What have I been up to?

Good question. I've been playing a fair amount of live poker at Bay101 and the Oaks card club which is about 15-20 minutes away from me. I didn't realize until last week that the Oaks spreads a 30-60 game. So instead of driving an hour to Bay101 to play the 40-80 game, I can drive twenty minutes and play 30-60. The skill level of the two games is pretty similar, so it's hard to say what's more profitable. Driving the extra 90 minutes to be able to play stakes 33% higher or having that extra 90 minutes to play along with saving some gas money to play lower. It's pretty close.

My results so far have been disappointing. I'm on about a seven session live losing streak over the last month or so. It terms of hands it's probably 2,000 hands which is literally one half of one day of playing online for me but it feels a whole lot worse than that since it's been spread out over several weeks. Live poker is brutal in that regard, I feel like I can play through losing streaks online, with live poker that could take months.

I have been playing some tournaments at the Oaks as well, trying to get sharper for the PCA. I final tabled the first tournament I played. Well came 10th out of about 75, but final tabling it sounds better. The rest of the tournaments I've played, I haven't cashed. I'm heading to Vegas on Monday to play some of the Venetian deep stacked tournaments.

Aside from that, I'm heading to Canada after Thanksgiving for about two weeks. I'm planning on grinding as much as possible while I'm there and trying to get back into the swing of things. I'm sure I'll be very rusty at first so I intend on restricting most of my play to lower limits until I'm confident I'm playing well.

I'll be heading to Boston for Christmas, Mexico for New Years, the Bahamas for the PCA and then likely Costa Rica for 3 months to play online next year. I just contacted Poker Refugees to help with the move to CR. We're hoping to get a nice place on the ocean with reliable internet. It doesn't sound like CR has any problems with online poker players being in their country so that's nice. The only potential issue is opening a bank account there which I've heard is a hassle. Ideally, I'd like to keep the Canadian accounts and continue withdrawing there but it's still a little unclear whether Poker Stars will allow that.

Good luck at the tables everyone.

Relaxing

I haven't done a whole lot since I got back other than play pool and relax. I did make it up to Bay101, a card room near me, the last two weekends. They regularly run limit games up to 80-160. I played the 80-160 game last night for the first time and surprisingly most of the players were decent. I'd equate the game to about a 15-30 full ring game online. I say surprised because the 40-80 games I've played in have an amazingly low skill level. In many ways they are tougher to play because the players are much less predictable and have wider ranges. There are a lot of multiway pots where several players can have almost any two cards which makes the decision making very difficult. It's hard to say which game is more profitable, I'd guess the 80-160 is slightly more profitable but comes with a whole lot more variance. I'm planning on heading up there every couple of weeks to play.

I haven't done any studying on my game yet but I have a whole list of things I want to look at and that's something I intend to start doing in the next couple weeks. There's a NL tournament in Reno next month I might go play. I'll be playing the PCA in January and would like to get some more NL tournament experience in before that.

I do miss online poker already and am looking forward to playing next year. It's possible I may even make a trip up to Canada before the end of the year to put in a week or two at the tables. I am worried about getting rusty and I don't think live poker is going to help much due to the low volume of hands.

Not much else to say. Good luck at the tables.

SNE Hat-Trick/Canada Recap

I made it for the third year in a row. 720k VPPs in 3.5 months. I'm certain I'll never play that much poker again in that short of a time ever again. It was grueling to say to the least.


Overall the Canada trip was a huge success. I far exceeded my expectations coming up here. I knew I could make SNE but I didn't know how difficult it would be. I didn't expect to do nearly as well money-wise mostly because I didn't think I'd be able to get in much volume at 15-30 and higher particularly after the first two weeks when there were very games running. Overall I think I ran about average, maybe slightly below average. I hit a 100K hand break-even stretch in terms of money and big bets. That seems to be about a once every year or two occurrence. Given the amount of hands I was playing, I think I played pretty well. At times great, at other times not so great. The only negative was running so badly at 100-200 but it always got my full attention and best game so no regrets. I also ran way above average at 100-200 early in the year and have run exceptionally well at 50-100 for over a year now.

It's back to the US tomorrow morning. And although I don't even want to think about poker right now I"m sure I'll be doing a lot of work on my game when I'm home. I'll likely be playing some live poker from time to time as well. I just registered for the PCA in January and I'm hoping to be able to stay in the Bahamas for a month or so and play online during that time. It's not really clear with PokerStars whether that's feasible yet. I'm also still worried about using the banks up here. I haven't had any problems yet with TD or BMO but I have a significant amount of money coming into the accounts over the next week so my fingers are crossed.

Thank you to everyone that supported me both here and at the tables. There were at least a dozen regulars in my games over the last few days that wished me luck and said a lot of nice things. It was completely unexpected and I really appreciate it.

Here's what the last 3.5 months looked like. After I send nearly half my money to our state and federal governments, pay a bunch of bills, and make some investments, I should have a few bucks to spend on myself.

August Recap

This was by far my toughest month mentally. I can't count the number of days I felt completely unmotivated. Too often I was just going through the motions trying to get my VPPs for the day. I hit about a 100K hand breakeven stretch dating back to last month that made things even more difficult. In total I put in 321 hours at the tables or just over 10 hours a day. Imagine the mental wear and tear of walking twenty miles a day, every day, for three and half months and that's likely similar to what it feels like 4-6 table poker 10+ hours a day for 3.5 months. On the bright side I'm up to 967K VPPs, only have five more days of this, and don't ever intend on doing it again. I'm hoping next year to travel to some different tournaments, using my FPPs to buy-in, and staying at the different locales for 3-4 weeks at a time while playing a more normal schedule.

I did finally break out of my extended slump, winning about 700 big bets over the last 15K hands or so. It didn't translate into a great deal of money because most of it came at lower limits. The higher limit games have been incredibly dead over the last week. In fact, I've noticed at the end of every month I've been here the games have died down. I'm not sure why but there were a lot of high limit games towards the middle of every month. In any event, it's nice to run good and string together consecutive winning days.

Good luck to everyone in September.

Oh Variance

Don't ever underestimate the amount of variance in poker. And further don't underestimate the affect variance can have on your game and mental attitude. If you asked me four weeks ago how I was playing, I might have told you as good or better than anyone in the world. Ask me now and I'm not sure I'm playing better than at least twenty-five of the regulars in my games.

The only thing that's changed is that I've gone through a 400 BB downswing, a 300 BB downswing, and a few 100-200 BB downswings all in the span of 70K hands. There is a serious negative mental impact this has, I start questioning a lot of the things I'm doing and my mind starts playing tricks on me. For example, it becomes a lot more difficult to make a thin river value bet on a scary river card when you've been raised the last nine out of ten times in that situation. I've read that the human brain is conditioned to believe an outcome is likely after it's seen it happen two or three times. This is an evolutionary trait and obviously has a lot of value in the real world, just not when you're playing poker. At that point, you have different parts of the brain conflicting with each other about what the best decision is and when making split decisions for hours at a time, it's easy to choose the wrong one. It's a subtle form of tilt I suppose.

That's just one of many examples.

I've said it before and I'll say it again (and will probably keep saying it), what separates the good players from the great players is being able to maintain your composure and play your A game even when nothing is going right. I think I do a good job of it compared to most but I have a whole lot of room for improvement as well.

I've got about two weeks to go and am up to 915K VPPs or so. I need to get more focused at the tables and bring my A game. I'm not leaving Canada with any regrets about the way I played. I've been really burnt out and unfocused this month. In a strange way this losing streak has been helpful. It's jolted me awake and reminded me that I do actually have to give 100% effort and think through all of my decisions.