day a week schedule where I should easily be able to accomplish the 100 tourney goal. I'm also consistently 6 tabling with a high comfort level so I'm confident I'll get the volume in and still be rested and fresh while I play. My backer and I also decided to add one more night a week of backed games on Wednesday nights. Playing Sundays is great but if I want both of us to be profitable and with the limited volume it makes it hard.

Also, based on my conversation with my backer (see last post), I'm not going to even look at the makeup. He's right. My only job is to play and keep evolving my game. With my low monthly volume it's somewhat pointless keeping up with profit, etc. as a measurement of success. I might have 3-4 negative months and then whammo...one big month. So I may stop doing that in my monthly recaps.

I'm also getting DEEP stacks consistently now. I've been hovering closer to 30-70bb when things start getting into the middle/late stages vs. my standard 10-20bb shove, double, wait, shove, shove, wait, shove, bust.

In March, I also started playing the games I want to play. I stopped playing the turbo multi-table sngs except for some 90 mans on Tilt. I played deeper stacked games where I could exploit my post-flop edge and have more fun playing.

How I Improved vs. February (and some of January's) Leaks

1. Light 3 Betting - Toward the end of the month I really started getting comfortable here. I 3bet blind a few times and started 3betting people I felt were stealing from early position or those I knew could fold. Still needs some practice, but definitely a big improvement.

2. Fear of Mistakes - This last Wednesday, after I had the chat with my backer, I really let a lot of things go. He ended up ghosting me toward the end of the session and I felt very confident in my decisions. I would make a decision for a play and he would chat the same thing. It really validated a lot of my thought processes.

3. Hero Calls - Not an issue at all. Less pressure to succeed = ability to let go of hands

4. Light Steals - Another big improvement. I keep covering my cards and it's really helping. My VPIP/PFR for the month increased to 17/12 and I found myself at several tables running around 25/20 over 100+ hands. Obviously it's all table and situationaly dependent, but I'm definitely more comfortable opening up my game.

5. Double Barreling - I improved here. I think more so in the fact that I was confident in whatever line I decided to take, whether it was a double barrel, check-raise, delayed cbet or whatever.

6. Folding to 3bets - After the session where my backer ghosted me, I started seeing spots where I may have been folding too much with the KQ, AT type hands. This is going to take more practice, possible mistakes and possible suckouts, but I definitely saw some common spots where I'm leaving equity on the table.

7. Long-Ball Bluffs/Alternate Lines - Still needs some work getting comfortable playing certain multi-street lines when in the deeper stages of the tournament with marginal holdings, but gonna keep working on this.

Areas to Work On
At this point I think the biggest thing to keep working on is consistently practicing the above areas. Repetition makes things automatic. Other than that, I think just staying confident and trusting my reads during the later stages without really focusing as much on the consequence of what making a mistake means to my stack. Just play out the line and make the EV decision. Tony Dunst had a good line at the end of the last WPT television broadcast. He said, "It's not about winning the most pots, it's about making the most correct decisions."