End of an Amazing Month

This was my best online month to date. Words can't describe how well I ran. I hope it continues through the PCA main event. I won't be playing much poker the next couple weeks aside from tournaments but I'll have an update from the PCA.

Happy New Year everyone.

Back to Back SNE

I made it with 6 days to spare:



I haven't decided if I'll go for it again next year but most likely I will.

A couple people have asked me what SNE is. Basically you play a bazillion hands of poker in a year and PokerStars rewards you with a lot of cash and some major tournament entries. More details here: http://www.pokerstars.com/vip/supernova/elite/

Happy Holidays everyone. I'll have a few updates from the PCA.

December to Remember

My incredible good luck continues. In the ~5.5 Million hands I've played in my poker career, nothing tops how well I've run the last five days. If I had a run like this during the World Series, I'd have won a minimum of 3 bracelets and been anointed poker's next great superstar. What a fickle game we play.

I seriously doubt I'll ever go on a run like this again particularly in such a short amount of time so it's well worth reveling in.

Amazing Positive Variance and why I'd Wouldnt Make it Playing Live

The last two days have been pretty remarkable, the best two day stretch I can remember having:





My friend George plays live poker, 80-160 I believe and is likely the best player in the game. I was talking to him recently and he was telling me how bad he's been running and that he hadn't won a single session in a long time. Imagine the flip side of this, having the same variance but negative variance. I'm probably somewhere around a 1.25 big bets per hundred hands winner in the games I play. I've run at 12 BB/100 over 4000 hands so I'm running about 10.75 big bets above expectation. The flip side of this run would be run at about -9.5 BB/100 over 4000 hands. Now imagine you're playing live poker where I believe they average about 30 hands an hour. That means I could play for 133 hours, probably 3 or more weeks and be down 380 big bets or $76,000 if I was playing 100-200. And this all assumes I maintain my composure and play the same game that earns me 1.25 BB/100. I don't think I'd make it through the second week. Kudos to you George, I don't know how you do it.

A quick VPP update: I'm up to 986,500 VPPs, way ahead of pace. I'm leaving for Boston Wednesday morning and I'd guess I'll reach SNE by the end of the week. What a relief.

Happy Holidays to everyone and may you run as good as I've been running.

December Update

I've been playing tons of poker this month - 28,000 hands after 14 days to be exact. It's amazing that I had to average 2,000 hands a day last year to make SuperNovaElite. I really don't know how I did it. I'm exhausted and feel like the only thing I've done for two weeks is sit at my computer playing. Last year I had to do this every single day of the year. Thank god for the changes to Stars VPP structure this year or I don't think there's any way I could make SNE again. So I've gone from being on pace to start the month to about 6 days ahead of pace. I'm at about 970K VPPs as of this post and hope to make SNE within the next 10 days.

I realize I haven't done any strategy posts in a long time, hopefully I have time for one in the next month or so. There really isn't much more to write about that I already haven't written at some point but some topics are worth revisiting. Also my friend Ryan has an excellent blog here: http://ryanwold.com/ and he's already written some good strategy posts.

December has been a pretty strange month money wise. I took off winning 25K after my first week or so and at the beginning of last week I went on about a 20K downswing before recovering some today. I feel like I've run really poorly this week and I'm happy to be where I am. I don't feel like I'm playing my A game, mainly because I'm mentally exhausted but maybe my B+ game. I'm really looking forward to making SNE and relaxing. I need at least a few days where I play very little poker and recharge.

Here's what the month has looked like:

November in the Books

I'm happy with how the month turned out all things considered. I got really sick after my last blog update. I couldn't play any poker for about four and a half days and went from being a few days ahead of SNE pace to a few days behind. Today was actually the first day since then I've felt 100%. I got sick on Sunday the 14th so for 15 days or so I had various ailments. There were quite a few days where I was playing with a fever and sweat dripping down my face.

I ended the month almost exactly on SNE pace - I'm at 916K Vpps at the moment. I'm heading to Boston for about 6 days for Christmas. Then it's back to San Francisco for a couple days, off to Miami for 3 days, Puerto Rico for another 4 days, and then the PCA in the Bahamas for 10 days. So I really need to play a lot of poker the next couple weeks to make sure I'm ahead of pace before all my traveling. I've been multitabling more of the lower limits to earn VPPs faster and I imagine I'll be doing a lot of that in the next couple weeks.

I'm pretty excited about playing the PCA this year. I feel really good about my tournament game. I've been watching a lot of videos and thinking about my game. My NL game itself is not great but I feel like my tournament game and grasp of the concepts needed to be a winning tournament player is at an all-time high. It's 95% luck in any given tournament of course but I'm still looking forward to it either way.

Here's what November looked like:

November Update

Things seem to have returned to "normal" at least for the time being. With the exception of one 150 big bet downswing at 50-100 in the span of about 400 hands, it's been a relatively tame month. I think I'm running fairly well and playing well.

The games just seem to get tougher and tougher. When I think back to almost two years ago when I started playing on PokerStars, the games were much, much softer. The player pool of good regulars was probably half of what it is now, and there were many more fish. I used to open a 15-30 and 30-60 table for heads up games and I rarely had any competition. Now there are days where 5 or 6 guys are doing the same thing as me, opening tables, and trying to get in as many hands as possible heads up before someone sits. When I started it wasn't uncommon for me to play heads up against players for extended periods of time. Now I'm lucky to get 3 hands in before someone sits. And in some instances the entire table fills with regulars before I finish the first hand.

I'm hoping the trend of improved play and less fish doesn't continue much longer or I'll give serious consideration to splitting my bankroll across several different sites. SuperNovaElite is great and works out to almost 80% rakeback but another six months of this trend and I'm not sure the rakeback would compensate for the increased earn I could find at other sites. For now though I'm still on Stars. And on the subject of SNE, I'm now 1 day ahead of pace at about 872K VPPs.

This is what the month has looked like so far:

October in the Books

I made a nice comeback over the last week. I'm not going to say the downswing's over though, I learned my lesson when I mistakenly said that earlier this month. I feel like I'm playing really well right now and that's what I want to continue to focus on. One benefit of running poorly is that I play tons and tons of hands so I was able to close the SNE gap to less than a day. I'd like to be 3 or 4 days ahead by the end of November and since I don't have anything planned, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

I wanted to link an article Royston left in the comments a few days ago. A lot of it rings true and it's well written, definitely worth a read if you're a poker player:

http://www.thepokerchronicles.com/archives/000947.html

Here's what October looked like and here's to a profitable November for anyone reading this:

Fighting Through My Worst Downswing Ever

This probably won't be my most well worded post, I'm mentally exhausted right now but felt like writing which is rare.

This month has probably been my toughest month as a poker player to date. In my last blog update, I wrote about being down 35K and close to 550 big bets. I had recovered to being down 200 big bets and actually was close to even money wise on the month when things really turned again. I dropped about 15K and another 150 big bets in the following couple days. And then it seemed like every day after that, I’d be down about 50-100 big bets, fight back to even, and call it a day.

After about a week of this and couple days where I wasn't able to fight back to even, I was down almost 500 big bets through 45,000 hands on the month. It really started to take its toll on me mentally. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, all I can think about is the fact that I can’t win seemingly no matter what I do. Yesterday I went out to play pool after booking another 100 big bet, 5K losing session and I couldn’t focus or make a ball. I just kept thinking about the money I was down and that I had to win it back. I quit my game, cancelled all future games, and decided to take an extended break from pool. I played several hours of poker when I got home from pool, won back what I had lost earlier in the day and quit about even. This has been the trend nearly every day this week.

I woke up this morning thinking about poker. I had sent a message to a friend the night before about a hand he had a question about. When I sent the response I was exhausted so when I awoke in the morning, my first thoughts were I probably gave the wrong answer. I jumped out of bed, raced down to my computer, reread my response and sure enough, I hadn’t even read the starting hands correctly. What an idiot I am I thought to myself. Is my brain gone, have I lost my mind? Is that what happens after you turn 35? I ran back upstairs and hopped on the elliptical machine, thinking I have to work out. I have to clear my mind somehow, someway.

After working out, I jumped into the games and played for about 3 hours. I was up about 3500 at one point, then lost it all back and decided to take a break. I took my dogs for a long walk that was more about me getting fresh air than it was about the dogs. I came back, played another 3 hours. Down 5K and another 100 big bets. I’m now down over 500 big bets on the month and am wondering if this will ever end. I feel like I’m playing well, I think my mind is working correctly but the results keep telling me otherwise. I decide to relax and watch a football game I have money on. I’ve got Florida State -3 and Over 58. I’m behind 28-24 with 30 seconds left and my team has the ball at the 4 yard line, 2^nd and goal. Great, all I need is a touchdown and I win both bets. They call a timeout, draw up a play. The quarter back drops back, has a receiver wide open in the end zone. As he’s about to throw the ball, his own running back hits him and knocks the ball loose. The other team recovers. Game over. That’s fitting I think, time to play some more poker.

I play another 3 hours, drop another 5K and another 100 big bets. I’m now down over 600 big bets, including 200 on the day (one of worst days ever) and am absolutely beside myself. I sit out at all my tables, walk outside, look up at the sky and just think this can’t possibly be happening. I have this delusional thought that there’s some remote possibility somebody has tapped into my wireless internet so I switch to my Verizon card. I close all my 50-100 tables and decide I’m done with that limit until I can start start winning at lower limits. I resolve to play my absolute best no matter what. I play another 600 hands, maybe 2 hours and win back the 10K I’m down on the day and about 160 big bets. Again I’m about even on the day and call it quits.

So that’s where I’m at. In one respect I’ve been very fortunate this month in that I’ve run well at 50-100 all month long. So even though I’m still down a bazillion big bets, it could be much, much worse in terms of money. At this point I just need to focus on playing my best. I know I’m running bad. I think I’m playing well. It should only be a matter of time before things turn around.

As much as I love poker and gambling, man it can be a hard profession to be in when everything goes wrong. I’ve got no choice but to fight through it.

The End of a Vicious Downswing

I powered through what was my worst downswing in recent memory and possibly my worst ever. I was down about 550 big bets and 35K at one point. I've actually been lucky to run well at 50-100 all month or it could have been worse money wise.

I'm still down a couple hundred big bets and a few thousand on the month but I feel a whole lot better. I get pretty stressed out when I run that bad and my natural reaction is to play, play, and play some more. I'm now within 4 days of SNE pace and have no intention of slowing down for the rest of the month.

Poker is a crazy, crazy game. I've read that 99/100 fail at becoming professional poker players and I wouldn't doubt that it's an even higher failure rate. It's incredibly difficult to maintain composure during these types of streaks - to not tilt, not play higher limits, drop down limits if necessary, and maintain your best game. All it would have taken was for me to decide to play 100-200 or 200-400 after I was down 350 big bets to try to recoup my losses and I'd have busted my account.

I've got my fingers crossed I continue to run well. As I always say, the cards have no memory so anything's possible.

Slow Start to October

I'm down about 12K after 16K+ hands this month. I jumped in a couple 100-200 games early in the month on my own and ran terribly. Every time I've ever moved up in limits in my poker career, I've run bad for an extended period and 100-200 has been no different. Aside from that, I think I've actually run ok this month and have just played poorly. I had a -14K day on Saturday where I folded to a 3-bet preflop twice, posted out of turn 4 times, and totally lacked focus. That reawakened me to the fact the game actually requires attention and thought. You'd think a couple thousand would have engendered that startling realization. Nope.

Hands wise I've done pretty well this month. I cut my 8.5 day SNE deficit to just under 7 days, I'm hoping to continue that pace for the rest of the month and be within 4 days by months end.

September in the Books

I ran very well this month and it ended up being one of my better months of the year. I also was lucky enough to cash in the 5K WCOOP main event for about 10K - this was one of the tournaments Poker Stars put me in from being SuperNova Elite. It also ended a streak of about twenty consecutive Stars tournaments where I hadn't cashed.

In other news, I'm now partnering with a friend (and blog reader) in the 100-200 games on Stars. So essentially what this means is I now have the option of playing another 50-100 table whenever a good 1-2 game is going since I have half the action. This should translate into more money making opportunities and more profit. I'm hoping the more I play the games, the more comfortable I'll be with the swings even though I'm only absorbing half, and ultimately play the games on my own.

On the VPP front, I'm still about 8.5 days behind. I multitabled more 10-20 this month to keep up pace and that's the plan for the next few months. There will likely be some days in October where I 6-8 table those games for several hours and earn 2-3 days worth of VPPS.

September Update

I've run fairly well so far in September, up about 300 big bets and 18K through half the month. I missed about three days of playing from attending my brother's wedding and have been playing a ton of hands since I got back to make up for it. I'm now about 10 days behind SNE pace and look to narrow the gap by the end of the month. I don't have anything major planned until Christmas so hopefully I can get a lot of hands in between now and then.

On a personal note, I either bruised or cracked a rib playing kickball of all things. I haven't been to the doctor yet but the way it's still hurting I'm pretty sure I cracked it. If you're wondering how I broke a rib playing kickball, I tried stealing home with a head first dive and it ended up being a rib first dive. Oh and I'm getting old, that too. If a broken rib wasn't enough, they disallowed my steal because the pitcher allegedly had the ball before I left third. I wasn't in any condition to argue as I jogged back to third grimacing.

Here's what September has looked like so far:

Farewell August and CardRunners

August didn't end too well, I broke about even over the last two weeks or so. I feel like I'm playing the worst poker I've played in a long time. I can't keep my concentration and feel really burnt out. Unfortunately I can't afford to take a break and fall any further behind SNE pace so I'll have to play through it. As of today, I'm about 8 days behind.

I quit my instructor position at CardRunners. It was a difficult decision that I've been wavering back and forth on for quite some time but ultimately decided it's too much time invested for too little return. I also didn't like the idea of giving my opponents information and several of them informed me they were watching.

Heading to a pool tournament this weekend and then off to Boston the following weekend for my brother's wedding. Other than that, I'll be playing a lot of poker and hopefully getting ahead of SNE pace by the end of the month. I need to get back on track mentally this month which will probably entail a lot more exercise/cardio.

Here's what August looked like:

Great Start to August

I've run really well so far this month. I've done OK handswise but am hoping to play even more the last three weeks of the month. I have nothing planned until my brother's wedding at the beginning of September so looking forward to playing a lot between now and then.

Getting 3-Bet Out of Position

Ok here are some of my thoughts on getting 3-bet when out of position in limit HE, specifically against aggressive 3-bettors.

The most important thing to keep in mind, as it is in any hand, is your opponent’s range. There are several things that you can do to identify their range in this spot (in no particular order):

Know what position you are raising from and what position they are 3-betting from. There’s a huge difference between being 3-bet by UTG+1 when you’ve raised from UTG and raising from the small blind and being 3-bet by the big blind. In the first case, your opponent might be raising with 10% of his hands and in the latter, he might be raising with 35%. The earlier the position you’ve raised from and the earlier the position you’ve been 3-bet from, the stronger your opponent’s range will be.

Use your opponent’s 3-betting stat to get an idea of their range. If you use HEM, you can mouse over the % they 3-bet and it will break down how often they 3-bet from each position. The 3-bet % by position accounts for how often they 3-bet in that position against all positions, not just the position you’re raising from so you want to adjust that number based on your position but it’s a good starting point. This stat is one you need a lot of data on and if you have less than 100 trials from that position HEM will list the exact number in parentheses next to the %. Similarly, the overall 3-bet % stat takes into account how often they are 3-betting from all positions so this can be misleading. I don’t know if UTG (where it’s impossible to 3-bet) is included in this stat but it wouldn’t surprise me.

The way I use the 3-bet% stat is by comparing it to my own 3-bet%. I know what HEM lists my 3-bet% as and the default ranges I 3-bet from each position against all other positions along with what % of my overall range these hands constitute. I actually have a text document with all this information that I refer to a lot. For example, if my overall 3B% is 20% and I get 3-bet by a player with a 25% 3B% I will take the range I’d normally 3-bet in his position against my position and add 5% more hands. This isn’t an exact science by any stretch, but it’s what I do.

Know your own opening range from each position and more importantly how your opponent views your opening range. Is your opponent a good regular that you’ve played thousands of hands with? If so, they probably use HEM or PT as well and know almost exactly what % of hands you’re raising from that position. Consequently, they probably have a very specific and easily identifiable 3-betting range against you. Or is your opponent an unknown who has been at the table for twenty hands and seen you raise ten out of those hands. In this case, your opponent could have a very wide 3-betting range incorrectly assuming you’re a maniac.

Know how your opening ranges stack up against typical competition in your games. Are you a lot looser preflop than most or more passive? Your opponent’s 3-betting % is based on 3-betting against all the players in your games. So, if you’re tighter than most, it’s likely they have a tighter 3-betting range than their stats would indicate.

And lastly, as I alluded to earlier is game flow. Have you been playing really tight this session or really aggressive. Players often open up their 3-betting ranges when you’ve been raising a lot of hands or tighten up when you’ve been playing tight. Something that helps a lot with this is looking at your own stats, HEM displays your session stats at each table and this is something I often look at to keep in mind what my opponent’s views of me might be during that session. Knowing your opponent helps here as well. Bad players are more likely to incorrectly assume you’re playing like a maniac or on tilt when you’ve raised several hands in a row. Good players don’t automatically assume this because they understand you could just be getting a lot of good hands.

Enough about hand ranges, so what to do with them?

The big debate preflop is whether you should be capping with some of your range or just calling your entire range. This seems to be pretty evenly split among good players but I’m on the side of flat calling your entire range.

There are a few benefits to calling our entire preflop raising range. One is that we’ve given no information back to our opponent about the strength of our hand. We still have our entire preflop raising range. And since almost all opponents will bet the flop, we always have the option of raising the flop and taking the lead back and winning the same amount of bets with our good hands. The important thing for me is that the less information my opponent has, the worse his postflop decisions will be. In other words, he will make more mistakes on average. There’s no getting around this unless you have a perfectly balanced capping range and I have no idea how you’d even go about this. The other benefit to just flatting is that we now have the option of raising the flop, where we’ve seen 3 more cards, or just calling or even folding. Since our opponent is nearly always betting, the flop is basically irrelevant in determining their first flop action but it’s very relevant to ours because we can use it to determine our best course of action.

That said I do see some benefits to capping, particularly if you’re not confident in your own postflop skills out of position. One obvious benefit is that if you do encounter one of those rare opponents that checks back flops after 3-betting, then you can lose value by not getting that extra small bet in preflop. If I encounter an opponent like this, I make a note, and I have a range of capping hands that I’ll use against them. The bigger benefit I see, is your decisions become a lot easier at that point. You’re always betting the flop, and you’re almost always betting the turn assuming they’ve just called your flop bet. As a result of this, you’ll win a lot of pots where you both don’t connect with the board where you otherwise might not have had you just called preflop and given up at some point. My counterargument to this, and this is where good postflop skills come into play, is that you almost always have the opportunity to take the lead back in the hand, either on the flop or the turn. You also have the added information of knowing the board. So, if you understand your opponent’s range well enough and how well it connects with different board textures, then you can still take back the lead and win those pots where you both don’t connect with the board. In fact, this way is even better because you’re not always getting punished the times your opponent has a big hand by always having the betting lead, you can selectively choose when to take the betting lead back.

Here’s an example of taking the lead back and picking up a pot where you both have nothing:

Let’s say you raise JTo from the cutoff and an aggressive button who isn’t very showdown bound and not very imaginative 3-bets you (there are a lot of these player types in my games). You’ve estimated the button would 3-bet about 23% of their hands against you in the cutoff – a rough range of their hands would be something like:

44+,A4s+,K9s+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,A6o+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo

The flop is 3d 5s 6c

He bets and you call

The turn is the Ah

He bets and you raise

Your opponent will be hard pressed to call in this situation without a pair especially given that your raise is very credible considering you can have your entire preflop raising range going into the turn, at least all of your unpaired Ax hands. I plugged this into Flopzilla and our opponent in this hand has nothing ~40% of the time. By nothing, I mean no pair and no draw. So, you’re risking 2 big bets on the turn to win 5.75 big bets which means you’re getting ~2.9-1 on your raise and it only has to work ~26% of the time. This is a huge victory to get a fold here. Now of course there are some opponents that might call with KQ here (I’m one of them) but most do not.

One other related thought about this hand. A flop raise is also a very viable line with a hand like JT, QJ, KQ, etc. What this raise can do particularly on this type of board texture is “buy” you outs. Let’s say your opponent has AK, AQ, or any other unpaired high card hand. Now if a 4 or 7, and possibly even a 2 in addition to your overcard outs comes, you can often win the hand.

So those are just a couple examples from one hand to give you an idea of ways you can take the lead back and win pots unimproved. What’s great is that if you’re confident you can find enough of these spots, then you minimize losses with your weak SD bound hands like your ace high or bottom pairs because you’ll just be check/calling for the most part instead of capping, leading the flop and turn and getting raised by the top of his range. And you're still able to get value out of your own strong hands because your opponent will nearly always be betting the flop and you have the option of checkraising

The best advice I can give if you’re unsure of what to do in a 3-bet pot out of position is to plug your hand into PokerStove along with your opponent’s hand range to get an idea of your equity. By looking at your equity you can get a good idea of the strength of your hand compared to his range and it will help to make better postflop decisions. This is something I do all the time. I often do it immediately after a hand I played where I was unsure of what the best play was. As a quick aside, there was a hand I played today where I raised UTG with 66 and got 3-bet by the button. The flop was JJT with two diamonds and I wasn't sure whether I had enough equity to call. I called. The turn was the 9d and again I wasn't sure if I had enough equity to call, I chose to fold. So I immediately looked it up and found that I probably should have folded the flop and definitely the turn. Additionally, you can use Flopzilla and plug in your opponent’s hand range along with the board texture to get an idea of how well their range is connecting with the board.

Ok those are some of my thoughts, I have a lot more but this could go on forever. Feel free to ask questions.

July in the Books/ HR2267

July ended up being my second worst month of the year after June. I feel pretty good to end up winning 20K or so considering where I was halfway through the month. I'm looking forward to playing a lot of hands in August and hopefully I can run and play better.








I'm sure most of the people reading this have heard that HR2267 was passed in the US House Financial Committee. From what I've read and understand, this was the first step to legalizing and regulating online gambling including poker (a few things like sports betting are excluded). From the 41-22 vote and the sounds of things, there's a decent chance this gets passed in the house and senate and signed into law by next year but no guarantee. If it's signed the way it's currently written, it will be up to the states whether they want to opt-in. All indications are that California will be opting out which unfortunately means we'll have to move. If you're in an opt out state, it will be impossible to play on a legal, licensed site. Poker Stars and Full Tilt are confident they will be licensed in the US which is great if you're in an opt-in state. From what I read (and someone can correct me if this is wrong), people will be able to play as the are today in the opt-out states with two big differences. They can't play on a licensed site and if they play on an unlicensed site, there's a 50% tax imposed on deposits (ouch!)

I'll certainly be following the bill closely along with what states are likely to opt-in.

Back on Track

Things actually got a lot worse before getting better. I think I dropped another 10k or so and was down to 35K in my account which was the least I have had in over in a year. It was scary because another 10k or so lost and I would have had to give serious consideration to dropping the 30-60 games. I hit 500k vpps this month and earned two 4K bonuses which helped keep me afloat. Things finally did turn about five days ago and I'm on about a 500 big bet, 28k upswing.





It's amazing what running good does to my game. My game and reads are much sharper. Although some part of that is likely my perception, I'm nearly positive I'm playing better than I was last week. The right plays suddenly seem much more apparent and have been almost automatic at times. It's unfortunate in a way, it's a subtle form of tilt to know I'm not playing my A game when I'm running bad. This was especially true because the more I lost, the more meaningful lost money became to me, and the harder it was to play my best. It's tough not to be results oriented and this is something I constantly struggle with.

I mentioned in my last post that I need to make sure I don't put myself in the position of having to drop down limits because of mismanaging money. This became even more apparent when I started playing worse because the money was becoming more meaningful. This is one of the main reasons I've refrained from taking shots at nosebleed limits even when properly bankrolled and profitable games are running. It's not only the possible lost money at those limits but it's the after affect on my game that can be doubly detrimental and ultimately even more costly. Ideally, I'd like to always play stakes where the money means next to nothing and allows me to always play my best game regardless of how much I'm winning or losing.

On the VPP front, I've gained a lot of ground in the last week. I'm up to 528K VPPs which I think puts me about 2 weeks behind pace. I don't anticipate any problems making SNE again this year.

As my wife reminded me today, I haven't made any strategy posts for a while. If anybody has a specific topic they want me to write about, please email me or comment and I"ll do my best. If not, I'm sure I can come up with something.

Tough Times/Dropping Down in Limits

It's been a really tough 2 month stretch for me. After running so good for so many months I almost forgot what's it like to run bad for an extended period of time. It seems like every 15-25 big bet pot I'm involved in, I'm either coolered or rivered. What's scary is it can get worse, the cards have no memory. In dollar terms it doesn't look so bad:



But last month I had my worst month of the year with WSOP tournaments costing me about 30K. On top of that, tons of expenses. And truthfully, I'm the worst money manager in the world. I live like the Sultan of Brunei and between my wife and I we easily spend 10K a month on non essential things. And if that weren't enough over 40% of my money goes to the IRS

And so I'm left with no choice but to drop down in limits and will be sparingly, if at all, playing the 50-100 games until I'm able to build back up. Those who follow my blog probably know I did this twice last year as well. I only hope I'm as lucky as last to year to be able to build back up quickly. This year it's a little more painful. According to PTR I'm the biggest winner online in the 50-100 games and at least temporarily I can't play them:




My current Poker Stars bankroll sits at 46K and I'd like at least 60K to play in the 50 games. With 50K, I feel fine 1 and 2 tabling the games so if I'm able to get back above 50K, I'll probably selectively play them.

The bottom line is that I need to learn how to manage my money better. The losing streaks are inevitable but not planning ahead for them is inexcusable and now results in a big opportunity cost.