2-3 Whack A Mole

I got to work like 25 minutes early today and grabbed a seat in a 7 handed 2-3 nl game. I ended up only playing a single orbit, but did have a revelation. The game is basically whack a mole. Think about it. Your basic goal is to sit there and be patient enough to out wait your opponents. If you succeed, eventually one of them will stick his pointy little head with it's beady little eyes out for a breath of fresh air, and hopefully you'll be waiting for him with aces or a set or some other such monstrosity and just pummel him into submission. That pretty much sums up how I play that game, and about how much I respect the strategy required to beat it. I'm not saying no limit hold 'em isn't a difficult and rich game the way it's intended to be played. But when half the table has like 40 big blind stacks and is willing to call like 20% of their stacks pre-flop with pretty much any describable hand, well, then you've got yourself a hip hoppin' game of 2-3 whack a mole!

Suggestion Number 3

Here was Commissioner Dave the Luckbox's list of suggestions (and no, you can no longer argue, as you successfully traded Adrian Peterson for Drew Brees straight up 1.5 quarters before AP blew out his ankle):

1. The last time you did this, it turned out great, so I'll give you a different challenge: Rate how good the 2012 presidential candidates would be as poker players, without being overtly political. If you can't do that, then rate the Avengers (in the upcoming movie).

2. If you were to create a fantasy poker league, what would it be? How would it work?

3. Watch an episode of the WSOP on ESPN and describe how different it is on TV than real life.

4. Compare LA and SF. (Culture, not traffic.)

5. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? (No, I am not interviewing you for a job.)

6. How did MIT prepare you for a life of poker playing? Did it? If you went somewhere else, do you think you'd be doing something else?

So here we go...first, let's dispense with the politicians. I don't really follow politics, and I'm not saying that in a "it's cool to be disinterested" or a "I don't have time for that" way or anything. I really just...don't. Maybe it's because I find it difficult to get unbiased news, or because I simply don't read that much, or perhaps I just don't care. I wish I was more involved, it's a real shame that someone like me simply stands on the sidelines, but that's the way it is. Moving right along....

I'm pretty sure fantasy poker leagues do exist for specifically the WSOP. My understanding is that you have a draft and everyone just picks players and you score points for cashes, final tables, bracelets, and total dollars won. There are probably bonus points for guys scoring points in multiple games, etc etc. This is the most practical way to do it, and has been used for many other domains, including US Weekly. The obviously problem here is that you don't have "positions" in the same way you do for other fantasy sports. One way to solve that would be to have say 6 NLHE players, 2 stud specials, 2 draw games guys, and a wildcard or something, but that's just not really practical because lots of these guys play lots of different events and it just wouldn't work. A more fun way (and completely impossible) way to do it would be to set up a league at your home casino with your friends. Six of you set up a draft and can select anybody you want on Earth. You keep score by who wins (or loses...that'd be fun also) the most money over the course of each week, playing head to head games just like fantasy football. The problem of course is that tracking results is impossible, so this is just pie in the sky type stuff. Back when online poker...existed...you could have done a draft like this using PTR as your source of truth. In fact, that'd actually be close to viable.

OK last one before it's time to watch the Steeler's game (which kicked a half hour ago but damn it I simply cannot watch commercials anymore) and that's describing the difference between playing poker on TV and in my world. I've watched a fair bit of the broadcasts and the differences are practically too many to enumerate. The pace is much slower on TV. That's partially because they are playing NLHE, and partially because it's TV, and partially because of shuffling machines. The banter on TV is just not there. Try watching some of the old high stakes poker episodes (like the one where Hanson quads up on Kid Poker's top boat) to get an idea of how it is in my world. A big hand will happen, and at least half the table will be talking about something completely irrelevant. Everything runs smoothly on TV; the dealer never fucks up, there really aren't any arguments, basically nothing goes wrong. I'd say something like that happens several times per hour in my world. There are no seat changes on TV; in the games I play players come in and out of the game constantly, and there is lots of seat changing. The Oaks 30 game was more like you see on TV the two days a week it was pre-scheduled, with 10 players bunkering down and nobody moving for a few hours. In the course of a 5 hour shift I could change seats up to 4 or 5 times depending on what goes on (or I could stay in the same seat...you never know). And the douchebaggery; nobody other than Helmuth is a shit head on TV. Half the people I play with (at least at Commerce) are.

OK that wasn't really everything but it's time for some football.

More Random Things

It's amazing how quickly time flies by and it's been a week since my last post, even when I have lots of stuff I want to talk about. I just never seem to find the time, and I'm not exactly sure why. I guess I do spend an awful lot of my days trying to play poker, and what little time is left my brain is very tired and I just want to watch Breaking Bad and/or The West Wing with Danielle. Anyway, a few random topics...first I want to address this comment:

No, you don't sound like an arrogant asshole at all. Maybe arrogant, but def not an asshole :) Just kidding... Seriously though, I was more implying in my question about the whole idea of giving up a carreer in software industry to professional (live) poker. I am sure you blogged on this subject somewhere in the past, is there a pointer? Do you find it more rewarding / stable / gives you more freedom / independence etc'? What are the goals withing 5-6 years? I heard some notes of disappointment in this last post (maybe mistakenly), so was wondering how frequently you question the carreer direction that you voluntarily picked.

Just sort of because I think I should. At this point I'd say that I have seen the man behind the curtain and just like in the movie he is simply not as bad ass I thought he'd be. When I started this venture I just assumed that I could play 2000 hours a year and make north of $80/hour playing (either at the 40 or by playing higher) and boom I'd be making $150K a year in no time and maybe I'd move up further and I'd have all the freedom in the world and it'd just be the best thing ever. I now know differently. First of all assuming you'll do something 2000 hours a year and have lots of freedom is just absurd. Second of all, truly making a big bet per hour while logging big hours is very, very difficult. Third of all, it's certainly neither more rewarding nor more stable than any number of other jobs I could find. So why do I do it? Well at this point I feel like I'm entitled to a year or two or some other length of time of "being successful", since it's basically taken me three years to get here. By any metric things are going great; the parade somehow didn't happen last week, but I did crack the $100K profits line for the year (with some fishy accounting, since I have paid some, but not nearly all, of the taxes I owe, but am including all my online profits for the year which were more than wiped out by Black Friday). I'm going to make it to 1800 hours of LHE, and I'm up over 1000 bets so far. And most days I actually enjoy going into work (although the last week or so since I fell off my $1000/day scooter ride I've been saying more and more than I need a vacation...I don't know why it's just been tough to, you know, give a shit) and in general things are just...good. So I guess the answer is that I don't have a 5 or 6 year plan, but for right now I'm going to just enjoy being successful.

I feel like I had other things to say...ah yes, that's it. First of all, my place of employment is going all in this month, paying players $10/hour to sit in the 20/40 game and $20/hour for the 40/80 (with a minimum qualification of 40 hours for the month). If you count me as a friend I would really appreciate it if you could give us a shot, because if this doesn't work I have a feeling we are all going to find ourselves in the pink slip room very shortly. And even if you don't, for shit's sake that's basically rake free poker in the 40 and a nice shot in the arm to anyone's 20/40 hourly so please just come play some poker it'll be good times trust me.

The only other thing I've got is that I figured I'd tell everyone I'm officially in the business of staking people now. I have three ad-hoc agreements with three players I trust very much (both ethically and poker skills wise) that are allowing them to get what they want out of poker (money) while dumping some risk on someone else (me) in exchange for some of their expected winnings. I don't really want to get into the details of the stakes or anything, and they are varying levels of private (from completely private to completely public I guess), and I suppose that really is that. So hopefully they won't blow me up and I'll make some money on them, but if past events are any predictor of future success I could be in for a rough go of it.

Thanks Dos

In response to my last blog post Dos left a comment. To be honest I didn't even know he read my blog, but as I'm finding out more and more a lot more people read than I think. Anyway, here's the comment:

You run good at the ***** and bad at Commerce. It's a bit silly and hypocritical to think about things like not playing the Commerce 40 because you get crushed. Remember that whole post about the guy who PMed you down below? It's one long game and I'm sure you're still ahead when looking at your total results. Go play Commerce 40 it's almost invariably a better game.

Finally, your game selection skills are almost so nitty to be detrimental. This is very much related to the driving issue. Sometimes your overall $$/hour would be higher by sitting in a crappy game than driving somewhere else to play and losing an hour or more by driving/parking/waiting to sit in a better game for 3 hours.

And it's pretty much spot on. Regarding the first section, the weird part is that I completely understand that he's completely correct, but that doesn't really change the fact that the Commerce 40 is in my head. It feels like I've played it a lot (which really isn't true, I checked, I have something like 100 hours life time, but that's probably because I've played it for a short time on a lot of days I played at Commerce for a full shift), and every time I sit I catch myself stealing myself mentally for a big loss. This is obviously horrible, and I even asked Mike about it and his advice was "well you can't play in a game where you feel like that, so either don't play it or don't feel like that." I think he's right, but not playing isn't really a viable plan. I've known for a very long time now that if you want to play LHE for a living in the LA area you need to be very comfortable in the Commerce 40. That's just the way it is, and I need to get over a little 200 bet downer grind my way back to being confident in the game. One thing I will say is that I think I have run extremely bad in terms of getting into good games over there, because I can think of a half dozen times where I sat in the must move and it was just awful and I quit and played 20 instead. But that aside, Dos is right that I just need to play the game and stop pretending I've taken a shot at it when I have like 100 hours in it lifetime.

Regarding the game selection nittery, I will cop to being quite selective about what 40 games I sit in off shift, but also offer a few reasons beyond pure nittery that I do it. First of all by the time my shift ends I am usually tired and having trouble concentrating, and taking a break to drive somewhere else is practically something I want and need to do. I'm not really sure how everyone else does it, but I'm a morning person and I function best mentally 30 minutes after I wake up and go downhill from there. Danielle is almost the complete opposite, routinely getting her best work done at 7pm, but that's just not something I can do. Second, I believe Dos and I have a rather different system for evaluating win rate in a given game. It's possible that he's correct and I'm wrong, but when I look at a game with 4 professional and 2 fish I don't see a real profit source. His argument (I think) is that I will break even against the 4 pros and take money from the fish, and that it's still possible that the fish are losing so much money that all 5 (if I sit) pros are winning something like $60/hour. The more I think about it he may be correct on this one, but my third issue interacts with this one in some complicated ways. It's hard to go from from a 9 handed soft game with lots of open limping and 5 way pots to a 6 or 7 handed game with 4 other guys who play super well. You have to completely change your thought process for most hands, thinking about your range and being combative instead of (often) just determining if you're ahead and if not if you have odds to draw. And finally, it's just kind of awkward to stay and play the 20, because it just feels, you know, weird and wimpy. On top of that a few times I've been asked to come back into the 40 game to "help out" and obviously I'm not going to say no but obviously I already chose not to be in that game and going back into it gets me a little out of whack mentally and well it's just not great.

But in general yes Dos you're completely correct and I am very grateful for your opinions. I need to play the Commerce 40 because I've tricked myself into believing that I'm cursed over there and that's just not the case, and I need to be more aggressive in sitting in games with experts, not only because it's probably often correct from a $$$ point of view, but also because doing so will make me a better player in the long term. So in short, thanks :)

Results So Far This Year

It's funny, I find myself more interested in what my sheets say than in the actual amount of money I have available to me. Someone could be robbing me blind after I cash out and honestly I wouldn't notice, because I have no accounting practices in place mapping the amount of money I win and spend to the amount of money I have. MikeL said it well recently "if you play lots of poker and have lots of money, you're a professional. if you play lots of poker and go broke, you're a fish. it's pretty much that simple." Other people have given the advice to just worry about making good decisions and playing well, and the rest of it will sort itself out. Obviously the right answer and approach is somewhere in the middle.

Anyway, my results for the year so far are pretty interesting and extremely frustrating. I just crossed the 1600 hour line for the year, and over 2/3rds of them have been at my place of employment (obviously some of them before I was employed there, but still you get the idea). That's not all that surprising, I suppose. Nor is it surprising that I've played less than 500 hours of "OT" for the entire year, until you think about the fact that I didn't really have the job for two whole months early in the year, so knock out something like 300 of those hours and all of a sudden, boom. All this schlepping around I do looking for good games and the Saturdays I play and all that for the past 6 months have netted me less than 200 hours of ass in seat poker time. Pathetic. The thing is, I know that's the case, and I know the root problem of it is the driving. Today Danielle went to the drag races with her dad and I had a choice to make around 1pm after the Steelers claimed soul possession of first place in the AFC (OK technically that didn't happen until 4:15 when the Ravens finished shitting the bed in Seattle but whatever allow me my moment of glory). Did I really want to drive to Commerce or HG for a half day? Was it really worth it? I eventually decided that no, I'd take the day off instead. I went to the gym, then ended up watching almost an entire extra football game (the aforementioned Raven's fouling), etc etc. The point is that driving to a casino, be it for the day or after my shift, really just isn't the right thing to do unless you're going to play for a long time. There is just so much effort involved, as evidenced by my records that something that feels like I spend a ton of time on has netted me only 200 hours of bonus table time and...here's the kicker....

Negative dollars :(

That's right, I'm underwater for the sum total of hours I've played away from my place of employment. Sure, the real reason is that freaking commerce 40 game just obliterating me every time I walk in the door (I'm stuck over 200 bets on the year in the game why do you think I play 20 when I go there) and not playing enough volume in other games to have any hope of recovery, but still it's just depressing. All of this really got me thinking about home court advantage and how at this point it's very difficult for me to have it anywhere but at my job. I simply can't get to any other casino on a regular enough schedule to have that intimate "feel" of the game and just knowing what everyone has and what they intend to do it with it. I suppose a good question would be "what are you going to do about this, Jesse" and to be frank I don't really have a good answer. I suppose I'll make sure I'm more implicitly aware of the math of any decision I'm making regarding leaving a casino for another one, but beyond that what can I really do? One thing that seems certain is that it makes almost no sense to drive to Commerce to play the 20 (I learned this at one point but seemed to have forgotten it), when I could just stay after my shift and play. The only reason to head to Commerce is the 40, and since I currently am scared shitless of the game I suppose the answer now is just "less Commerce." So here's hoping I manage to actually implement that, I guess.