Sunday, June 11th: Small Fish, Big Pond

Yuck: I only managed 3 posts here for the entire month of May (and only 3 in April)...that's pretty unacceptable, and now that school is over with I'll do my best to get in at least a post or two per week. I just never really bought into the 'post for the sake of posting' mentality...one of my pet peeves in law school are people who ask questions (which they usually already know the answer to) just to hear themselves talk or put their intellect on display for all to see. Conversely, there was a girl in my classes who everybody respected as quite brilliant (indeed, at the graduation ceremonies she swept pretty much every academic award up for grabs), but she hardly every volunteered her opinions, except when she was called on by the professor, and she was always just incredibly on the ball. Anyway, that's my long-winded way of saying that I gravitate more toward the blog mentality of posting when I have something interesting to say...so I apologize for the recent infrequency of posts, but it's only because I respect and value the intellect and introspection of my readership, and I don't want to dilute the quality of this thing just for the sake of jamming in 4 posts / week. I spent much of yesterday, actually, reading through a lot of other internet poker blogs (damn, I had no idea there were so many), and some of them are marginally interesting, whereas most are simply daily or weekly recaps of how much the author won that day/week, or an outlet for his bad beat stories. I'll end this blog far before it devolves into anything like that, I promise.

A lot of the emails I get are from people who have happily beaten the games at stakes x/y, but always get creamed trying to move up to the next level, and are sent scurrying back to their previous stakes with their tail between their legs. I've made several previous posts about moving up, so I won't rehash my old advice here, but rather simply say that you're hardly alone...I never really thought to look into it much until I was randomly perusing my PokerTracker stats the other day and noticed that I've been absolutely creamed at the 50/100 and 100/200 games. Granted it's only over around 7,500 hands, but it was salient enough to make me think more about playing higher and higher stakes. A quick sample screenshot...notice a pattern of any kind?



For around a year now I've been perfectly content sticking to the 30/60 games, and dabbling in the 50/100 and 100/200 when they look good (and yes, also the NL games, which I've really been enjoying lately)...but reading through a few of the really high-stakes' players blogs really made me reconsider my reluctance to jump into those huge games (I'm talking the $300/$600 variety). I mean, skill-wise, I have no reason to believe that I'm not just as good if not better than them...the mathematical test is an obvious one: all I would need to do is maintian a TENTH of the winrate as I do at the 30/60 games to make that jump worthwhile...that's a mere 0.3 or 0.35 BB/100. Surely I can do that, no?? Bankroll isn't really an issue, although I'm not saying I'm thrilled with the idea of a 200BB downswing ($120,000 holy crap)...psychologically something like that might be enough to make me want to take a few months off from poker. But then again, wouldn't it be cool to run hot at that game for a few weeks and make a quarter million or something! Like I've told many a friend who has complained to me incessantly about doing fine at $5/$10 but getting crushed at $15/$30 every time he's tried to make the jump: one of these times you're going to hit an immediate heater, and you'll never look back! That's basically how it happened for me and countless others.

All of this high-stakes talk was really spurred, I suppose, by reading the postings of Stoxtrader and other very high-stakes guys who regularly make $100 - $200 thousand each month. I admit, I guess, to feeling a few twinges of jealousy since I've lived obliviously in my own little $30/$60 kingdom for the last year, of which I am (at least in my little mind) the de facto ruler. The question is, I suppose, just how much money is enough?? (And that was actually supposed to be the topic of my next blog post before I got sidetracked by all this high-stakes talk...i'll make it the next one -- should be interesting, I think.) Maybe I shouldn't be treating $30/$60 as the ultimate destination, but rather as a proving-grounds, of sorts, for even higher stakes...that jump should also actually make for some interesting blog posts. Anyway, writing this all out is actually just reinforcing my will to try those bigger games...I think I'll give them a go. I just don't feel like all that hot sh*t anymore.