Your paper level goes...

Wow the $55s have been absolutely humiliating over the past week... just, wow. It's true what they say, you won't really understand how a downswing of x buyins feels until you've hit it yourself. Well, now I know what this one feels like:

Have you been to the carnival?

Had a horrific day at work today that's motivating reflection on holding down this job. I'll spare you the details, but I work at the repair department of a major electronics retailer (yes, that one). When I took the job a year ago, it seemed like a lot of money (at least, better than the $10/hr I pulled working customer service for UPS). Now the job is major -$EV, since it wears me out and makes it impossible to put in good table hours after a shift. Thankfully, cost cuts from upstairs forced management to cut everyone's hours by 1/3, so I only work 2 days a week now. I guess at the risk of going all tl;dr, I should get to the point.



The job is important. It gives me a compelling reason to leave the house: I've made committments to my co-workers (who I dig) and I don't back down on committments that I make to people (committments to organizations fall under a different category). So my fear is that if I become a "professional poker player", I'll start making all the decisions in my life based on $EV. Quitting my job, not getting enough exercise, never socializing; these things come naturally to me, and the last thing I need is a good excuse to encourage them. The take-home is that EV(Dollars) is not equal to EV(Life), and all the fat slobs you see at the WPT/WSOP are the proof.



The $55s have been good to me so far; really good to me. Better than those slunch-ass $33s. Let's just say my max OOTM streak is only 2 more than my max ITM streak.



This message self-destructed like 3 minutes ago.

Then a flower grew out that sand...

Interesting 2+2 post from a long-respected poster as he spirals the 57 buyins to busto. It's worth looking in to how different people view busto. Suzzer doesn't seem to have that much of a problem with hitting bottom, reloading and grinding back up. I've been playing with other people's money since day 3, so for me to lose all that and have to start over with my money would devastate me, to the point of quitting poker forever, or at least no longer viewing it as a money-making enterprise.



So think about what busto would mean to you and poker, and if you couldn't handle it (as I couldn't), keep super-close track of your play, and drop the fuck down if you get outside your [insert corny Caro-ism for "comfort zone"]. My first advice is to use the spreadsheet. Set it up properly and it will tell you all you need to know about your expected wins, winning confidence, and intervals on $/tourney and ROI and all that good stuff. If you know Excel, you can even write your own addons (RB calculator is great--not for Party, obv.) If you have trouble figuring out just how the fuck Excel works, keep in mind the 50-buyin guideline-- if you get below 50 BIs, drop. If you get below 50 BIs at that level, drop.

This hearkens back to the ego thing. The first step to being successful at pokah is to leave ego at the door. It will only blind you to the odds. This was never hard for me, since I assume I'm a failure at whatever I'm doing no matter how much evidence stares me in the face. Every time I load a table, I feel like I'm the worst player at the table, until some 14-year-old playing on daddy's credit card raises me on the river with the bottom 1-card straight. That makes it better.

We out like Stephen Noon.

Voracious Appetite

I saw something at a $55 today that really brought home how a mediocre player like me can stack bizzles at these things. I hate grabbing HHs so I'll just describe the situation: It's on the bubble, fairly tight, blinds are 300/600 and the stacks are pretty even. Play has been all-around excellent, and I'm gritting my teeth fretting that it's going to be another one of "those" bubbles where the blinds get so high that ITM lasts all of 3 hands. SB slightly covers BB & has pushed the last three times it's been folded to him. The 4th time SB pushes into him, BB types "gotcha" and flips over ATo. After SB busts, he continues to talk trash about the guy all the way thru the tourney.

"Got him with the hand in the cookie jar."

"Can't believe he put it all on the line with that trash."

Now I'm not one to frown on a bruv for trash talking but 1) those lines sound like they were cut from "WPT" (or maybe eXtreme PokAh Dethmatch or whatever trashbox poker shit they show on TV nowadays) and 2) THAT WAS A FOLD YOU DONKEY!

I showed the restraint and equilibrium of an Orthodox monk by not pointing this out to him, but the other guy at the table (TLB member) decided to let him know that it "was a XXXX call". Now the question, I guess, is: who is making the worse decision there? The donk, or the TLB grinder--who acted like he either had an active financial interest in sharpening the donk's game, or simply couldn't pass up a perfect opportunity to point out his superior poker knowledge? All the while, I'm practically in post-and-fold mode while the tilt at the table reaches San-Fran-In-1906 levels.

And I realze it might be a little harsh to call the guy a donk for one silly call, but come on people, this is the $55s. It's not cheap to make mistakes like that. I stand by my donkcrimination.

We out like Moscow.


Oh and btw,

Sustainable

Over my first 42 $55s I have a 53% ROI. Transport it via maritime channels, batch. My biggest worry whenever I jump levels is that I'll hit some sick -40 buyin downswing and be forced to drop back down. Although this has never happened, and I doubt that it would be as devastating as I assume, I still cannot release this particular neurosis. Nice to be able to overcome it with a nice 23-sized up.

Another poker blog

Thank god another small-stakes 2-bit poker dilettante decided to start another seldom-updated, cry-for-help poker blog.

My name is crzylgsjaxon. In 6 months of poker I've gone from $.25/.50 limit and $6.50 SNGs up to $5/10 and $55s, with stops at NL Cash, Omaha Hi-Lo and MTTs, and gone from working 50 hours a week at my crappy $14/hr job to working 12-20 hours and playing poker to pick up the slack.

This blog exists first to provide advice and guidance to the those who are new to poker and second to provide a public airing of my results, in the hopes that making them public will help me deal with the demon-whore that is variance when I'm losing, and give my ego a good stroking when I'm winning. Other raisons d'êtres may emerge as I slog forth.