Signs Of Life

As the world's worst blogger over the past year, allow me to apologize for disappearing for the last five months. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about, I just couldn't bring myself to spend any extra time on poker related activities in a long time. My last update was right before the WSOP, a time in which I was optimistic but also concerned about what would happen if the summer didn't go well. That concern turned into a reality after recording one mincash (in the smallest buy-in of the series, no less), and ending the series with my bankroll having been cut in half. It was the low point of my poker career in many ways. In retrospect, that kind of stuff would have been great to write about, although not from a personal standpoint. People are always happy to share stories about their successes, but nobody wants to spill their guts about failing at their job and having to start over from square one.

After busting out of the main event on day two (I got my last twenty BBs in with JJ vs. KK and AA), I wanted nothing to do with poker for the foreseeable future. Even during the last few weeks of the WSOP, I would show up at the Rio with a very negative mindset. While I'm confident that my negativity didn't affect my play, it undoubtedly made me miserable at the tables. If I got my stack in before the river, I was apathetic towards winning the pot or busting out and getting to go home. Everything about playing poker irritated me, something that is exponentially heightened by the types of players that surround you during the WSOP. So when I mercifully lost the remainder of my chips in the final event, I headed home for a long break from poker.

For the rest of July, I did little more than wallow in my misery and watch baseball. It was pretty pathetic. My time as a tournament pro had taken me beyond my wildest expectations and just as quickly reduced me to a cautionary tale of complacency and poor bankroll management. Even though I had no desire to get back to any other form of poker, I knew that I couldn't go back to tourneys any time soon. I hated them. I hated what they had done to my mindset, or more specifically, what I had allowed them to do to me. Unfortunately, I couldn't take more than a month off from playing. The money I had left wasn't going to last more than six months and I needed some kind of cushion to allow me to play stakes that would yield enough of a profit to take care of my monthly expenses, or at least delay going broke long enough for me to relearn how to win at poker. If there was a job on the market that I was interested in doing, qualified for, and paid enough to sustain my current quality of life, I would have quit poker this summer.

In August, I decided to swallow my pride and restart my poker career from square one. My plan was to play 50nl (that's $0.25/$0.50), and make sure I was good enough to beat busto stakes before moving up. Since there isn't a ton of money to be won at 50nl for even the best players, it was more precautionary than anything else. After all, if it took me time to relearn how to beat 6-max games, I'd rather lose $50 per buy-in than two, four or eight times that much. Things went fairly well, I felt confident enough that I could beat those stakes consistently, and moved up to 100nl after 22k hands with a 5.4 bb/100. My time at 50nl was important in a couple other ways as well, because I was able to familiarize myself with the current batch of programs that all cash grinders use.

100nl seemed easy as well, and although I only spent 10k hands at that level, my 19.6 bb/100 would suggest that it didn't pose much of a problem. More accurately, only playing 10k hands at any given level suggests nothing, but I didn't feel outmatched at all. I quickly jumped to 200nl, where I've spent the bulk of my cash game sessions ever since. Over 56k hands, my EV adjusted bb/100 is 4.2, which seems to be a very solid winrate. However, despite getting used to programs like TableNinja, I'm still not comfortable playing more than nine tables and rely heavily on game selection. While making $3,700 ($4,700 EV adjusted) over 56k hands is good at 1/2, it took me over a month to reach those numbers. Part of that is because I've spent a fair amount of time watching videos and studying, but the main reason is because I simply don't enjoy playing cash games. I never have. Even back when I was making great money three years ago, I never managed to put in over 100 hours of play in a single month. Imagine what that does for my motivation when my hourly rate is cut by 80%. Here's my graph from the 90k hands of 50nl-400nl I've played over the past few months:


In contrast, here's my graph from back when I played cash exclusively three years ago:


The games are much, much tougher these days. I recognized a number of people grinding 100nl and 200nl that I used to see at 1knl back in the day. In fact, I can confidently say that 200nl is currently tougher than 1knl was in early 2008. The landscape of online poker has changed dramatically, and I wish I knew what was coming so I could have worked my ass off to make up for the lack of opportunities in the future. Another thing worth checking out from those graphs are the non-showdown winnings, which are represented by the red line. While a given player's non-showdown winnings has a lot to do with his playing style, a good rule of thumb is that you want it to be in the black or at least close to breakeven. A sloping downward line suggests that you're being outplayed postflop, which certainly seems to be the case in my previous graph. The initial downward slope in my latest graph is because I didn't pay attention to non-showdown winnings, and once I took some time to work on that part of my game, the graph as a whole started trending upwards much quicker. I miss the days of making $0.33/hand despite not being particularly good at poker.

In late September, I decided to mix in a few tournament sessions to my schedule. Enough time had passed that I actually wanted to play MTTs again, and anything I could consider productive that would allow me to not have to play cash was more than welcome. Initially, I only played one or two tourney sessions a week. I had a couple final tables, although nothing big enough to keep me from doing much more than breaking even. I was still forcing myself to play cash, even temporarily moving up to 400nl for a few sessions before realizing how much harder game selection was compared to 200nl. In mid-October, I finished second in a small Stars $100r for $13k, which was arguably one of the most meaningful tourney cashes of my career despite being far smaller than the rest of my 'big' scores. As I probably could have predicted, it didn't take long for me to focus more on MTTs than cash. From August to September, I played 130 hours of cash and six hours of tournaments. Last month, those numbers were roughly 50/50. In November, I've played 77 hours of MTTs and seven hours of cash, the last of which were twelve days ago.

As much as I recognize that cash games are important for stability and keeping my 100bb game fresh, I can't stand playing them. On the other hand, there are plenty of times when I actually look forward to a full day of tournaments. My 90k hand tuneup at small stakes cash has definitely helped my game though, and I wonder if the same result can be achieved by simply watching cash videos to stay on top of current trends. Regardless, I am what I am - a tournament player who doesn't have the desire (and perhaps the skill) to switch back to cash full time or even part time.

My bankroll is currently in the neighborhood of $50k. Since my second place finish in the $100r last month, I've come to the realization that I need to be smarter with bankroll management. I've made the decision to cut most $100rs and freezeouts over $300 out of my schedule. There are enough midstakes tourneys to keep my monitor full these days, and I'm content grinding those instead of higher risk/higher reward options. Since getting back into MTTs, my average buy-in has been $116, far less than it used to be. However, the circumstances surrounding my decision making have changed dramatically, and I need to make lowering my risk of ruin my second priority. It should be my first priority, but considering that grinding small stakes cash accomplishes it best, I've put making sure that I don't hate playing poker at the top of the list. So far, so good, and given the quality of competition outside of the high stakes MTTs, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about grinding out a modest living in the near future.