My Year in Poker

This time last year, I set four major poker goals for myself. It’s time now to review and evaluate the year in light of those goals:

Goal 1: Make $X Playing Poker Failed

Sorry, but as usual, I don’t want to specify my exact goal or my exact income. I will say, though, that the goal was very ambitious, and I ended up making only a little more than 60% of what I hoped to make. This was largely a matter of not putting in enough hours. My goal assumed both a range of hours I might average playing in a week and a range of what I hoped an hour of playing poker would be worth to me in 2007. I ended up at the low end of my hourly rate, but the real problem was that I was hoping to play 30-40 hours a week and ended up playing a little less than 25. There’s a graph of my cumulative profits at the end of this post.

Goal 2: Be a Winner at 10/20 NL Achieved

I was playing 3/6 NL when I played cash towards the end of 2006, but that was also about the time that the UIGEA passed and the games got tougher. I ended up dropping down as low as .5/1 NL and working my way back up. A few months ago, I was not optimistic that I would achieve this, but I have. Although I’m not at the point where I’ll just sit down in any 10/20 NL game that’s going, with good game selection and over a small sample size, I’ve been a pretty substantial winner at 10/20 and 10/25 NL. Specifically, I’m at 10.3 BB/100 over 3000 hands. And that actually doesn’t count two of my most profitable heads up sessions whose hand histories I failed to grab (stupid UB).

Goal 3: Master Other Forms of Poker Achieved
This one was a little more vague, but I wanted to be good enough to beat some Stud games at some of the higher limits and to be comfortable playing the smaller WSOP events in these games. I didn’t end up playing any of these WSOP events, but I think I definitely would have been profitable in the Razz and Stud/8 events, and I did final table major PLO8 and Stud/8 internet tournaments.

I’m at 2.5 BB/100 at 15/30 Razz (though I’m a loser at 20/40 and 30/60- all three over small samples), I’m a big winner at 3/6, 5/10, and 10/20 Stud/8. To my surprise, I ended up having the most success at PLO and PLO8, which were two of my worst games until very recently. Over 7K hands, stakes from 1/2 to 5/10, I’m running at 6 BB/100.

Goal 4: Start a Poker Blog Achieved

I’ve really enjoyed writing this, and I think it’s helped my game tremendously to review and articulate my play every day. I’m especially flattered that I’ve managed to keep the attention of some non-poker players, such as my father, my friend Mike, and his father, who nevertheless tell me they enjoy keeping up with my exploits. For the sake of ‘the outsiders’, I should explain the BB/100 notation. BB actually stands for big bet, which is twice the size of the big blind. It’s a term that originated in fixed limit poker and doesn’t transfer well to NL and PL games.

So when I say I’m running at 2.5 BB/100 at 15/30 Razz, that means that I’ve made 2.5 * $30 = $75 for every 100 hands I’ve played of Razz at those stakes. But 10 BB/100 at 10/20 NLHE means I’ve made 10*$20*2 = $400 for every 100 hands I play of NLHE at those stakes. These large numbers are owing to a small sample size over which I’ve enjoyed some above average luck and also some extreme selectiveness about which games I’ll play. In other words, I make this much because I only play this high when the games are particularly good. I can’t just sit down and make that kind of money whenever I want.

Other Accomplishments and Disappointments

1. Cashing for a second time in the main event of the World Series of Poker was of course a huge thrill. If you haven’t already, you should check out the trip report. I think it’s some of the best writing I’ve done.

2. Although I spent an entire day at the ESPN feature table during the 2006 World Series of Poker, I actually saw more air time this year when I eliminated well-known professional Barry Greenstein. The autographed copy of his book that he gave me is a treasured souvenir from the experience.

3. Every Sunday, the major internet poker sites all offer their largest tournaments of the weak with buyins ranging from $100-$1000 and some drawing thousands of entrants. I spend most of my Sundays grinding my way through for five or ten of these and end most of my Sundays with suicidal ideations. That’s how frustrating it is trying to navigate these huge fields. But I did finally win one of them last month, the $200K Guarantee on Ultimate Bet.

4. In March, the editor of 2+2 Internet Magazine invited me to start contributing to the monthly publication. I’ve published an article in every issue since, and my 11th should be published tomorrow. Even though it’s just an internet magazine, the pay is decent, and it’s very flattering to be affiliated with the publishers of what are, in my opinion, the highest quality poker books on the market.

5. My biggest disappointment of the year was not winning satellites to any international tournaments. I had a great time last year at EPT Barcelona, and while I didn’t play a ton of satellites, I played enough that even as a break-even player it was more likely than not that I would have won something. The closest I came was finishing fourth in a tournament where the top two were going to get seats. I lost a coin flip to a guy who made what I consider a pretty bad call with AK.

6. Despite a few big wins, my Return on Investment in tournaments this year was a fairly lackluster 23%. It’s pretty much impossible ever to play enough tournaments to get a meaningful sample size, but I think my true ROI is probably around 50%, meaning that I experienced considerably below average luck in the 872 tournaments I played this year.

Year-Long Graph

This pretty well reflects the mix of tournaments and cash games that I play. I win pretty consistently at cash games, slowly growing my bankroll and offsetting frequent, small tournament losses. Then occasionally I make a big score in a tournament- you can see clearly where the WSOP and the UB 200K occurred.

Tomorrow, I’ll have another post about my poker goals and resolutions for the New Year.