Hey guys, finished up another long week today, just over 44 hours and still on pace for 300 on the series. I honestly think that the longer hours are affecting me because I have been making some mistakes I shouldn't be making. Part of it is that my mental focus drifts and then I do suboptimal things. Basically I know that in order to play long hours I can't be 100% focused all the time so I allow myself to take breaks mentally and then I play worse because I miss things and I'm not as sharp. I've also been fighting off a very mild cold for the better half of this week. Luckily its been way weaker than the one I had a few months ago so I have been able to play but I'm sure its affecting my concentration.

I mean all in all the week was fine, started off with 3 straight big wins in which I actually felt really good about how I played. Took a small loss Saturday after starting off up 100bbs which is always frustrating but a vast majority of what I lost back was variance, though a couple mistakes compounded the damage. Yesterday I played a short session since I was going bowling with some friends and essentially broke even, ending up $61. Correctly folded KK preflop though so thats a win.

Today was more than a little frustrating. I don't think I've ever walked away from a substantial winning session feeling worse about my play. I really should have won about double what I did. There were some small things that were close but not clear mistakes but then right at the end of my session I played a hand bad that may have cost me. I won't rehash the whole hand but basically I got minimum value from a monster in a spot where I played the hand in a way I know is suboptimal and cost myself somewhere between 25 and 100bbs of possible profit. I've made bigger mistakes. Multiple bigger mistakes. But this wasn't a mistake in a new situation where I learned something. That I can live with. This is something I am aware of and know what the best play is, and because I've been allowing myself to pay less attention in an effort to get more hours in I'm making these mistakes.

I know I am capable of playing well with the volume I'm currently playing and I just need to train myself to focus and think through every decision point. It just comes down to thinking before acting because whenever this happens I always know I've made a mistake as soon as it happens and if I would just stop for 5-10 seconds to think it through I would have found the optimal play before I do something else. Playing long hours is not an excuse to play on autopilot.

Anyways got a day off tomorrow which will hopefully take care of whats left of my cold and give my brain a rest so I can be ready for another long week of grinding. Once I feel confident enough I will start playing 5/10 again but right now I don't think its a good idea despite being rolled for it.

Have you been playing at the Venetian or the Rio?

Venetian, I refuse to give the Rio my business.

Play less hours with 100% concentration than more hours with 75% concentration.

I wept a tear of joy when i read that. THey are the biggest scumbags in the biz

I agree. In the cash games, the seats are uncomfortable, the technology is non-existent and on and on.

I wasn't planning on updating until the end of the week but randomly decided to post this earlier since I had a few thoughts.

Short mid-week update:

I was planning on cutting it back a little bit as mentioned in my previous post, but two of my four days this week have been very short (1hr and 4.5 hrs). A combination of burnout and run bad causing me to make errors, which makes me mad at myself and so I leave. Both of my last two sessions have involved me not folding to turn raises with 2 pair where its a clear fold. I'm glad I've been able to get up when I've been tilted because the only thing worse than not getting enough time in during the WSOP is forcing myself to play when I'm not at my best. I feel much better today so win or lose I'm gonna finish off this week playing good poker.

An Outside Perspective: Living the Dream

I was talking to a guy at the table a couple days ago, probably 5 or so years older than me. Turns out he's married and lives in Delaware. He asked if I was a local I said yea I live here now but I'm from Wisconsin. He immediately says "so poker brought you out here?". I didn't want to let the whole table know that I'm a pro so I gave my normal "taking a year off after college and seeing what happens" response, which really isn't lying, but isn't the whole truth either. He responded saying man I envy you younger guys with no commitments, you're living the dream. Then when he left he came up to me and said "hey man, keep living the dream".

In a time where I was running bad, not playing my best, and generally not having much fun in poker, this guy reminded me that I really am living the dream. Something I often say is that no matter how bad I'm running in poker I always remind myself that I'm running sick good in life. Well recently even I had forgotten that, and my interaction with this guy helped bring back that mindset.

Feel bad for his wife

It is great that you decided to take a chance on something, but man, what a schmuck he is.

Finished up the week today and I played so much better the last 2 days than I have in the last week and a half. Definitely didn't play perfect but I was thinking so much more clearly and was much more disciplined in my decision making.

I ended up losing yesterday and winning today for pretty much a wash, but like I said in my previous post, win or lose I was gonna play well and I think I did that.

Day off tomorrow and then back on Wednesday. I still haven't decided what I'm doing for the main event. I decided a while ago that I wasn't really interested in playing any other events, so now its just decided whether I play the main or not. People keep telling me that I'd be crazy to miss it but I'm not gonna sell a lot of my action to play it because then its not nearly as worth it. I think what its gonna come down to is playing 3-4 satellites in early July and if I get in, great, and if not I take the ~3K loss from the sattys.

Mathematically you are probably +EV. However, with a large field and a small sample size, that +EV has a very high chance of not translating into $ in any one occurrence - perhaps the satellites are the way to go. But then my two cents are not even worth two cents.

I don't understand this. If the $10K buyin is too big for you (as it is for me), then it's not at all "not nearly as worth it" to play for effectively smaller stakes. Using $3K or $4K to play satellites instead of to play with 30% or 40% of yourself in the Main is just adding more variance. So, I think your plan is mistaken.

I'm definitely +EV in the main but the variance is crazy since roughly 90% of the time I'm gonna leave with nothing.

Yea I see what you're saying. I just don't like the whole staking and buying/selling shares that is so rampant with tournaments. I play in games I can afford. If I can't afford it, I don't play. I also don't buy pieces of anyone else. I might be passing on profitable opportunities, but its just outside of my comfort zone.

Also, part of what I mean by it wouldn't be as worth it is because I wouldn't be able to sell any action at a markup I would like. With the main being so deep and me being a top 2/5 winner my edge is gigantic over not just the fish, but also tourney specialists who aren't used to playing deep for very long. There's no way to know for sure but my ROI is probably 100%, maybe higher. So if I sold I'd want to sell at 1.5 since that splits the profit 50/50 between me and the buyer. But without extensive tournament experience if I tried to sell at 1.5 I'd be laughed out of the 2+2 marketplace. I'd have to sell at 1.2 or something and to me thats just not worth it.

Finished up another week today, did not log as many hours as I would have liked but I feel like I'm playing so much better than before. A big reason for the short hours is one day I only played 3 hours because I was exhausted from essentially staying up all night playing open face/doing PLO flips at RobFarha's. I crushed it obviously. My edge in PLO flips is monstrous.

Yesterday was the last day of June, which was my biggest month both in terms of hours played and monies won since I've been playing full time. Booked 175 hours, mostly at 2/5, digging myself out of and way beyond the 2K hole I started the month in.

I certainly am running better lately but my head is also so much clearer. Today was my only significant loser of the week but I consider the session a big win since I got away from a big hand on the flop that 99.9% of the player pool would just consider a cooler and lose their whole stack. I didn't see the other guys hand but I'm extremely certain I was crushed.

So its not looking good for my 300 hour goal but I'm really ok with it. As it turned out that was probably biting off more than I could chew. It looks like realistically I'll get about 275, finishing up the prop bet with squid, rob and the other V reg in the process.

So why is any of this even a question? You can't afford the ME; OK. And if you can't afford the ME (from a bankroll perspective) then you definitely can't afford a satellite to the ME (under any realistic assumptions).

In the nicest possible way: if it's not obvious to you that satellites are outside your bankroll, then one of us is badly mistaken. Whichever one of us it is, I might still recommend reviewing the bankroll part of Mathematics of Poker.

Lots of the edge in these tournaments comes in the later stages when stacks are shorter. Also, from reading the rest of this thread, your deeper-stacked play is very good but probably not better than a good tournament pro's.

I'm going to sound aggressive and mean here, and I don't mean it that way--I like this thread and your 2+2 persona and everything--but I'd be happy to make a very small crossbook of a good tournament specialist vs. you in the ME if you do play.

Staking arrangements of all sorts are usually not designed to split the profit 50-50.

Again, not sure why it's not worth it. Let's say you're right about your ROI (i.e., that it's 100%) and that you sell 70% at 1.2. Then you're paying $1600 to play a tournament where your share of your equity is $6000. That sounds like an attractive option to me, and it's one that you wouldn't have otherwise...

...unless we're back to your distaste for selling shares, in which case, OK.

All my best,

--Nate

this ^ one made me scratch my head a little

He is not saying that he can't afford the makeup...he is saying that he doesn't want to have it at all. There are a lot of people that don't like to play with others money or loan money because it can put one in sticky situations and make them uncomfortable. I don't see any problem with this as it is purely personal.

Also, I think a lot of poker players get caught up with the idea "you should make every +EV play each time you come across one, even if the edge is .01%". This is simply not true for the average person because with this stance we are not allowing the mental aspect of the game to be represented. For example, there are a lot of successful poker players who use a TAG style simply because it reduces variance and is simply easier on one mentally. They could definitely add 5-10 dollars/hour to their bottom line but they are simply not interested in this because they can't handle the swings of opening up their play a bit. If they did open up, that 5-10 extra dollars would be lost due to tilt, etc..

It always makes me laugh when I see posters say "You should have called, it was +EV" or something similar as if it's just automatic. Each players game will be different just as their personality is. The fundamentals of the game are still the same, however, the grey area is just different.

Long-winded, but basically...Cush doesn't feel comfortable being staked or staking people, thus it would not be a good idea to get involved in it as it would more than likely hurt mess with his head.

The big scores outweigh the little losses, even if the losses occur 90% of the time. I'm not taking a shot at you, but I think you may not realize what the term expected value (EV) actually means.

Basically, If he played the main an infinite amount of times...he would be in the black assuming he is indeed +EV.


Also, sorry for the explaining Cush. I have read your thread since day 1 and have a very similar mentality to you with regards to the way you approach the game. Love the thread and am hoping to take my shot and join you out there in Sept/October. Keep crushing!


~JB

Yea you are mistaken. Buying in for a 10k tournament and a 1k tournament are completely different. You need a much smaller bankroll to afford 1k tournaments than you do for 10k tournaments. I think thats pretty self explanatory. So just because I can't afford to buy in cold for 10k does not mean I can't afford to buy in for a couple 1k ME satellites.

Then if I win one, playing the 10k tournament is fine because theoretically I don't have a choice since usually the prize for a satellite is a seat into the bigger tournament without a cash option. With the lammer system at the WSOP I'm not "supposed" to have the option to take the 10k cash, but because its so easy to sell lammers (well it was last year, not sure if they are cracking down on it) I very well could take the cash. This fact makes me not even want to play the satellites since if i did win one I'd probably want to just take the cash which means I'd just be playing a 1k tournament which even though I can afford it bankroll wise, it isn't worth my time when I could be playing cash. However, if there wasn't a way to take the cash (like many online satellites), then its entirely possible for someone to have a bankroll that can't afford the full 10k but can afford to play a 1k satellite and play the 10k event if they win the satellite.

That last part was kind of an aside but basically you are wrong if you think that someone not being able to afford a 10k tournament means they also can't afford to play satellites for a 10k tournament.

This is just insane. I see so many tournament guys playing cash now and they are horrible. Many of them are very successful tournament players but as soon as stacks get deep their heads explode. I agree that some of the edge comes in the shorter stacked late stages and I agree that tournament pros would have an edge over me there. But if you think a tournament specialist's deep stack game is going to be better than mine you're nuts. I'm pretty humble and don't usually brag but I'm in the top 1% of winners in a 2/5 200bb game so theres just no way someone who plays all or mostly tournaments would have a better deep stack game than me.

True, but I'm barely interested in splitting 50/50 with a backer, let alone a setup where the backer gets more than 50.

Yea, bolded part is pretty much why I don't like that option. Part of the attraction of playing the main event is not even the average ROI, but the chance of hitting a huge score while also doing something thats +EV. Its like a lottery where I have a few more tickets than the average player but still paid the same as everyone. If I sold 70% of myself I'd have to give away a ton of the cashout and so it takes away a huge part of why I want to play in the first place.

So pretty much what I'm saying in all this is that if I can't play on my own dime and reap the rewards of my effort then I'll just pass, play cash and wait until I can. Maybe thats next year, maybe its in 5 or 10 years. Thats the best choice in my mind and I don't think it hurts me financially at all since I can make more consistent money by playing cash with all the time I would have spent playing the tournament.

What are you confused about? JockBay pretty much explained it but in the long run the main would be profitable for me to play. I'm gonna lose 10k close to 90% of the time but will be profitable in the long run. I realize its impossible to play enough main events to reach a significant sample since realistically most of us could only play like 60 assuming the WSOP is around our entire lives, which doesn't even sniff the long run.

No worries man, your post sums up fairly accurately my basic thoughts on staking and even part of how I approach playing for a living in general insofar as I'm ok sacrificing some EV in certain situations for less variance. Thats why I haven't played much 5/10 lately. I could make probably 25-50% more money but to do so I'd have to go through about 300% bigger swings which would probably affect me enough that at least some of the extra profit would be lost back in the form of mistakes or just not getting as many hours in.

Thanks and gl with your shot!

Your replies in the last couple of posts were good. I pretty much agree with your responses and I do think you are running an excellent thread here. Hope to catch up to you again in Vegas this week

And I have a feeling you are due for a nice score soon.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to be underrolled for $10K tournaments and rolled for $1K tournaments. I am saying that if it's risk-adjusted EV-negative to play the WSOP ME, it's almost always going to be risk-adjusted EV-negative to play a $1K satellite to the WSOP ME.

Here are two arguments for the above claim.

ARGUMENT ONE.

A big problem (bankroll-wise) with playing the WSOP ME is that so much of the equity is tied up in the top 5 spots, and you--as a good player--have maybe a 1/1000 chance of making one of those 5 spots. The problem is that when you enter a $1K satellite, you turn that 1/1000 chance of getting the top-5 spot into a ~1/9000 chance. From a Kelly-betting perspective (or most other plausible quantitative perspectives), the detriment of turning the 1/1000 chance into a 1/9000 chance mostly (if not entirely) undoes the good of reducing the buyin by 90%.

ARGUMENT TWO

You implied that grinding $1K satellites is not a smart bankroll move for you right now given that you can sell the lammers. That is, a $1K tournament against WSOP-satellite competition that paid out $10K to all winners would not be a good game for you to play right now. You've also said that playing a $10K ME would not be a good game for you to play right now.

Why would the parlay of two bad games for you be a good game for you?

You said that you'd have an edge over good tournament regulars, and during the WSOP I don't think that a lot of those guys are spending a lot of time in $2-5 games.

I don't at all doubt that you have a better deep-stacked game than slightly winning tournament players who frequent $2-5 games. (FWIW, $2-5 is my most regular game, and I agree that people who can loosely be described as 'tournament players' and show up in those games play poorly with deep stacks.)

I've spent some time studying this question, and I think later play has a much greater effect on ROI than most players believe. Anyhow, the effective stacks are often ~30BB or shorter from about day 3 on (sometimes sooner). If you are not an expert at short-stacked and short-handed play, you will be giving up a ton after day 2.

We might have a difference in terminology here. In your earlier post I thought you were talking about good tournament players, i.e., the better part of the pool of players who make their living playing poker tournaments.

Most of those players are not playing $2-5 and would be in the top 1% of the player pool if they bothered to sit. Anyhow, see above--their edge during the days and days of short-stacked play against tight players would overwhelm your edge in the one or two days of deeper-stacked play against looser players.

Again: if you are talking about random people who sit in $2-5 games, then yes, you have a good edge over them. If you are talking about legitimately good professional tournament players, then I don't think you have an edge over them.

Sorry if any of this was (or came across as) mean! But I do think you're mistaken on some of these points. I'm speaking largely from experience here... I believed many of these same things before I did research, ran simulations, and made some deep-ish runs in the ME.

All my best,

--Nate

Ok I'll try to explain better. What I meant was that since I can sell the lammers I would never end up playing the ME since I could take the cash and that would be a better option given my BR. So if I always take the cash I'm effectively just playing a 1k tournament which I have no interest in and isn't as profitable as playing 2/5 cash. But, if there were no cash option I would be playing the 1k event for the purpose of getting into the ME, a tournament I want to play but can't afford. In that case it becomes a good game because it gives me a shot at the ME. But with the existence of a cash option, whenever I won the satellite I would make what I believe to be the correct financial decision and just take the cash, defeating the original purpose.

So it would be a good option if I couldn't take the cash in the event that I won, but since I can take the cash it makes actually playing the ME if I win the satellite incorrect and defeats my purpose for playing the satellite.

I said I have an edge over tourney players because the ME is deep stacked for way longer than most tournaments. And yes I include "good" tournament players in this. You say they don't play 2/5. Fine, so where are they? Games above 5/10 are almost non-existent so far this series except the games at Bellagio that go all year anyways. And the 5/10 games I've found haven't been great and are populated largely by cash game players. There are roughly 10-15 5/10 games going at reasonable hours. Lets assume they're all filled with good-great players that are gonna be in the ME. Thats less than 150 people. I was pretty generous in my assumptions but even if its 1000, the main event gets something like 6k entrants, so what about the other 5k people?

Please don't say that all these tourney regulars that don't bother to play 2/5 just don't play cash and only play tournaments. Anyone good enough to play tournaments for a living could make more playing cash so I can't imagine someone who only plays tournaments having an edge on me in a deep stacked scenario.

Agreed.

How many of these are there though? Anyone who tells me they make a living playing live tournaments is pretty much full of ****. Anyone good enough to do so will quickly realize they can make more in cash so for the most part guys saying this are just broke wannabe-superstars. There might be a few who just like tournaments or something but to think it makes up anywhere near a significant portion of the pool is ludicrous.

The amount of possible edge is vastly reduced as stacks get short. For them to have a big edge I'd have to make big fundamental errors. I've done enough poker study in the past about short stacks that I could do a bit of review and be prepared enough that the edge they'd have on me with short stacks would be negligible. They however cannot do the same and be ready for deep play unless they've played a lot with deep stacks because with deep stacks the game is less about math and more about other things that you can only learn from experience.

If these "legitimately good professional tournament players" aren't playing cash also then I can't believe they'd have an edge on me overall in the ME. As stated above I don't see how any edge they could have with short stacks would overcome my edge when stacks are deep and if they only play tournaments I guarantee my edge when stacks are deep is massive.

No worries man, I probably came off the same way but this discussion brought out a lot of things I have observed about the poker world/economy. I enjoy good back and forths like this so nothing is taken personally and I hope you take nothing personally as well.

Cool response--I think I still disagree, but I'll have more time to think/write tomorrow. Cliffs is probably some combination of: you underestimate how much edge you give up with short stacks; you might underestimate how good tournament players are at playing deep-stacked, especially the sorts of deep-stacked situations that come up more often in tournaments than in 2-5; there are a lot of reasons a very good player wouldn't be playing 2-5; I understand what you say about the purpose of satellites, but I still haven't seen any math justifying your claims. (Oh, and are you used to playing with antes, and are you used to adjusting to different-sized antes?)

FWIW I'm more confident about some of these claims than others, and am very grateful to be challenged on them. Also FWIW, I learned some of these the hard way (as a 2-5 player).

Thanks very much for your replies,

--Nate

Alright another week gone so time for an update. It was a pretty meh week, won a bit but ran pretty bad. I think I played well for the most part, definitely made a mistake today but ran pretty bad in some spots overall.

Wednesday was a losing day as I lost a couple big pots going for multiple streets with overpairs that got cracked. Took off for the 4th and then played a short session Friday in which I booked a pretty big winner. Only played 3 hours because I got in super late since my car was in the shop all day and I was tired from having to be up early to bring it in. I told myself before the session started I would play no more than 4 so I wasn't locking up a win or anything. Most of it came when I flopped a set and a guy just decided to give me 1k with TPTK, calling off the rest of his stack on the river in a spot he can be good 0% of the time. Won some other pots as well that I don't remember.

Saturday I was again up a bunch when this hand happened. I'm in middle position in what I've already decided is my last orbit. While the dealer is pitching the cards he accidentally flips over my second card, the 7. So the procedure here is he keeps going as normal and then gives me what would have been the burn card as my second card. So basically everyone's cards are the same as they would have been except my second card is what the first burn would have been and my flipped card becomes the burn. So of course I pick up AA. I raise to 20. Kid to my left, a complete unknown who I've played with for <1hour total makes it 60. Folds back to me and I make it 160, he eventually calls. Flop K98r. I cbet 210 and he calls. Turn 9. I bet 350 and he calls. Even though the stacks are awkward I didn't want to just shove and let him off easy with AK. When he flats, leaving himself with 290, I'm a bit concerned he has KK but at this point I'm going with it. River bricks and I put him in for his last 290 and he calls and shows J9. So that was fun. Ended up losing like a hundred bucks on the day, not a bad result for a day where I lost a 2k pot getting AA cracked by J9 where I was "supposed" to have A7o if not for a dealer error.

Sunday I booked a solid winner in unremarkable fashion, got a few hands to bet and got calls when I needed them. Today I made a fairly big mistake stacking off with KK when the worst card possible hit the turn and I no longer beat anything. Unfortunately that would not account for the majority of my loss as I would lose a 2k pot for the second time this week in a 3 way all-in with 2 overs and a flush draw against a set and an unknown hand.

Unlike RobFarha and the other V maniacs I don't play 2k pots very often and when I do I'm on the winning end more often than not (see set v. tp pot from Friday's session) so its unfortunate to have lost 2 in one week but I was pretty stoked about both spots so its all good.

We've got one more week of the WSOP now so I'm looking to finish out strong. I have to play 41 hours next week to finish the prop bet and one way or another thats getting done. The action is still very good even though it will start to slow down now that the main event is in full swing and people are either playing the main or starting to leave town. Today was the first day of <10 2/5 games at the V so I think its already starting to slow down but it could just be that it was Monday.

I'm definitely having a better summer than last year but also getting pretty burnt out despite a much lighter schedule than most other grinders. I'm getting pretty sick of holdem for sure so after next week I'm going to take a few days off and then take some time to play and study other games. I want to start playing O8 and other limit games that show up in mixes. I'll go one game at a time but I will probably start with O8 and then go to the draw games (2-7 triple draw, badacy, etc) and stud games. During the WSOP there seem to be lots of mix games at all stakes from 4-8 to 1500-3k so besides just being interested to learn new games I gotta believe theres value in those mixes. Its hard to learn because during non-WSOP time there are so few mix games and the ones that do run are generally too high for me to play but I can definitely learn O8 since 8-16 runs consistently at V. May or may not do some PLO also, we'll see.