$400 to $4k? Just playing cards tho

Oh, I've now played Drawmaha for the first time and I might be in love.

It's not only really engaging in a purely recreational sense (and it is this); I think it's kind of fascinating as a poker game, maybe?

(Such may be the ramblings of an easily impressed newbie, but boy it seems neat.)

I'm about two hours into my first "you know what? I'll fire some MTTs" session.

I'm kinda bored, haha. It's also been a little frustrating: was doing great in a PLO tournament and would have had a ton of chips if I'd just won my 57/43 (which the 43 had no business pot/jamming). Card dead elsewhere, and I forgot how annoying that feeling is.

Update: $488.94

Took a shot at PLO30 and NL30. Went almost entirely perfectly. Won some flips, but overall I feel like I'm playing great. I'm finding the right bluffs, they're getting through, my bluffcatchers are winning, I'm making hands that I can actually make non-folding decisions about... loving it.

Except the MTT session I briefly wrote about mid-session, haha. I'd be above $500 already if not for that (as I played cash on the side and it went way better).

Somehow mincashed a PLO8 MTT despite being totally card dead (like, what basically happened was I won 3 big pots over the course of the whole tournament and folded the rest of the time), but I'd fired at other stuff and just ran pretty bad. This happens, obviously.

As you could see before results were in, though: I'm maybe kinda cold on MTTs.

Loving my cash games, though. I think that not needing to win may be freeing me up psychologically to take some chances here or there that have ended up being both +EV and +$. I'm less afraid of not just losing but being wrong, too.

When I was really trying to make this work as a career, I was probably "gripping the stick/bat too tight" to offer a hockey/baseball metaphor. Sometimes it paid dividends (studying sure was helpful), some if it may not have.

As will be the refrain of this blog, though: right now, I'm just playing cards.

And running pretty good, mostly.

just keep writing bro!

BiLLAllas, I'm going to assume you're being sincere, and thank you for the support! I hope that my ramblings are of even minimal value to someone. I enjoy writing, and I find that--in a lot of places online--writing "too much" is explicitly discouraged (looking at you, reddit).

I'm not going to rant about "kids these days with their tweets and tiktoks" but it does feel like social media literacy and webforum literacy are somewhat different "cultures", and I'm definitely someone who was steeped in the latter. (See my join date for this forum, which I actually always felt a little late to.)

The Parasocial/Vicarious Catharsis Update:

(Y'all, this a long one. TLDR: good for DNegs; his journey is meaningful to me in ways that approach absurdity, and I've got renewed fire for my own poker "career" in part due to his persistence.)

I've been watching Daniel Negreanu play poker on my TV for... probably like 20 years now? (Not non-stop; I've kind of been in and out with poker, in my life.)

I've been watching his daily WSOP vlog since he first did it in 2017.

At risk of being full-on pathetically parasocial about the whole thing, I will say (with no small amount of self-consciousness) that... I relate to Negreanu in a number of ways.

Dude is vegan. I am too. He started at it in 2006; I started at it in 2010. I like that he isn't just incidentally vegan; he showcases both the nutritional and "gustatory" sides of veganism on his vlog, and I really appreciate that. I honestly think that (ironically) the phrase "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar" applies an awful lot in vegan advocacy. Don't point out how evil average folks' diets are (especially when most people really don't ascribe any ethics to what they eat and you can't bully them into instantly adopting that value system); point out how achievable and pleasurable a vegan diet is. When push comes to shove, I think everyone sort of knows that plants are healthier and more defensible food than red meat and stuff, but that doesn't mean you should go around doing the pushing and shoving yourself when its success rate is probably basically zero.

This is all to say that he and I have chosen an unusual dietary lifestyle that is meaningful to both of us in the same ways. And for that, I do feel some kind of ridiculous kinship with the guy. Does this mean I only want vegans to win bracelets? Nah, but I've definitely been rooting for at least one vegan to take down bracelets for years and enjoying what he shares of the WSOP grind.

Which brings me to the more important point: I think Daniel and I are both irrationally romantic about the World Series of Poker.

Daniel Negreanu has no reason to play a $500 NLHE freezeout at the WSOP. Not on its face, not logically.

I mean, does Negreanu have financial reasons to play in the way of bracelet side bets? In the past, he has. Does his GG endorsement deal demand that he plays X number of WSOP events per summer? Probably something like that.

But for whatever responsibilities or side bets he has, he wouldn't agree to any of them if he didn't love the World Series.

I also love the World Series. It was the new hot thing on TV when I was in high school; of course I got sucked into it. (Those WSOP broadcasts were terrible at capturing the actual flow of games but great at capturing personalities and drama. They made WSOP tables seem like fascinating places to be at.)

In a period of my life when I wasn't especially focused on poker, I decided somewhat on a whim that--"enough's enough": I was going to make sure I went to the World Series of Poker before I died.

And I did!

This was 2015. On this site, I'm pretty sure I asked (but now can't find, due to the forum migration) something like "do the daily deepstacks use the same chips as the bracelet events?" It was something silly along those lines, but I just wanted the mostly-genuine WSOP experience and I couldn't afford to play a bracelet event. (Like I said, I just wasn't really playing poker then and I didn't have a bankroll. I was in grad school and merely had money that I could decide to put towards my first trip to Vegas because I really wanted to.)

This attitude about the WSOP never really left me. In the late 2010s, I was really trying to make a go of playing full-time (which is now a lifestyle I would not wish on my worst enemy), and in 2018 I made a list of things I'd like to achieve in poker. Even then, I have to believe I knew how little of it was truly in my control, but it can be valuable to have goals (or maybe better stated: "desires"). Here's most of that list (edited only very slightly for readability):

It's honestly a little embarrassing, haha. But you can see where my head is (or at least was) at with poker: demonstrating that I can compete in a variety of games was important to me.

I will tell you with an awful lot of humility that I achieved only one of those goals: I actually cashed a HORSE MTT at the Aria shortly after writing this list. I'm 0/3 in bracelet events though, and I think I'm 0/10 in WSOPc ring events. After that HORSE cash, I believe the only "cashes" I have in live tournaments (which I played like two dozen of in this span, between the WSOP, WSOPc, and other Vegas fare) were in a satellite to a WSOPc Main Event and then a WSOP single-table satellite.

It's nothing that can't happen to a skilled player, but nothing you want to happen when you're trying to build a poker career.

You'll notice that the last goal I included was playing the PPC by 2024.

You may be able to guess that I didn't quite get to that. More on that in a moment.

But Daniel played in 2024. And he won. And--like I said--I think that he and I have very similar feelings about poker. We want to make winning decisions and we understand that you are often simply at the mercy of the deck, but we also have an irrational passion for the game and the mystique of it. Similarly, the World Series means something to us. There's more Mike McDermott in both of us than either of us is entirely proud of.

And while winning the PPC is not the most significant boost to Negreanu's finances in his poker career (not even among his WSOP cashes; he has two second-places that combine to be like 10x the 2024 PPC first prize), it's just SO prestigious. I have less ego about poker than I've had at any point in my life since beginning to play, but even now there's a lot of (again) romance to the idea of being not just a NLH winner or a PLO winner (or a winner at both of those games) but a great all-around poker player. (It's also just less monotonous, frankly.)

It doesn't seem like they still award the Chip Reese Trophy, for some reason, but--if my limited understanding of Chip Reese's personality is accurate--I think that Negreanu winning the former's namesake award (if only virtually) is absurdly appropriate and brings me to another reason I have so much (qualified) admiration for Negreanu.

My (again, limited) impression of Chip Reese is that he was a cash game crusher who understood what a (live) cash player's actual job is.

When you are a live cash game pro, you are an entertainer.

Online, it's still kind of true, but the social dimension of the game is all but removed.

For tournament players, I only barely think it's true. Once someone pays their buy-in, they're just kind of committed to playing the tournament until they bust or win. (But you'd probably like them to play more tournaments again later, if you think they're making the prize pool juicier.)

But inescapably: live cash pros are entertainers whether they know it or not.

Daniel Negreanu has seemed to ALWAYS know this. For this and other reasons (he values poker history/etc), winning the Chip Reese Trophy (even if they don't give it out anymore, maybe) probably means a lot to him, because Chip Reese's reputation (if Barry Greenstein is to be believed) is that he was just as strong at the social dimension of the game as he was at the strategic dimension of the game.

Those of us who grew up playing online never needed to develop these skills. And I'm not the most outgoing or gregarious person, either in general or at the poker table (on the uncommon occasion that I play live). But I've always tried to recognize--particularly when I identified as a professional poker player--that I AM providing a service when I'm at the poker table. Even online, I'm making an opponent available for someone who wants to play a PvP card game. This is true live as well, but I think that all poker players would do well to remember that they are competing with the flashing lights and (hopefully) warm smiles of slot machines and table game dealers.

Again, I think Negreanu has always known this about his job. And--while you can see his energy for fans depleting here and there in his vlogs--this is why he is a self-styled poker icon/ambassador/advocate and not just a poker player. I believe his table talk is partly strategic (to disarm people and extract info as best he can), but--again--I think he understands that a poker pro's job is not only to play well but to be engaging. (And because he's so engaging, I've enjoyed watching him for years and years!)

But this blog is about me, not him. Back to my egomania! Me, me, me!

In 2021, I wrote the following in a different, ill-fated blog I'd started in this forum:

It's taken more than three years for all of those depressive feelings about poker to evaporate. I've played almost no poker in the meantime.

Instead, I've gotten the best job I've ever had (don't ask, please; I want to have a pretty strict firewall between that part of my life and poker). Nothing glamorous, and it's frankly not challenging and doesn't have room for advancement. But it's been enough to equip my wife and I to buy our first house and adopt our first dog, who has revolutionized my mental health.

Let me go back to part of the above quote:

If you are reading this, I need you to understand that I wasn't making excuses.

I'm not doing the following anymore for a lot of reasons, but I played almost all of my online cash poker using DriveHUD. I knew my EV bb/100 and my bb/100 from that time, and over a frustratingly large sample I had bottom 25% luck. That absolutely does not account for the live MTT dry spell I mentioned earlier, which--alongside being a little expensive--was discouraging and never afforded me a big break that would have firmly established a low-to-mid-stakes bankroll that I could really build a poker career on. I kept pretty careful notes of my tournament play: I busted on +EV plays like every single time. I have vivid memories of texting my wife about my increasing stack size in these tournaments, and I look back on my notes and I'd typically just be losing flips (or better) before the money bubble burst. (I've always been very realistic--if annoyed--about this! I wasn't "grinding" live MTTs; my sample size was insignificant. I ran unremarkably bad except insofar as I can remark upon how unhelpful that was for a pro who needed a break to get to the next level of his career.)

Conversely, for online MTTs... in my DriveHUD, I know I would look at my EV WR for being short stacked versus my actual WR and be absolutely discouraged by how big the difference was: I was running worst when I was short-stacked and trying to survive.

I mention all of this just to give everyone the background of my poker career to date, as well as offer context for why it was so cathartic for me that Daniel binked the PPC.

My wife (also vegan, unsurprisingly) has some fondness for Negreanu, so historically we've enjoyed his WSOP journey together. When we tuned into the final day of PPC coverage on PokerGO, I turned to her and said "if I were Daniel and I won this, I would cry".

And he did cry. Pretty hard.

I'm really happy for him.

And I don't mind telling you that I've spent a lot of my life feeling like a loser. I'm comfortable sharing that because now I have a very different self-image and way of valuing myself, but when you fail at your one big "dream" due to simple, stupid, measurable bad luck (WR vs EV WR) despite all of the work you put into it and all of the confidence you've developed with regard to the vital details... it's very depressing. It makes you scoff at "follow your dreams" rhetoric.

And I'm still kind of cynical about that stuff. People who encourage others to follow their dreams are often either selling something or delusional about their survivor bias.

But Negreanu--obviously already very accomplished and extremely privileged (to offer some key qualifications to his persistence)--kept fighting for his dream of another bracelet.

And Daniel won the single most prestigious bracelet of the summer short of the Main Event (and their ranking as 1 and 2 is debatable; I'd put the PPC at #1... it is to pros what the ME used to be, in my humble opinion). I'm sure that binking an online bracelet or that $500 freezeout he got 16th in would have been a huge relief and massively satisfying; the PPC is just on a whole other level and I'm so glad that he not just felt that way but visibly felt that way.

It's inspiring.

It doesn't change any of my poker plans, but it's almost as cathartic for me as it was for him. He banged his head (or at least his selfie stick) against the World Series for so long without finding another bracelet. I know that feeling, and his PPC breakthrough means a lot to me, however silly that is to admit.

And I was already feeling inspired (some may say deluded) before he finally succeeded.

Maybe it was finally getting back into WWE after years of refusing to watch the product due to the unpalatability of Vince McMahon's creative, personal, and business choices. I live in Philly now and--amidst a WrestleMania weekend of smaller wrestling shows that I was enthusiastically attending--I very unexpectedly got a free ticket to WrestleMania Night 1, to see the prelude to Cody "finishing the story" of his championship ascent as well as Triple H kind of "starting his story" as the "undisputed" leader of WWE (not that he wasn't given a lot of power over the company in the preceding year or so; wrestling fans know what I mean when I say that WrestleMania XL felt very much like the beginning of something fundamentally new).

Maybe I'd just spent enough time away from "my dream" and enough time being bombarded with extremely American "follow your dreams" rhetoric that I got worn down and have talked myself into believing that lofty personal achievement are possible, when they very well might not be.

Or maybe I've just gotten enough real paychecks and kisses from my dog that I care way less about failing.

Make no mistake: I'm not writing down a list of goals like I did in 2018, but I'm also not limiting myself in terms of what I consider possible in my rekindled poker "career" (a word that I will continue to hesitate to use). I not only do not want to play poker full-time but I would refuse the opportunity if it came my way.

I mentioned (but didn't mean to be depressive about) how my job has no real opportunity for advancement. This is true; my position is kind of the beginning and end of the road. But it's low-stress and pays well enough; I truly like it. But there are a lot of days where I'm like "if I ever had any potential to achieve anything, I'm not going to realize it in this job".

But that's okay. I was actually really content with not achieving much more with my life than what I've already achieved. As I've said to people about my job, "a lot of people work a lot harder for a lot less". I regularly reflect on how uncommonly successful and happy my marriage is (I've been with the same person for the entire life of my 2p2 account), and I own a house in a city I love to pieces. My dog is the best. As I said, my self-worth is almost completely satisfied by all of those things; when I look around the world, I can't help but feel like I've won at life just by having all of those things going for me. I know how distant everything but the marriage (I've been so lucky for so long to be with her) has felt at times. Part of the reason I wanted so badly for poker to work is that I thought it was legitimately my best option for earning money.

And, in a way, that might still be true (in terms of upside).

But I never want to only or primarily rely on it (unless--like--best case scenario, it goes so well that I become independently wealthy; I am by no means expecting anything close to this).

Never, ever, ever. It's too stressful and too helpless-feeling when it's not going right. Getting it in good over and over and seeing not just my money but my ability to make money evaporate... I can't live like that again. I honestly think that nobody should.

Still, despite all of my gratitude for what I have, there is most definitely a part of me that's like "you know, Dev? You worked really hard to get better at poker after seemingly already having a knack for it... and that may still be your best avenue for making the most of yourself financially/egomaniacally".

I'm very excited about my new relationship with poker. I truly don't feel like I need to win, which is new for me. Even in periods when I wasn't trying to play full-time, there was always an element of--like--proving myself or making full-time play possible or whatever.

I just want to play poker again and see where it takes me, even if I may need to lick my wounds and replenish my "bankroll" at points, if it goes badly.

And I think that--while I'm very probably rusty/ignorant on important things and I'm being careful not to get in over my head--there are too many things I learned too deeply about this game for me to be, like, totally fooling myself about my ability.

If nothing else, the games I've been playing in so far (nothing above NL30/PLO30) have felt extremely beatable.

And--like--for the foreseeable future, I don't have any ambition to play in difficult games. In the past, I did. Like, there was a time where I was pretty sure that--at a minimum--I was the best PLO player in my state or close to it (and being in Pennsylvania with PokerStars PA, that was moderately meaningful). And I wanted the opportunity to prove it.

Now, I don't care. Beating easy games is fun and (literally, if modestly) rewarding.

I'm not aspiring to play the PPC by 2030 or anything like that this time around. Chasing a bracelet or ring again sounds fun, but you know what else is fun?

Scratching my dog below her left ear (her favorite, it seems) between online cash hands. Playing a couple of tables while a Phillies game, Penguins game (omg, twist; I'm originally from Western PA), or pro wrestling is on the TV.

And most importantly: only playing when I want to and having no concrete expectations or needs for how it will go.

You know: just playing cards.

I played at Borgata for the first time today, which I am not at all including in this challenge.

Truthfully, I just wanted to play there to have played there. When I moved to Philadelphia in 2019, I was like "oh, I can play at Borgata, which is kind of an historic casino for poker". Then the pandemic really messed up my introduction to my new city and its surroundings. Then the 2021 despair I copy/pasted in my previous update derailed my poker-playing.

So it was decided that I would take $200 out of not-actually-my-bankroll money (just some goofing off money) and play it there.

I had fun; that was the main goal (though I obviously wanted to play well, which I think I did). I played 2/4/6/12 LHE, which was kind of weird and the easiest game I've ever played at a casino poker room. Made a little bit of money there then decided I wanted to play some big bet before I left: moved to 1/3 NLHE and lost a little, then moved to 2/2 PLO which was predictably playing very big (wanna see a flop? $15+) and I missed a wrap/flush draw to bust my lil bit of trip money. Oh well.

Truly had a good time and played well; all good. Only disappointing thing is--yeah--if it had gone very well I would have used that pile of money as a very, very aggressive live bankroll for here in Philly.

Unless I can't actually grow this bankroll over time, I'm sure I'll get around to grinding some live sessions in town, but I'm in no rush. Playing at home is comfortable and many more hands per hour, obviously. But I do enjoy live poker, too. If I do grow this bankroll to $4k, that's not an entirely unreasonable amount of money for taking shots at the lowest limits of live poker.

I also might just set aside some money and play poker in real life sometimes; that's one of the benefits of having disposable income and not playing professionally.

Anyway, played some PLO10/PLO30/NL10/NL30 tables tonight after getting home, eating, and watching a movie.

These 30c tables are treating me VERY well.

Bankroll: $587.81

Blech. Just had one of THOSE.

The big tables went worse than the small tables and it felt like everything bad that could happen did. And if I'm very honest, I think I made some choices that were not necessarily part of my A game (I feel like I dropped down to B- due to fatigue, frustration, and probably playing 1-2 too many tables; I think 4 is best for me and I was mostly playing 6), but I also feel like I was in a lot of spots where I was running into some pretty improbable combos.

Also, man, I did not miss this feeling: the absolute mountain of ways that PLO can beat you down. Being card dead preflop, missing flops, having second best hands that really shouldn't fold without a specific read, missing combo draws, not being able to get bluffs through, and losing all-ins.

Bankroll: $426.03

No more PLO30 for a bit. (I think still mixing NL10 and NL30 is reasonable, though.)

Blahhhh.

Played some probably ill-advised (but largely fun) dinky stakes 12-game on SWC and I feel like the overwhelming winner was the rake.

I know I wasn't the winner!

Some of the games I know better than others, and I'm only so able to evaluate--say--my badeucy game.

Similarly, I can only be so sure of how good I am at a lot of the mix, but I know VERY confidently that a splashy player at the table was worse at probably all of the mix.

I was just so card dead. I missed so many enormous draws or just couldn't even get involved.

Goofball left; I left. I like the variety; I didn't enjoy how it went.

But I had a good NL/PLO session last night, so it looks like progress overall since last update: $489.85

This past session was the worst-feeling one yet, but when I see that my last update had my bankroll at a lower number, that's nice! Haha. (I'm also trying to avoid updating too frequently when a number going up and down is only so interesting.)

Sitting at $530.44, but it's been swingy since my last update. Was just under $600 for a moment.

I mean, these swings are really only so remarkable though. In any sitting, it's just been +/- 1-3 BIs, basically. nbd.

Ran super bad all-in today, though. I don't like that feeling any more than anybody else does! Got all-in in a 65/35, ran it twice and lost both. This was against a reg who is probably the most competent player (other than me, I hope) in my games and I think they played it really badly and got rewarded for it, honestly. (I can't easily run a sim for it to get a simple up or down answer on that, as it was a multiway pot with a pretty bad player between us. Long story short, I think they shoved at the bottom of their continuing range and had to know I was at the top of mine.)

In another spot, was all in with only a 13% chance of losing the whole pot (we had some chops) and that's what happened. Lost a lot of flips.

My games are good and I feel like I'm mostly playing well; I do feel like I've made some NLH mistakes that I don't feel were especially defensible, but it's hard to say sometimes against weak players. I think I'm really, really solid at bread and butter NLH, but sometimes in re-raised pots I feel a little lost (especially against super weak players).

As not to have this be merely an update in which I copy/paste a number and complain about running bad, I want to check in on some things I wanted to have define this reconnection with poker (not all of which I have mentioned or will have fully explored in writing... and heck, I may be forgetting something):

1. "Have fun"
This has mostly stayed true. I haven't played when I don't want to, and I've actually wanted to play pretty often (and had time to do so). Like I said, today's session had some bummer lows but I think I'm succeeding at not taking anything too seriously.

2. "Be slightly aggressive with BRM"

I've probably been a little more conservative than I could be, but I dunno: I don't feel like I'm erring on the side of languishing in rake traps. I'm trying to move out of 10c bb games (and so on) as quickly as possible, but I also don't want to be reckless.

3. "Buy in short to reduce stress"

I've been really happy with this decision, and buying in with or topping up to 100bb has been rare. In both PLO and NLH (at least in my games), you're only playing a pot bigger than 80bb so often anyway. As I said in the beginning, if I can frontload my decision making with the earlier streets of the game, I think that gives me the biggest edge I can have. (I definitely don't run away once I've built a stack, though; I know how to play with 60, 80, 100+ big blinds. I just want to avoid it when I first sit down.)

4. "Embrace the swings of the game"

This hasn't been as easy as I'd hoped! Like I said, today was a bit of a bummer, but... I dunno, I do think that--at least intellectually--I've done a much better job of accepting variance than I ever would have in the past. I'd like to write more about this in the future, but--in short--I know how little control I have over the outcome (even in a large sample) and I'm knowingly signed up for that this time around. While you can definitely see some "I deserve" thinking when I ruminate about losing some big pots in this update, that thinking is dominating my mind way, way less than ever before.

5. "Don't get bogged down in study; work with the skills you have and see where they take you in the current climate"

I don't think I really mentioned this part. Part of the premise--in my mind--was that I'd already done a lot of work, learned things that are kind of difficult to unlearn even in taking like three years off of playing (sophisticated stuff too; I feel like my NLH postflop solver study has stuck with me in a really enduring way), and I was ready to take on microstakes just with my existing knowledge.

But the part of me that felt like I was actually made of the right stuff to pursue poker full time has gotten the best of me here and there!

I get curious about spots and concepts, and I want to investigate them! Again, this is what made me feel like I was cut out to play full-time; I think you see a lot of people who like to play poker and like the idea of playing professionally until they're actually confronted with the grind, the stress, and the imperative to study.

Like, if you struggle to find motivation to study, I might say you should give up on playing full-time (though I might recommend against that for everyone, really). I digress.

Anyway, I ran a Monker sim overnight last night! I nearly swore to myself I wouldn't get into these weeds.

But already having a license for Monker and GTO+ makes "succumbing" to studying a lot more likely than if I didn't.

Now, I don't have enough RAM on my increasingly old and always modest PC to have actually run EXACTLY the PLO MTT sim I wanted to, but I was able to simplify things to get some insights that I found useful.

And--while I haven't signed up for RIO again or anything--I've been reading some free articles to refresh or instruct myself on some important ideas.

But I'm very pleased to report that I'm really not being drawn into a different mindset about playing even if I'm spending some time with Monker and stuff, which would have been the concern. I want to make good choices at the table and be as well-equipped to do so as I can, but I'm still extremely clear with myself that I want poker to remain a hobby.

But plenty of people are serious about their hobbies!

And--while part of the appeal of poker is the lack of ceiling on how profitable it can be--I'm always going to be able to make the most money with it if I am not drawing upon it for living expenses.

If I reach some of my bankroll goals or otherwise find significant success, will I draw from my poker bankroll to treat myself? Oh, probably!

But I just feel so resolutely clear about the idea of keeping poker a side thing. I hesitate to even call it "part-time" (even if lately I've had a lot of time to put in part-time-like hours).

I'd like for it to supplement my income, but I just refuse to let poker become a responsibility. An opportunity? Sure. I'm grateful that it's an opportunity that's back in my life.

But I'm also grateful that just thinking through hands (in real time, I mean) is back in my life. Even when I was really out on poker in my three year break, I would say sometimes that "I don't miss playing but I do miss thinking through hands at the table; that was fun".

You could be forgiven for thinking these are the same thing, but I think the difference is really important.

I didn't miss playing because playing--for me--wasn't fun and it wasn't meant to be fun. It hadn't been a diversion or merely "an opportunity" for a long time; I spent years trying to build a full-time poker career. That struggle wasn't fun, and that's largely what "playing" had meant for me.

But now it's very different. I'm just playing cards.

(If this update feels poorly-written, I sort of spent too much time on it and then had to run! No time to look it over again or complete all my thoughts!)

It feels annoying to update this blog so quickly after the last post, but...

I pulled up my past Run It Once blogs to just kinda skim them and refresh my memory of how my full-time aspirations went years ago.

Have you ever had the experience of desperately wanting to hug your past self?

I feel so bad for the guy who wrote those blogs (me).

He really ran so miserably poorly. It's not just a story I tell myself to cope with failing.

Tons of DriveHUD screenshots of a positive EV WR next to a negative WR, with relatively big samples representing one period or another.

I thought the following was the case but I also wanted to confirm: according to the primedope variance calculator, I had bottom 25% luck over like half a million hands.

Bottom 25% isn't even that extreme. It's just unlucky. It's losing a 75/25 all-in. Sucks, but it's literally supposed to happen a quarter of the time (like how often a reasonably good baseball player gets a hit; sort of unremarkable).

But when you live through it over a long stretch, you feel like the unluckiest person in the world. Especially when succeeding at poker is very important to you, both financially and personally.

It was a really disillusioning experience, which is why I now wouldn't wish full-time poker on my worst enemy. I have a lot of "neighbors" in this forum who think they can just skill-blast their way to a compelling living playing poker.

If any of them are reading this now, I implore them to find new poker goals. Playing full-time is not worth the stress or uncertainty.

Like, if you play with the primedope variance calculator (which I often would when trying to cope with my downswings and still do to keep things in perspective), you will see valleys in a mundane (but large) sample that would EVISCERATE most players' bankrolls in one way or another.

(Actually, this post is probably as good a prelude as any to exploring variance more in my next post. Maybe tomorrow!)

Gonna get the raw figure update out of the way and then actually write about something more substantial. +$109.73 (Edit: to be clear, this is the amount I've netted since starting to play again. It's not my net since my last update.)

(I'm changing how I'm reporting this; I'm still setting four figures profit--still call it $4k maybe--as the goal, but I don't want to disallow myself from adding to my bankroll, especially if it's not to replace losses. If I want to invest to play higher, I want to have that option. I haven't done that yet, but yeah: I'm going to share how much I'm up or down in terms of results, for the foreseeable future.)

Today sucked.

Wanted to play some MTTs, so I did. Whiffed all bullets after losing more than my share of all-ins.

Wanted to play some mixed cash, so I did. Got HU action on 13-game and 8-game tables (not at the same time) and I don't think anybody could have won with my run of cards. Lost a little less? Maybe. But it was just really rough; I think I played fine.

Finally, I fired 4 spin and gos (which I always enjoy for their brevity, upside, and weak opposition), and only cashed one, but it was 3x so I only lost one BI on that diversion. And the win was a nice note to end on. (I'm not a robot; sometimes these things matter to me.)

(If you haven't caught onto this by now, I enjoy playing different kinds of poker.)

Onto what I've been looking forward to writing about:

How to Reduce Stress by Looking at Variance

It sounds backwards, right?

Well, I can tell you that from two different (and arguably opposite) perspectives, it isn't.

I mentioned in my previous update that I would look at primedope's variance calculator to cope with downswings--just to keep things in perspective. It really shows you what's normal noise when you feel cursed. (A lot of us would do well to look at this noise when things are going well, too.)

That's one side of the insights available to us: that massive downswings are not the universe having a vendetta against you; they're actually really common, even given a positive winrate (even a pretty great one).

Since starting this blog, I've wanted to write a little bit about the inverse: what's possible if--when push comes to shove--you are a losing player (in general or maybe just in a session where you're not playing your best... any period or a career in which your true winrate is negative).

We all know that bad players get better than they "deserve" as a matter of course. It's what keeps them coming back. (I mean, it's what keeps us--hopefully winning players--coming back, too; we want to play with the losers so we can profit.) It's what makes tournaments so popular: everyone thinks that they just need the right run of cards to hit a massive score. And they're not really wrong, strictly speaking. The World Series of Poker Main Event has a lot of room for skill in its structure, but ultimately the winner has sometimes just been the dude who ran the best. (Insert your pet example of a bad "world champion of no limit hold 'em" here. Everyone reading this probably has at least one in mind.)

"Oh, but that's just short term variance; that ain't hip-hop. Er, poker."

You're not totally wrong, but--as many folks on this forum have written--the long run is actually very, very long.

And what I would like us to see is that--in most practical senses--the long run is too long to treat with anything but awed (but also jovial) humility. (Spoken like a guy whose poker career didn't pan out, eh?)

Did you know that--according to the primedope variance calculator--a slight loser at 6max NLH cash has almost a 28% chance of coming out ahead over half a million hands? Winning more than 200 buy-ins is their best outcome (again, according to this "calculator", which is more like a simulator in this case, if I'm not mistaken).

A PLO 6max player with the same "win" rate (slight loser) will come out ahead basically a third of the time in the same number of hands.

Does this mean we should throw strategy out the window and care nothing for EV because it's merely theoretical? Because the entire range of outcomes is so expansive and nothing we do actually matters if the deck doesn't like us?

Not quite. But honestly... close to it!

What you do in any individual hand of poker--in cash games especially (tournaments can become--like--unique opportunities, obviously)--is sort of like trying to change the weather in Japan by standing in California and throwing a pebble into the Pacific Ocean.

Okay, you have more control than that, but honestly? Not by all that much.

Obviously, you should expect very different outcomes when comparing absolutely punting with playing well, but--in terms of results--the difference between playing well and playing poorly is mostly randomness, across surprisingly large samples.

It takes 2.5 million hands of 6max NLH cash for a slight loser to only have a single digit (9%) chance of profiting in that sample.

The inverse of this is also true: a slight winner at that game--in 2.5M hands--will have lost money almost one in ten times.

Think about that: one in ten identically modestly "winning" poker players will have lost money after TWO AND A HALF MILLION HANDS.

Think about a group of ten people! A baseball team's starting lineup, let's say (both MLB leagues have a DH now and Shohei doesn't count so shut up). One of those ten dudes--having played just as well as the other nine--will end up with a radically different result, on average. Just because that's how poker works.

So, do we become total nihilists about it? Not on these forums, I don't think.

I've been thinking about writing about how little control we have for the entire life of this blog, but I spent last night and this morning "in the lab".

But this is the important distinction: I wasn't spending time in the lab to fool myself into thinking I have control over my results. I was spending time in the lab to develop more confident decision-making processes. However choppy the waters of variance may be, we can always train ourselves to navigate them better (whether strategically or emotionally).

All of the above may sound very results-oriented, but I mean for it to be the opposite.

Anyone who thinks they can just depend on their skill to garner results is literally delusional in this game. It's the romantic lie of poker. You see it in the graveyard of this particular forum.

Like, hey: I love Rounders. I suspect a lot of us love Rounders.

But Mike is so delusional. I hope that you know that, if you're reading this.

Don't be like Mike.

Focus on the process. Be as prepared as you can be for the ENTIRE range of outcomes, and--also--just take the results way less seriously. (Hint: you can't do this if you depend on the results for paying bills.)

If you do not find the process rewarding in itself, you are in the wrong "business". You are engaging in textbook wishful thinking and there is vanishingly little daylight between your mindset and that of a total rec who just fires at an MTT because "who knows; I could run good and win".

I'm so grateful to be back in poker, because the process of thinking through a hand--even in so-called "solved" NLH--tickles my brain. I'm not going to swear that I've perfectly memorized lines and ranges, but I do depend on the time I've spent with Monker and GTO+ to inform my decision-making. And even though a lot of people may think that sounds rote or whatever, every hand is different enough to me. And every game is at least a little bit different if you are game selecting with any intention at all. (Growing and shrinking the ranges for various actions is necessary against actual humans.)

It's all still fun to me, especially now that I'm way more disinterested in the results. (I mean, I want to do well! But I know it doesn't matter if I don't. Not really. And I know how little control I have; trust me.)

And even if I'm making mistakes or completely overestimating my edge... I might get bailed out by variance and win anyway! Over a pretty big sample, even (say, 2.5M hands)! Sounds fun!

Relax. Just play cards. As well as you can. Or as well as you want to; it's not my money! Punt it if you want to!

Conversely, study if you want to!

Just don't depend on the results, no matter what. It's such a terrible trap.

Incidentally: I'm really not attentive to PokerNews as a rule and I was not looking for anything like this when I stumbled upon it (I just ended up clicking article after article late last night), but I found it extremely validating that Greg Raymer said in

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2024/06/greg-raymer-world-series-of-poker-wsop-20th-anniversary-46370.htm

pokernews

Greg Raymer Reflects on Historic WSOP Main Event Win 20 Years Later

Poker is a fun way to raise the ceiling on your potential income. It is a ridiculously awful way to establish a floor. When you actually look at it soberly, it makes no sense.

Get someone to pay you regularly to do something for them (or, like, if you are successfully and sustainably self-employed doing something of actual value for clients or customers, that's cool too). Put some of that money (an amount you truly don't need) towards poker. Make money from poker, hopefully. If not, no big deal. (We already established that you didn't need the initial bankroll? Right? You only risked money you could afford to lose? Right? Right...?)

Don't let poker consume your life. It does not care about you and in all likelihood it will not keep a roof over your head. Roofs are expensive. So are downswings. And you can't buy roofs, food, medicine, bus tickets, birthday gifts, or even ballpoint pens with EV big blinds.

+$183.37

(That's it. That's the tweet. Reminder: this is how much I'm up overall since starting to play again, at microstakes.)

+$185.30

I'm in a very anti-MTT mood. I'm just running so badly in them lately. I'd be doing significantly better if I just hadn't played any since getting back into the game.

I do think I'm most enjoying NLH cash right now, so I expect to dedicate most of my monitor's real estate to that in the near future. While I feel pretty good about my theoretical foundation for playing (and that's fine and good), it really is the game that allows for the most creativity (and fewest showdowns) against weak players.

PLO opposition is just as bad as always, but you really do need the cards to cooperate in that game in a way that's far less true in NLH.

In NLH, I feel like I'm (perhaps foolishly) just giving myself the green light to be a little too loose-aggressive until someone does something about it (which--in the microstakes games I'm still playing--isn't happening). It's just kind of working, so I'm just kind of continuing to do it.

+$277.00 let's goooooooooooooo

+$347.42 how about just don't end this upswing ever how about that

+$364.40

I wanted to weigh in on the WSOP final table controversy.

Everyone saying "poker isn't a team sport" looks so ridiculous.

Tournament poker has effectively been a team sport for a really long time, for anyone with the network to make it such.

The only way to keep it from being a team sport is to ban selling/swapping action or staking players. If that sounds deeply impractical, it's because it is.

And even beyond that, once you've final tabled the WSOP main event, why wouldn't you be able to hire a coach to be on the rail to talk to you between hands?

As best I can tell, Tamayo broke no rules. If people want to discuss rule changes, I think that's totally fair.

But this "poker isn't a team sport" line is so absurdly laughable. I've never had any backing in poker and I do enjoy the "chip and a chair" "lone wolf" romance of it as much as anybody, but don't be delusional.

By the way, this isn't to say that I LIKE that people don't have all of themselves in tournament poker. I think it makes public success and failure in tournament poker completely misleading, and I will admit that I'm not entirely comfortable with the implicit collusion of players swapping pieces in the same tournament.

But you really can't keep players from piecing out their action. However, I would honestly prefer it (and I'm sure players would prefer it in a lot of cases, including for taxation) if tournament organizers facilitated the trading and selling of shares of entries.

Similarly, it's completely impractical to keep people from consulting information between hands, unless you completely change the environment of tournament poker (at least for final tables).

Do we need final tables to be played in isolation, with electronics confiscated? I don't think it's such a bad idea.

But drawing the line between the final table and any other stage feels somewhat arbitrary.

And this is all coming from someone who is pretty disenchanted with MTTs anyway, so who cares, haha.

+$401.20

I've played one session between my previous update and this one! Just had a ton of other stuff going on (nothing bad; just things that took time).

I've been getting really distracted from playing by various things (I've only played twice since my last post), but my sessions keep finding ways to go well. Thankful for tonight's spewy guests.

+$501.65

Maybe I take shots at NL50 soon?

I did take shots at NL50 and they went unremarkably well.

I won't be back at NL50 for a bit though, because I'm withdrawing the rest of the money I originally put into playing. This does mean a minor setback in terms of climbing stakes, but mentally it barely feels like anything because I had only started taking shots.

This also means I'm playing with pure profit, which is very satisfying.

This also means there's no reason for me to differentiate between my profits and my bankroll for the purposes of this blog: $579.73

I'm very slightly disappointed that I haven't made four figures to this point, but I really cannot complain at all. I've had a handful of challenging sessions but overall the deck has treated me pretty well.

But yeah: ~11 buyins for NL50 is more aggressive than I want to be, and I don't mind slowing down considering how amorphous my poker goals are. If I had to articulate my goals, I don't think I can do better than "keep playing and supplementing my income", and these are just as achievable at $10-$20 games as they are at $50+ games (especially if I keep decent BRM).

I'm in no rush to climb up to stakes where the games actually become challenging. If I find myself there (and find myself a winner), that's great, but picking up some extra disposable income at breezy tables is an acceptable outcome to me.

One of the things I keep wondering is just how ambitious I want to be with my poker career (which is more modest even than "part time" suggests). I have yet to rise to the level of my incompetence, but I know that level exists (particularly for NLH cash games). Like, I know what I'm doing, but I wouldn't bet on myself against others who know what they're doing. To this point, I'm just not especially competitive about the game in any ego-driven way anymore. There was a point in my poker career in which I really wanted to establish myself as a great player (especially in PLO), but I really don't care about that anymore.

Beating easy games is fun (and profitable), and--even if I do eventually confront the problem of if I want to play in tough games for potentially great rewards--that's not a question I need to answer anytime soon.

For the foreseeable future, I'm going to be playing against a bunch of easily-punished open-limpers and that's fine by me.

I haven't played since my last post, which is actually why I am posting.

I'm definitely going to continue playing here and there, but the reality is that I'm just not making enough time for poker for this to be an interesting journey to document frequently.

Just wanted to say good luck on your journey!

I'm in a similar situation as you when it comes to getting back into the swing of things after a long break, GTO and bankroll decisions.
I made the classic mistake of not playing enough and cashing out more than is required to stay at my level which has set me back quite a bit.

You're obviously a winning player but I have to agree strongly, 11 buyins is basically nothing these days with the increased aggression and swings and one bad session could crush your spirits.
I'd rather see you grind it out for real and take small shots occasionally, something that doesn't endanger your bankroll. Also try to find a good "time slot" for your poker sessions and stick with them. Soon enough you'll find that something is missing if you don't play a session. The amount of distractions these days compared to 2010 is unreal 😃