Halloween Curse?

Well, I decided (as usual) to get some poker in before work this morning. Perhaps it was a Halloween curse of some sort, but I had one of the worst sessions I have had in quite some time.

In 171 hands, I lost $119.25. That is over half my $1/$2 6-max profit gone in less than 40 minutes. Here is what that looks like:



I feel like I should have stood up at some point, but I don't know when. It was just the wrong end of big hand vs. big hand, over and over again. Two hands that stand out in my mind:

• KQ on a AKK flop, lost to AA.
• TT flopped top set, lost to AA when he spiked an A on river - that was a $46.50 pot.

and every pot I won was a small pot of the variety:

• KQo, Flop AJTr, take it down with a single bet vs. 3 opponents on the flop.

I'll have to admit that I had been running well enough that in my mind I had the impression that this 6-max stuff was a breeze. I had already figured earning the $100 so I could take a shot at $2/$4 was going to be a no-brainer. Maybe this is a good grounding to remind me that it truly isn't as easy as I had led myself to believe. I just wish the 60 BB hit had been at 50/1. :-)

On the positive side (because I need to look for those positives after a session like that):

• I am still running at almost 3 BB/100 at $1/$2 6-max even after this horrid session.
• I don't think I went on tilt. I'll review my play to see if this is true, but I certainly didn't hit the swearing-monkey-tilt stage.
• I don't feel totally demoralized like the last time I had a 50+ BB loss. Disappointed, yes. But not rolling it over and over in my mind and obsessing about it like last time.
• I am still up money at every site, every level ($0.39 at $1/$2 FR!!!!!! WOOO HOOOOOO!!!!), and still up a chunk of change for October (amazing what you can do with a Poker Tracker export and an Excel Pivot Table in 5 minutes):

Admittedly, these tables looked MUCH better before this morning's bad run (my September/October profit was almost $350, and my 6-max profit was also well over $300), but I think I can still take solace in my results over time so far. I'll hope for better luck tomorrow, I suppose.....

$0.39

Well, I finally did it. I am finally out of the red at $1/$2 full ring. 2300 hands, $0.39 profit for the rockin' winrate of 0.01 BB/100. Go me.

I had an interesting night of it last night - sat to the immediate left of my brother who himself was to the immediate left of one of the biggest fish I've seen at $1/$2 FR - a 57/0/0.32 guy who called down to the river with anything. Yum. I actually was down at that table for quite a while (as was Quadman) but I hit a few hands at the end and wound up $10.

At the other table I had an interesting time of it - I was totally card dead (I played only 4 hands out of my first 50, luckily winning them all big, so was up about $35) so I'm sure I looked like the biggest rock on the planet. Then I played the next 6 consecutive hands:

• 98o in the SB (lost in a BvB when my flush lost to his higher flush): -$7.00
  
• KQs OTB (lost when the fish played K2s and hit his 2): -$5.00
  
• 99 in the CO (got out on the turn in a boat-vs-boat confrontation): -$5.00
  
• A6s in the hijack (open raised and got 3-bet by the BB. Whiffed and folded on the flop): -$3.00
  
• AQo in MP (raised an EP limper, took it down unimproved vs AT at the river): +$6.00
  
• KJs in EP (limpfest, raggy flop checked around, J hits on the turn and I raise a bet into me and take it down right there): +$5.75

Then a few hands later lost a bunch on a AKo vs 99 on a A92-K-6 board. So summary of that one is I caught a huge rush of cards in about one button revolution and got to lose about $20 on them. :-(

But all in all it was a good table, and I left that table up $24.50 - just enough (evidently) to earn enough to bring my lifetime earn positive.

I think I'm going to (slightly) modify my criteria for taking a 40 BB shot at $2/$4 - instead of earning another 60 BB at $1/$2 FR exclusively, I'll take a shot when I hit $700 in profit, regardless of what I earned it at. This will be another $100-ish abive wher I am now, and I'll mix it up with both 6-max and FR games to try and earn it. Wish me luck.

Update

Yes, I am getting really, really lazy about naming my updates.......

Bad news: I'm on a 80 BB downswing at $0.50/$1.00 6-max. It is the usual low limit beats (getting rivered) as well as a large amount of big hand vs. slightly better hands against maniacs who will bet and raise with anything, so I wouldn't believe them. Hard to watch someone win against them with A-high at the river when you can't even get your overpairs to hold up against them. I checked my stats just to make sure I wasn't calling down more often with losing hands, etc. but it appears I am going to showdown about 20% less than I have been and also losing the showdowns about 20% more frequently than before. So, just running bad. No biggie.

Good news 1: I was already running well enough at $0.50/$1 6-max that an 80 BB hit still leaves me at almost 2.5 BB/100 at that level since I started.

Good news 2: At the same time as my downswing, I am on a 80 BB upswing at $1/$2 6-max.

I am about 6,000 hands into my 6-max experience and really like it - as you can see from the bankroll update to the right, I've already outstripped what I made in my first 30K hands of full ring in only 6K hands of 6-max. To be fair, I'm also playing at a higher limit now, but in terms of big bets, I am up 317 BB at full ring and 200 BB at 6-max.

The $0.50/$1.00 6-max games are super soft, especially during peak times. It is not unheard of to have 3 of my 5 opponents with 45%+ VPIP. Many of them are more aggressive than their full-ring cousins so it takes a bit more to beat them. The $1/$2 tables are a bit tighter (only 1-2 fish per table) and a lot more aggressive. You really have to pick your spots carefully - I am very careful with table and seat selection

In theory, I have now completed the first stage of my bankroll pyramid from a previous post, being up 80 BB at $1/$2. That should mean that my next stop is to take $160 and take a shot at $2/$4. In actuality, what I think Iwill do is to play $1/$2 full ring until I earn the $160 to step up. Why??????? Well, for a totally trivial reason - $1/$2 full ring is the only level where I am an overall loser (down about 20 BB). That bugs me every time I start PokerTracker . :-) So, I'll play until I'm up 60 BB at that level, then take my shot. Don't try to figure me out......

$5,000 and beyond

Due to a good run on the blackjack tables as I finish up playing before the online ban goes into place, I have moved above the $5,000 mark. That's a $700 improvement in just two weeks since my last update, and that is with only about 6 hours of actual gameplay. Nice earn rate, for sure!

I'm still astonished that I am in this position - when I started this journey with absolutely $0 of my own money a tad bit over 8 months ago, there would be NO WAY I would have imagined that I would top the $5,000 mark by this point. Admittedly, over half of this money came from a source (blackjack) that hadn't even crossed my mind at the beginning, but this still doesn't dampen my amazement. In theory, I am bankrolled to play $5/$10 and nearly bankrolled to play $10/$20. Yikes!

Now that the ban will go into place, I'm sure this incredible rate of earn will go down significantly, as I will be "restricted" to just playing poker, unless some of the online casinos pull a surprise and either stay open or re-open on advice from their lawyers.

Assuming this will not happen, I'm going to do a summary of my blackjack play. The below graph and chart should say it all.

A few notes:

• The graph and chart do not include the $300 GamesGifts affiliate bonus, but my bankroll update (obviously) does - thus the discrepancy in values.
  
• I was running insanely hot over this stretch - over 50% above my expected earn across all casinos.
  
• I cannot believe I have put over $43,000 in action on the tables, but like I said before, I guess betting every 5 or 6 seconds adds up very quickly. On casinos with the fastest software, I was getting in 800 hands per hour.
  
• Party Casino is OMFG RIGGED!!!!!! :-)
  

I'm off to Full Tilt next (likely) as they are one of the online poker rooms that will stay open. It seems there are more of them than I would have thought which is perhaps a ray of hope that some of the other rooms will see the light as well.

The end? Maybe not.....

It looks like my last post may have been a bit premature, although the situation is still grim. Many sites have said they will stay open past the time of signing, including "name" sites like Full Tilt:

Official statements from various poker sites

Cardplayer.com's thoughts:

What's NOT Included in Anti-Gaming Legislation including the following phrase:

Do not panic. First and foremost, this bill does not criminalize playing poker. In fact, the bill does not speak to the poker player at all.

Also nice to know that Party will pro-rate the amount of my bonus that I do not clear before they shut down U.S. players:

2+2 post from a from Party representative

That's about it. More positive than the last one, but still a bummer...

The End

Well, it appears to have happened. Late night on Friday, September 29, the U.S. Government passed a bill making it illegal for U.S.citizens to gamble on the Internet. Well, actually the bill focused on the methods by which online accounts are funded, but the net effect of the bill is to ban online gambling. The bill has not been signed into law by the President yet, but there is no reason to think that he will not, as the bill was attached to a port security bill that has very little chance of being vetoed. This pretty much sounds the death-knell for the online gambling industry, estimated at 6 billion dollars per year in the U.S.

In theory, there is a gap of time (270 days) during which the banks and other financial providers have to become compliant with the law. In actuality, the casinos (especially the publicly traded ones) have jumped this gun and started banning U.S. players outright. And the ones that have started the banning are not the small-fry casinos either - among those that have banned (that I know of as of 7:00 Monday morning!) are Partygaming, 888.com, William Hill, and Intercasino. I have not kept up on the news, as I am disconnected from the network as I write this, but would not be surprised to see that all of my casino / poker options have been closed to me by the time I get home today. I think my only possible action is to try to play out the end of my Party bonus ($100, 5x, and I'm about 30% through it) before the President's pen actually signs it into law.

There is some speculation that the reasoning behind this bill is to "prove" that you cannot ban something as large as this - that it will fail much like Prohibition in the 1920s, and once it has deemed to have failed, to regulate and tax it. I think this is VERY optimistic thinking - I personally do think that the ban will fail much like prohibition, but don't know that the situation will shake out in exactly that way. Regardless, it would take many years to get to that point.

The reasoning for the bill is to protect us from the evils of gambling. Senator Bill Frist had this to say

"Gambling is a serious addiction that undermines the family, dashes dreams and frays the fabric of society," Dr Frist said. "The bottom line is simple: internet gambling is illegal. Although we can't monitor every online gambler or regulate offshore gambling, we can police the financial institutions that disregard our laws."

This is, to be quite frank, pure bullshit. If that were the case, there would not be exceptions in the bill for online betting on horses, lotteries, and fantasy football. The bill is pure hypocrisy - a combination of election year politics and the inability to tax the stream of money that is produced.

If you haven't guessed, I am highly offended that the government can control what I do with my own disposable income and in my own free time.

Land of the free indeed.

I will likely see what the damage is over this next week, tidy up for a last bankroll update, and check out. I hate to complain, as I am over $4,000 richer than whan I started, but am totally disgusted at my government right now.