Reflecting on Week 1

After completing my first week as a full time player last night, I wanted to take a step back this morning (glad I did not do this last night while still fuming from my poor evening session) and point out a few observations from my first week.

1. First and foremost, I am enjoying myself. Poker is a constant challenge which very much caters to my competitive instincts. Playing against some of the best online pros in the world just makes me want to become that much better. Despite playing more than 10,000 hands this week, I am never bored while playing and feel like I have to constantly adapt or my opponents will get the best of me. That said,

2. Poker is surprisingly stressful. Perhaps this will go away with time, but at this point I just care too much. Although my sessions typically only last 2-3 hours, I am incredibly focused on each hand and take no breaks. After each session, my body feels the impact and I typically need about an hour of dead time before I can really think about anything non-poker related.

3. If I were doing this for the long term (i.e. as a career), I would definitely set a weekly schedule and really try to stick to it. I think playing two sessions a day, each 1,000 hands long, five days a week, would be an optimal routine. This would mean playing about 25-30 hours of poker a week (trust me, this is A LOT)...My schedule is just going to be too crazy over the next few months to stick to something like this, but I will be sure to take days off going forward (I played every day this past week which was a mistake).

4. I like my setup. Given my bankroll and my skillset, I think that 4-tabling 6-max 10/20 NL cash games is the best use of my time from a bankroll management, risk/return, and $/hr perspective. In choosing this setup, I have made several choices including playing online rather than live, cash games instead of tournaments, 4-tabling 10/20 NL, and playing short handed rather than full ring games. Let me briefly explain the rationale behind each of these decisions.

Online vs live: the driving factor here is flexibility. I can live where I want, and play where, when, and for however long I want. In addition, I also strongly believe that online play offers a much better risk/return profile than live poker at a casino. The difference is driven by the sheer number of hands you can play online. In one hour live I will see ~40 hands whereas online I will see ~400. This means I can play lower stakes online, protect my bankroll, and still make more ($/hr) than I could make live. There are obvious limitations to online play as well (not seeing your opponents is a big one), but I think these are more than offset by the difference in hand volume.

Cash vs tournament: the key difference here is volatility. A winning tournament player can go months in the red before having a big score, whereas a winning cash game player should put up a positive result in every month (assuming full time play). Given the fact that I am trying to build a bankroll for the WSOP in June, I just feel like grinding cash games makes more sense for me. There are other substantive differences as well including the difference in focus between pre-flop play (tournaments) and post-flop play (cash games). In cash games, every street is important (preflop, flop, turn and river), and so weaker opponents have more opportunities to make mistakes from which strong players can capitalize.

4-tabling 10/20 NL: 4-tables seems to be the perfect balance for me. I am never overwhelmed by the action (I can see all 4 screens with no overlap), and equally important, I am never bored. As such, I do not try to force the action, because I am always within a few minutes of having a real hand to play...Given responsible bankroll discipline (x buy-ins at a certain level), I could probably play as high as 25/50 NL. In the past, however, I have never played above 5/10 NL for an extended period of time. After one week of play, I think 10/20 is probably the right spot for me. The games are substantially tougher than 5/10 NL (much more agressive and probably 60-75% full time pros), and although I will not win as many bb/hours, I believe that I will be more profitable at this level (I am staying open minded here, and if this proves not to be the case, I will drop down to 5/10). In addition, playing 10/20 NL will force me to play my best and continually sharpen my game, which will only help me going forward.

6-max vs 9-max: this is another interesting choice, as I used to be a 9-max player. Full ring games (9-max) have many weaker players than the short handed 6-max games at the same level. Still, 6-max games force the action, and as a result, players have to open their hand range (play more hands), and are faced with many more difficult decisions (why weak players avoid the games to begin with). As a result, there are many more opportunities for weaker players to make mistakes. This will always result in an opportunity for stronger players to get a larger edge. This is obviously a tradeoff between tougher competition and more opportunities to exploit weakness, but I believe I will be more profitable in these short-handed games.

5. Losses hurt more: unfortunately, it is rooted in human psychology that losses hurt more than gains feel good. I can attest to this fact after one week of play, which is why I am constantly trying to detach myself from the financial results.

I feel like there are many more thoughts floating around in my head, but I guess I will save many of them for later. As always, if you have a question or comment, feel free to post in the comments section.