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Here is my latest article for The Sportsman, published last Sunday.
Writing a couple more is now keeping me busy, too busy. There are a lot of adjustments I need to make in my game at the moment (ie. I‘ve had a horrible month and my confidence is shot), and real work - paid work - is getting in the way.
No play, no post. Took a small knock on Thursday over at Sun Poker which has forced big-time introspection. Long story, conclusion: I need more faith in my game, and to get more faith in my game I need to study up. I’m happy that I can make decent decisions based on the cards in my hand but I’m really failing to understand my opponents properly and as a result poor players, sometimes very poor, are often beating the hell out of me.
It’s not just variance, it’s not just luck, it’s the fact that I see these guys day-in, day-out and I haven’t taken the time out from playing them to analyse their game. I haven’t put in the effort, and so I haven’t got the rewards. It’s not good enough to say, “Well, I play better pre-flop cards in better position, with a better understanding of post-flop outs and equity and pot odds. Therefore in the long-run I will win.” I need to do better than that and start to understand them as individuals, making individual mistakes. Heads-up Display should be only the start of what I know about them. So you little 2/4 monkeys, look out, I’m watching you play, I’m taking notes, and I will be back. Just give me a few days to work this thing out.
Jesus, tournament play is tough. After a reasonable first outing at NL single-table tournaments I figured the experience of playing a bunch of free rolls and the Sunday big-money games would be both educational and make a nice break from the low-limit grind. Yeah, right.
I got some sit and go practice in the morning, playing a whole bunch of single table £10+1 entry 6-table tournaments on SunPoker. Played 11, won three (£45 a pop), runner-up four times (£15 each) for a £74 profit, 68% return on investment. Easy. Except it’s not. There’s something about tournament play which turns my gut. Just too much stress, and man, I cope with stress badly.
Interpoker’s $10,000 free roll (2000MPP entry) started at 5.00 with 543 entrants. Two-and-a-half hours later I went out in 24th place, when, needing to double up in the next round or be blinded out of it, I called pre-flop UTG for 3000 of my 21,000 stack with Qjo with the blinds and antes adding up to 7500. One caller, and the small blind completed for a 15,000 pot. The small blind, the tournament chip bet out 6000 and I go all-in on a 9TJ rainbow flop. He called and flipped 8Jo, but turned a 7. I couldn’t catch an 8 or K or on the river so that was that. Time to calm down, call it a day and crawl into bed.
But. RakeTheRake had a $500 free roll for new accounts. I was all over the place and went out early. Ditto when I played a $66 satellite to Party’s $1m guaranteed immediately after. But, fuck it, the huggable one was away, nothing on the TV, and I already felt wasted and tired out and over-adrenalined and so I might as well blow all I’d won earlier by paying up the $215 entry fee and take a shot at the $155,000 prize. The prize pool pays down to 750th place for these things and only 4000 entrants and so might as well…. lose. I mean, I didn’t play that badly, but when I min-raised 66 under the gun I knew I was going out and just wanted it all to end. It did, in 1286th place.
Did I learn anything? Yes, I have sick addiction to gambling - one of those, I hate doing this, but want to do it anyway-types that just doesn‘t really happen in my usual limit play. Yes, I can play a reasonable No Limit tourny strategy and make some competent reads. Yes, I have to learn to deal with stressful situations better. And yes, I have to get back to fixed limit and grind my way through it.
After wiping out in that brief, greedy spell at $10/$20 I’ve dropped back down the limits to tighten up my game against some $2/$4 weaklings. So far, so good, and I’m finding it easier to make good decisions where bankroll isn’t important. Up a $1000 or so in three good days and one bad, though it takes a lot of multi-tabling hours.
But it’s just not stressful enough. I decide to make my No Limit debut at a bunch of InterPoker single table tournaments. Just to get a bit of adrenaline flowing.
First hand QQ, KJT board and I check-fold. I resolve to get aggressive. Next hand, T9, 299 board, 2 turn, and A river, sees me out against A9. I resolve to get tight.
Play a 10-seat and 6-seat simultaneously. Come third in the 10-seat (in-the-money), and third in the 6-seat (just out of the money). I need to concentrate a little more, and only play one at a time. So other than a brief call from the huggable one making arrangements for this evening, I’m pretty focused playing my next 6-seat £10 buy-in, and win. And the next. Beginners luck?
Whatever, the £55 net is peanuts compared to two hours at a cash table, but somehow the all-or-nothing nature of the tournament game just seems more exciting and I have to remind myself that if I want excitement I should go jump out of an airplane, or hang out at the bookies or whatever that isn't playing poker for a living. Back to $2/$4 grind, for me.
I've never gotten around to playing live. Just don't have the face for it. If you haven't seen these Full Tilt ads yet, have look, and try not to smile. http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/best-poker-faces-in-the-world.php
Shut Up and Deal, by Jesse May
I’ve played over 100,000 hands of limit hold’em so far this year. There have been ups, and there have been downs but always Jesse May’s story of a struggling professional player continues to inspire. Shredded nerves and drained emotions are part and parcel of limit hold’em, where everyone, I mean everyone who plays, sees more swings of fortune than even the toughest person should have to deal with. It’s a brutal game.
As May says, “Poker is a combination of skill and luck. People think mastering the skill part is hard, but they’re wrong. The trick to poker is mastering the luck. That’s philosophy. Understanding luck is philosophy, and there are some people who aren’t ever gonna fade it. That’s what sets poker apart. And that’s what keeps everyone coming back for more.”
Mickey Dane is a streetwise kid playing the high-stakes poker rooms in the mid 1990’s. The book is his story, and the stories of dozens of the low-life and high-rollers he is up against. It’s not an old-fashioned novel in the way that novels used to have beginnings, middles, and ends. After all, poker is not like that, it has no end. You win a hand. Deal the next. Lose it all. Borrow a dime and buy-back in. Life is just one big poker game and money the way of keeping score.
Session after session, the book meanders along, building towards its denouement as the great East Coast blizzard of ‘96 sweeps into Atlantic City. Mickey Dane is left sitting in his chair, stuck almost everything he ever had, with no one interested in playing him any more. But this book is not a bad beat story because when we finally leave Mickey, he understands better than anyone ever before what it’s all about.
bitterness and denial aren’t
realistic ways
to deal
with something that happens again and again
never to know exactly when
but that the only stop is not to play.
but to play
that’s thing.
shut up and deal.
A streetwise poker pro writing poetry? Maybe it’s meaningless. Maybe it is to somebody who hasn’t tilted off a month’s expenses in a hour of madness; to those who haven’t been on the wrong side of the last 18 river cards; to people who don’t know what it’s like, not to crave money, but to crave the bankroll to play that super-loose aggressive high-stakes game going on in the corner, right there.
Those 38 words of the poem are quite simply the best possible expression of the inhumane nature of the game, as well as its attraction, and the only possible credo for those who want to play it.
Buy Shut Up and Deal from amazon.co.uk
Kind of appropriate to be talking of downswings in my first post this morning. This just happened:
So that’s the $10/$20 bankroll Pacific Poker bankroll out the window, and the $5/$10. Not really enough for the $3/$6 either. See you at the $2/$4. I’m the guy on tilt.
It’s not just me. Scanning through the 2+2 forums this morning there were a couple of “is my downswing unusual” threads. They crop up from time to time, guys who have been winning at, say, 1.5 big bets per 100 hands over 20,000 hands (say $3000 a month at $5/$10) who suddenly drop 500 big bets ($5000) in 5000 hands (say, one week). WTF, they think, ‘What the fuck’?
The responses are always the same: “It’s just variance”, “Your sample size is too small”, “Don’t be results-orientated, concentrate on playing good poker”. But today one poster got it spot on:
“I do think it’s important to understand why people make these posts though. I know I made one. I think it comes from the need to extrapolate out and see how much you stand to make in the year. You get a 2BB/100 win rate playing $3-6 over 15K hands and you think to yourself “ while I'm making $12.00 an hour per table playing four tables; assuming I play 40 hours a week I should make 100 grand this year! And if I could keep the same win rate at $5-10 and play 6 tables I’d make a quarter million next year” and the next thing you know you’re mentally shopping for a BMW. Then you hit rough patch and you have images of yourself living on rice –a-roni for the rest of your life. Don’t fall into this trap, it’s too stress inducing. ILOVEPOKER is right; have monetary goals, but don’t focus on your win rate as a function of improving your game.”
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=6144785&an=0&page=0&vc=1
All this reminds me of the most humbling post I ever read. The guy was a legend on the board, he wrote well and he analysed play brilliantly. Unfortunately he found out how long the long-run really was and it forced him to give up the game and get a job.
“What does it take to beat this game? How can I drag myself to write about it when all I want to do is hide? It all started off so well. Bad luck stories always do. I took another $1500 out of Pacific over a few days, all swell, bankroll looking good, I’m feeling good, June just gonna be the month when it all happens. Yesterday it went off the cliff, comfortably my worst day. Two separate $900 downswings, punctuated by a similar upswing. Christ, the nervous and emotional energy that takes, forget what it does to confidence.
Down is bad. Up is just relief - not good, just relief. Then down again, and there’s no way back. And what when it’s all over? What can you do? Scarlett O’Hara the damn thing - tomorrow is another day? Drink and forget? Conversation is all but impossible, sleep a long way away.
Well, today was a new day. A day for study, for plugging leaks, for analysis, for a long overdue check-up and sweat session. So how did I find myself throwing away half my (admittedly small) Interpoker bankroll without even clearing the bonus? You tell me.
Low doesn’t start to describe the way I feel. Can words do me justice? Spent, empty, impotent, crushed, sick, ill, pathetic, useless, bleak, depressed.”
That was three days ago. Since then I’ve won. The game is good, all is good and the bankroll is looking just swell, thanks very much . June is gonna be the month where it all happens.
Big Deal - One Year as a Professional Poker Player, by Anthony Holden
There is no way that Big Deal should miss the flop but when the cards are flipped at showdown, Anthony Holden is holding rags. He has the anecdotes, he has the hard-earned experience, he even has the dust-jacket endorsements - David Mamet, Salman Rushide and Martin Amis. But he just doesn’t have the nuts.
Poker until the late 1970’s was a game of hard-ass Texan hustlers, a Runyon-esque romp from coast-to-coast. Poker since the late 1990’s has been dotcom boom time, an ever-expanding entertainment industry and a blue-chip business in both its casino and online forms. Big Deal sits somewhere in the middle, harking back to the golden age, but unable to look forward to mass-participation.
The old-time stories, and literary-Londoner-in-Las Vegas observations are lifted straight from Al Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town. Alvarez, is Holden’s real-life mentor, and the pupil never threatens to overreach his master.
The book recounts Holden’s experiences on the professional circuit in 1988-9, book-ended by a pair of appearances at the World Series of Poker Main Event, the $10,000 buy-in No Limit Hold ’Em tournament. He comes 90th in 1988, then 111th in 1989. But Holden gets outdrawn on these experiences which should be his book’s big draw.
James McManus, another journalist/author and literary type entered the tournament in 2000 - and made the final table, winning a quarter million dollars. Positively Fifth Street, McManus’ tale of his exploits, woven into his coverage of the murder trial of Vegas legend Ted Binion, really tells you what it’s like for an amateur to sit with the pro’s.
Don’t misunderstand. Big Deal is a good book. It is a worthy book. The poker is real, the players are real and the writing is real. But it is not a great book. It is neither as entertaining nor perceptive as Alvarez’ original, and it is not as exciting or informative as McManus’ update.
Buy Big Deal from amazon.co.uk
At last! The Cryptologic network (which includes SunPoker) has sliced a little from the rake at short-handed tables. Having already spent $15,851 this year any reduction, however small, is welcome.
Two players now face one unit max rake.
Three to four players now have two units max rake.
Five or more still have three units max.
