Monday, December 25th: Best of...
Yikes -- a whole 2 weeks since my last post; I hate it, but things had been really hectic: I've slept in beds in Sydney, LA, NY, Philadelphia, and Toronto in the last 2 weeks, and then came the holidays, etc. (Yes, my Australian interlude has now come to an end.) I've actually sat down and started no fewer than 4 posts, each of which on topics that interest me greatly, and which I'm pretty motivated to finish, but I've been frequently distracted and interrupted...but I guess the silver lining is that I've got at least a few more (hopefully) good posts in me before throwing in the towel...for now, though, I'm going to do something I did at the end of last year: in the spirit of all the year end "best of" review shows on TV, I've gone back through my posts from 2006 and picked out my 10 favorites. Yeah, it's a little bit of filler, but I'd like to think it's not a complete waste of your time...in fact, in re-reading these myself, I'm reminded of how worthwhile I've always felt it to be glancing over my shoulder to remind myself how far along this path I've come.
10. Tournaments Are Gay
One of the more controversial posts I made, but I still like it -- the post is undoubtedly somewhat colored by the fact that I have a particular distaste for tournament poker because I just don't know how well it reflects actual long-term expected value, but that's my math background speaking. I think they attract a lot of people lured particularly by the prospect of fame, whereas I'm more inclined to continue to grind away relatively anonymously in the cash game circuit. As I wrote before, though, I think I'm going to play in a few events in this year's WSOP just for fun; more to experience the spectacle than anything else.
9. The $20,000 Day!
Not sure how "good" a post this one actually was, but it was important in teaching me how to deal with a downswing the likes of which I had never seen before (nor would I have even believed it were possible, had you warned me in advance.) The 2+2 forums have seen scattered reports this year from very well-regarded players (especially on the limit side) who have been getting crushed -- absolutely crushed for amounts of 1,000 big-bets and more. Just a year or so ago, 300 big-bets was assumed to be an appropriate bankroll for an average-or-better LHE player, and anyone unlucky enough to suffer through a 300+ big-bet swoon was quick to be labeled a fish who undoubtedly had simply been running well beforehand. How times have changed -- consider as illustrative the admissions of bicyclekick, a relatively well-regarded high-stakes LHE player who has played as high as 300/600, but who found himself relegated to the 5/10 games after a downswing of over 1,500 big bets. These stories are popping up with alarming frequency, and should give serious pause to anyone thinking about giving poker a serious go...can you mentally handle swings like this? Because they're not just for fish anymore, but coming to a poker table near you.
8. Hard Work and Leverage
I'd like to have put this a little higher on my list, but I'll keep it at #8 for now, even though I think the stuff I wrote about leverage might be some of the more important content I got down over the course of keeping this blog. In fact, I've gone back and re-read this post perhaps more than any other, simply because when living a poker-fueled lifestyle, it's so easy to forget the motivation and drive that helped me get to this point...so I'm constantly on guard against allowing too much complacency leak into my life.
7. Deep Thoughts, Part I, and Part II
A heck of a lot of mental masturbation. Not sure I ever came to any concrete conclusions, but they were thoughts that had been nipping at the fringes of my psyche for what had seemed like the entire duration of my poker "career".
6. The Golden Age of Online Poker
This was another one of those posts that I had swirling around in the nether-regions of my cranium for months before I actually decided to take a crack at it. In fact, as I re-read it just now, I remembered how much I had been preoccupied when I wrote the post with the question of just how much poker I should be playing, and just when the financial incentive simply wasn't worth the opportunity cost of missing out on "real life." I think I laid out my philosophy relatively succinctly at the end of the post, but I've got to admit that I always feel a twinge of remorse every time I see 2+2 posts with guys who manage 6-figure profits in a month, not because they have higher winrates than me (in fact, their rate is sometimes 50% or more lower than mine), but simply because they have the discipline to sit at their computers for 10 hours / day, and get in 90 to 100 thousand hands / month. I don't think I've ever cracked the 40K-hand mark. Even when I did my $40,000 surgery recovery challenge, where I had nothing to do but sit in my apartment with my jaw wired shut and play poker, I "only" managed 51,000. The idea that there are people out there who routinely play double that amount hurts my brain to think about.
5. Mike McWho?
Actually, I would have liked to put this post higher on my list, if for no other reason than that Rounders is the quintessential poker movie for so many guys of my generation. And yet it has so quickly been superseded in so many ways, as I mentioned in the post. Amounts of money that were supposed to stagger the viewer in the movie are now won and lost every few minutes online by twenty year olds who have bankrolls that would have poor ol' Mike McD soiling himself.
4. Table Selection
It's no secret that this blog isn't exactly chalk full of strategy info (nor have I ever claimed as much, but I think it makes up for it in other ways), but there are a few nuggets in here that I think are especially worthwhile to assimilate. I'm still shocked at how little emphasis most "good" players put on table selection, preferring instead to just take the first seat that becomes available. Well, do yourself a favor: buy PT and PAHUD if you don't already have them, invest the time to learn how to datamine, etc. and watch for an immediate reflection in your winrate.
3. The Great Beyond
I wrote this at a time that felt as though it were some kind of "crossroads" in my life (although I've since come to appreciate that these 'decision points' are more illusion than fact.) All of my friends from law school had just taken the bar exam (they all passed, by the way...it was a much higher passage rate last summer than the years before...for first-time test takers from ABA-accredited law schools, I think the passage rate last summer was 85%, instead of the mid-70s that was the norm; I only know a couple kids who failed.)
2. 24/7 P.O.C.
I know I hammer away at this principle like it's my job, but I do so for one reason: no aspect of poker has changed my life away from the table as much as this one -- to be able to assign a quantitative value to the sands of time that pour through the hourglass that is our brief time here has really changed in a surprisingly positive how I think about and value my leisure time, and that spent in the company of my family and good friends.
1. The unfortunately-titled Poker-boomers, trust fund babies, and bears -- oh my!
A post that was months in the making, although as much as I enjoyed finally getting these thoughts down "on paper", I'm not quite sure that I "solved" anything at all...because I still have those persistent thoughts: e.g. I'm happy about the modest degree of financial independence that poker has brought me, but I've got a few friends who are financially comfortable via family/inheritance and it's still sometimes hard to decipher just how we're differently situated...I actually just read a passage on money (and the making of it) from a classic book that resonated with me more than any other passage I've ever read, and I'm going to post it here in the next few days for a little perspective.
Well, that's all for the countdown for now, but as I wrote above, I've got a few half-finished posts that I've been working on for a while that I hope to publish here soon...
happy holidays,
10. Tournaments Are Gay
One of the more controversial posts I made, but I still like it -- the post is undoubtedly somewhat colored by the fact that I have a particular distaste for tournament poker because I just don't know how well it reflects actual long-term expected value, but that's my math background speaking. I think they attract a lot of people lured particularly by the prospect of fame, whereas I'm more inclined to continue to grind away relatively anonymously in the cash game circuit. As I wrote before, though, I think I'm going to play in a few events in this year's WSOP just for fun; more to experience the spectacle than anything else.
9. The $20,000 Day!
Not sure how "good" a post this one actually was, but it was important in teaching me how to deal with a downswing the likes of which I had never seen before (nor would I have even believed it were possible, had you warned me in advance.) The 2+2 forums have seen scattered reports this year from very well-regarded players (especially on the limit side) who have been getting crushed -- absolutely crushed for amounts of 1,000 big-bets and more. Just a year or so ago, 300 big-bets was assumed to be an appropriate bankroll for an average-or-better LHE player, and anyone unlucky enough to suffer through a 300+ big-bet swoon was quick to be labeled a fish who undoubtedly had simply been running well beforehand. How times have changed -- consider as illustrative the admissions of bicyclekick, a relatively well-regarded high-stakes LHE player who has played as high as 300/600, but who found himself relegated to the 5/10 games after a downswing of over 1,500 big bets. These stories are popping up with alarming frequency, and should give serious pause to anyone thinking about giving poker a serious go...can you mentally handle swings like this? Because they're not just for fish anymore, but coming to a poker table near you.
8. Hard Work and Leverage
I'd like to have put this a little higher on my list, but I'll keep it at #8 for now, even though I think the stuff I wrote about leverage might be some of the more important content I got down over the course of keeping this blog. In fact, I've gone back and re-read this post perhaps more than any other, simply because when living a poker-fueled lifestyle, it's so easy to forget the motivation and drive that helped me get to this point...so I'm constantly on guard against allowing too much complacency leak into my life.
7. Deep Thoughts, Part I, and Part II
A heck of a lot of mental masturbation. Not sure I ever came to any concrete conclusions, but they were thoughts that had been nipping at the fringes of my psyche for what had seemed like the entire duration of my poker "career".
6. The Golden Age of Online Poker
This was another one of those posts that I had swirling around in the nether-regions of my cranium for months before I actually decided to take a crack at it. In fact, as I re-read it just now, I remembered how much I had been preoccupied when I wrote the post with the question of just how much poker I should be playing, and just when the financial incentive simply wasn't worth the opportunity cost of missing out on "real life." I think I laid out my philosophy relatively succinctly at the end of the post, but I've got to admit that I always feel a twinge of remorse every time I see 2+2 posts with guys who manage 6-figure profits in a month, not because they have higher winrates than me (in fact, their rate is sometimes 50% or more lower than mine), but simply because they have the discipline to sit at their computers for 10 hours / day, and get in 90 to 100 thousand hands / month. I don't think I've ever cracked the 40K-hand mark. Even when I did my $40,000 surgery recovery challenge, where I had nothing to do but sit in my apartment with my jaw wired shut and play poker, I "only" managed 51,000. The idea that there are people out there who routinely play double that amount hurts my brain to think about.
5. Mike McWho?
Actually, I would have liked to put this post higher on my list, if for no other reason than that Rounders is the quintessential poker movie for so many guys of my generation. And yet it has so quickly been superseded in so many ways, as I mentioned in the post. Amounts of money that were supposed to stagger the viewer in the movie are now won and lost every few minutes online by twenty year olds who have bankrolls that would have poor ol' Mike McD soiling himself.
4. Table Selection
It's no secret that this blog isn't exactly chalk full of strategy info (nor have I ever claimed as much, but I think it makes up for it in other ways), but there are a few nuggets in here that I think are especially worthwhile to assimilate. I'm still shocked at how little emphasis most "good" players put on table selection, preferring instead to just take the first seat that becomes available. Well, do yourself a favor: buy PT and PAHUD if you don't already have them, invest the time to learn how to datamine, etc. and watch for an immediate reflection in your winrate.
3. The Great Beyond
I wrote this at a time that felt as though it were some kind of "crossroads" in my life (although I've since come to appreciate that these 'decision points' are more illusion than fact.) All of my friends from law school had just taken the bar exam (they all passed, by the way...it was a much higher passage rate last summer than the years before...for first-time test takers from ABA-accredited law schools, I think the passage rate last summer was 85%, instead of the mid-70s that was the norm; I only know a couple kids who failed.)
2. 24/7 P.O.C.
I know I hammer away at this principle like it's my job, but I do so for one reason: no aspect of poker has changed my life away from the table as much as this one -- to be able to assign a quantitative value to the sands of time that pour through the hourglass that is our brief time here has really changed in a surprisingly positive how I think about and value my leisure time, and that spent in the company of my family and good friends.
1. The unfortunately-titled Poker-boomers, trust fund babies, and bears -- oh my!
A post that was months in the making, although as much as I enjoyed finally getting these thoughts down "on paper", I'm not quite sure that I "solved" anything at all...because I still have those persistent thoughts: e.g. I'm happy about the modest degree of financial independence that poker has brought me, but I've got a few friends who are financially comfortable via family/inheritance and it's still sometimes hard to decipher just how we're differently situated...I actually just read a passage on money (and the making of it) from a classic book that resonated with me more than any other passage I've ever read, and I'm going to post it here in the next few days for a little perspective.
Well, that's all for the countdown for now, but as I wrote above, I've got a few half-finished posts that I've been working on for a while that I hope to publish here soon...
happy holidays,
posted by Blog Administrator at 2:26 AM
3 Comments:
Merry Christmas!
I also especially enjoyed several of these posts of yours this year, especially 9, 8, 6, and 4.
I'm sorry to hear the blog wrapping up, but good luck to you.
Best Wishes for 2007!
SPORTSANDPOKERONLINE
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
This is the best poker blog I have read in a while. You're writing is flawless. Keep it up!
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