Sometimes, life kicks you in the face. I had a couple of bad days in a row. One I could have coped with. Two put me on the brink. You’re probably used to reading about my bad days. They happen frequently. Well, about once in every ten that I play. So two in a row wasn’t way out of line, statistically speaking, and I should have been ready for it. Another lesson learnt the hard way.

I start thinking about getting a job - a career to be precise. Maybe law school would be a good idea…. we’ll see. I traipse over to Iggy’s page to see what online poker’s blogfather has to say. Yup, he’s quitting too. I guess the old pros were right: poker is a great hobby and a lousy job.

Still, a chip and a chair is all you need. It’s all I’ve got. So I fire up WPX who are running rake free poker. They make a little sitting on the cash in your account and get to advertise their sportsbook operation, then pay you your rake at the end of each week. When I last looked they weren’t doing so well, and the games were tighter than a nun’s…. Whatever. Now there are always four to five tables available, they’re reasonably juicy and I can pay the rent playing breakeven poker. To be continued….

What else? Don’t play poker? Like playing video games? Try PKR. It’s got to be seen to be believed, though it doesn‘t do it for me - there‘s already enough in the game of poker to keep me interested. If I want entertainment I‘ll go to the pub. Good luck to them, though.Maybe they'll get the kids hooked and losing for real. “Wanna bunk off school and do some horse?” “Nah, I’m on PKR.”

Email me if you’re interested in rakeback.

Don’t play poker? Try backgammon instead. Supposed to be the ‘new poker’ but it’s too high variance, low skill, too mechanical, and low thought over large numbers of moves to have the same appeal. Still everyone knows how to play, and plenty of people think they’re good. Reminds me of back in the day, hanging out in Dahab and buying grass at a $1 a bag from the Bedouin. The kids used to come round all the cafes to sell colourful little cotton bracelets. If you refused they challenged you to backgammon. I was pretty proud of the way I could beat them all. Those under 6, anyway. Them 7-year olds really knew how to roll the dice. Think you’re better than that? Take a peek at PartyGammon.

While Jamie Gold was eating blueberries in a Las Vegas hotel suite readying himself to go suck out on the other poor folks at the WSOP final table, I was pissing my bankroll away in a marathon 9 hour session of limit grinding. I had 9 out of 25 sets busted, half my Aces and Kings shot down and She-only knows what else. If it was bad, then it happened to me yesterday.

But was I playing good poker? Was I fuck. This morning I sat down to do my penance, working through the hand histories trying to find the mistakes. I didn’t have to look very hard.

1. Missed a turn bet with unimproved AQ on a 3-flush, K-high board.
2. Limped with J9o behind two limpers. Got raised and paid for it.
3. Failed to call river heads-up in 11BB pot with low pair when an obvious flush draw missed.
4. Limped T9s behind two. Folded instead of raising A9x flop.
5. Peeled flop with gutshot getting only 4-1.
6. Open-limped 33, then check-folded flop.
7. 3-bet a TAG’s early position raise with AJs.
8. Open-limped A8s.
9. Failed to bet-fold river.
10. Open-limped 33.
11. Open-limped QJ.
12. Called down with bottom pair after getting check-raised on AJT flop.
13. Paid off river raise.
14. Missed river bet-fold opportunity.
15. Missed turn bet.
16. Failed to bet turn with unimproved AK - and split pot.
17. Missed river raise.
18. Bet-fold opportunity with KQ on Ttxx turn. (Not sure about this one).
19. Failed to bet turn with 72o on 5352 board with no aggressors.
20. Failed to value bet river when I turned a pair of K’s.

This was all in the first 300 hands of just one session - I was probably still feeling pretty good about my play at the time, while cursing my fate. I decided I could look at my arse no longer. I play better than this, and I’m going to play better than this. So I did. Today I earned back what I lost. Did I tell you how much I love this game?

Not so easy since PokerTracker doesn’t tell you how much you’ve bet. The statistics are buried deep in the database, so you’re going to need to do some programming - specifically, an SQL query - to get them out. Don’t worry if you don’t know what SQL is, just use the instructions here to set-up a query.

Then use this:

SELECT
sum(iif(isnull(g.exrate), gp.total_bet, (gp.total_bet)/g.exrate)) as TURNOVER,
sum(iif(isnull(g.exrate), gp.total_won - gp.total_bet, (gp.total_won - gp.total_bet)/g.exrate)) as PROFIT,
(PROFIT/TURNOVER)*100 as MARGIN
FROM game_players AS gp INNER JOIN game AS g ON gp.game_id = g.game_id
WHERE gp.player_id = (select pref_value from prefs where pref_key = 'RP')
and g.date_played between #2006-01-01 00:00:00# AND #2006-08-07 23:59:59#

I’ve figured out that I wagered $611,426 and won $8,211 at a rate of 1.34% from the beginning of the year until mid-July, when I started a new database. Since then I’ve wagered $69,603 and won $1,384 at a rate of 1.99%.

I’ve also paid $23,851 in rake. God doesn’t play dice, but she did invent rakeback.

The huggable one’s cousin trained this year’s Derby winner, Sir Percy. We sought him here and we sought him there. Lovely horse, though he didn’t say much. I was told that he might not race again as a 3-year old - the Arc is a real possibility - but he will certainly be back in training next year.

I’ve never been excited about racing before, or known anything about it and I don‘t like gambling on things I don‘t understand, but having watched this horse race, and listened to those who know, I’d be happy to back Sir Percy in anything. He just seems to like getting his nose in front. You can back him at 15.5 on Betfair right now. If he runs then that is free money.

July graphs don’t make the prettiest viewing even accounting for nearly two weeks’ holiday. Once again, rakeback sees me through. Get it at RakeTheRake (code ShePlaysPoker) or ThisIsTheNuts (code 1188). Please. Still, I made a recovery of sorts after that terrible June, and I’m still re-acclimatising to the full-ring tables so there is hope.

Full-ring

6-max

The best of the WSOP coverage - and links to everyone else’s - is at Tao of Poker.

Meanwhile things are looking bad in the States for online poker as the Senate gets ready to follow the House and vote for a ban. Iggy has some good stuff - the guy sounds seriously worried, and he’s been around forever. Even The Economist is on the case. However Lou Krieger however says don’t worry.

I guess the only place you should really follow the action is on an online betting exchange making a market in its own demise.

I’ve now played around 87,000 hands of 6-max at various levels since the beginning of the year, after switching from full-ring at which I played around 50,000 hands. That’s a lot of times to decide whether to check, bet, raise or fold. I wonder how many people in normal jobs have made 240,000 decisions that affect their take-home pay. Ever.

But break it down. By far the hardest decisions are the ones that occur post-flop. Pre-flop play is usually straightforward: you know which hands you like to play and where, and just do it on auto-pilot. So what’s the difference between full-ring and 6-max for post-flop decisions (let’s call them PFD’s)?

It works out that I’ve made 30,000 post-flop decisions at full-ring playing in those 50,000 hands, seeing 245 hands per hour. That’s 147 PFD/hour. I’ve won at 1.2BB/100 hands during that time, so each 100 PFDs have earned 2BB.

At 6-max the corresponding numbers are 80,000 PFDs, 313 hands per hour, 287 PFDs/hour, a winrate of 0.87BB/100 hands, and just 0.91BB/100 PFDs.

Are you still with me? It means that not only am I forced to make twice as many stressful decisions in each hour of 6-max play, but each one has been earning me half as much as in a full-ring game.

Theoretically each PFD you get to make correctly earns you money against opponents making PFD’s wrongly. So the more PFD’s you make, the more money you make. It hasn’t worked out like that for me, and I wonder if has for you? I’d speculate that it doesn’t quite happen like this because a large portion of winrate comes from pre-flop not post-flop decisions.

I’ve learnt a lot playing 6-max. All the usual things about isolation, aggression and blinds-play. I think that it is still the most potentially profitable way to play limit hold’em. But you have to be able to sustain an absurdly high decision-making rate. And I can’t keep doing it.

It’s time to get back into the full-ring.

If you’re interested in me, there’s now a short bio here, and on the re-jigged sidebar.

And I’ve added a review of The Man Behind the Shades - The Rise and Fall of Stuey ‘The Kid’ Ungar, Poker’s Greatest Player, to the Books section, also on the sidebar.

That was a pretty big hole to climb out of. That was a lot of marginal value bets worth of climbing. But I made it, and then some more, and then I went on a roll of my own. Who’s laughing now?

Seriously, when I left I’d been playing against a line-up so passive you‘d think opium was cool again. Someone bets into you and it can only be quads. Get check-raised and it’s the royal. Suddenly I come home, tanned and relaxed and it’s like Zinedine Zidane caught me in a threesome with his mother and sister. Plus ça change.

Pythagoras later trimmed his beard and became a poker theoretician.

Damn I need this holiday. Back in a week.

I recommend taking a look at Stoxtrader’s low-limit videos. Even if your game is already perfect - which I guarantee it’s not - it’s just good to see a great player in the same games you play, making the same decisions you do. Stox’s commentary is clear, and he never makes a decision without giving a reason. Too often when I play I’m on auto-pilot, excusing myself because I’m playing three or four tables. Watching Stox play the same number of tables, though without even heads-up display, but still taking his time, thinking everything through and articulating the decision-making process shows what can be done and what needs to be done. Check out the site, he also does no-limit cash games, and the high-stakes videos are eye-opening. They’re also near enough free if you have a This Is The Nuts rakeback account.

Elsewhere in poker-land, I’ve been listening to Zog and Henry and their PokerDiagram podcast show. It’s a fun set up (“This is London calling… raising and folding.“) where they chat over a game, usually a PokerRoom multi-table tournament. Haven’t heard them win anything yet, though.

Finally, SunPoker have upped their monthly bonus to $150. Click here to get the details and here to download the client.