Darkened Poker

Long time ago a friend sent me 20$ on PokerStars and I started playing 1$ buy in cash games.   Using good bankroll management I managed to not go broke and work it up to 200$ so I was playing 10$ NL cash games and 2$ tournaments.  By a good amount of luck I managed to win a tournament and got an extra 575$ dropped in my bankroll.   Normally this is a good thing but in this case it gave me a chance to make a really stupid mistake.

Since I was playing 1-2$ NL live games and had worked my way through the micro limit levels online so quickly with only my bankroll management requirements holding me back I assumed I could jump to the bigger games.  Given my bankroll was not big enough to match my live game limits I just jumped up to the 40$  NL cash games.  Well I quickly learned that at the higher levels online games are about 10X harder than live games.  I quickly lost the bankroll to play at that level and stepped down to the 20$ NL games.  After a week or so at that level I no longer had the bankroll to play and had to move back to the 10$ level.

Even though I was back at the same level before all this started I was on super tilt for having lost all my tournament gains.   So before long I am all the way back down to 5$ games and I finally realize I need to take some time off from the game to get my head reset.

What I should have done is taken that tournament win money and cashed it out.  There was no reason to keep it on there as I was steadily working my way through the levels and everything was going as planned.  A second best plan would have been to separate my cash game & tournament money and just used that 575$ to only play 5$ tournaments.

Painful lesson to have to learned but I am glad I learned it with a small tournament win rather than big one.

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Darkened Poker

Level two is done on my Cash Game only bankroll building challenge.  Finished with the .02 / .05 games and moving up to .05 / .10 now.  I am not even close to being on time though, should have took me 2 weeks but it has taken me 2 months, the live cash games have been too good lately and work has been crazy.

Interesting things I learned this time around doing this level again.

• People are starting to try and learn to bluff, their stories make no sense and usually just involves a big bet on the river that seems out of place, calling them with pocket 4′s really makes them tilt.  They even do this if you have been betting all the way and are pot committed.
• There are a bunch of people that do not know how to build pots since they play so tight and try to compensate by betting huge or re-raising all in on the river.  They are easy to spot as their stats are very small ie 8, 8, 12 or something crazy like that.  And unlike the bluffers on the river there is usually not a missed flush draw on the board.
• Get a copy of Poker Tracker, there is to much churn in the games to keep track of everyone so it is nice to get stats on people you played with in the past.  Also allows you to play more tables at once.  They have a 60 day free demo that can get you through these lower limit stages.
• There is a lot less big pots determined by kickers and a lot more set over 2 pair hands or picking off bluffs.  People in general are a lot more aggressive than level 1.

Will get through this limit quicker with the holidays coming up.

Last update

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Darkened Poker

Lots of very smart people like David Sklansky, Chris Ferguson and Roy Cooke have wrote about bankroll management and the effects of standard deviation on it.  I am not going to go over their impressive work but I do have a few thoughts to add.

Most bankroll systems for No Limit boil down to:

• Never put more than 5% of your bankroll into any one cash game
• Never put more than 2% of your bankroll into any one tournament
• You should get up from the table if you have 10% of your bankroll on table either through winning at the table or losing at other tables.

I started with a system like this and have added some exceptions over the years.  For live games I have never had a bankroll big enough that I could buy into a cash game for only 5% of it.  Every time I build up my bankroll something comes up in my personal life that kills a good chunk of it.  This makes it very hard to live by rule # 3 as I would always have to leave a table every time I won a big pot and in live games there is often no other good games to table change to just so you can protect your profit and bankroll.

What I have done instead is I will stay there as long as the fish do not get comparable stacks that can take you out in a bad beat.  I use to make the mistake of worrying about the other good players having the big stacks.  But over time you realize you should not be playing hands with the other good players but instead focus on the fish.  If you do play with the other good players it will most likely be with the nuts so it rarely matters.  But the fish always get you into bad spots were they usually have a draw and get all your money in.  So only stay at the table with > 10%  of your bankroll on it if fish are not stacked enough to hurt you.  I will even sometimes stay at a table with one big stacked fish if there are a lot of other small stacked fish and just not play him until he gets knocked back down.

Next online the rule for 5% of your bankroll does not work if your even slightly prone to tilt.  If you’re multi-tabling you might have only 5% at each table but you have 4-8 tables open and therefor have 20 – 40% of you bankroll in action.  I have once or twice in the past gone on tilt on one table and then blown off all my money at the other tables before I realized I was on tilt and shut it down.  Don’t think it will happen to you, it will happen to everyone.  Tom Dwan even had a great article in Card Player were he was playing live at the Bellagio with Lyle Berman and tried to bluff him off a royal flush loosing >800k in the process.  Busted out of the action he went home and started up a bunch of online tables before he had lost another 600k before realizing he should not play for a very long time. Online I do not believe you should have > 10% of your bankroll in action at any one time regardless of the number of tables.

Just some thoughts,

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Darkened Poker

You may have noticed my post in the past have been a little all over the place.  That is because I have been into a little bit of everything in poker.  Although my result online have been steadily improving over time nothing has been even close to breakout.  The problem is I sit down each night and open 2 tournaments windows followed by 1-2 sit & goes and 2-4 cash games.  This is lot of fun for me as I usually make it into the top 30 in at least one of tournaments, cash in one of the sit & goes and often double up in one of the cash games.  The time investment in those tournaments is huge though and I believe I could make a lot more in the same hours in a cash game.  Also by spreading myself that thin in so many different types of poker is not allowing me to learn quickly at any one of them.

Time to focus.  I am choosing to only play cash games until I am at the $5-10 level and have at least a 15k bankroll.   After that I can go back and focus on sit & goes and multi-table tournaments.  I  am giving myself 2 weeks for each of the 6 levels from .01 – .02 until .5 – 1.0.  Then 4 weeks for the remaining 4 levels from 1-2 to 5-10.  28 weeks in total or till Feb 15 2010.  This means proper bankroll management of never putting more than 5% of my money into any one game and getting up when I have 10% of my money at any table ( through double ups or massive losses at other tables ) .

Let you know how it goes.  If anyone has been through this run before and has any tips I would kill to hear them.

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Darkened Poker

Was playing recently at Lucky Chances casino and I noticed a that in general people have total disrespect for their own short stack.  You see a lot of it in cash games which is kind of surprising, people buy in for 200$ and get knocked down to 40$ ish and then move all in with T 8 suited.  Of course they get called and busted, and here is were it gets really odd, they then buy in for another 200 and start over.

Now it would still be a bad move if there were just planning on either doubling up or going home.  But if they were planning on buying in again anyways, then why not buy back in earlier and save yourself that last 40$.  It is not a re-buy tournament, there is no min amount before you can add on.  But a lot of people have to wrong mentality and consider each buy in a atomic unit that must be played to its end and then one can start fresh.

There are so many things wrong with this mentality that it hurts, but will try and list them all.

• That last 40$ that you just blew off is now another 40$ you will have to earn back at a later point, imagine all these 40$ over the years and how much they would have added up to.  That’s 1000′s more in the bankroll right now if you had just picked it up and gone home.
• You only get so many chances a night to double up, why let yourself get down to 40$ and only be able to double up to 80$ instead of 400$.
• Why if you can buy at any time would you drop that low and not be able to protect your hand.  Now suddenly you pick up a good hand and there nothing worst than seeing the flush draw get there because you were already all in on the flop and can not bet them out.
• If you have any skills at all, why would you chain one arm behind your back by playing short and limit yourself to only having one move

I am sure there are more, but that should be enough to drivel the point home.  I am by no means against playing short stack, sometimes if I do not know any of the players I will buy in short till I get a feel for the table.   Sometimes I just like to practice short stack play or have a overly aggressive table and want to minimize risk.  But do not just toss away the last of your money because you have took some beats and are down to that last of it.  Buy back in again or pick it up and go home, if you must push it all in on a sad attempt to double up.  Make sure it is against me, I will give your short stack a good home.