Playing Break-even Poker

Don't you just hate it when you've played a good number of games, and you check your stats, and realize that you've just been playing break even poker for the past few weeks.

For a grinder who plays a huge number of games, this is acceptable because of rakeback. But for myself and my limited number of games, rakeback is very small and negligible. So playing breakeven feels like a waste of time.

This is exactly the situation I find myself in July. Nothing really special. No big win streaks, no big losses either.

Of course, its better than losing. But at least when you're losing, you're trying to actively find the leak and analyzing your hands. When you're coasting along winning some and then losing it back, its like you're lost in a maze and you don't know where to go.

You don't know if you want to change your current playing strategies as it could just be variance and your playing style is already optimal. Changing something might suddenly cause you to play sub-optimal.

I think this is where playing with a group of poker savvy friends become a benefit. At least you can show them your hands and let them analyze it to see if improvements can be made. Unfortunately, my group of friends are all beginners in this game so I have to wait and let them mature before I can even discuss hands with them.

Oh well, at least I'm not complaining about a really unlucky streak. Let's hope it picks up in the next few days. =)

Back to the Tournament Trail?

I heard from pokermanila that an online Pinoy player just placed 3rd in the Pokerstars Sunday Warm up for a cool $62K and change. That's about 2.8 million pesos. Very nice score, indeed !!!

I've been stuck playing just SNGs this year due to time constraints. But this news has sort of gotten me thinking of trying the tourneys again.

I did fairly well last year (not to the point of reaching 5 figure cashes) when I exerted time and effort to join regular tourneys. My win/cash rate was OK and I had a positive ROI. My main problem was that tourneys just take too damn long and the good ones start after midnight philippine time. I am not exactly young and I need to get at least 6 or 7 hours of sleep to function well the next day.

Also, it was extremely frustrating to play 5 or 6 hours at a time, then just place in the money for 2x or 3x your buy-in. Tourneys are designed be top heavy but it really takes a lot of patience and a good amount of luck to hit top 3.

So hats off to the pinoy player. And this should show people who are still on the fence about online poker its potential. Imagine sitting at home, playing what is essentially a game in your PC and earning 2 million pesos.

Of course I'm oversimplifying things, but you get my point. =)

Multi-tabling SNGs

Let me just quickly write down my thoughts on this issue as this is relevant to my play now. For players just starting to multi-table, this should be an interesting post.

You will always hear from poker players everywhere that playing SNGs is all about the volume. Initially, I was hesitant to agree. I always thought that ROI was a better gauge of success. Profits will eventually follow. But I now realize I am wrong about this and will explain why. This is probably old information for some of you grinders, but should be good for the beginners.

My ave ROI in SNGs as a whole is somewhere in the 15% range. It is a decent ROI but this is achieved usually playing only 1 or 2 tables at a time. Assuming that I play 2 games in a day. This will total 60 games in a month. Assuming I play 11+1 SNGs. Then my total expected monthly profit for SNGs is 60 x 11 x 0.15 = $99

Now, let's see what happens if I multi-table SNGs which I have been doing only recently. For arguments sake, I will assume that I only play 3 tables at one time which is easily achieved. This means that I can play 6 games in one day or a total of 180 games in a month. Obviously my ROI will drop as I now pay less attention to each table. There are many calculations out there about how much your average ROI drops for every table you add. But for simplicity's sake, I will assume it will drop to a low of 6% which is a very conservative estimate for 3 tabling. Then my total monthly profit becomes 180 x 11 x 0.06 = $118.80

Even at this very simple monthly progression of 1 table to 3 tables and assuming a big drop in ROI. Your profit still grew by 20%. This is not even counting any rakeback or bonus or the added player points that you get for playing more games which translates to some value.

So same time spent for poker playing. But you get a higher overall profit at the end of the month. Common sense, right ?

Yes, your ave ROI drops. But at the end of the day, it is the time that you spend playing poker versus the profit that you get which is more relevant. In mathematical terms, it is the profit per hour.

OK, a note of warning. I am not saying that multi-tabling is automatically equivalent to better profits. The premise of this post assumes that you are a somewhat experienced winning player and you know the basics of SNG play, push/fold strategy, ICM, the relevance of Q and M, sklansky's gap concept, etc. Because as you begin to multi-table more and more tables, your decision time has to be quicker. Therefore, you have to be following clear cut rules on what hands to play/push/fold. There is not much time to analyze player tendencies and whether somebody is bluffing or not. It is all about making +EV decisions.

Therefore, the logic I have presented in this post is strictly not for beginners and especially not for negative ROI players. Beginners are better off learning the ropes by playing 1 table at a time. Only if you are already winning consistently in playing 1 table SNGs will you reap the benefits of multi-tabling.

As for myself, I have only started multi-tabling 3 tables consistently the past 2 months. So it is a little early to analyze my results. I have noticed a slight drop in my ROI, but so far so good. I will give further analysis on this maybe by the end of the year when I have accumulated more info.

Thanks for reading. =)

False Guarantees

Example No. 1
Car Battery company offers you 15 months full replacement warranty on their maintenance free whatchamacallit batteries. You happily buy one. Battery will almost all the time fail on the 16th or 17th month.

Obvious ba .... batteries are finite things... they will eventually lose the electrical charge and the plates will wear out. The battery companies have this computed exactly so their warranties will end right before this happens.

So those long warranties are actually marketing gimmicks. Very seldom do you encounter factory defective batteries since they're just plates enclosed in a box.

Example No. 2
Product on the internet ..... guaranteed to remove wrinkles, make your boobs grow bigger, make your dong longer .............100% satisfaction or your money back .

Gullible customer whips out credit card and swipes away .......... product comes to you via mail ... nicely packaged in a bottle with some murky green liquid inside .......... ooooh

Applies it religiously every day ........ waits the requisite 2 weeks stated on the box ............. looks at it ......... and doesn't see any difference .... except for a green fuzz that is growing on the shaft ..........

Livid with anger ... calls up the 1800 hotline which is now non existent ...... CHAching

Example No. 3
Announced Poker Tournament .... 500K Guaranteed ...........Buy in is only 5K........... WOW ..

Smaller print says that tourney will only start if 100 players are present ..........

Are you smarter than a 5th Grader ?
Math Question .... What is 5K multiplied by 100 ?
English Question .... What is the definition of GUARANTEE ?
Ethics Question ...... Are you even for real ?