Poker Trail

As a professional poker player, it feels like there are two separate times each year to make new year’s resolutions. The first is the same as when everyone else does: January 1st, New Year’s Day. The second is at the end of the event that everyone looks forward to throughout the rest of the year, the biggest poker festival in the world: The WSOP. It feels like such a culmination of efforts, excitement, heartbreak and expectations and is a true finale of the year’s events. The rapid fire schedule of potentially life-changing tournaments, combined with the busiest cash game days on the calendar in Las Vegas, makes for an exhausting six weeks of poker.

I’m always eager for the WSOP to start and, about 75% of the way through the schedule of events, eager for it to end. Traditionally, this is the only time of year where I register for the poker lottery, aka no limit hold ’em tournaments. While there is nothing more exciting in poker than being deep in a tournament, it is also the most high variance and both mentally and physically draining of the two main variants. Cash games provide the ultimate flexibility in start and stop times, while tournaments are the complete opposite. If you want to completely remove the invention that is the alarm clock from your life, be a cash game poker player.

I fired at 5 lotteries tournaments during the WSOP:

WSOP $565 Colossus – 731st place for $4027
WSOP $1500 Monster Stack – dnc
WSOP $235 Daily Deepstack – dnc
Venetian DSE $600 – 13th place for $3275
WPT500 $565 – 164th place for $1667

In the cash games between May 27th and July 10th, I put in 203 hours of work and showed a profit at a rate of about $72/hr. The majority of my sessions were 5/10 at the Bellagio, with some 2/5 mixed in around town, as well as a couple 1/2 games at the Golden Nugget for a change of scenery. Total profits during my 2015 WSOP comes to $20.1k.

What is the “long term” in live poker? It isn’t rhetorical… I would seriously like to know your opinion.

The short and medium term has been good to me. Ever since moving up to 2/5 full time, I’ve taken each hand much more seriously than when I was putting in all those hours at 1/3 where both the competition and the stakes made me extremely bored. That, combined with endless hand discussions with friends (more on that later), combined with some good old-fashioned run good has resulted in me having very good months lately, and January was no different.

The Bellagio has been my home base. Despite it’s shortcomings, particularly regarding customer service and especially when compared to other top quality rooms such as Aria and the Wynn, I can’t disregard the results. Since the start of 2013 I’m averaging well over 10bb’s an hour in the Bellagio 2/5NL games, over 476 hours. A lot of those hours (the ~50 earliest) were very poorly played compared to my current game, mainly because I was still making adjustments while trying to move up in stakes. So when I exclude those hours from the stats, the hourly ticks up further.

I’ve been through horrific downswings and written about those. I’ll throw in a #nojinxs hashtag and hope for the best here. But I’m just wondering when this 2/5 hourly rate that currently displays in my Poker Journal app will be considered legit. Wondering when I can breathe a little easier, knowing we aren’t just having a one time menage with the variance mistress and lady luck while both are in a good mood. Keep the Bellagio Cocktails coming.

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I just got home after playing my final session of 2013 at the Bellagio. I used to really dislike playing there. It was always cramped, and the floor guys were unwelcoming. These days, the poker room is slightly less cramped after they removed a few of the tables. Still kinda cramped though. And the floor guys are, I guess, a little more welcoming. Most of them. But I’ve found a sense of comfort and confidence playing in the 2/5 games at the B. See here, from tonight:

I straddle, and utg raises to $25. It folds around to me and I call with 10 10. The flop is Js9c3s, and I check. My opponent tries to bet $50, but blatantly string bets and the dealer pushes half of his bet back to him. I call. The turn brings the Ad. Not my favorite card as more of utg’s range is now in front of my tens, and he continues with an actual bet of $50 this time. I still call. The river is a brick: the 2c. I check one last time, and my opponent grabs a stack of reds and places his $100 bet in the middle. He kind of has to have an A, a set, or some sort of bluff… I don’t think he’s good enough to bet KJ or KK here. Sets are hard to make, but an A makes a lot of sense. Doesn’t feel right though. Feels weird. So yeah, I call. He flips 88, we scoop.

When you make a call in that kind of river spot, it isn’t all that different from getting it in with QQ vs AK preflop. You’re a small favorite (in this case, I think physical tells combined with betsizing and player type analysis gives me an edge), but you’re gonna lose a decent percentage of the time. But for the past 3 months or so, my hero calls have felt more like getting it in with AA vs AK. Some people think confidence is overrated, and that you should be able to play optimally without that kind of intangible force. I think being in the zone is huge. Of course, running good helps too.

I certainly haven’t ran bad over the last few months. This, combined with what I hope is good play, has allowed me to put up a solid hourly rate of $56/hr over the past 500 hours of live 2/5 no limit holdem. It’s good enough to firmly plant myself as a 2/5 reg with hopes of taking shots at 5/10 in the somewhat near future. I’ve been in this position, at least monetarily, before. It’s easy to forget that poker will always be a grind when things are going good. But this time I’m going to tell myself to stay in the moment and to keep working hard. I also have statistics on my side this time. Nobody knows what exactly the long term is in live poker, but the number of hours I’ve put in feel like tools I can use when I need them; tools I didn’t have before which always resulted in not doing the job correctly.

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On the life side of things, 2013 was a year I’ll never forget. I got engaged! My beautiful fiancée put up with me for 4 years (and counting) of fumbling about the low stakes poker world. How she stuck around through all the downswings and uncertainty of a poker lifestyle is beyond me, but I am thankful, and excited. When I was younger and I would picture my future wife, I’d see someone nice, attractive, funny, intelligent… Pretty standard list. She’s all of those things, but she’s something else that I never considered: she makes me want to make myself better. That is, in my opinion, the best trait you can find in a partner.

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I’m not really one for new year’s resolutions, so I don’t have any of those. I also used to think goals were the way to go, but I recently read an article by the creator of “Dilbert” in which he claims that “goals are for losers.” So I won’t rattle off a big list of goals for 2014. I suppose I do have a handful of things I’d like to accomplish:

1) Win an MTT tournament. Although, I don’t think anybody has actually ever won one of these things because I don’t see how it’s remotely possible. Pretty sure it’s a scam.
2) Become a 5/10 reg.
3) Get in better shape.
4) Blog more, and create more content in general.

But what’s more important than the goals is the path, and the process. If you want to move up in stakes, this is what you need to do:

1) Play a bare minimum of 150 hours a month. Focus on hours in good games, not on daily monetary results.
2) Share every semi-questionable hand that you play (or observe being played) with a group of poker-playing colleagues/friends who are also trying to advance their poker lives, and keep an open mind regarding feedback. They also need to share hands that they play and be open to feedback from you. Always question lines, ranges, sizings, etc.
3) Take shots as soon as you’re financially able.
4) Don’t worry too much about balancing your lifestyle. Balance will be easier when you’re making more money per hour, which will allow you to work less hours. Get mentally tough by practicing, not by balancing.
5) Try to have a routine. This will probably be affected as game quality ebbs and flows, but try.

Happy new year.