Even though I've taken some of my winnings out of poker, I don't want to actually live off any of it yet. Right now, my ultimate goal, is to move up stakes as fast as possible, and hopefully before I go to graduate school next year, I'll be able to make a decent income without having to grind the hours away. Right now, the plan is to be at 5/10nl or 10/20nl before August this year. I'm targeting those levels specifically because I think at those levels I'll be able to make a pretty good income while putting in much much less time than I do at poker right now. Right now I'm grinding a ton because I want to build my bankroll and poker ability to get to that level. The assumption is that I'll be a winning player at those stakes, which I know is a BIG BIG assumption. I guess you'll all see in a couple of months how whether or not this is just a big pipe dream.
When I first started playing poker, I was all about the tournaments. However, I've realized that to make money in tournaments you need to you need to be playing a lot. The large scores are so few in between that you need to be playing a high volume to see any steady income. Not to mention that any of the worthwhile online tournaments take 5 hours+ from start to finish, with the assumption that you make the final table. This will not be possible for me in grad school. I won't have the time to play that much volume. My life goal isn't to become a poker player, and I would like the time to take my graduate studies much more serious than my undergraduate years. Cash, though, is different because I'll be able to sneak in hands as my schedule allows. Another plus with cash is that all the higher stake online cash pros make much more money than online tournament pros.
I'm not saying that online tournament players make less money because are less skilled in poker than their cash counterparts. I don't think this difference is because of skill, I think it's more of a difference in stakes available to the online poker player. An online cash player has access to pretty much the highest stakes that people play. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a live game that regularly plays and has blinds over 300/600nl. One can regularly find up to 300/600nl games on the Internet almost everyday. Tournament players, however, have to go to live $10,000 buy in tournaments around the country. And you can't find stakes anywhere near that high that run on the Internet regularly. Pokerstars I think has a quarterly $1,000 tournament, but I think that may be it. Mainly because of a convenience-potential profitability ratio (I just made that up), I have switched a lot of my emphasis from tournament play to cash play. There's also one thing I absolutely hate about tournament poker: the bad beat very very deep in a tournament.
I don't remember many cash bad beats probably because I've experienced a lot, and there is nothing inherent in a beat that makes it more painful than another other than the size of the pot. However, I can recall two brutal beats in tournaments with almost perfect clarity. I was very deep in two huge tournaments online, and I was probably 4+ hours into both of them. First place was five figure score in both tournaments. There was 20 or so people left in one, and 18 or so in the other. Anyways, I got all my money in on the flop as a huge favorite to become the chip leader in both tournaments. When I saw the cards I was ecstatic, but that feeling came crashing down in a couple of seconds. With two cards left to go, I got knocked out with a 5 outer in one (80% favorite) , and 3 outer in the other (85% favorite). The moment right after the beat is the worse - the first time it happened, I was so angry that I was cursing at my computer at the top of my voice. Then, there's the acceptance phase and I somehow try to just move on. Then the realization set in that I was only getting a couple hundred bucks for over 4 hours of work seemed like pocket change in comparison to the chance of a 10k+ score. In each case, I didn't even break 1k for probably playing four hours of some of the best poker in my life. That's an additional slap in the face. Even though the euphoria you get after winning a tournament is pretty amazing, I don't think it balances out the feeling of a brutal suckout deep in a big tournament. The extreme of emotions that you endure within such close proximity to each other is probably unique to tournament poker: the high and excitement one feels when one sees the cards and having all that crashing down within seconds when the turn and river card is dealt sucks!
I'm done ranting about tournament poker and given some reasons as to why I'm switching to cash. As I finish writing this entry, two very memorable posts by poker players that I really respect and blogs that I read regularly come to mind.
The first one is by Taylor Caby (Green Plastic) and he likens tournaments to going to clubs. I find it very funny and I completely agree with him on all accounts.
http://www.cardrunners.com/fusetalk/blog/blogpost.cfm?threadid=15206&catid=89
The second is by Shane "Shaniac" Schleger and he recounts his brutal beat in the Aussie Millions. I can only imagine how shitty it must feel when you have to travel halfway around the world for a tournament and suffer a horrible beat with 20 left to go, and get a paltry 60k when first is $1.5 million. Couple that with the fact that you've been playing the tournament for probably 3 days straight. Must not be fun.
http://shaniaconline.blogspot.com/2007/01/dont-think-twice-its-all-right.html
http://shaniaconline.blogspot.com/2007/01/lily-rosemary-and-jack-of-hearts.html
On a side note, it was after reading this blog I decided to listen to Lily Allen. If she's good enough for Shaniac, she's good enough for me. I downloaded her entire album and I really liked her. I burned her album onto a CD and I left it in my car. I probably listened to her for about three weeks straight, naturally, I've since stopped listening to her completely because I may have burnt myself out on her. But she just came to the States on a tour and I got to see her in Houston for $18. I was there with two of my friends and we all agree that it was an amazing concert and that she is an amazing live performer as well. It also probably helped that she had her concert in a bar where the drinks weren't ridiculously priced, which allowed me to get quite drunk. It was a really fun night.
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