Thinking about the future

[geormiet]

Nothing like a 3 month breakeven stretch to make you stand back and look at what went wrong.

Here is my year in review:

Jan - Feb
I don't play too much online because I haven't figured out a way to cashout from the site I am playing at. I put in maybe 100 hrs at live 40/80 and win a decent amount. For these 2 months I win about 15k which is fine.

March - early April is huge. I have one 20k week in there, and around 40k for the month. Naturally, I am feeling fine.

April, May, June. Nothing. It's an awful, horrible breakeven stretch (I get lots of rakeback, so to be breakeven w/ that means i am losing a LOT). Getting rivered every hand, having every opponent's turn c-r semibluff hitting and all that stuff leads to probably deterioration in my game. I start playing a lot of hands, and I start tilting pretty constantly. I don't play too bad when I tilt, I just don't play my best. Which is about breakeven poker. So I go through this period in a constant haze of tilt (at the tables and away as well)

July
Have one of my first winning days in what feels like 3 weeks, and it's a big one. In the morning I play 200 hands online and win 5k, then I go to bay101 for my first live session in 2 months and win another 5k.

Now since then (over a week ago) I have hardly played. I will play microstakes NL for like 3 hours or something, its pathetic.

I've also been trying to play at AP these last few weeks. In June I had some friends xfer me 6.5k and I lost it all at 5/10 - 25/50. I've paid 2.5k of it back, and I got another $500 to work with. So these last few weeks I was playing my ass off at 3/6 and just not getting ANYWHERE. If I thought that breaking even at my normal stakes was defeating, doing the same while trying hard at AP 3/6 was soul crushing

Anyway, the site that I was playing at is dying. limit holdem has ceased to be profitable. I am looking at other sites, and it seems there are still some goldmines available, but for how long? It seems that pretty soon limit holdem everywhere will become fishless. Live play is still amazing of course. I am planning on trying to incorporate a new routine of playing live a few days every week, but will this be enough? Can I make decent money being a live pro? I used to say that I would never consider playing live for a living, but now I am seriously reconsidering.

I am also trying NL, but really, I hate it. I don't know, it just feels like starting over, and I don't want to start over.

Anyway, I am pretty much just venting here. I am 27 years old and I don't have any work experience. I have enough saved to last me for a while, but it's not like I can retire on it. I was always hoping that I could keep up poker for another 5-10 years and then be set, but I'm feeling more and more like this is not gonna happen. I guess I'm wondering if I have to make a choice, to either switch to online NL or live limit?

ANyway If anyone wants to offer some advice that's cool, but yeah, I'm just hating poker, and I wish things could go back to the way they used to be.

[yourface]

just wait until they start playing online poker in china

for now, take a vacation and go somewhere nice. work on getting rid of your life tilt

[veganmav]

I don't have much advice to offer. But lemme tell you, it's hard on all of us. Recently I have been finding money making opportunties with my bankroll outside of poker. I think this is important.

Also you have ING direct right? or something like it i hope.

anyway man, yeah it's rough

*hug*

[geormiet]

Yeah, I mean, i have my money invested well in retirement accounts and index funds and prosper and 5% savings accounts, but its not like this is enough to live off of.

[donger]

I've been having this same sensation of dread as game selecting seems tougher and tougher. I think most everyone in MHUSH is good enough to start regularly beating other games, but which ones? I hate NLHE so much and LO8 (my other good game) seems to be undergoing the same shakeout as LHE.

Are you there, God? It's me, Donger.

[joker122]

you didn't say specifically what your main game is online but i inferred it was something like 10/20-30/60 or around there.

if that's the case, i really don't know what you guys are talking about. if you have money in ps, ftp, and ap you should almost always be able to find at least 3 tables worth sitting at.

[geormiet]

yeah, it's 10/20 - 40/80 just like everyone else.

Maybe I'm just playing at the wrong sites. The fact that it takes me forever to move money around is a big problem.

[Verde]

Aren't the NL games also getting much worse?

[geormiet]

That would make me feel better.

[Hock_]

[ QUOTE ]
if that's the case, i really don't know what you guys are talking about. if you have money in ps, ftp, and ap you should almost always be able to find at least 3 tables worth sitting at.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even at higher stakes the games are beatable, but they are definitely tougher than they used to be. Gone are the days when players are going to make 2+BB/100 over any reasonable # of hands (100k hands+), but making even just .5BB/100 at 100/200 can end up being A LOT of money at the end of the year. [0.5BB/100 @ 100/200 x 250,000 hands = $250,000]

But you have to be patient, and by that I mean view results over a period of months rather than days. With such a relatively small edge there will be days or weeks or months when you lose, and the variance can be pretty harsh (so you need to make sure you have adequate bankroll and/or are willing to move down). But if you are a good player then in the long run you will do a hell of a lot better than working just about any other job out there.