Slings and Arrows

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By Chips_Middle | April 3, 2008

I have been remiss about posting lately and really shouldn’t have left it this long, so apologies to the 1.35 people who read the blog.

March was a very interesting month where I actually got caught up in playing poker. Some things went well and other things, not so much.

At the start of March I freed up some more cash to add to the bankroll as part of a new plan to move up in limits. Sticking to building with the money I have online seems like a false economy since it will keep me playing $25 poker for some considerable time when there is no reason for me not to be rolled to play higher. So, at the start of March, I moved up to playing $50 games as my regular game. My plan being to put in 2 weeks to a month of hands before going on to $100 games (assuming I don’t find some massive skill gap I can’t adapt to).

I also started experimenting with 2 tabling. I have a negative history with multitabling but had become quite confident with my decisions and decided it was time to give it a go. This is all with the aim of reaching a situation where my poker playing can actually have a chance of making some meaningful amount of $$ over the month.

So the results are that I managed to put in 8,000 hands in March which is the first time I met my 6,000 hand target. I played the $50 tables profitably and quite a lot of $20 (I stepped back down to start the 2 tabling) through the first part of the month.

Around the middle of the month I opened an account at Full Tilt. Having a second site on a different timezone and one with higher traffic opens up more of the day in which I can play. I have other things to do and so am not around in the evenings. I need to be able to play daytime poker and Betfair frequently doesn’t have the game I want. What’s more at 9am I am going to be facing regulars who are sitting down fresh.

So, as of the 20th of the Month, things had gone well. I was up $525 from a combination of $20 and $50 games and was earning at a fairly impressive win rate. According to the plan, it was time to move up and so that’s what I did.

Now. I have some advice for anyone stupid enough to try this at home. Do not, move to a new site, move up in limits and add 50% to the number of tables you play, all at the same time.

Up to $100 tables, feeling good about my game. Playing on Full Tilt for 3 days or so, that’s going well too. This multitabling is easy, time to add a 3rd one. 2 days later and my $100 career is -$1100.

Now, if you’ve read any of my earlier bankroll updates, you will understand that this little swing is enough to wipe out not only March’s winnings but probably everything since I started the blog. Earning at $10 and $20 buyins and giving it back in a $100 game is not good for the bankroll or the ego.

According to the statistics, I was still a winning player. Even in March I was still winning at @5 ptBB /100. The problem is that the game I had lost in has a much larger cash effect than the game I won in.

I was pretty unlucky over those few days and 2,200 hands. I’ve analysed them and run them through handy pieces of software just to check and I really was pretty unlucky. But I was also pretty stupid. I compounded my bad luck with some bad decisions. I probably courted some situations that led to big pots which increases the luck factor.

By moving up, moving sites and adding tables I put myself in 2 situations which are likely to involve changes in the game (new site + new limit = different opponents and possibly changes to reads). At the time when focussing on these changes to the game, picking up on them and adapting my game was at it’s most important, I decided to add another table and make it that much more difficult.

Not for the first time, I have found a novel way for arrogance to screw up my figures for the month.

I had freed up extra cash to add significantly to my bankroll before moving up in limits and am sufficiently rolled to play the $100 game and to take the $1100 loss. This is good, since had I just been taking a shot that went horribly wrong I would now be bust and this would be the last blog post.

Another lesson learnt and time to move on. I recovered somewhat in the last couple of days of the month and overall I came out only $150 down. With the bonus money I cleared at Full Tilt through the 2nd half of the month I’m pretty sure I actually come out slightly ahead.

Either way, $100 PLO is currently my regular game and I’ll update on how April is going in the next post.

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