Playing online for a living, Year 2 - Penthouse to outhouse

[davidross]

I find it hard to believe that it’s been 2 years already since I last worked at a conventional job. As of the end of April my 2nd year of playing full time online poker is complete. If I look at the year as a whole, it was certainly a great year, but it’s hard to feel enthusiastic about it since it finished with a terrible drought.

My first year was very well documented. I went through a lot of things for the first time. I changed limits, moving both up and down, I changed sites, and I added extra tables. I had my first serious losing streaks. I established a routine regarding when I would play, and for how long. In short it was an adventure.

The second year became much more like a regular job, although not really like any job I’d ever had before. When the year began, I had just made the move to the 15/30 game. I had averaged around $1,600 a week over the first year, which included 6 months of 3/6, and 6 months of 5/10 6 max. When year 2 began I felt like I’d discovered the goose that laid the golden egg, I was up 56K in the first 10 weeks alone, and by the 26 week halfway mark I was up 123K for the year. I was actually making money faster than my wife could spend it and we began putting money away towards a 2nd story on our house that we had talked about for ages but never really thought it would happen. My wife was working full time now for the first time in our married life, and life was really great.

The only real significant change I made during the year was adding tournaments to my usual routine. It started as a whim to try and qualify for the WSOP, but became almost an obsession for me. I went to Vegas for the series and met up with some posters I had corresponded with a lot, and still do, eMark and Sobe Dude. Sobe managed to get a seat while eMark and I missed out and took in the side action and the atmosphere, and I vowed to go back again and play. I had certainly gotten the tournament bug and started playing them each night. I started with $10 and $20 buy in’s but didn’t take long to move up to the $100 and $150 Super tournaments they ran each night at Party. I kept 2 bankroll’s, one at Party for tournaments, and one at Empire where I played all my ring games for the rakeback. I was very fortunate to have an $18,000 2nd place fairly early on that gave my bankroll a big boost, and I did manage to win 5 times over the course of the year, although never a “super”, just the $100 NL’s.

Playing tournaments kept the game fresh for me, because to be honest playing the same games every day could get a little tedious. I played every day, 2 sessions on weekdays, and evening sessions on the weekends. I was making enough money to take time off whenever ai wanted, but usually I played every day. If I went deep into a tournament I would skip playing ring games for that night, but other than that it was business as usual. There is no doubt I spent my non-playing hours thinking about tournaments. I went to Foxwoods in November for the World Poker Open and tried to qualify for the main event, but just like the WSOP I came up well short. Playing live is a whole new ballgame for me, and the structure and speed of the satellites just doesn’t fit my natural game. The limits go up pretty fast, and you really get a small number of hands during that time, you really can’t sit back and wait for premium hands. I really need to play more of these to get used to them.

The week I went to Foxwoods was the first bad week I had all year for ring games. Over 6 months of playing I had only 2 losing weeks, and neither of them was over $700. I left for Foxwoods on a Wednesday and in the 3 days leading up to that I lost $7600. I spent $4K on entry fees at Foxwoods and won back around $2K in ring games, making it a very expensive week. But when I came back I went on a rush, winning $30K in the next 4 weeks heading into Christmas. I booked a February Cruise for the Family and we had a great Christmas where I took a week off from playing.

By this time I was making sure to take time off when I could. For the first time ever I was feeling it physically. I kept very strange hours, usually playing until 3 or 4 in the morning, then getting up to make breakfast and pack lunches for my kids before going back to bed. The end result though was I could go weeks without sleeping more than 4 hours at a time. My mother told me at Christmas time that I looked tired, and I vowed to try and take a few more breaks from playing. When January started I was still on a roll, so much so that on the 20th of January I did something I had never done before, I cashed out in the middle of the week.

I have never been comfortable leaving a lot of money in the poker accounts. For 15/30 I didn’t like letting it get below $8K, but my routine was to cash out my regular withdrawal every second Saturday, and if my balance was real high I would take out a big chunk and move it to our house fund. Because of a great run I found myself on a Wednesday night with over $30K in my account and I decided to take out $20K. I didn’t know it then but I wouldn’t make another withdrawal from Empire for 4 months. I had run bad before, I had a 4 week stretch the previous January where I broke even. Maybe I will just take January off next year. But I sure wasn’t prepared for the run I went on now. I lost $7K in the next 4 days of that week, then $9500 the next week. I had a $5,800 single day loss, more than double the biggest amount I had ever lost before, followed by a $3,200 loss the next day, completely wiping out my Empire bankroll. I was forced to start playing ring games at both Party and Empire giving up some rakeback while I tried to move funds back to Empire.

The first week of February, the 6 of us went on a cruise out of Miami, to the Bahamas, St Thomas, Puerto Rico and Haiti. The break couldn’t have come at a better time, giving me a chance to get my thoughts back together. I came back ready to get back on track, but it didn’t happen. The night we got home I made $1200 and thought January was just a blip on the radar, but the next 2 weeks were both losers again. I had only had 2 single day losses over 2K all year, and now I had 8 of them in a 4 week period. Over 28 days, 19 of them were losers for me. And I made all the mistakes bad players made during this stretch. I played long hours when I was stuck, and I quit early if I got up trying to protect a win. Now a lot more people than my mother told me I looked tired. I wasn’t sleeping much, and when I did go to bed I couldn’t sleep. You think about a lot of things when you’re running bad. You wonder if it’s just the cards or if you’re game has somehow changed. Maybe the games have gotten tougher. Maybe I’ll have to find a real job again. My wife was seriously concerned about my health. As my frustration grew, my usual sunny disposition clouded over. I found myself cursing the computer over and over again. My wife couldn’t handle listening to me and started watching TV upstairs. I found myself playing after the kids came home in the afternoon trying to get unstuck, then getting mad at them when they interrupted me to tell me about their days. I really wasn’t enjoying myself anymore. I posted about the losing streak and got quite a mixture of replies. From the long time posters I got constructive criticism’s and “hang in there” kind of replies. From a large number of posters I got scathing criticism’s of my play going so far as to question how I’d ever been able to win at all. Not only did I begin to question my own ability, I think at this point my game really did begin to deteriorate.

There are a lot of ways to lose. Some days you just can’t win a pot. You don’t get many hands to play and when you do, they just don’t hit the flop. Slowly you get ground down. It happens all the time, and you have a small losing day. Some days you get lots of good cards, but seem to win just the blinds with your big hands, and lose every pot that seems to go to the showdown. Those days get expensive. Playing hands to the river only to come second gets very expensive, and those were the days that seemed to happen a lot. Lets face it, unless you are simply terrible, dropping 3K in 1000 hands is getting cold decked. Especially when you’re as tight and passive as I am. The major criticism of my game is that I’m weak-tight, but that style of play actually reduces the swings, making 3K losses even less likely. But after 6 weeks of losing, I think my game did change. I started getting even more passive than usual, especially post-flop. Getting rivered again and again made me too afraid to raise with less than the nuts. And when I did raise, it killed any further action as the savvy players picked up on my play. As February turned to March I felt for the first time that I was outclassed in the games. I was getting outplayed, and I knew it.

2 things kept my head above water in March and April. The first was tournaments. During a 5 day stretch in early March I made 4 final tables. No top 3 finishes, but over 10K in prizes combined covered my ring game losses for a couple of weeks. 2 weeks later I picked up $12K for a win during a week where I had yet another 3K loss. The other saving grace was rakeback. I have been anb affiliate at Empire since signing up for my own rakeback program. I have had a moderate number of people signed up on my account, but I always made more on my own rakeback than the total of players playing on my account. Towards the end of 2004 I had a rash of new players sign on to my account and early in 2005 it peaked. Players come and go in these programs, but during the 4 bad months to start 2005 I had my 4 biggest affiliate months, which took all kinds of pressure off my day to day performance.

As my poor results continued into April it was clear I had to do something. I was up $9,000 in the 11 weeks since the losing streak began, but that was due to $20K in tournament winnings. When I lost another $6K during a week in April, leaving me with $1700 in my Empire account I quit playing 15/30. I chose to go back to the 5/10 6 max games that I had been playing before I moved up to 15/30.First of all, 5/10 was the highest limit I could really afford without reloading from savings, and I knew I had to work on my aggressiveness. 6 max really forces you to play aggressive so that’s where I went. I also took a break from playing tournaments, simply because the entry fees were as much as my expected profits if I could return to winning 2 BB/100 hands. The return to 5/10 sure didn’t make an immediate improvement. After a small win in my first week, I got killed again in my 2nd week for a $2500 loss, which equates to $7500 at 15/30. But after that I seemed to find my game and finally I had 3 winning weeks in a row. I worked on being more aggressive pre-flop and post-flop. I got my pre-flop raise number up to 14% from around 10% before, simply by never limping first or 2nd in, and never cold calling. 3 bet or fold to a raise, raise or fold a limper. The only way to get my numbers any higher pre-flop will be to raise more from the blinds, and I’m not ready for that yet. I also changed my user name when I went to the 5/10 games so no one had any notes on me which game me a fresh start as well.

The other development in May was I took on a coach. I am a big believer in coaching. Even when I was running well I had approached some big-name coaches regarding lessons but had never actually hired anyone. Late in 2004 I had contacted Tommy Angelo when I heard he was coaching as I had always loved his articles and his posts. Tommy was offering help for live game players and was very honest in expressing that he didn’t think he could help me in my circumstances. Then in April he contacted me after reading my posts on the losing streak, and told me he thought he could help. I jumped at the chance and we set up some phone meetings over 3 straight days. 1 hour to 90 minutes each day and it was an unbelievably productive 3 days for me. We spent exactly zero minutes talking about game play, instead we focused on ways to make sure I played my “A” game all the time. It made me realize how far off track I had become, and how much energy I was wasting on things that really wouldn’t help my overall game. I still have 90 minutes credit with Tommy, and I am really looking forward to spending more time with him.

After 4 weeks of 6 max play my win rate was only just above 1 bb/100 but that was due to the horrible week at the start. I felt I was in the right place mentally, and my bankroll was once again big enough to play 15/30. Although I could have easily reloaded from my savings, it was important to me that I get the bankroll back up by winning so that’s what I did. Although it’s way too early to tell, I have now won 10 of my first 11 days back at 15/30 and my confidence has returned. Let’s hope year 3 turns out as well as the first 2.

I think when I look back in the years to come that the first 8 months of this past year will have been the “golden” time of online poker. New players were rushing into the game and I was one of the early online pro’s waiting for them with open arms. There is now a small army of online pro’s, some of them playing 8 tables at a time filling up every table I sit at. I have to change tables a lot more now than I ever did before, but there are still a lot of good games out there, and I suspect there always will be at least for the foreseeable future.

[jvphish]

ouch
good read, thanks for wasting a half hour of my class time...

[bicyclekick]

Glad to hear you're back on track david!

Thanks for sharing.

BK

[NoRiverRats]

Your posts are entertaining and helpful. I am sure I am not the only person here who appreciates the insight into the dymanics of running good and bad, although the latter is probably more useful to any serious poker player. Thanks again.

[mscags]

Glad you're doing well again. I hope to someday play 15-30 [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Toddster18]

David-

You don't know me, but i've kept up-to-date on your skid, and have felt for you the whole time.

Makes me happy to see that you appear to be back-on-track. I hope the poker gods put you on a ridiculous rush for about the next 2 months. Good luck.

-Todd

[TStoneMBD]

this is a great story and im glad i read it. i really hope things work out for your david. good luck to you and please keep us posted.

[pokerstudAA]

Your story continues to interest me David - thanks for the update. I often realize that playing the "game" of poker involves much more than AQ's and JJ's. Bankroll management and game/limit selection become very important. Large tournament entry fees and variance can severly impact a bankroll. On top of all that, trying to maintain a somewhat stable income the entire year is extremely tough to accomplish - its hard way to make an easy living.


Poker is hard. Long term success at poker is even harder.

Good luck in the future.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
Your story continues to interest me David - thanks for the update.

[/ QUOTE ]

Me too.


I also can't believe it's been two years since you started this. Seems like only yesterday I was reading week 15 or so of your journal as a virtual newbie on these forums.

You were very much part of the inspiration for me to give this whole 'online-poker-pro' thing a try.

I recently had my 1-year anniversary although I have been a bit lazier and less profitable overall than you and have not had quite as many crazy swings.


A couple of other observations:
1 - Partly an observation made during your downswing...but we are finding out more about it now:

When people tell you that you aren't looking well then you need to STOP and take care of yourself.
Not later. Not after you're done playing for the evening. But right-away!!
I know that you know this....but you also kept on playing during some of these stretches.
Take care of yourself first and promise yourself you will never let yourself get like that again.

For example, I was in a period of high-stress a few days ago and knew that I would be lousy if I tried to play. So I simply didn't play for the most part.
When I was playing, if I felt the stress was getting to me I got out of there.

When it gets to the point that you're cussing at the computer and your wife has to go to a different room then you HAVE to know that you need to stop.

If you are feeling the swings too much then there's no harm in even playing just 200-300 hands back at 5/10 6-max just to feel more confident.
Sometimes I'll dick-around on the crypto 1/2 and 2/4 6-max tables just for a break if I need one. Hell, I am clearing a bonus over there anyway so might as well.


Anyway - the whole point is that you were probably going through a 6-week stretch of tilt. I imagine a down-swing of that magnitude could probably do that to anybody.


I think your talks with Tommy about always trying to find your A-game were exactly what you needed.


2 - I try not to play when I'm tired. I lose focus and miss things and just play on auto-pilot.
Yes, we all put in a LOT of hours so you're going to be tired for some of those....but I have stopped pushing myself SO much. If I'm tired I'll even take an hour nap or lay down or something. If I am ready to play again after that then I do.
I seem to always play better when I'm alert, awake, well-rested, etc. I am making better reads and observations and make some call-downs that feel a bit wacky but turn out to be the right move.


3 - Exercise is a good idea. Bobby Fischer (and others) would consider physical exercise to be just as important as the actual studying when he was preparing for a world-championship chess match. He would run, swim, play tennis, etc. I too have found that I am able to think more clearly and deeply...and also get better sleep...when I am in better shape.
To this end, I am going to make physical exercise a part of my 'routine' or 'training' heading into the WSOP.
I'm very serious.
When I go out running tonight it will be with the mind-set that it will give my mind the strength and clarity it needs to allow me to play my best.


I believe the recent NYTimes article on Negreneau mentioned that he doesn't drink caffeine or alcohol for the weeks leading up to the WSOP (where he's obviously playing many of the prelims too).
Seems he is of a similar mind-set that he just doesn't want to 'show up and play'. He is taking measures to ensure that his mind can be in it 100%.


3 - Hope you are able to make it to the WSOP. You might not have seen that I won my seat via a Stars double-shootout a couple weeks ago so I will be going. Actually will be staying there for 3 weeks (June 26 - July 16) so we'll see if I make it back home in one piece.

Would be a pleasure to meet you if you are able to make it.


4 - Say hi to the wife for me!!! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]


5 - Continued success to you in your 3rd year of doing this. You have survived the worst of it so it would appear. I do believe congratulations are warranted on that fact alone .
Keep it up. I am not sure if you are truly fully aware of how much of an inspiration you have been to many a 2+2'er.


end suck-up:
good luck David.

[davidross]

Quote "Anyway - the whole point is that you were probably going through a 6-week stretch of tilt. I imagine a down-swing of that magnitude could probably do that to anybody"

I think I had 5 weeks of real tough cards followed by 5 weeks of tilt. I hope I've got it under control.

I agree that the timespent with TOmmy was exactly what I needed.

I am very eager to get to Vegas. Even if I don't win a seat I'll go providing I can bank some travelling funds before then. It would be great to hook up.

The wife says Hi back. For some reason she is still smitten with you, but don't get too excited, her taste in men is clearly warped [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]