Well, I’d like to think so anyway. Like so few poker players, I have recorded my poker sessions in a small notebook. And I have transfered my notes into what I think is a pretty good program, the Poker Stats Tracker at cardplayer.com. I was updating my stats to include last night’s short session, and I noticed that I had played my 500th cash game.
Only, I went digging a little bit deeper into the data, and while I’m sure I had entered all the stats since I began playing the $1/$2 limit game at the Oaks Card Club way back in about 2003 or 2004, the stats in the application went back to only 2005. Bummer.
Still, even if it is not an entirely accurate milestone, it still seems like one. And so I pulled out some interesting data.
In cash games, I’ve made $5,588, for a whopping $2.93/per hour. To be fair, the first year or two, I was playing first $1/$2 limit games, then $2/$4 limit games, then $3/$6 limit games, before I got up to my present level of (mostly) $6/$12 games. The standard deviation is $239.78.
(In that time, too, I’ve played in 152 tournaments and won a total of $3802).
At the beginning of 2005, it looks like I was just jumping form the $2/$4 game to the $3/$6 game. And I can say that I’ve been a cash game winner, albeit a small one, every year except one:
2005: $833 (in 84 sessions totaling 405 hours)
2006: -$430 (in 11 sessions totaling 459 hours)
2007: $1321 (in 98 sessions totaling 373 hours)
2008: $664 (in 82 sessions totaling 318 hours)
2009 (so far): $3200 (in 125 sessions totaling 349 hours)
I’m not giving up my day job–if I had one, that is.