In his highly acclaimed comedy performance, Dress to Kill,
Eddie Izzard points out that the Church of England has no
fundamentalists, because they simply aren't that far into the
religious aspects of life. He argues that the most radical of
questions a C of E fundamentalist would ever come up with would be
Tea and Cake, or Death
, and Izzard comically points
out how easy of a question Cake, or Death?
would be to answer,
should one of these C of E fundamentalists ever approach you.
I got a question today from a
poker fundamentalist on an old blog
entry. My first thought was of Izzard's comedic Cake or
Death
sketch. Someone sitting
in a hotel, asked me, Do you suck [at poker], or lie
[about your winnings]?
.
So, should I take suck
or lie
? Izzard's point, of
course, about these fundamentalists is that single-minded thinking,
where the options are narrowed to two ludicrous paths, are exactly
where single-minded religious focus falls into the absurd. I think
this fellow has done the same.
Of course, there are many players out there, even playing at my stakes, making a hell of a lot more
than I am (at least in the short term). Poker games are really juicy
right now, and lots of new players have done well early, through a
combination of luck and some basic skill. I believe that over time,
the luck is going to even out for those players who are beating these
games for more than the statically expected.
Regardless, I take every poker criticism, however ludicrous it seems on
the surface, very seriously. I therefore don't want to dismiss the
possibility that I suck or lie
; someone has made the case, so I
will attempt to figure out if he's right. Checking whether I am lying
is pretty easy; I simply am not. I don't plan to prove that to
Mr. Hotel with scanned images of my bank records. My readers
will just have to assume that for sake of argument that I am not lying
and my results are as I say they are. Why would I draw the IRS'
attention by ranting about how I pay my taxes on poker winnings if I wasn't paying them
in full?
So, let's dig deeper into those results to see if I suck. I generally
can eek out about .7 big bets per hour (or per 100 hands) in limit
(I'm frankly not that great of a limit player), and I can pull down
5-7 big binds per hour (or per 100 hands) in NL games. In the really
soft games, I find that I can reach that 7 big blind level pretty
frequently, and when the games are a bit tougher, I struggle to stay
at the 5 level.
I have looked at years of results — online databases of hands and
session records from live play — and I don't think I'm
that far from the theoretical expected maximums. I do figure
I could get myself to a 1.5 big bet winner in the limit games with
serious work, but until NL and PL structures actually start to
completely fizzle out, I'm going to hold off into putting serious work
into my limit game. I probably do suck more than I should at limit,
but that's been a known problem in my game for quite some time and
don't think I'm likely to improve it. I had two choices: work on my
limit game, or focus on NL/PL, and I've chosen the latter. I argue
this isn't “sucking”, it's picking a specific area of
focus and holding off improving another area that isn't all that
popular at the moment, anyway. In other words, I've made a game
selection decision that I'd be better off improving my NL and PL game
for the moment.
Another idea I had to investigate the possible source of the comment
was, instead of looking at my average results based on that
session data, that I would take the numbers backwards instead. In
other words, let's investigate if making around $10,000 a year fits
with a reasonable amount of EV, given how often I play. Ok, so for
sake of simplicity, let's figure I made exactly $10,000 and I played
only $1/$2 NL and made that average of six big blinds per hour. That
means that I would have played 833.33 hours in a year, or about 16
hours each week. On average, this is exactly how much I am playing.
Some weeks I don't have time to play at all on the weekdays. Those
days, I play about 8 hours a day each of Saturday and Sunday. On
weeks when I've put in a few hours during the weekday evenings, I
usually put in less on the weekends. Anyway, I have to note that I
was truly amazed that the numbers, which I hadn't looked at in this
“top down” way ever before, actually matched perfectly to
the EV numbers I calculated using other data sets. It's not mere
mathematical symmetry, because my banking records which I use to
generate my tax data and that $10k number are completely separate
records from the session data I used to generate the average win rate
numbers.
Of course, if we do the numbers from a limit perspective (I did play
some limit in 2004 and 2005), it comes out to about 18 hours a week of
half $5/$10, half $10/$20 (i.e., the theoretical limit of $7.50/$15). Again, the numbers match my actual playing frequency.
Anyway, this troller has given me two options (suck or lie?
), neither of which makes
much sense given the data. Sure, I'm not the best player I could be. I
suppose there must be players out there who have reached a pinnacle of
3 big bets per hour in limit and 12 big blinds per hour in NL. However, I may be well on my way, because my
results show a steady climb (when I first started NL, I was lucky to
stay even over time and I was certainly net loser in the early River
Street days). Of course, my game needs work (everyone's really does),
but wouldn't the first step in such work involve being honest about
one's results? And if you are honest about your results, how can you
suck
? To really suck at poker, you have to be someone who is
unwilling to be honest with yourself about your game.
I think that newcomers to poker are far too optimistic about what is
possible with regard to wins. I know a lot of young kids who have had
amazing runs, and they have moved up in stakes quickly. I heard about
one young boy who has put together a $30,000 bankroll in the matter of
just about a year (having started at $1/$2 NL), and he frequently sits
in $100/$200 NL games with his whole bankroll on the table. Sure,
he's winning now and may win for a while, but the odds say that a
crash and burn is coming unless he gets realistic.
Meanwhile, I have friends asking me why I'm still usually playing $1/$2
NL after all these years and only occasionally taking shots at bigger
games. It's true that I keep very conservative bankroll requirements
(having gone broke twice, once for having inadequate bankroll and once
for raiding it for other expenses). I simply don't believe I have a
reasonable bankroll for bigger games. Meanwhile, I've chosen this
year to take some profit from poker, so my bankroll, for most of
this year, has been at static size; my winnings each month leave it
steadily for other expenses.
I'm a winning player who constantly tries to get better, and that's
enough for me for the moment. Maybe I'm not improving as fast as others,
nor making as much as people who are playing above their bankroll, but
that's ok with me. I'm pretty sure I'd have to quit my hectic job if I
wanted to focus even more on poker. So, my message to my hotel-posting friend
is: money isn't as important as you think it is; making the correct
decisions and playing well and within your bankroll is. The money will
come as a side effect over time. For my part, I'm happy to wait, as long
as I play my best game every time and learn something every time I play.
Occasionally, I feel a twinge of worry that the games will dry up before I
have a chance to cash in at higher limits, but I really believe I'd have
to go to full-time professional now to do that, and I don't want to quit
my job and take that life-risk at the moment. If I miss the best part of
the boom, I'll miss it. I'm thinking long term here.
I'll end with this link to an excellent Barry
Tanenbaum article that I (ironically) just read before going to bed
last night. His point is that there is much luck in poker that
is hidden, and you could be experiencing a lot of that kind of luck
and not even realize it. I think so many players, probably
Mr. Hotel included, have generally good basic poker skills but
also have, on top of that, gotten really lucky in this way over the last
year or two. It's not that they can't overcome it and get better;
it's just that their hidden luck might lead them believe that
amazing results are normal. In fact, I know from experience that
those amazing results are simply a cushion that will later help you
survive the times when your hidden luck suddenly transforms into
someone else's overt luck — every time they are in a pot with
you. Don't be a fundamentalist about it; Don't assume that
your better-EV-than-thou faith in The Great Sklansky and your
excellent recent results actually measure how good you are. We all
suck a little bit and we all are God's proverbial gift to poker a
little bit. Sure, read Sklansky religiously and be proud of your
results, but remember that poker isn't as simple as Cake, or
Death
.
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Q
is still a favorite, even against
K
