Zero To Sixty

As you can see from my poker blog, I had attempted a fun experiment: To see if I could start with zero money and make it to $60,000 from just online poker. I believe my overall process was spot on and doable: Start by winning money in a sit’n'go or freeroll tournament and then use those winnings to play cash tables. There were two problems with this:

1) Tournaments are susceptible to luck.

• It’s not an accident that Emmanuel Lasker and Garry Kasparov were world chess champions for years: They were head-and-shoulders above every player around them. There is very little luck involved in competitive chess at a very high level.
• You don’t see this in poker. Even the great players don’t dominate like you see in other individual sports. Winning the World Series of Poker three years in a row? Nearly impossible, even for incredibly talented players.

2) Cash tables are incredibly boring

• Right now, I bet I could win $100 to $200 a day just playing the low stakes tables in online poker rooms. But there is a big problem: I find cash games incredibly boring. All it really takes is patience and discipline. So you sit there minute after minute, hour after hour, just mindlessly turning cards over, and the few moments of excitement are anti-climactic–you either get hit with a bad beat or you win a big pot off of the really poor players at the table.

As a result, I just couldn’t continue with this experiment. It was alternately frustrating and boring. Winning a freeroll takes a tremendous amount of luck, and my whole idea was to minimize luck with knowledge. Unfortunately, in chess tournaments, it is extremely hard to minimize luck.

This means that I’m going to drastically curtail my poker play, making my poker site somewhat irrelevant. I’ll keep it up for the occasional poker post and update, but my attention now is going to be aimed at something more interesting: Writing.

I’ve decided to work on my three current projects, pretty much simultaneously: My mystery novel, my science fiction novel, and my Twitter novel. Over the next few weeks I’ll set up a way to track these via this or other websites.

As I mention numerous times on this blog, this is a standard situation for me–my life is a series of tangents that I follow and then abandon (e.g. poker) when I get bored. I then follow the current of my life in some new direction. And that new direction now is writing.

Oh my goodness, I haven’t updated this blog in ages, and there is quite a bit of news. Let’s get caught up, shall we? Okay, on Carbon Poker I got in the money on a freeroll. That gave me a bankroll of a little more than $1.00. I took that bankroll and then started playing cash tables (as I said in my plan). Starting with 2/4 penny cash tables, I actually built my bankroll up to around $50.00. Then things went bad.

There were some ups and downs, but three single hands took me from $50 to less than $2! The first was an ace high flush where I went all-in and then lost to a full house. That took me to around $30. Then I went all-in again with an ace high flush and, you guessed it, lost again to a full house. I’m not sure how often that happens, but it just devasted my bankroll.

I was down to about $11 and then went all-in against a loose-aggressive player with 99 preflop. This came shortly after I had lost in the secon full house, and clearly I was making poor decisions and was on tilt. I lost to an overpair draw and that took me all the way down to pretty much exactly where I started–less than 2 dollars.

I had no choice but to start at the 2/4 penny level again, and it didn’t take me long to get to $5. I then switched to nickle/dime blinds cash games, and in three days I find myself back up to $20. Actually, I’m finding the nickle/dime cash games quite lucrative. I don’t win the big $20 pots, but I also lose extremely rarely and can easily make $5-$10/night.

The downside, of course, is that I will never make it to $60K at that pace. So I have a new plan. The first part is that I will only commit one third of my bankroll max at each cash table session. The second is that I will accelerate up the limits much slower. As you can imagine, I previously quickly went up to the 50 cent/1 dollar blinds level and that’s what wiped me out quickly. I believe by taking it more slowly, I’ll be better prepared for the chip and knowledge requirements of a higher level.

The other downside is that I’m not earning enough comp points on Carbon Poker to qualify for high dollar value freerolls. As a player, you receive comp points for playing cash games, and the higher the level, the more comp points you earn. If you earn 2,000 comp points over three days, you qualify for free entry into $1k and $2K tourneys. Part of my plan was to play plenty of $1K and $2K freerolls, but that plan will have to wait until I can handle the cash games that generate the comp points to let me qualify for those.

All in all, I’m in a good spot: Not broke and still learning!

Too Much Is… Too Much

I’ve cut down on my poker play, as I’ve been playing just way too much. I still play quite a bit, and I can see my play continue to improve, but I’m not playing six hours a day. I am going to focus on one freeroll every few days.

Progress

While I still haven’t finished in the money in a cash tournament, I can see evidence of my improved play. In the Carbon Poker Sit’n'go tourneys, I’ve made it to the third round in two of my last three attempts. I also am generally well-placed in tourneys heading into the first break. What knocks me out? Almost always a bad beat. For example, tonight I was kicked out of a freeroll on Absolute Poker when my pocket tens got beat by an under pair that matched with a second pair on the river.

Bummer

Earlier today I made it to the final two in the funstep 3 sit’n'go tourney on Carbon Poker. If I won,  I would have earned a full dollar. Hey, it’s something!

Anyway, I was up 5,000 chips to 1,000 and really was moving in for the kill, when I had to leave to do something with the family. So, I’ll take it as a moral victory, even though I had to forfeit my spot.

If you can’t really begin to learn until you realize just how much you don’t know then I’m hitting that point with poker. I’ve memorized opening hole cards. I understand the concepts of pot odds and outs. I’ve mastered my emotions so that I have the discipline and patience to pick my spots, but after reading through Matthew Hilger’s Texas Holdem: Odds And Probabilities I feel like I’m still a rank amateur.

Looking over the concept of stack sizes, assessing effective implied pot odds, and the winning odds of things like backdoor straights and belly buster straights just adds a whole level of complexity that I didn’t even consider. I mentioned this in my “donk” post earlier, but it bears repeating: In no-limit, it sometimes makes sense to make plays that you normally wouldn’t.

This is going to be a real challenge for me, as it adds quite a bit of mathematical complexity. Imagine figuring out the odds of hitting a two gapped straight draw from the flop to the river with one overcard, while also assessing the implied odds of a stack going all-in including what the turn bet will be. Not easy.

One change for me is that I’m much more likely to play low pairs, especially against significant raises, as the odds of hitting a set, while low, can pay off huge in no-limit tourneys. In fact, this happened to me tonight, and while the result wasn’t what I hoped, the actual play was pitch perfect to my mind:

It’s early in an Absolute Poker Freeroll. I’m in late position with a bunch of typical loose freeroll players. Blinds are only $25/50 and the key players have early stacks in the $1500 to $2500 range. My stack sits at $1420. I’m dealt:

A loose player raises to $250. In the past I would fold 55 immediately. But it’s clear that I could easily win this guy’s whole stack if I hit a set and take him to the river. So even though the odds of me hitting a set are low with the pot size, the effective odds with me nabbing his whole stack (something like 25 to 1) are too good to pass up. I figure I’ll hit the flop, miss the set and fold. A player behind me also calls, and three of us go to the flop. The flop comes:

And just like that I hit my set. My next worry is to make sure it will hold. At this point I have two thoughts: Are there any traps for me and how can I extricate two full stacks with this?

I was relatively unconcerned about the flop. There are no flush dangers yet, and the only straight possibility is 34. While 34 is a possible holding I found it highly unlikely. Of course, there is always the possibility that he or the other person were holding 66 and have me beat with a higher set, but I found it more likely that I was facing something from AA to even JT from the maniac.

The answer to my second question came quickly: Loose player in early position went all-in. I pushed, and late position player also went all-in. Loose player showed:

Loose player went all in with top pair and mediocre kicker. His only hope is to hit the hail mary straight with an 89, 34, or 48 dropping. Possible, but a pretty big long shot. I, of course, showed my triple 5s, but then late player showed his hand:

Another favorable holding for me! Even if he hits a set I beat him. His only hope is drawing a 3 on the turn or river, which is around 4.5 to 1 against. I have a 70% chance of winning both stacks, and it happened because I called with this scenario entirely in mind! Unfortunately for me, here is what the turn and river delivered:

And late caller hits his hail mary straight on the river! I have to admit that it didn’t really bring me down. If I’m in that position 7 out of 10 times I’m walking away with two big stacks.

I need to do a lot more analysis and study of how various holdings can play out to the river with the effective implied odds, but my rudimentary knowledge has already improved my game, if not my results… yet.

I feel pretty good despite the fact that my bankroll is still pathetically low. The reason is that I can see some real growth in my play. All of these grind-it-out tourneys against maniacs and loose players seem to be a pretty good training ground.

On example of progress is in the Carbon Poker Funstep sit’n'go tourneys. These are play money sit’n'gos where when you get past the first two rounds, you actually play for $1 in real money in the third round. In the past I’ve had to play about 4 times or more in round 1 tourneys to win and move on to a round 2 one. Now I’m pretty much a lock to move on to round 2.

One of the differences is that I’m getting better at heads up play. Playing heads up over and over again is grueling, but I’m starting to see some real patterns develop and an underlying key strategy. It’s obvious but not easy: Minimize your losses from middling and poor hands and maximize your profits from big hands.

To my mind this often means folding against early raises. I guess if I think about it, favorable pot odds in heads up are hard, if not impossible. So playing for any kind of draw is dubious unless you have an extraordinary number of outs.

One side effect of this is that if I have a much bigger stack it can be incredibly demoralizing playing against me heads up. I just don’t call a lot of bets unless I have a good hand, and them I’d most likely re-raise. As a result, it takes someone a LONG time to make progress against me. I like that.

Anyway, I feel good. I’m getting better, and it’s starting to show in my results.

I generally use a reference of starting hands so that I don’t get too loose on my opening bets. I misplaced it and found myself just playing “off the cuff.” The result has been some pretty poor poker by me. I got very undisciplined and lazy. I was playing hands I never should be playing like Q8 and I was betting aggressively with middle pair in poor position.

The good news is that I quickly realized this was an issue and got back on track. I did break one of my rules and immediately got burned for it. I generally will never go all-in with unpaired cards unless one is an ace. A very loose player went all-in, and I had KQ. His range of hands could have gone everywhere from AA to T9. I put him on a mediocre hand and went all-in. He had A9, but it was the A that killed me… he won with A high, and my rule proved to be there for a reason: Ace high on all ins is a fairly common winning hand when pairs aren’t in the pockets.

I’m not sure if I’ll have time to participate in the Bodog free roll tomorrow night, but I am planning on starting tomorrow. One of the funny things about large freerolls is that in the early rounds, a lot of people join with the idea of just rolling the dice and building large stacks of chips in the first few hands. They do this by putting all their chips into the middle of the table for their first bet, even if they have lousy cards. If they win and get that large pile of chips, then they continue playing normally. If they don’t, then they are out and no money lost (after all, these are freerolls!).

I’m not a big fan of this strategy, but I certainly am open to taking advantage of the situation. If I get a powerful set of hole cards tomorrow, I’ll go all in and collect the chips. So, let’s hope that my first two cards are…

That would be nice.

For this adventure, there are very few ground rules, but the rules themselves are important. Here they are:

1. I cannot start with, add, deposit, or in any way shape or form increase the money I am able to work with.
   • This includes not only myself but deposits or gifts from others.
   • When I get to $60,000, it must all be pure winnings.
2. I can only include winnings from poker. This includes all types of poker, from razz to stud, but the truth is that I pretty much foresee myself only playing no limit hold’em.
3. I am free to use any online poker room, but it must be online. If I happen to win money in a brick and mortar casino, that doesn’t count.
4. I am free to withdraw money for personal use at any time. While this will lower the money I can use in stakes games, it still counts as winnings.
   • This also means that if I withdraw money, I can re-add it to my account.
   • In other words, this is a net income game. At the end of the road, I need to simply have won $60,000 more than I have lost in online poker, starting with zero and not depositing any non-winnings money.
5. There is no time limit.

Okay, if I think of any more, I’ll update the rules, but basically it’s pretty simple: From zero to sixty via online poker.