All the Summer's poker news (Part One)
Since I've now started the research project for my degree, my Summer of hardcore poker playing has essentially come to an end - I'm now actually having to do some real work!
My research project is (loosely) on the SARS Virus. I'm going to be looking at the interaction of its surface Spike protein with a receptor (DC-SIGN) on Dendritic Cells of the immune system. My first week has been quite intense. Never having worked in a proper lab before or done novel research is quite daunting and I feel somewhat out of my depth. Last week I was being heavily babysat, but this week my supervisor is away so I've got to try not to destroy the lab and if possible, actually get some experiments completed!
Anyway, this post is supposed to be about poker so here we go...
Around the time of my exams I was exclusively playing limit Holdem ring games. I'd been steadily building my bankroll and, by transferring it from one site to another, I was able to take advantage of a glut of redeposit bonuses that were being offered at the time. By this stage I was playing limits of $3/$6 and was feeling pretty comfortable and making a steady profit. I'd worked out that one of the most profitable times to play was early in the morning (UK) so that it was late in the evening/night in the US and therefore more players would be tired, drunk, frustrated etc.
I had also ordered a mountain of new poker books from Amazon and started to make my way through them. I read "The Theory of Poker" by David Sklansky, which is a very general but also very fundamental book, followed by "Holdem for Advanced Players" by Sklansky and Malmuth. This latter book is, I'm sure, an excellent resource, but I think I was both not ready for it and much of it did not really apply to the kind of poker I was playing on the internet (i.e. relatively low stakes and against weaker players than the type that the authors were used to playing against). It assumed that the reader was a very experienced and competent player and I should have realised this from the title before I bought it. Most of the ideas and concepts that it dealt with involved situation that occur infrequently - moves it suggested were mostly borderline plays to be used only when the conditions were right and they were the kind of moves that would turn and already profitable poker player into a slightly more profitable player if, and only if, used correctly. I started trying these kinds of plays too frequently and against the wrong type of opposition (most of the people that Sklansky plays against would be capable of laying down top pair to his raise with only a flush draw or would raise the turn as a semi-bluff and therefore would need to be either raised or called down, but the fact remains that against merely average players one can - and I was - win money by playing a very straight forward game. It turned out, therefore, that it was not only the case that I was probably not ready for the material in the book, conceptually, but that I didn't even need it yet.
My reading and misusing of the above book was not the only reason why my summer's poker did not go according to plan. In fact if I had only read that book and changed nothing else I would probably have minimised my losses to such that I would still now have the banbroll to be playing 3/6 (this is probably not the first hint that you may have had that things have not gone entirely to plan this summer - weeks of no post may have been a bit of a clue!)
My biggest mistake of the summer was deciding to move up from $3/6 to $5/10. Or maybe more crutially, not moving back down to 3/6 soon enough. Not only is there a big increase in the size of the bets and the size of the pots when going from 3/6/ to 5/10 there is a big increase in the skill of the players. Up to this point there had been only very small changes in people's ability as I had moved up the levels (all the way from $0.25/0.50 to $3/6). The majority of players were still weaker than me and the number of complete baffoons did not really decrease. At 5/10 however ther were a noticable number of very good players and a large number of the rest were also better than me.
My decision to move up to 5/10 was not entirely ill-advised. There is a very useful chapter in Matthew Hilger's book (Internet Texas Holdem) that deals with bankroll management and my bankroll was just about comfortable for the 5/10 limits. Playing at a level suitable for your bankroll is essential because everyone has bad runs of cards and needs enough capital to absorb these, but not matter how big your bankroll is, if you're not a winning player a a particular limit then you should quite obviously not be playing it. My mistake, therefore came in not realizing soon enough that I was not yet a winning player at 5/10 and moving back down to 3/6 before my bankroll took a beating.
My bankroll took a beating.
Not only was I too stubborn and bigheaded to accept that I wasn't ready for 5/10, I made the cardinal sin, which should possibly nominate me for the "Fish of the Year" award! I decided that in order to rebuild my bankroll I should play at the $10/20 limits. What a jerk!
My bankroll took another beating.
By this stage I was left with nothing like enough to carry on at these limits however stubborn I was going to be. So finally I got the message and moved back down the limits. Thankfully I hadn't completely exhausted my bankroll and in fact I still had more than I initially started with back in April, but the limits that I was able to play at now (which to be safe were around the £1/2 level) just weren't fun anymore. I'm not wishing to sound like an addicted gambler here, who once he's tasted the high stakes action he can't look back. It took me months of hard work to get to the point were the money I was earning was beginning to be significant. I was now in the position where I had to be just as pacient and work just as hard as before for about quarter of the hourly rate. It was going to take months more hard work to get back to where I was and right now I really didn't have the pacience .
It was time to take a break from poker...
My research project is (loosely) on the SARS Virus. I'm going to be looking at the interaction of its surface Spike protein with a receptor (DC-SIGN) on Dendritic Cells of the immune system. My first week has been quite intense. Never having worked in a proper lab before or done novel research is quite daunting and I feel somewhat out of my depth. Last week I was being heavily babysat, but this week my supervisor is away so I've got to try not to destroy the lab and if possible, actually get some experiments completed!
Anyway, this post is supposed to be about poker so here we go...
Around the time of my exams I was exclusively playing limit Holdem ring games. I'd been steadily building my bankroll and, by transferring it from one site to another, I was able to take advantage of a glut of redeposit bonuses that were being offered at the time. By this stage I was playing limits of $3/$6 and was feeling pretty comfortable and making a steady profit. I'd worked out that one of the most profitable times to play was early in the morning (UK) so that it was late in the evening/night in the US and therefore more players would be tired, drunk, frustrated etc.
I had also ordered a mountain of new poker books from Amazon and started to make my way through them. I read "The Theory of Poker" by David Sklansky, which is a very general but also very fundamental book, followed by "Holdem for Advanced Players" by Sklansky and Malmuth. This latter book is, I'm sure, an excellent resource, but I think I was both not ready for it and much of it did not really apply to the kind of poker I was playing on the internet (i.e. relatively low stakes and against weaker players than the type that the authors were used to playing against). It assumed that the reader was a very experienced and competent player and I should have realised this from the title before I bought it. Most of the ideas and concepts that it dealt with involved situation that occur infrequently - moves it suggested were mostly borderline plays to be used only when the conditions were right and they were the kind of moves that would turn and already profitable poker player into a slightly more profitable player if, and only if, used correctly. I started trying these kinds of plays too frequently and against the wrong type of opposition (most of the people that Sklansky plays against would be capable of laying down top pair to his raise with only a flush draw or would raise the turn as a semi-bluff and therefore would need to be either raised or called down, but the fact remains that against merely average players one can - and I was - win money by playing a very straight forward game. It turned out, therefore, that it was not only the case that I was probably not ready for the material in the book, conceptually, but that I didn't even need it yet.
My reading and misusing of the above book was not the only reason why my summer's poker did not go according to plan. In fact if I had only read that book and changed nothing else I would probably have minimised my losses to such that I would still now have the banbroll to be playing 3/6 (this is probably not the first hint that you may have had that things have not gone entirely to plan this summer - weeks of no post may have been a bit of a clue!)
My biggest mistake of the summer was deciding to move up from $3/6 to $5/10. Or maybe more crutially, not moving back down to 3/6 soon enough. Not only is there a big increase in the size of the bets and the size of the pots when going from 3/6/ to 5/10 there is a big increase in the skill of the players. Up to this point there had been only very small changes in people's ability as I had moved up the levels (all the way from $0.25/0.50 to $3/6). The majority of players were still weaker than me and the number of complete baffoons did not really decrease. At 5/10 however ther were a noticable number of very good players and a large number of the rest were also better than me.
My decision to move up to 5/10 was not entirely ill-advised. There is a very useful chapter in Matthew Hilger's book (Internet Texas Holdem) that deals with bankroll management and my bankroll was just about comfortable for the 5/10 limits. Playing at a level suitable for your bankroll is essential because everyone has bad runs of cards and needs enough capital to absorb these, but not matter how big your bankroll is, if you're not a winning player a a particular limit then you should quite obviously not be playing it. My mistake, therefore came in not realizing soon enough that I was not yet a winning player at 5/10 and moving back down to 3/6 before my bankroll took a beating.
My bankroll took a beating.
Not only was I too stubborn and bigheaded to accept that I wasn't ready for 5/10, I made the cardinal sin, which should possibly nominate me for the "Fish of the Year" award! I decided that in order to rebuild my bankroll I should play at the $10/20 limits. What a jerk!
My bankroll took another beating.
By this stage I was left with nothing like enough to carry on at these limits however stubborn I was going to be. So finally I got the message and moved back down the limits. Thankfully I hadn't completely exhausted my bankroll and in fact I still had more than I initially started with back in April, but the limits that I was able to play at now (which to be safe were around the £1/2 level) just weren't fun anymore. I'm not wishing to sound like an addicted gambler here, who once he's tasted the high stakes action he can't look back. It took me months of hard work to get to the point were the money I was earning was beginning to be significant. I was now in the position where I had to be just as pacient and work just as hard as before for about quarter of the hourly rate. It was going to take months more hard work to get back to where I was and right now I really didn't have the pacience .
It was time to take a break from poker...
posted by Pinky @ 10:23 AM
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