One Step Forward, two steps back

In the immortal words of Will Ferrel in the movie Zoolander, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" After winning $5,300 in the first 9 days of July without a losing day, all of a sudden I'm getting smoked every time I pick up the mouse. In the last 8 days I've dropped $3,300 playing the same way in the same games. It makes no sense!

The only explanation I have is I'm in the midst of a massive run of bad luck. Either that or on July 10th someone stole my brain and replaced it with a bowl of oatmeal. What I could really use (in addition to a stiff drink) is a total no brainer good day tomorrow. A day where I'm faced with almost no tough decisions, my cards are so good that I couldn't possibly screw it up and my opponents do a bunch of stupid shit that works to my advantage. I've had plenty of days like that in my career and what I really want is one of those days tomorrow. Not the next day, not on Saturday, but tomorrow! Because I'm getting really frustrated and not only is this bad run getting expensive, but it also makes working a miserable chore.

The World Championship of Onine Poker (WCOOP)

The WCOOP is the largest and most prestigious set of poker tournaments in online poker. Much like the WSOP the, WCOOP grows a little bit every year. When they started running the WCOOP in 2002 there were only a handful of events and first place in the main event was only $65,000. Two years ago, the first year that I played, there were 15 events and last year there were 18 with a main event first prize of over $600,000. This year there will be 23 tournaments (starting on September 14th) with buy ins ranging from $215 on up to $5,200. Here is a link to the full schedule of events.

I'm not sure how much I'm going to invest in this years WCOOP or how many events I'm going to play. Some of it will depend on how my results are between now and the middle of September and we'll have to see how having a new baby around impacts our finances. If someone dropped $100,000 in my lap right now, I'd play 15 events with buy ins totaling about $8,000. If I don't have anyone investing, I'll probably play 7 events with buy ins totaling around $2,000.

I expect that other people will have some interest in betting on me, even though I haven't exactly brought home the bacon for my backers in the past. Since I'm interested in playing as many events as possible, I'll gladly except backing from anyone for pretty much any amount. If you're someone out there like Tom (Hey Tom) and you want to take a $100 shot so that reading this blog is more interesting for a few weeks in September, send me an e-mail (wesdave1279@yahoo.com) and you can join the team of people with financial interest my 2007 WCOOP.

Unlike the WSOP where I've pretty much gotten my ass handed to me, I've done pretty well in the WCOOP in the past. I've made the money in about 20% of the events I've entered and I've had a few where I was knocking on the door of the big money when I got eliminated. It's important for my long term career to keep trying with these big tournaments and if I keep trying eventually I'll have another really big hit like I did in August 2005. It would also be nice to win some money for the poor saps who've been striking out along with me for the past few sets of big tournaments. I'll have more on the WCOOP and my plan when the time gets a little closer.

Thinking Long Term

I am terrible at thinking long term. When I'm having a losing day (or sometimes even a losing hour) it gives me almost no comfort to think back on all the success I've had in the past and all the money I've won in my lifetime. I want to win now and as soon as the dollars hit my account I feel like that's where they should stay. Lately, I've been avoiding looking at my account balance as I play during the day so while I usually have a sense of how I've been doing, I don't know exactly how much I'm winning or losing. This seems to keep me in a better frame of mind and stops me from sweating every dollar. Even though I know I shouldn't look, it's almost impossible to stave off curiosity for more than a few hours.

Today, I had a somewhat shocking and perplexing day. After starting the month off with 7 straight good winning days (and two days off), I had my worst day of the year today. Where the hell did this run of terrible luck come from? I don't feel like I played any different today although I'm sure I made my share of mistakes. For the most part it just seemed like every time I made a good hand, someone else made a great one. Unfortunately, making big lay downs isn't one of my strengths and I really got punished my making second best hands.

At the start of July if you told me I'd be winning as much as I am for the month at this point, I gladly would have taken it. But, since I had so much more 8 hours ago it really doesn't make me feel much better to think about the fact that I'm still having a very good month so far. It's critical that I book a win tomorrow even if it's a small one otherwise my morale is going to start suffering and when that happens it becomes really difficult to play all day and play well. It seems like whenever I go into a day thinking that I lose 2 or 3 big hands in the first 10 minutes of my day. Hopefully, tomorrow will be the start of new streak.

This and That

One of the things that sucks about my job is I don't get holidays off. I read an article in the paper the other day that said that most people in France get 20 f-ing holidays a year on top of whatever other vacation they get. Lucky bastards! With the exception of the major holidays, I usually discover that I'm in the midst of a holiday at 1:00 p.m. when I check to see how our stocks did and I see that the market was closed.

Today it took me a few minutes to figure out why there were twice as many games running as there would be on a normal Wednesday. Of course, almost everyone was home from work and what better way to kill some time than with a little online poker. I've learned over the past few years that the 4th of July is one of the days when the total nut balls come flying out of the wood work. With the exception of the day after Thanksgiving, you'll find more people who don't have a clue what the hell they are doing playing poker on the 4th. While it makes the games a little better, it also makes them more volatile and a little more stressful. At the very least I hope the other regular players got their bankrolls beefed up today with a bit of extra dough so they can slowly lose it back to me in the coming weeks.

In online poker ban news, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a huge article that took up 3/4 of the front of the technology section a few days ago. What was great about it was based on how the article read it seemed like the paper was in favor of fully legal online gambling and that anyone who opposed it was a freedom hating idiot. It wasn't until close to the end of the article that they even mentioned the reasoning behind the ban and they did it in a lackluster way. I've discovered that the most recent rallying cry of the Poker Players Alliance as other opponents of the ban as well as the congressmen who've written bills to repeal the ban is "Adult Americans should be able to spend their money however they want." Makes perfect sense to me. Apparently the first bill (I think there are actually a few) to repeal the ban and make online poker totally legal and regulated in the U.S. was submitted in April and is in committee , but there wasn't any mention of when the house will vote on it.

I don't want to get too riled up and go on and on, but I will mention one more thing about the ban. One of the main things that the opponents of online poker say over and over is that young people are the real victims. They're damaging their financial future and losing what little money they have gambling and the government needs to save them. I've read this a few places and I always think that credit cards are 10 times worse than gambling. How many people do you know who've lost any significant amount of money gambling? Probably not too many. Now how many people do you know (especially young people) who have bought a ton of shit they can't afford using their credit card and spent thousands of dollars on interest in the following years? Almost everyone falls into that trap at some point, but I don't see the government trying to save us all from ourselves by making it hard to get a credit card.

Now that I have my little rant out of the way I can tell you I actually had a pretty nice day today winning just under $500. What makes it all the sweeter is I was losing over $700 at one point early in the day. So far July is looking nice.

A Strong Poker Day

The system I've been using over the past few months is pretty simple. I've made a few adjustments here and there and found that my best bet seems to be playing in $2/$4 blinds games, buying in for $125 (the max buy in is $400 and that's what the majority of the other players do), and leaving if I get my stack up over $200. There are usually 10-15 games running at the $2/$4 limit and after being out of a game for 30 minutes you can rejoin a game you've already played in and buy in for any amount (If you wand to return earlier than 30 minutes you're forced to buy in for at least the amount you left with).

Normally there are plenty of games going, but to make sure I don't end up on a waiting list for a game I've just been in I make a note on my dry erase board of the time and the table name every time I leave a game. Usually I've got two or three names on my board and sometimes if things are going really well I'll have 4 or 5 tables that I've left within 30 minutes. Today I looked over at my board during a crazy hot stretch and saw that I'd left TEN tables in a twenty minute span and even more amazingly I had at least $250 in all of them when I got up.

When I stopped for lunch today I'd played 1,800 hands and I was up about $50. I played another 1,200 hands and finished the day ahead $1,700. It was a sweet run and a great day overall. Also if you look at the post below you can read an article I wrote for Cardschat.com (it's not up yet) which explains a little more of the logic behind buying in short.

How Much Should I Buy in for in a No Limit Cash Game?

The vast majority of online no limit cash games have a maximum buy in, a minimum buy in and what amounts to a suggested buy in. When you sit down there are usually two check boxes: one that conveniently allows you to buy in for the maximum (usually 100 times the big blind) and one where you can type in another amount. The “other amount” area usually has a number that’s equal to 60 big blinds pre-entered which the websites have put in as a suggested amount that you buy in for. Of course if you try to buy in for a minuscule amount you’ll be kindly informed that you are below the minimum which is almost always 20 times the big blind.

So which amount is right and additionally should you leave if you hit a certain amount? The answer is the same as the answer to many other poker questions; it depends. Some players will have the best results buying in for the maximum and others will have better results buying in for less. Some players should hit the road when they reach a certain amount and others should never get up because they’ve accumulated a given number of chips. The important part is to do some critical thinking about what your strengths and weaknesses are and decide what works best for you.

Conventional wisdom says that you should buy in for the maximum and accumulate as many chips as you can in an effort to have every other player covered. The thinking here is that when you get that big hand that you’ve been dreaming about and someone else makes a slightly worse hand (or tries an ill-advised bluff) you’ll make the most you could possibly make. The main disadvantage is sometimes you’ll be the one with the second best hand that’s tough or impossible to fold and you’ll end up losing more than if you had fewer chips. The questions is, will there be more times that you double up or take an opponents entire stack than times that you lose all of your chips or allow an opponent to double up?

There are other advantages to having a huge pile of chips in front of you. While it’s nice to have people bluff at you when you’ve got a great hand, in general it’s easier to beat opponents who straightforwardly bet their good hands and check their weak ones. When you have a ton of chips your opponents will be less likely to bluff at you because they’ll think you can afford to call them down. On the other side of the coin, your bluffs will be more effective on earlier betting rounds because even if you’re betting relatively small amounts, your opponents know that in order to call you all the way down they might have to put in more chips than they want to. Frequently they’ll decide it’s not worth it and give up when they may have called you down if you had fewer chips.

Another strategy is to buy in for a smaller amount to limit your risk. In the old days before online poker, if you were winning you’d be stuck with whatever amount you had in front of you since you couldn’t take chips off the table. Now there are so many games that if you want to, you can leave one game if you’re ahead and immediately buy into another for a lesser amount. For example, if you decide that it makes sense for you to always have between 40 and 70 big blinds, you can buy in for 40 and if you find yourself with more than 70 you can leave that game and buy into another for 40. The main advantage of this strategy is limiting your fluctuations. No one terrible hand is going to wipe out an entire great day’s worth of profit or put you in a huge hole.

Of course there are other advantages for buying in small. You’ll find that it’s easier to get paid off on your good hands. Since your opponents will know they’re only liable for the amount you have in front of you, often times they’ll take ill-advised risks. Furthermore, many players have the perception that if you haven’t bought in for the maximum then you must be a weak player. Anytime your opponents have misconceptions about your abilities, it works to your advantage. It can be less stressful when you have less on the line and it can make those small pots and blind steals seem more significant.

Deciding how much to buy in for requires that you look at your strengths and weaknesses. If one of your strengths is making big lay downs, then having more chips is less dangerous than if you’re a player who’s never folded top pair in your life. Maybe chopping out a bunch of small pots with well timed bluffs is what you do best. In that case there’s no reason to open yourself up to more risk by having a big stack. If you go on tilt every time you lose a huge pot, you’ll be better off having fewer chips and keeping the pots smaller. While half the players in every game think they’re the best player in the game, actually being the best player in the game means you’ll be better off with more chips. Another factor in this decision is the size of your bankroll in relation to what size games you find interesting. You can play in bigger games with a smaller bankroll if you buy in small.

If you buy in for the maximum is it still possible to have so many chips that you should get up? Sure it is. Most players have a range in which they feel comfortable. Maybe that range is 100 to 200 times the big blind for you or maybe it’s anything up to 500 times the big blind. When you start playing hands differently than you would strictly because you’re worried about losing all of the chips in front of you than it’s best to get up and jump into another game for a lesser amount. For example, if you’ve decided that raising to 3 times the big blind when you’re first in with pocket aces is the best way to play them and all of a sudden you decide to open raise to 6 times the big blind because you’re worried about taking a bad beat, you’ve got a problem. You don’t want to give up equity because having so many chips is making you nervous.

When you look at a typical online no limit game you’ll find that most players buy in for the maximum, but many of them would be better off buying in for less. Don’t let your ego get the best of you and buy in for more than the optimal amount just because you feel like you have to. On the other hand, if you’re used to buying in for less, maybe you’d be better off buying in for the maximum. The important thing is to think about why you’re buying in for the amount you do. If you’re not sure how much is right for you (and probably even if think you’re sure) try experimenting with various amounts and let your results dictate what you should do in the future.

June Recap and July Goals

June turned out to be a pretty good month. I effectively won the same amount that I did in May (which was my best month so far this year) but I took the first 5 days off for my trip to the WSOP and another 3 days for our baby shower weekend extravaganza. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that making the same amount of money while working 3/4 the time is a good thing. I ended up falling a little short of my goals, but ended up playing about 45,000 hands for the month.

In July, I'll once again try to hit 60,000 hands in a month. My wife Jen and I are due to have our first baby on August 2nd so there's a fair chance that I'll get derailed by an early baby arrival. If the baby comes in early August I should be able to hit my target without too much trouble. I'm a little disappointed in myself that I can't seem to quite hit the hand goals that I've been setting for myself, but I'm pleased that I've been doing better than I thought I might be able to do in terms of dollars per hand. Hopefully I can continue to improve on both an knock out a $10,000 month.