In the middle of a longer-than-usual session Sunday night, a cash game after I’d been knocked out of a tournament early (more on that later), it occurred to me that I’d been playing poker—real poker—for just abut a year. I did a quick check of my log.
It’s been exactly a year and a day.
A year and a day since I sat down at my first-ever real-money poker game (not counting the dealer’s choice games I played with fellow chess club members way back when). A year and a day since my first win, my first profitable night.
What a year it’s been.
On that first night, I had read just one poker book, Winning at Poker by Dave Shaarf. This book isn’t one that gets a lot of press, it’s not high on Amazon’s best-seller list, but it gave me a great foundation for the game.
I found it to be a well-written and accessible book, especially for a newcomer. It explained not only the concept of starting hands and player types, but told why they were important.
More than anything else, one thing has stayed with me from that book, a way to approach the game: “Poker isn’t a game of cards played by people. Poker is a game of people played with cards.”
I’ve gone through many more books (some of them more than once), and snagged two more on a weekend shopping trip: Dan Harrington’s first volume on no-limit tournaments and Eric Seidel’s interesting looking treatise. No matter how many years I plan, I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning.
Because it’s an anniversary, of sorts, I think it’s appropriate to look back. Shaarf’s book stressed the importance of keeping a poker log, of for no other reason than it’s impossible to lie (“sure, I’ve been winning”) when you have real numbers starting you in the face.
Most of these numbers will be cash game numbers. Most tournament numbers (such as time played) I didn’t track, and other tournament numbers I find it useful to track separately from the bread-and-butter cash game totals.
In the past year and a day, I’ve played 310 hours. This year alone, the number has been 201.5 hours. I’ve made a net profit (after time charges/rakes, tips, means, etc.) of $1796.50.
I began a new logbook at the start of the year and have also input the umbers into CardPlayer.com’s Poker Analyst. Since the start of the year, I’ve player 201.5 hours and made a net profit of $1514, for a whopping $7.51 per hour. With most of these games being $3/$6 and $6/$12, I’m making right around one big bet an hour. I played 29 winning sessions and 13 losing ones.
In the past 3 months, with the last 5 weeks or so of that at the $6/$12 level, I’ve made a net profit of $1143, having played 122 hours for an average of $9.37 per hour. I played 19 winning sessions and 6 losing ones.
You can’t look at figures such as these without calculating the cost of playing. Card rooms and casinos take time charges or rakes. You tip dealers and other personnel. Sometimes you eat.
In my logbook, I track the number of hands that I win. When I’m done with a session, I total the hands, multiple by the rake, add estimated tips (for dealers, it’s often $2 per winning hand, sometimes less for a small pot or a poor dealer, sometimes more for a huge pot or a good dealer) and if I ordered food, and consider that my cost of play. (I don’t add in jackpot drops; maybe I should.)
It’s cost me about $1848 to play poker this year. That works out to $9.17 per hour.
Some might look at that number and conclude, incorrectly, that it’s costing me more to play than I’m winning. But that would be incorrect. If it did not cost me anything at all to play, if I could play utterly for free, I would have made that much more. If there was no rake, no tipping, if I never ate, I’d have that much more in my pocket. Looked at another way, my gross (before “expenses”) this year is $1514 + $1848, or $3362, $16.68 per hour.
In other words, I’m beating the rake.
But not by a lot. That’s one reason why I’ve avoided a couple other casinos and card rooms in the Bay Area, one very near my workplace, that takes a $4 rake off its lower limit games. A 33 percent higher rake would make a significant dent in my current profitability. I’ve incurred enough “lessons” at the table that have cost me money—and expect to incur more in my still-early stages of learning the game—that I don’t want put myself in a situation where making money is even more difficult fro the get go.
I dipped my toes into the tournament world twice in 2004, both in limit tournaments. In the first one I entered, I finished 3rd (I think the field was 80-100) and won $1255. Take away the tip and buy-in and I profited $1035. The second time around, I finished 18th, one table away from the money.
Interestingly, I’ve performed better, money-wise, in tournaments during 2005, but that’s only because I won one. I’ve played in 12 tournaments and cashed in 3 of them, all limit tournaments: a 14th place for $155 (that didn’t quite cover the total buy-in), a 4th place for $865, and a 1st for $5000. If it wasn’t for the win, I’d be in the red on the tournament side of the ledger, although not my much.
I’ve also had a bit of luck that’s totally unrelated to playing skills, but happened because I play mainly at a card club that has a bad beat jackpot. Late last year I got a table share of a bit more than $500 when the player to my right won the bad beat, then a couple of weeks ago I got the winning hand share (25%, or $3750) when I rivered a royal flush to beat two full houses.
One thing I’ve done also: I’ve kept my poker money separate from my “everyday” money, literally as well as figuratively. I have a separate wallet for my poker money.
That said, my tournament winnings and bad beat luck went directly into the bank. That money I don’t’ consider part of my poker bankroll. Rather, I’m using it to pay off bills, to provide a cushion should I ever get laid off again, and to have a bit of fun and get some new toys (like the Sony PSP I traded my “old” Motorola Razr V3 phone for that I’m totally addicted to). Oh, and the grass-fed steak barbeques I’ve had with some good friends.
I found out something interesting about how my approach to poker has changed as I played Sunday night.
Sunday began with my entry into a no-limit tournament. The card club here is in the middle of its Player of the Year” series, alternating limit and no-limit tournaments on Sundays. I was feeling pretty confident going in, although I knew no-limit was still a game that wasn’t quite in my league.
In the first round I limped in with a middle pair, flopped a set, decided to slowplay it, then called an all-in bet from a player who had played a two-gap low connector that had filled on the flop and who rivered a straight.
My rebuy came way too early for my taste.
My exit came too early too. I had stolen a couple of blinds and had, while not a small stack, not a large one either in the fifth round and blinds at $100/$200. I had about $1600 in early position when I snagged a pair of kings. I raised it to $500 and a player in late position went all in.
That was a player who had played quite a few hands and I didn’t hesitate to call, even though he had me covered. To my dismay, he had the one hand better than mine: pocket rockets. Neither one of us improved on the board and I was out.
I felt OK for two reasons. First, I thought I’d made a good play, and second, several people at the table, including some whose games I respected from what I saw there, said good bye with kinds words about being a pleasure to play with at the table.
Those words were nice to hear. I play a pretty quiet game, quiet as in I don’t talk a lot. I certainly don’t get in anyone’s face when I win. I don’t taunt other players. I don’t criticize their game. I don’t act loud and obnoxious. I don’t throw my cards across the table when I get beat (or when I just get 2 lousy hole cards). I don’t splash the pot. I try to tip generously (at least, if the dealer is a good one—and that has nothing to do with the quality of the cards themselves).
Having convinced myself that I’d not made a bad decision, I was in a good mood to sit down to a cash game, one of two $6/$12 tables there. Within the first hour and 15 minutes, I was powering through the table. I had pocket rockets twice, pocket kings twice, and AK offsuitt once. I made one of each of the pairs stand up, as well as the AK and had boosted my $300 buy in to more than $400.
Then the bottom dropped out of the cards. Face cards and aces avoided my hand like the plague, unless they decided to arrive in the company of low-to-middle unsuited cards in early position. Pairs? They avoided me altogether.
Oh I did see a few somewhat risky hands. I stabbed at the occasional 2 Broadway cards, but missed flops completely. I snagged a KJ suited once, found a flop of KJ8, pushed it hard, and lost to a J8 when another 8 fell on the river.
For a three-hour stretch, I won just two tiny pots and saw my stack dwindle to less than $40. I did something I’ve not done in a long, long time: I pulled out one more $100 bill to keep playing.
I felt good about this table and realized that I was just in a bad stretch of cards. I had reigned in my game and wasn’t taking risks.
But I also wasn’t feeling down or frustrated. That would not have been the case just a few months ago.
I’ve added to my list of poker mantras. In addition to the Shaarf saying I noted earlier and the “good decisions, good decisions” I’m always telling myself, I’ve responded to events on the felt, good or bad, as ‘that’s poker.”
So I just sat and observed the ebb and flow of the game. Watched the players and how they played. Began to see vulnerabilities I could exploit when I might have the opportunities.
And after than 3-hour stretch, after I hit the nadir of the session, the tide turned. Slowly, to be sure, but it turned.
The biggest hand, a pot of more than $200, was one where I made a possibly questionable call.
I had pocket eights, limped in, and called a raise from a *very* loose player. I should add here that the game itself was rather loose, with 4-7 people regularly seeing the flop and when a raise came late after several limpers, it was almost 100 percent that everyone would call the raise. Calling raises seemed to have little true hand strength meaning. Heck, even raises happened on king-rag offsuit hands.
So with several players in a raised pot, the flop came 654 rainbow. It was checked around to the very loose button player who tossed in a bet. Everyone called, including me, in middle position.
A king fell on the turn. This time an early bet was made. I suspected a pair of kings at this point, but called with a rather large pot. Several other players called too around to the button, who raised. It got called twice around to me and I hesitated. With several bets already in and the pot, I’d guess, with around 10 big bets, I figured that the odds weren’t quite in my favor.
But I called anyway, deciding that the odds were close and worth taking a risk.
The risk paid off.
An 8 fell on the river.
Unfortunately, the raiser had just 4 chips left (of the 6 needed) and went all-in. Everyone just called—I wish I could have raised rather than just completed—and I raked in a huge pot that built my stack up to more than my original buy in.
I was able to pull in some more pots before I left, playing an hour past the time I’d planned to leave (a 7:15 session), had won a total of 18 pots, and ended up with a net profit of $179, almost enough to cover my tournament expenses.
But more than the money, the feeling of not worrying when I was down, made a difference in how I was playing the game. Even when I was down, I was starting to get a bit chatty with the player next to me (who was raking in some huge pots himself), and that feeling allowed me to stay even-keeled and be ready when the time was ripe.
I read somewhere recently that the really good professional poker players almost cease worry about money when they play. It’s nothing to them to drop thousands of dollars. The money itself almost ceases to have meaning.
I don’t want to not worry about money—I’ve been in positions where I was just getting by. I think it’s more a combination of a (slowly) growing confidence in my ability to do reasonably well at the game and an acceptance of not worrying about losing. Losing, like poker, happens. I think accepting that after a year at the game will turn out to be one of the biggest keys to future success.