Poker Year in Review

I’ve been very busy with work and life, and I haven’t had as much time to play poker lately. Certainly not as much as in the past, or as much as I would like. But I do still think about the game all the time – strategy, hand analysis, branching out into other games.

Live Poker

Live poker has been great for me this year. I had some very successful Vegas trips, good results in local cash games, and a nice local tournament score. I have worked on and improved my player reading ability, and this is what I like the most about poker. I have a very good feel for the game when sitting with real players, and the math and strategy aspects of the game that I have learned over the last several years is now second nature in live play.

On-Line Poker

On-line poker has sucked this year. I cannot win the Chiptalk tournament. The fish have largely dried up due to legal restrictions on deposit. The games are tougher now, and even the low level games are populated by more skilled and tricky players. On-line play is becoming closer to my Clone Theory every day – the majority of the on-line players are closer in skill, and the results therefore reflect luck and variance rather than differences in skill.

In years past, it was fairly easy to win. I took a single $200 deposit and ran it up to several thousand dollars spread over several sites over a period of a few year. I played a slow, steady game and gradually built a bankroll at several sites. The Poker Horror Story took a nice bite out of my on-line bankroll, but I fully recovered.

Then the new laws went into effect. New deposits were restricted, so much less new money was coming into the game. Moving my funds between sites was cut off when NetTeller was shut down. As a result, all of my funds were pooled in my PokerStars and FullTilt accounts. Then the games went bad, and now I cannot win.

To compound problems, for the last half of this year I have been on the worst ice-cold streak of my poker playing history. I cannot count how many times I have put my money in as a 75%+ favorite and lost. I cannot cash in a freakin’ $10 SNG! Last night all the money went in and Villain had 6 outs on the river, making me about a 84% favorite. Exactly as expected, one of his outs hit. It happens so often that it is now routine. I expect to lose.

All this has combined to nearly eviscerate my on-line bankroll. This is so sad, because there was a time when winning on-line was routine. So I ask myself – have I lost my skills? Am I doing something wrong? How could I run $200 up to around $6000, and now I absolutely cannot win at anything? Why do I win in live play, but lose on-line?

I guess I have answered these questions for myself already – deposit restrictions dried up the fish, tougher players remain, games are harder, I have little or no edge over my opponents since they are all equal to or better than my skill level, and variance kicks into create losing streaks from which I cannot recover. In addition, from what I can pick up in my readings, there are more players using data mining tools, Poker Tracker and other statistical or tracking software, and there is obviously collusion and cheating. All of this has some negative effect on a casual player's overall results. How much, I am not sure.

Branching Out On-Line

But I love to play the game! What’s a hobby poker player to do? Well, I have dropped down in limits, but soon I will have no funds left if this trend continues. Also, I am looking into other games. Hold ‘em is fun and popular, but everyone had read the same books and everyone knows how to play like Harrington, Ferguson, Bruson, Negreanu, Sklansky, etc. I have the feeling that there are many games out there that play like PartyPoker NLHE circa 2005.

I cracked open the FullTilt Tournament book in the last few weeks and read the Matusow chapter on Omaha HL and the Ferguson chapter on PLO. Matusow really knows what he’s talking about with Omaha-8 The same with Ferguson’s chapter on PLO. Ferduson's chapter has completely re-aligned my approach to starting hand values in Omaha – it really is very different that hold ‘em. I expect that the edge right now in PLO is beating the legions of players that apply hold ‘em strategy and starting hand values to PLO.

I will have the opportunity to play the Ameristar this week, so there will be one more live session to round out the year.

New Chips

After purchasing nearly every sample set ever made, I finally made another purchase – a new 1400 set of the Dunes commemorative chips. Paid from my live poker bankroll. I believe the Dunes chips are, by far, the best looking chip available in the moderate to low price range. Actually, I think they look as good or better that the Pharaohs. The replica Dunes house mold is and inlay are classic. For a plastic chip, the sound is wonderful, almost exactly like clay.

Do I need another chip set? No, but collecting is an affliction, so I do not fight it. And, I will be giving away my original dice chip set, so I need something in replacement.