I'm Back

Well, to be honest, I've actually been "back" for about a month now but have only now gotten around to writing about it. Thus my break from the game lasted for about 7 weeks - a bit shorter than the three months I anticipated.

So what brought me back?

Something very simple, actually. I got a $20 no-deposit bonus at one of the smaller rooms and decided to play with just that money, more as a diversion than anything. And if I lost it all, then oh well - it was not part of my bankroll. So I was treating it like "found" money.

The bad parts of the site:

1. The traffic there is very low - the most tables at $0.25/$0.50 I have ever seen is two 10-max games and three 6-max games running simultaneously. Often, however, there is either no table at all or only one table running at that level.
2. The site does not support Poker Tracker or any heads-up display.
3. The lowest stakes they had (at the time) were $0.25/$0.50 so I was starting out with a 40 BB bankroll - just a bad session or two away from losing it all.

The good part about the site:

1. The players there suck like no other suckage I have seen before.

I have taken that $20 bonus and have ran it up to $120 solely playing $0.25/$0.50. As I mentioned, I have no specific PT stats, but I can at least find out the number of hands I've played to get to that point: 3230 hands. Well, if you do the math, that turns out to be 6.2 BB/100. Ordinarily, I'd say that is way-beyond sustainable (and due only to running hot over this sample size), but for two things:

1. My poker "coach" has shown that he can sustain 6+ BB/100 over 100K+ hands. Whether I am that good remains to be seen but it at least shows it is possible.
2. These players really do suck in ways I can't even begin to describe. Perhaps I ought to drag some hands out for future posts to demonstrate this, otherwise you can take my word for it.
3. I don't "feel" like I'm running that hot. I know, this is very non-scientific without stats to back it up, but this does not feel like a hot streak - just beating up on the weakies.

One very interesting strategy I've adopted due to the low traffic and (to be honest) because I am playing way below the stakes I am "used" to playing is to sit down at an empty table and wait for the fishies to come to me. I wish this was my idea, but is part of the "Wookie Table Selection Mechanism" from a 2+2 post, but I had never had the confidence to pull it off. This has worked out very well for me - I think with the exception of maybe one player, everyone to sit down and play me heads-up has been horrible. Sometimes the table fills up quickly, and other times I play heads-up or 3-handed for quite some time - something I've learned to enjoy.

I've also found that I don't mind not having a heads-up display. It certainly makes you pay more attention instead of just doing a numbers-based read. I still am not as good as I should be about keeping notes on players - all of my reads are session-reads and (except for the fishiest of the fishies that I remember) do not persist from one session to another via notes. I need to fix that.

So where do I go from here? Do I just sit around at the quarter tables and beat up on the fish for kicks? Maybe, but I don't think that would satisfy me long-term. I've taken a peek at some of the higher limit games (up to 3/6) and they seem very, very soft as well. In fact, one peek at the 20/40 game showed some obvious soft-spots as well. :-) The site actually has a few good things going for it to make it a semi-permanent home for me:

1. A good signup bonus (100% up to $1K, clearing in $10 increments, with months to clear in total)
2. Rakeback (at standard rates of 30-ish percent)
3. Ability to deposit from U.S. using a credit card

So, my tentative plan is to get my Neteller funds (which should be available to me within a month or two), make a deposit, and see if I can hit up some of the higher-level fishies for some money.

My only concern with that plan is that now that this latest stint has shown me that poker can be fun again that increasing the stakes will kill some of this enjoyment, at least during the downswings. I guess all I can do is be aware of that possibility, and try not to let it happen - to play poker like it should be played, as if the money and results don't matter. We'll see.