A couple people requested this in the schedule, so I thought I'd share some thoughts to get discussion going.

So it’s been almost a month since Black Friday. We’ve all survived, and if we’ve made it this far, we’re probably off suicide watch. So now the focus is moving forward. What are we going to do?

1) Quit. Lots of players come and go. The environment changes. The fact of the matter is, not everyone can beat poker. Or, people will have to move down to a level they can beat. If they don’t, they’ll eventually bust out. People lose the desire to play, they move onto other things.

2) Become a live pro. But it’s too boring. There’s not enough hands per hour. People are annoying. I don’t get rakeback. I have to drive to get there. Blah, blah, blah. You know what else is boring, working in a job you don’t like. It can be worse than sitting in a casino one-tabling 8 hours a day. At least in the casino, you usually have cute cocktail waitresses.
3) Check out some smaller sites. More than likely, you’ll never have what you had at Poker Stars or Full Tilt again. You won’t have FPP’s, the Iron Man program, slick software that helps you play 16/24 tables at once. You won’t have Table Ninja, AHK scripts, concierge, etc.

This COTW will focus on option 3. Obviously, if you decide to quit, you just go find a job and grind it. If you choose to play live, there’s a lot of threads out there that help with the transition. There are some good books out there. So there’s other resources that will fit option 2.
1. Get rid of your label. A lot of people sit down, log in, load up X # of tables and play 15/13 because that’s what they do. You get to know another grinder, you guys introduce yourselves. “I’m a 24-tabling 25nl Stars reg.” “Oh, I’m a 12-tabling 50nl FTP reg”.

So now, FTP and Stars are out for the US, and everyone’s going to smaller sites and complaining, “There’s only 5 FR 25nl tables at X” “Nobody starts tables at 50nl at Y” “Merge 4NL is reg-infested!”

2. Break out of your shell and realize that you’re going to have to play the conditions. If there aren’t a lot of Full Ring tables, play some 6max. If there aren’t 12 tables going, play less. If 6 of your tables are just regs passing blinds back and forth, cut them out. Focus on playing and learning the new players.

3. You might have to play multiple sites. There’s lower traffic on a lot of the sites we’re going to be playing on. Sometimes, there aren’t any games going. Get on multiple sites and play when a site has the best traffic. Is it mostly euros? Play in the afternoon. One site is dead? Have a backup site.

4. Make the most out of the sites you have available. Make sure you get rakeback. Bonus whore. Go play some different sites and try them out, take advantage of their bonus offers. Build up your roll so you can play multiple sites.

5. Don’t autopilot. You don’t know players as well as you might have before. Study them. Pay attention. Play a range depending on who’s left – if there’s fish, adjust to them. Don’t just play the same static hand range all the time.

6. Get used to the software. Sure, we all like the stuff like auto top up, sit out all, etc. But things like that attract grinders. Typically fishier sites have worse software. Get used to it if it means you make more $. Be an ambassador of kwan.

tl;dr

• Break out of your shell and adjust to the changes.
• Play 6max and Full Ring depending on the site conditions
• Bonus whore and get rakeback
• Add in live games if you have the opportunity
• Have more of a safety net than you have in the past. Let’s learn from this and have more $ saved up.
• Take on a job to help with the padding.
• Don’t auto pilot
• Get used to the software not being geared towards grinders.
• Table select, change the times you play if you can, Don’t waste your time just playing with other tag grinders, find the fish.

first. nh brky

Nice to see a CoTW after so long, pretty common sense stuff that needs to be said.

good post brky!

Good antipanic post!

Excellent post!

I went from 12 tabling 10nl on Pokerstars to 4 tabling 4nl on Carbon. Black Friday made me re-evaluate my Poker goals and since I was skittish to make a big deposit, I put $ 50 on Carbon and decided to start over. I made sure to get 35% rakeback and a deposit bonus (bonuis is a joke, tho you'd have to grind a billion hands to clear all of it). Since realistically I wasn't going to be moving to 25nl as I had planned on Pokerstars I just decided to play fewer tables and work on my postflop game. So far results have been mixed. For one thing I have had the most hideous luck imaginable (like running into set over set 5 times out of 9 flopped sets and losing 16 out of 25 showdowns with KK on boards without an A-and not once to AA) but I am looking at Poker right now as an activity and an intellectual challenge more than a possible future source of income. My hope is that the US Government repeals UIGEA and realizes tax revenue from online poker could be a huge windfall and allow casinos to operate online poker on the PS/FT scale.

Nice poast, sir.

Adjusting to new players/games etc is an excellent way to really improve your game. If you can make use of the fact that you'll be out of your "comfort zone", you'll find a lot of ways to improve your game that you hadn't thought of before. Nice post, op!!

Well done UD.

What's a job

You forgot option #4: Move to Costa Rica.

Good post though... especially about adapting. I had been pondering a switch from STTs to cash for a while. Black Friday somewhat forced the issue and STTs have LOL volume on the smaller sites. So, 10NL ftw. The software transition hasn't been as bad as I've had to focus on learning no skills/strategies.

Still, I think it will be legalized before too long and we'll all be playing on Harrah's. This is just trying to keep skills sharp.

I didn't address moving to another country because my target audience is 5-25nl players for the most part and most people will not have the means to do so.

So where are most of the FTP and stars population going to go? I know no site compares to these but its not like the entire selection of sites is gone.

I see my attempt at humor failed yet again.

If you look at the traffic tracking sites, Merge is seeing the most growth. Merge, Cake, and Bodog are the main options for US players. Everyone says Bodog software is awful, and Merge seems to be the popular choice. LOTS of info on this in Internet Poker forum.

I had just woken up, sorry I missed the joke.