Return from St. Maartens
Boy am I tired.
This is what happens when you mix poker, partying, drinking, and then throw on a 36 hour trip home on the end of it all :)
The trip did not go as well as I had hoped. The high points were a 4th place finish in the initial $300 buyin event, a victory in the $300 supersatellite to the $2600 Main Event, and strong finishes in most events, but these were overshadowed by several key bankroll mistakes that I made over the course of the trip.
The first mistake was my decision to agree to help start a 2/5 NL game by playing shorthanded for an hour prior to the $300 PLHE tournament. Shorthanded NLHE is not my specialty, and though luck played a small role, I was playing a game that I am not good at against players who are good, and I dropped $1500 prior to the start of the event.
The second (and probably most major) was my decision to play in the $300 + rebuys PLO event. There were tons of Europeans in attendance who play the game regularily, plus the fact that a $300 + rebuys event is way out of my bankroll. I did play well, and got busted by a guy who made a great read on me (I later found out that I have a rather significant Tell), but should never have been playing the event in the first place.
The third mistake was deciding to play in the $500 NLHE event after waking up dead tired and in no condition to play my 'A' game. I busted out very quickly.
The fourth mistake was playing house games after busting out when there was little else to do in the poker room. I did have other things I could have done (such as read/watch a movie/etc), but instead chose to gamble. These mistakes (and my lack of experience withthe nuances of live play) lead me to question my decision to "go pro".
All in all, the tournament was very well organized, with excellent play and staff. I highly recommend it, especially to players more proficient in NLHE than me. I was disappointed with the fact that it was near impossible to get a full table of Limit together (we tried many combinations of straight Holdem and mixed games, to no avail). There are more WPS events in the future, and I would love to return (unfortunately, the next is during BARGE).
I haven't even been to RGP to see all the stuff I have missed. I'll save that for later, when I have much more time :)
Fell
This is what happens when you mix poker, partying, drinking, and then throw on a 36 hour trip home on the end of it all :)
The trip did not go as well as I had hoped. The high points were a 4th place finish in the initial $300 buyin event, a victory in the $300 supersatellite to the $2600 Main Event, and strong finishes in most events, but these were overshadowed by several key bankroll mistakes that I made over the course of the trip.
The first mistake was my decision to agree to help start a 2/5 NL game by playing shorthanded for an hour prior to the $300 PLHE tournament. Shorthanded NLHE is not my specialty, and though luck played a small role, I was playing a game that I am not good at against players who are good, and I dropped $1500 prior to the start of the event.
The second (and probably most major) was my decision to play in the $300 + rebuys PLO event. There were tons of Europeans in attendance who play the game regularily, plus the fact that a $300 + rebuys event is way out of my bankroll. I did play well, and got busted by a guy who made a great read on me (I later found out that I have a rather significant Tell), but should never have been playing the event in the first place.
The third mistake was deciding to play in the $500 NLHE event after waking up dead tired and in no condition to play my 'A' game. I busted out very quickly.
The fourth mistake was playing house games after busting out when there was little else to do in the poker room. I did have other things I could have done (such as read/watch a movie/etc), but instead chose to gamble. These mistakes (and my lack of experience withthe nuances of live play) lead me to question my decision to "go pro".
All in all, the tournament was very well organized, with excellent play and staff. I highly recommend it, especially to players more proficient in NLHE than me. I was disappointed with the fact that it was near impossible to get a full table of Limit together (we tried many combinations of straight Holdem and mixed games, to no avail). There are more WPS events in the future, and I would love to return (unfortunately, the next is during BARGE).
I haven't even been to RGP to see all the stuff I have missed. I'll save that for later, when I have much more time :)
Fell
posted by FellKnight at 12:40 PM
4 Comments:
Heh, I read the first sentence three times before I figured out that there really wasn't an "up" between the "throw" and the "on a 36 hour plane trip."
Sorry to hear that things didn't go so well. I am interested in your thinking behind your questioning your going pro. Are you saying that in the aftermath of having a few bad days? Those are going to happen, and will continue to happen with regularity the more you play. However, you will have more and more of a history of results that will enable you to be confident that the current downswing is an anomoly.
On the other hand, if your primary concern is mistake #4 (re the house games), I think it depends on a lot of factors. If you have a propensity to gamble, as do many players, LV may prove to be a difficult place to live unless you can somehow substitute that with poker. One counterpoint is that in LV you will rarelly have problems finding a good live game to play in, and your game selection will be a lot greater.
One thing that is good in LA compared to LV is that house games are much less available (or at least the ones that are available are not interesting to me). But again I think the cost of living in LV as compared to LA makes LV a good place to start.
I'm sure this post comes off as quite a ramble since I have stopped and started it several times as necessitated by work. I continue to believe judging from what I have read of your various postings that you will do more than fine as a pro. This is not a belief that I would have with the majority of posters.
If you would like to discuss any of this further, feel free to email.
Hey,
It's not just the poor results at all. I also spoke with many players who have played professionally, either currently or in the past, and described candidly the life I would be giving up to play poker. They all seemed to think that I was giving up too much for too little in return.
I am not especially worried about the house games, as I tend to only play those on vacations, and have certainly been able to avoid them in the past.
Thank you for your words. It is a complicated decision.
Fell
It seems to me that you have alot of problems with disclipline and game selection. This is likely a downfall of many internet players trying to play live in a restricted environment like a resort tournament site. Online, it is so easy to find a soft game and keep playing in it day after day until it dries up that these 2 important qualities are lost on some players.
I think that if you want to go pro, you have to look at every time that you choose to sit at a table as a very important decision -- this is now your livlyhood.
Like omaholic said, playing and living in Vegas would seem to be more like a microcosm of the online environment that you are used given the number of soft tourist-riddled games and the 24h nature of the games.
I'm by no means a pro poker player, and I'm not sure of my aspirations at this time to that end...it kind of varies from time to time. In the "real-world" I am a professional and make 6 figures, but going semi-pro is always a goal of mine, so I appreciate reading blogs like yours.
It seems that you take losses hard, but learning from these errors in judgement should be an easy task. For me, taking losing in stride is the toughest part of the game and one that I have yet to master. I only make 1-2k a month playing poker, but a single losing session of 30-40bb does have an emotional effect on me even though I have the bankroll to absorb it. You are down some money, but simply do not do it again and focus on your strengths after a bad losing experience. When you are back ontop of the strong aspects of your game then branch out more into other areas of poker.
Dave,
Thank you for the advice. There are a great many reasons why I seem to excel online, rather than live, game selection certainly being one of them. I do exercise game selection online, even though there are many games running, but I found it difficult to turn down a side game or tourney live because "it is the only game in town". This is clearly a flaw which I need to fix.
I'll be continuing to think on the matter.
Fell
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