Poker Wannabe

12/31/2004 - BooYa!

Well whattaya know.  It really was an investment after all. 

I'm talking about my new monitor, of course.  The monitor is really cool, and by cool I mean totally sweet--so sweet that I want to crap my pants*.

Now, I bought it for this sweetness factor, but also for the convenience factor.  Overlapping tables is a pain--being able to see every table clearly at once is a big plus.  And also, who knows, maybe I'd start to play six tables at once rather than my usual four...

Well, last night I finally got both my new monitor and my old 17" CRT hooked up at the same time.  On my new baby, I had four tables of CelebPoker 2/4 and 3/6 running as I was grinding towards the bonus (CelebPoker is a skin of PokerRoom, a place that has uber-juicy 2/4 tables, but 3/6 tables that start getting too tight for comfort and 5/10 tables that are just people sitting around waiting for pocket aces).  I was doing well, and after about 30 minutes of getting reacclimated to multi-tabling (remember, it had been nine days), I decided to open two tables of Empire 5/10 six-max (my new "main game" so to speak).

So there I was with four CelebPoker tables on my new baby, and two Empire tables on my old piece of crap.  Much in contrast to "Black Saturday" from about three weeks ago, I had one of the best runs I've ever had online, winning about 175BBs in two and a half hectic hours of play (about 950 hands).  I can call it "BooYa Thursday," I guess.  Over two-thirds of those BBs came from the 2/4 tables, but at the end of the day I compared total dollar winnings between the monitors.  They were almost equivalent, within 5% of one another. 

On my new guy, I was playing four tables of an average limit of 2.50/5.  On the old guy, I was playing two tables of 5/10.  And surprise, surprise, the winnings fell just as proportionally.  Now, one day is far from an adequate sample size, but it got me thinking.  In the "old days" before my new monitor, I would usually play four tables at a time, often bonus whoring.  If I didn't have any bonuses to collect, I'd play at Empire since there I have rakeback.  But now with two monitors, I can do my full four-table bonus whoring on the new luxury cruiser and still have, say, two tables of Empire 5/10 going on the side.  So my win rate per hour essentially increases by however much playing two tables of 5/10 is worth to me (minus a small amount for decreased effectiveness at each table).  Conservatively estimating, I can see 150 hands/hour on those two 5/10 six-max tables, and even if I can only pull a somewhat modest win rate of 1.33 BB/100, that's 2BB/hour or $20/hour I've just added to my earning potential.  The new monitor, then, will pay for itself every week to two weeks. 

See?  It was an investment, just like I had planned it all along.  Heh. 

And who knows, maybe I'll have to buy a second one, so I can easily eight-table...

*Link for anyone who missed the reference, not that I imagine there are many by this point.      

12/30/2004 - Costa Rica

For the past week, I've been on vacation in Costa Rica with a somewhat random collection of family and friends.  I had big dreams for this vacation, among them to go scuba diving and to play poker at the Casino Europa.  Since the planner for the trip was not myself--rather it was my tree-hugging (heck, tree-fellating) sister--I found that accomplishing my initial goals would be difficult.  Overall, though, the trip would still be lots of fun.

The main impediment to my poker-playing aspirations were simply that all the poker rooms in Costa Rica, as far as I knew, were in San Jose, the capital.  We would be near San Jose for only two nights--we would be staying about 30 mins outside the city the first night and right in the city the last night.

Playing the first night would have been a possibility except that I didn't end up arriving in San Jose (defined as finally being able to leave the airport)  until after 11pm.  This was because while I had a 7AM flight out of Austin, one actually isn't allowed to fly to another country without a passport.  Yes, upon showing up at the Austin airport at about 6:40AM, I had this amusing exchange with the airline personnel:

Her: "Where are you flying to, sir?"

Me:  "Costa Rica."

Her: "Do you have a passport?"

Me:  "..."

Her: "Sir, do you have a passport?"

Me:  "Uh...er.........no."

Her: "No, you don't have a passport, or no you didn't bring it with you?"

Me, reality finally starting to sink in:  "I, uh, didn't bring it with me."

Her, speaking to me slowly, like I was a child, after coming to the conclusion that I had the IQ of a jelly bean: "Sir, Costa Rica is a foreign country.  You need a passport to travel to a foreign country." 

Yes, I had come to the airport but left my passport on my dresser.  Luckily, I was able to catch a 4PM flight, thus inconveniencing the other six people on the trip only slightly.

I, however, was inconvenienced a lot more despite my being able to go back to bed for a few hours.  Little did I realize that my sister would be a gestapo-like trip commander, which meant we were getting up at 7AM the next day to leave for hiking on some distant volcano.  So,  having arrived after 11PM and then eating, I wasn't able to even consider going to the casino--over 30 minutes away, remember--until after midnight.  And I was to be awake in under 7 hours.  Hell, if the games were even a quarter-way decent, I'd be lucky if I were even considering leaving the casino in 7 hours.  So I passed, figuring I'd get another chance the final night.

This being a poker blog, I won't bore everyone with the details of the trip, other than to say that I spent most of the next few days in remote sections of the interior of Costa Rica hiking up volcanos or through rainforests (ok, technically they're cloud forests) getting very muddy and very wet in the process, as a result of my sister's love for nature rather than sandy beaches, crystal waters and girls in bikinis (loves of mine, although not necessarily in that order).  It was fun, though, especially since I did get to go on a "canopy tour" at one point which is going on zip lines through the forests.  That was a lot of fun, as the lines were sometimes hundreds of feet long and up to 260 feet in the air (according to the advertisements, and I believe it). 

One moment was a little distressing.  On one of the longer and higher lines, I was traveling along at a nice rate when I broke out of the thick forest over a wide-open valley.  I must have been about 200 feet in the air, as I saw the tops of a house or two, but mostly foliage and small trees below me.  It was very rainy, surprisingly cold (probably mid-fifties) and very, very windy.  So windy, in fact, that about three quarters of the way across the valley, the wind blew me to a dead stop.  So there I was, hanging by a pulley and a strap from a thin metal line 200 feet up in the air in some crazy wind that was nearly blowing the helmet off my head and me horizontal.  I had to hand-over-hand it to the next platform, and for a minute there, the whole experience was not fun.  But otherwise, it was a blast.

I took a lot of pictures, the one above from fairly close to the coast during the return trip to San Jose (that is the Pacific way in the background) and the one below my sister, who actually has photographic talent, took one night of the sunset.

But to heck with the pretty scenery, I wanted some international poker action!  Finally back in the capital the final night, it was 8PM and I had to get up before 5AM for another insanely early flight, but damnit, I was going to play some poker.  Luckily, the Casino Europa was five minutes away and so soon enough, there I was, running down the stairs into...

The smallest "real" casino I've ever seen.  There was a room with a bunch of slot machines, maybe a dozen casino game tables going and a bar.  I've seen bigger casinos in the lobbies of Las Vegas hotels.  But whatever, I don't  play any of that crap anyways. 

A quick left, through a couple doors and there was the poker room!  Like the rest of the casino, it was fairly small--at most a dozen tables--but about half of them were full and I was primed and ready.

Except.

It was.

Tournament night.

There wasn't a cash game to be found.  And when I asked the floor, I was told that "maybe" at 10PM a cash game would start, and that it would probably be 1/2 NL.  I could play in the tournament if I wanted, though.  Only $10 for T30 in chips, with unlimited rebuys of $150 for T690 in chips!  WTF???  So basically it was a $160 tournament with rebuys.  Ugh.  Thinking back on it, I probably should have played anyways since I risk larger amounts than that playing 10/20 or 15/30, but at the time the whole principle of the thing turned me off big time.  And, since I didn't feel like waiting two hours for just the possibility of no-limit, only 15 minutes after arriving I was back in another taxi returning to the hotel.

So in the end, I didn't get to scuba-dive, didn't get to play poker, and didn't get to ogle girls in bikinis, but I did get to enjoy a lot of things I was not expecting to do.  And, despite my portrayal of her (ahem, you know, tree-fellating and gestapo-like), I really do love my sister; she planned an excellent trip.  So, despite going longer between poker hands than I ever have before (nine days), I had a lot of fun.

12/22/2004 - Holiday Rush

My Christmas gift arrived yesterday.  Yes, my brand new monitor that I bought for myself.  I'm in love.  I got to play poker for nearly three hours on it, and it's unbelievable.  It's a whole new ballgame.  Of course, I have to wait a long time before I get to use it again because....

I also leave for Costa Rica today.  In fact, my plane takes off in five and a half hours.  I should really be getting some sleep, but nothing stands between me and my reader(s)!

Costa Rica should be a lot of fun.  Aside from the warm weather, hot girls and sunny beaches (and, hopefully, scuba diving!), there will be some casino poker action.  I can't wait, although I am a little cautious. 

You see, I used to be a live player.  Online was only moderately successful to me, but I was making a killing playing live.  In recent months, though, I've turned to online play mostly because like a hooker in Vegas, it's always there, cheap and easy.  As a result, while my online play has improved in leaps and bounds, my live play has suffered dramatically.  I used to be a shark.  I could read people.  I could sit there and watch the lesser players and watch as their faces told the entire story of what was going on in their minds.  One could literally see them coming to a decision, and based on how they looked upon reaching that decision, one could gain lots of information. 

The best players to read were online players who only rarely played live.  They would wear their emotions on their sleeve, as the saying goes.  If they were shocked, they showed it.  Disappointed, they showed it.  If they thought you missed the flop and were raising to find out (thinking, "oh, he probably just has AK"), they showed the entire process of their devious plotting on their faces, complete with the look over that said "oh, now let's see how he reacts to THAT."  Of course that was an instant three-bet in my book.

But now I'm the online player!  My few recent attempts at live play have shown me that 1) I can't read people the way I used to and 2) They can read me better than they used to.  I was recently playing a very casual laid back game with friends (occasional, recreational players all of them) and I was screwing up reads like crazy.  I played at Canterbury Park during my recent trip to Minnesota and I don't doubt based on other people's reactions that I was letting way too much emotion show.

It's really distressing because the two games, while fundamentally the same, are very different.  Online you have pokertracker, your cards, and a betting pattern, that's it.  Live, you have to do pokertracker in your head, watching and learning how people do things.  And you have to read people, plain and simple.  Are they strong?  Are they weak?  Are they betting differently this time than they usually do?  Live play also takes a lot more patience.  I can see 300 hands an hour four-tabling 6-max tables online.  Live, if a dealer can get out over 30 hands an hour, that's fantastic.  Online, the skill is in not getting overwhelmed by the sheer rapidity of it all; live the skill is sometimes just to stay awake and alert! 

My poker career has gone through phases, from playing lots live, to playing lots online, to playing lots live again and now I'm back to playing lots online.  And during each period, because of the different skill set between live and online play, I always seem to do relatively poorly playing the "other" way.

Yet here I go, deeply entrenched in an online phase, ready to play in a live casino in another country having not posted any type of legitimate win in live play since mid-October.

Wish me luck!  I'll be back in a week, hopefully with good news to report.

12/19/2004 - Pre-Holiday Madness Update

December has been a much more interesting month than November was.  That's not really a good thing.

I'm reminded of that saying that goes something like this, "May you be blessed with an uneventful life."  November was uneventful.  It was, almost without fail, a long slow positive gain.  I started playing in early November, won, won, won, and 600ish BB's (plus another 200ish BB's worth of bonuses) later, the month was over.  It was extremely profitable--the best month I'd had online by far--but uneventful.

December has been anything but.  Now, I look at the good ol' spreadsheet and it's about two-thirds of the way through the month and I'm about two-thirds of the way towards what I earned last month.  That's good.  If I can earn what I did last month every month, in addition to the income from my new job, I'll be one happy SOB. 

But the way I've been winning has been, well, stress-inducing.  The month started off with a string of nice small winning days--much like how all of November was--but then I hit a rocky patch.  I'd win, say, $400 one day, but then lose it the next day.  Or I'd win a good amount over two days, just to lose that exact amount over the next two days.  Then I hit Black Saturday, 12/11.  It took me just four scant hours to blow through over 130 BB's, for by far the worst run online I've ever had--I've had bigger than 130 BB downswings, but never in such a concentrated period of time.  I won't go into too much detail (indeed, I've blocked much of it out of my mind) but, for example, three times in the span of 30 minutes I flopped a full house and lost.  It was that kind of run.  I was playing on Empire Poker  and PokerPlex, and let's just say that by the end of it, I was convinced they were both rigged. 

The next week was a return to November-like ways, as I consistently won modest sums every day, so that by that next Saturday (yesterday, 12/18) I had won back all I had lost on Black Saturday, plus a little bit.  It's somewhat annoying to play for an entire week and essentially break even, but it happens, I guess.  I was much happier that it was a 15 BB win week rather than a 130 BB loss week.

But then I found out about PartyPoker's 20% reload bonus up to $200.  That's a great bonus, but I would only have a week to play it off...except I would be leaving for Costa Rica on Wednesday, so I would only have four days to play it off, all 1400 raked hands.  I'd been playing almost exclusively full table 3/6 at Party and its skins recently, and continuing to do that for this bonus would probably take 10 hours of play.  To expedite things, I decided to take a stab at 6-max 5/10.  I'd been playing 6-max on Interpoker at the 2/4 and 3/6 GBP tables (~$3.80/7.60 and $5.70/11.40) with much success and so the Party tables shouldn't be too much different, in ability or stakes, I thought.  Heck, I'd played a small amount of party 6-max 5/10 a few months ago with modest success, so why not. 

Three+ hours, 1180 hands, 790 Raked hands and 79 BB later (6.7BB/100 for those keeping track) I was feeling a lot more confident.  The games played very similarly to the way the Interpoker 6-max tables play, although I have to say that the average Party player is better than the average Interpoker player at six-max.  Obviously, a 6.7BB/100 winrate is not maintainable by any stretch of the imagination, and who knows, maybe I'm downright horrible player having an amazingly good run, but for one evening it was plenty good enough for me.  And now I only have about 600 more raked hands to play over the next three days to hit the bonus.  And who knows, but with my consistent short-handed success now at three sites (UltimateBet, too), maybe within a few weeks I'll be primarily a 6-max player.   

So, yeah, the ride has been much bumpier this month.  And, as opposed to last month's 3:1 winnings-to-bonus ratio, I'm currently at less than 1.5:1 (more bonuses, less winnings this month).  But as long as my play is solid and I'm making money, I'm happy.  I guess if my worst complaint is the manner in which I'm winning money, well, then, I really don't have anything to complain about.   

12/11/2004 - Investment

Well, I've finally invested in my poker career.  Okay, I guess I did that when I bought Pokertracker, but this time I've made a somewhat major purchase. 

I bought a brand new computer monitor for one reason and one reason only: to help me multi-table online.  It is a Dell 2001FP 20.1" LCD.  Complete overkill.  Expensive (although I did get it at much less than Dell's listed price).  But what the heck, I'm rolling in the dough, right? 

Of course to celebrate I went out and had my worst day playing online since May--a 130BB nosedive that took barely four hours.

It's okay, though.  Once the monitor gets here, I will never again have an extended losing streak.  That's how great this monitor is.  I currently have a 17" CRT, 16" viewable, which means the viewable area on my new baby will be 57.8% bigger.  Thanks to its 1600x1200 resolution, I'll be able to four-table with absolutely no overlap, and I could still hook up my old monitor and either surf while playing or try going up to six tables.  I've tried six tables on my current monitor and that's just the hassle of hassles.  Four tables is even annoying at times.  But in one week, those will be problems of the past. 

And don't even get me started on the great effect this will have on my porn viewing.  I haven't been this excited since I was a little kid waiting for Christmas.     

12/7/2004 - Laziness

I haven't updated in a while.  I feel bad.  The reason has been three parts laziness, one part new job. 

The new job has been killer.  Not because it's particularly tough--it isn't--but because it means I have to wake up at 8:30am.  As someone who was going to sleep at 6 or 7am just a week ago, that's a pretty dramatic change in sleep habits.  Unfortunately, my body has not adjusted as quickly as I like--I'm getting up at 8:30am, but I still can't fall asleep until 4:30am, making for some pretty tough mornings of simply trying not to trip over my own feet, much less trying to be productive in any way. 

Between waking up and, oh, about lunch time I must have about 149,732 distinct, lack-of-sleep-induced moments during which I decide to quit.  I will persevere, though.

Maybe.

Online Wackiness   

My, uh, second job...er..first job...er...other job has been going okay.  It has slowed considerably, likewise because of my corporate job, but mostly due to my own shody play.  That's one problem with bonus whoring: I no longer have to actually win to win, I just have to break even.  And so I think I've subconciously taken that into account with my play, as my actual poker wins at sites has for the last two weeks or so been pretty consistent in being below my take from bonuses.

For the month of November, my Winnings:Bonus ratio was nearly 3:1.  In December so far (and, really, also the last week of November) it has been less than 1:1.  Maybe I've just hit a bit of a rut, but in examining my play I think I've allowed some leaks to spring up--playing a little too aggressively at times, and paying people off a little too much.  I think in my efforts to just "hit the bonus" I've played for longer than I should have in single sessions and less optimally than I should have because my goal with each hand was no longer just to "make money."  I really, really, really, need to be conscientious of my play at all times.

Perhaps having this job will have a good effect on my overall poker playing, though.  I'll no longer be able to play with impunity, having to limit myself to a couple hours in the evenings and to the weekends.  I'm thinking such limitations will make me less jaded with the overall poker experience, perking me up and getting me to concentrate and play better.  If I can only play half as much, but I only lose a third of my winnings, then I'll have a pretty lucrative two-job total salary (heck, I will even if I lose half of my winnings).  At least it will seem that way to a guy who was always either a student or making less than $10/hour doing menial work. 

Also, reading this thread on bonuswhores.com has me convinced that my recent bonus success (> $1200 last month, similar if not more this month) can quite possibly be achieved every month.  That one guy made over $2000 in bonuses in November alone!   

The only question: will I ever play live again?   

I have to complain about one site, however.  NaziPoker, er, StaffPoker  (a 24h skin whose symbol, a black S inside a white box inside a red circle, is very reminiscent of the good ol' nazi flag, a little too much for comfort, I think) got me coming and going.  Either that or it was Neteller.  Staffpoker is a European site that deals exclusively in Euros and as far as I can tell, with no warning whatsoever, I was charged a pretty substiantial fee for both withdrawing from Neteller to Staffpoker--Dollars to Euros--and then from Staffpoker to Neteller--Euros to Dollars.  It was 10 Euros in each direction if my math is correct.  That seems to be a pretty substantial charge considering at no point in time during the entire process was I told I would be charged even a penny.  Are regular conversion rates that wacked out that I lose 2% of my money every time I change over? 

Anyways, needless to say I'm unhappy.  I did make a 150 Euro bonus in addition to just about breaking even, so it was a profitable move anyways, but still. 

12/1/2004 - November Recap

November was a good month.  It's been gone barely six hours and already I miss it.  And surprisingly, in stark contrast to the previous five months of my poker career, I only played live four times this month while the vast majority of my play came online.   

The theme of the month was bonus whoring, and oh boy did I do a lot of it.  I managed to bag $1257 in bonuses alone, plus another $130 bonus that won't be payed until mid-December (24h's bonus is payable after 30 days).  And that doesn't even count my rakeback.  I could have broken even in my actual poker playing and still paid all of my bills.  Bonus whoring is great. 

And luckily I did a lot more than break even in my poker playing.  I made up for all I lost in my disastrous Vegas trip and then some.  All in all, it was a great month.

December Forecast

December should be interesting.  I already have over $1100 in bonuses to clear this month, with more I'm sure that will be forthcoming.  Also, I'll be in Costa Rica for the week around Christmas, and you'd better believe I'll be hitting the Casino Europa and the Hold'em Club while I'm there.

Another interesting thing about December is that I will no longer be "just" a poker player.  Yes, that job I might get has become the job I did get.  I start Monday.

What? A Job?

As I mentioned before, I felt kind of obligated to get a job.  I didn't become a poker player to be a full-time professional for the rest of my life; I became a poker player because I dropped out of school and found out that I could support myself doing that rather than finding a real job.  And now that a job has been handed to me on a silver platter, I have to take it. 

Surprisingly, my biggest concern is a possible drop in social status.  Now, I'm not a status whore as well as being a bonus whore, but, being single, I am somewhat aware of how the ladies perceive me, and so while I certainly don't go out of my way to present myself as being something I'm not, I definitely do not object to being viewed with a certain amount of respect.  What that all boils down to is that I enjoyed playing poker and supporting myself solely by my winnings, but I felt that not having a "real" job with a "real" income and a "real" future and, well, real benefits would make me somewhat undesireable to a non-negligible percentage of the female population. 

Then I went to Minnesota.  Now, I have never claimed to be a "professional" poker player, but I have been supporting myself by playing poker and as one friend told me, "if you support yourself by playing poker, maybe you're not Phil Ivey, but you're a professional."  Well, in Minnesota I was absolutely delighted (um, er, really) to meet my sister's boyfriends frickin huge family.  They were hanging off the rafters, there were so many of them.  And all of them were quite impressed with my profession.  This surprised me because I assumed people would see me as a worthless, degenerate gambler.  But no, while some were only somewhat interested and others were downright fascinated, all seemed to view me with a lot more respect after learning what I did--and these were successful people, some with Ph.Ds and so forth.

So, of course, I've now downgraded my position from "free spirit poker player" to "working stiff."  Ah well.  One thing's for sure: I'll still be playing plenty in the evenings and on the weekends.  And who knows...maybe in a few months I'll be right back to being a professional poker player.