A Cautionary Tale? OK, not reallyI haven’t really felt like blogging lately. The political thing is just so surreal and reality is so depressing that I’d rather spend my political energies elsewhere. As for the rest, I’ve been to busy doing to write about what I’m doing. But Karol’s recent decision to venture onto Party Poker has prompted me to tell a little story about my experience with Party.
Although every online poker player I know raves about Party, “because of all the fish”, I have traditionally avoided Party Poker like the plague—because of all the fish. While I have managed to be modestly profitable on most of the sites I’ve played on (of which Bugsy’s Club and Poker Stars are in my opinion the best), every time I fund my Party Poker account I lose it all, and it always seems to be because of some idiots chasing down every last hand or raising and re-raising (usually in the dark) with garbage to scare out my strong hands.
Still, after the Bar Exam, I decided to consolidate my poker accounts (due to the now-defunct traveling blogger’s tourney, I had opened accounts at a variety of truly awful sites, including True, Planet and Choice), and put it all into a Party account. I was determined to take another stab at it, since everyone else seems to be making money over there. With $200 and the clarity that comes from a month of not playing poker, I re-entered the Party.
Big mistake. I lost $50 almost at once at a 1-2 hold ‘em table that seemed to be populated by me and nine randomized bots. NOBODY folded to my raises, and EVERYBODY raised pre-flop. I was hopelessly outmatched, since none of my “traditional” strategies were of any use to me. I eventually started chasing and bluffing too, and soon lost the other $150.
Daunted, but certain that it was them, not me, I put in another $100 and played only $10 sit-n-gos. The quality of play was pretty much the same, but in the sit-n-go context this is a plus early on, as you sit back and watch them knock each other out. I can sometimes make it into the money in those things just by posting and folding until and unless I get a big pair, and then going all in. Also, you can play for 2 hours and not lose more than the buy-in. Of course, you can also play for two hours and not win anything. Because I often just want to play for 30 minutes or so, however, I was soon drawn back into the ring games. Getting rivered repeatedly makes me go on tilt, so I soon lost all my money.
I put in $200 more, determined to move up to higher-stakes games where I assumed the play would be better. It was just as bad in 3-6, so I put in another $200 and sat down at the 5-10 tables. Here, at least, the play seemed noticeably better. Not free of idiots, but at least I felt like I had a handle on the table. Sadly, $200 is not enough to weather a string of bad cards and bad beats at a 5-10 table, and soon found myself $700 in the hole. Wake-up call.
So, did I stop? Actually, I did. I quit, because $700 was way more than I could afford to lose, and I felt like I was behaving like a gambling junkie. So I quit.
For a while. The $700 loss was really weighing on me. Not only because it was irresponsible and because we needed that money, but because I thought I was a better poker player than that. So I made a deal with myself: $1000 and you’re done. Forever. I put in $300, and vowed to play with discipline, restraint, and intelligence. If I lost the final $300, that would be it. No poker, ever again.
I played pretty solid for a few weeks, always hovering around $300. I discovered that I’m less likely to get hosed at 7-stud ring tables, either because I’m better at it than I am at Hold ‘Em or because the greater information makes you less likely to get surprised by someone playing totally irrationaly. So I played 7-stud ring games and NL sit-n-gos. I played focused, and I played my best, and I was more or less breaking even. I analyzed my play very carefully, and I’ve managed to rein in significantly my tendency to go on tilt. I still see myself making plays I know are wrong, and I’ve discovered it usually is spurred by an instinct to gamble—to see if I can’t catch some of the luck that I see all the fish profiting from. I know that that is a bad instinct, and I also know (because I’ve been paying more attention to that) that the fish are losing money. The guy who cleans up hand after hand, and has everyone cursing at him for his huge stack of rivered loot? Stay at the table with him long enough, and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll see him rebuy at least once.
So my online play has improved, and I’m not in danger of losing all my cash, but I’m also not showing a profit over time. After much consideration over the next month, I decided that what was keeping me from making a profit was the “fish factor”. At the 1-2 and even 2-4 tables, I don’t earn enough to offset the occasional big pot lost to someone who called raises while dominated until the river handed him my stack. So, I decided to try the higher stakes again. Based on my experience in 5-10, I figured 10-20 would be even freer of idiots. This was a correct assumption, but a dumb move. If $200 wasn’t enough for 5-10, no way was $300 going to cut it at 10-20.
Still, I got lucky. I got a string of great cards early on, and last night I won back the full $1000 playing 10-20 7-stud on Party. Part of me wants to cash it out and walk away from Party, but another part of me knows I can parlay it into a big profit. When the two parts sit down to talk about it, though, they tend to want to compromise by cashing out the $1000 (or most of it) and going back to the low-stakes table. I don’t see that as a realistic option, however, because I just believe that there is too much luck at work down there (and correlatively too much incentive for me to gamble). Still, I haven’t been playing at the 10-20 tables long enough to know whether my gains will continue over the long term. And now that I know that Karol is on Party, well . . . where’s my tackle box?
