Back to 50-100

That may be a record for the shortest amount of time taken off from a limit. My 50-100 hiatus lasted all of 3 1/2 days. I've been on quite a tear winning 598 big bets and 33K since breaking from 50-100.



I did actually play a few 50-100 hands this morning, there were a couple games I couldn't resist. I'll continue to be very selective about the 50 games I get in. There have been a lot of good games at that limit so I anticipate I'll be putting in a fair amount of hands in the upcoming weeks.

The World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) starts in a little over a month. I haven't decided exactly which events I'll be playing but at least a handful of them. I've been playing several tournaments a week since I got back from the World Series trying to stay sharp for all the big tournies I'll enter next year. So I look forward to the WCOOP, it should be a good test of my no-limit game.

Check your Ego at the Door

There is no place for an ego at a poker table. It can be argued that it's helpful away from the table but at the table it's only detrimental.

One of the biggest mistakes I see players make is playing in games with better players because they can't or don't want to admit to themselves that a game is too tough. This includes staying at tables where bad players leave and are replaced by good players. It also includes knowingly playing in tougher games to prove to themselves or others they can beat those players or that limit. I see this often with heads up players. A good player will sit with someone they can't admit is better than them and lose all of their money. Poker is about winning money, it's not about saying, "I beat so and so" or being able to say "I crushed the 300-600 game for x amount of $'s". If it is about that, poker will humble you*

*Phil Hellmuth excluded

I find I play my best poker when my ego has absolutely nothing to do with my thought process at the tables. It's at these times that poker is strictly about making decisions which will yield the highest expected return for me. This applies to in-hand decisions as well as game selection decisions. When playing, I'm constantly juggling tables, swapping better tables in and bad tables out - this is a big part of my overall success. I'm also leaving tables if there are no fish sitting at them, regardless of whether I think I'm the best player left at the table or not. In addition to avoiding better heads up players than me, I also avoid players I think I have a small to medium edge over. There are enough bad heads up players at my limits that playing even average players is not efficient use of my time or mental energy.

I find I play my worst poker when I let my ego interfere with my thought process. For example, player X has raised my big blind sixteen straight times. My ego says, "Doesn't he know who I am, I've won more money then he'll ever win." Instead of focusing on what I should be doing to counter his strategy, I'm letting my ego and emotions get the best of me. Another example, a 3rd player sits down to my immediate left when I'm playing somebody heads up. My ego says, "Why does this guy keep sitting at my heads up games, doesn't he know sitting with me in a 3-handed game is a losing proposition. And why does he always have to sit on my left?" Instead I should be refocusing my thought processes and strategy for 3-handed play. After all, someone will sit at my table eventually and there will always be somebody acting after me regardless of where they sit.

Losing your ego at a poker table is a huge obstacle out of the way. You can focus solely on playing poker and making the best decisions.

Some Relief

The poker gods are either trying to tell me something or are just having fun with me. After about the worst 30,000 hand stretch I've been through and the decision to stop playing 50-100 (see last blog entry), it's as if a switch has been turned on and I can't lose a hand.



On top of this, I final tabled the $100 rebuy on Stars finishing 9th and winning about 9 out of 10 coin-flips along the way. I'm not complaining by any stretch but couldn't this have happened sometime during the prior 30,000 hands?

Dropping Down a Limit

I made the decision to stop playing 50-100 until I'm able to build my bankroll back up to 100K. I had decided earlier this week that if my Stars bankroll dropped below 60K, that I'd stop 50-100 - I had started the month with about 80K and am now down to 58K. Nearly every day this month has looked eerily similar to this:



What's frustrating (besides losing a lot of money) is that the 50-100 games aren't too much different than the 30-60 games in terms of skill level. In fact they are probably easier on a whole because I'm more selective with them. A big difference however is that I haven't been able to get many heads up and 3-handed hands in. There aren't a lot of heads up players at 50-100 and if a bad player sits, the sharks instantly swarm in and it ends up being 6-handed where my win rate is lower and variance is higher. So for my bankroll and mind's sake, 50-100 will have to wait.

This is what my dismal month has looked like to this point:



The Won$SD stat tells it all. I'm usually at about 50%.

On an unrelated note, I got to play heads up with Orel Hershiser for a while last night. He seemed like a very nice guy and a competent limit player. An observer asked him what he used to do when he was off his game and he said, "Practice, practice and I'd switch up my daily routine from time to time without changing the core components. Some of my best pitches were thrown in the bullpen. Also, I always believed I was the best." That's a champion talking.

July Update

I received my 100K VPP Bonus from Poker Stars today for playing the main event and agreeing to their T&C so I'm now at 601K as of writing this. That puts me a good 60K VPPs, or about 23 days, ahead of pace. That's a big relief and will let me relax a lot more, particularly on our trips/vacations.

This month continues to be a tough one, it's by far my worst of the year. It's been the polar opposite of last month where everything imaginable went right, running at 3 BB/100 over 50K hands. This month it feels like I've been rivered every other hand and have lost nearly every big pot I've been in (of course I haven't). But to exacerbate matters, I've run incredibly bad at 50-100. I've had quite a few days where I've ended up winning 50 big bets or so and losing two to three thousand because of 50-100. My stats look like this:






In terms of big bets this hasn't been one of my worst downswings of the year, yet at least (fingers crossed). But money-wise I think losing ~26K is the biggest. What's really amazing is that I've continued to play a good deal of heads up and 3-handed and have continued to beat those games handily. On the month, I'm at about 3 BB/100 playing 2-3 handed which is the primary reason this downswing isn't much, much worse. On the year, I'm at 6.30 BB/100 over 30K heads up hands and 3.80 BB/100 over 28K hands of 3-handed. I don't know how people who don't play short-handed do it, the downswings they go through are very likely in the 500-1000 big bet range. Even when I had my two 500 big bet downswings this year, I was playing 10-15% of my hands 2-3 handed. Now it's more like 20-25% of my total hands.

All I can do is to play through this like all the other downswings I've been through. Something I've stressed to every person I've ever helped with poker is that what separates the good players from the great players is how they play when everything goes wrong. Everybody plays like a champion when they're hit with the deck, the key it to maintain your A game when the cards inevitably turn.

I feel pretty good about my game right now although I constantly have to work at it. I've spent a lot of time this month looking at stats and some hands trying to find some areas where I can improve. I also feel like I need to refresh my brain or I forget things, it's a little bit scary. I think if I took six months off from poker, it's very possible I'd have trouble beating a 5-10 or 10-20 game. It's not like riding a bike for me, more like having a final exam that covers the whole year and having to go back to review all the things I learned that I forgot.

I need to stay sharp and focused and that's the plan for the rest of the month.