Rhymes with Joker

Week Twenty Wrapup

I'll mention last week again, because I finally have the distance that I can add up the numbers without feeling totally depressed. It was a bit worse than I'd guessed, being a week that was down over $1300. (I guessed $1200.)

As I said, I don't feel as bad about this as I originally did, even though it put my entire career in jeopardy, even though about ten different people could easily say "I told you so." The worst part of that was that I couldn't get traction at any other limits, either; both $2/$4 and $3/$6 kicked my ass after the big drubbing at $15/$30.

This led to me flailing around a bit looking for other ways to make my nut; I gave the Sit-and-Go single-table tournaments a try, but determined that even though I used to play a whole lot of them, I have forgotten, it seems, how to play them profitably, or at least consistently profitably. I then took someone's advice (actually, several someones), and gave the $25 max-buyin no-limit ring games a try. My first sitting was quite profitable, as were my second and third sittings, so I think I'm going to be on these no-limit rings for a while. I gave the $50 max-buyin and $100 max-buyin tables a try, too, and I'll probably move there shortly, but for the next couple of days it's the $25NL tables as I rebuild my bankroll.

During Week Twenty, I worked my way up to multitabling the no-limit rings; I have no problems with three but I haven't tried four yet. I've decided that the $25NL tables are nice, and they're profitable, but they're not profitable enough to play professionally. So, I'm treating this time multitabling the $25NL as training-wheels for the $50NL, which is in turn training-wheels for the $100NL, which is in turn training-wheels for the $200NL. And as I've said before, once I'm winning consistently at the $100NL and $200NL on PartyPoker, I'll feel a lot more comfortable sitting that no-limit game in Detroit, where, as I've also said, I've seen $20,000 on the table.

And so, even though I made nearly $500 during week 20, and even though that's not enough, and even though I've been on a bad run, I'm optimistic about the future.

That said, my situation might parallel a situation I was in several years ago, where I was usually fairly optimistic despite results. Today, I remember those couple of years as one of the worst times of my life.

I had a respectable, easy, fun, but low-paying job at a typesetting company when I was essentially dumped by a girl I'd been seeing for a few months. As I said in my last entry, I tend to go a long time between relationships, so the dumping gave me reason to evaluate my life. She said that one of the things that attracted her to me originally was all these big plans I spoke of (this was during my political days). And, true to what she said, I wasn't doing a lot to make those plans come to fruition. So, from her point of view, I was stuck in a rut and I seemed to like it.

After I'd been dumped, I came to realize that she was right, and so I tried to determine what I really wanted, in order that I could set myself upon that goal. I decided that my goal was that I wanted to be Governor. One of the things I determined then that I needed were sales skills, and so I set my eyes upon the want ads (things weren't all-internet then) to find an entry-level sales job. I ended up accepting a position with Colorado Prime Foods, which from the salesman's point of view was somewhere between being the Schwan's guy and being the Kirby vacuum guy.

The similarity between then and now is that I wasn't very successful at the job. I could see money being made; I could see how it was possible to be successful, but I wasn't successful. One of the reasons I consider this to have been pretty much the worst periods of my life is that I believed their bullshit, that even if I wasn't successful now, I would be very soon, and all I had to do was to hold on until then. (I was in a pretty poisonous relationship for the latter part of my time there, too, and the poison spread to pretty much every part of my life. But there's no parallel there.)

The parallel may be that I'm having just enough success at poker to keep me playing. I'm having difficulty at these lower stakes in building enough bankroll to play the higher-stakes games profitably, and maybe I'm not even good enough to play those higher stakes anyway. (That bad weekend at $10/$20 in Chicago during week 2, or was it 3, really spooked my about my ability at the mid-limit games. Of course, my play is different now, but it still spooked me, and destroyed for now my ability to play live games with stakes that high.) To continue, I can see the money being made, and I see myself making the money in the long term, but I need to get to the long term. And for the last several weeks, I have written several things about how the long-term is just a couple of weeks away.

Maybe if my fortunes at $15/$30 were different, I would already be at the long term; this is one reason I don't feel too horrid about taking a shot even if it was stupid. And truly, I only lost 30 or 40 big bets at the $15/$30, so I probably fell victim to variance more than anything. My mistake was sitting down without being able to weather the variance. The no-limit rings seem to be working for the present, although the upside is limited at the $25NL tables, and so I need to move up. I planned to do so within the next several days, but I think I'll do so starting even today: As my current $25NL tables break, I'll replace them with $50NL tables. I've never multitabled the $50NL, but I don't expect a serious problem.

My numbers for both Weeks 19 and 20 follow. The NL rings are recorded as "NL $0.5" (e.g.), which means that the big blind was $0.5, fifty cents. (That's the $25NL.) I may change that later, so that the $0.5 reflects a big bet, rather than a big blind, corresponding to the way that PokerTracker figures things like big bets per hour on the no-limit rings, and for the same reason: In case I want to figure things later in terms of big bets per whatever. But for now, "NL $0.5" means that the big blind is 50¢, which is also how PokerTracker records the type of table.

The day's best poker news:

• Iggy's Poker Blog

Fellow Michiganders' poker blogs:

• Gambling Blues (BG)
• Gadfly's Buzz
• Dispatches from the Culture Wars
• On Hiatus:          
• Royal Poker
• Ralph Nader's Poker Jam

Other poker blogs:
(People who whined about no link)

• Up for Poker
• The Cards Speak
• Chicago Phil
• Poker Index

Play poker online:

• PartyPoker
• Intertops Poker
• Doyle's Room
• Full Tilt Poker

Or in the casino:

• Kewadin Shores (1)
  in St.Ignace, Mich.
• Little River Casino (2)
  in Manistee, Mich
• Soaring Eagle Casino (3)
  in Mt.Pleasant, Mich.
• Greektown Casino (4)
  in Detroit, Mich.
• Motor City Casino <4>
  in Detroit, Mich.
• Harrah's (5)
  in E.Chicago, Ind.
• Trump Casino (6)
  in Gary, Ind.
• Leelanau Sands Casino (7)
  in Peshawbestown, Mich.
• Point Edward Charity Casino (NP)
  in Sarnia, Ont.
• ----
• Atom Feed