The Poker Chronicles

• I can better capitalize on my bankroll. I have more than enough roll to play most games online, provided that I am a winning player in them, so I should use it more. Given the quality of $15/$30 games online I feel comfortable starting out there. This is definitely going to take some adjustment for me in terms of dealing with larger losses, but I am going to have to make that at some point anyway.
• I think I can make more money. I will show the numbers below in a second, but for now I think I stand to profit more at 4 $15/$30 full games than I do at 2 $10/$20 short.
• I will take far fewer hideous beats, which makes life easier emotionally. I don’t have much of a tilt problem anyway, and I will definitely still take my share of bad ones, but its nothing compared to what I will get at a 6 max table. This may make playing less unpleasant, which means I will be more likely to play more often.
• I can see more hands per hour. Due to there being more people at the table though I don’t think this will make much difference in terms of rake-back, but it might be a couple bucks an hour more.
• I am going to have to start playing full tables to move up in limits from where I am. There are a few $15/$30 6 max games, but they are hit or miss in terms of quality and beyond that no games are really spread as 6 max. True, a lot of games above that are often short anyway, but often they are full or become full quickly. I'm not big into table hopping, so I am pretty much going to have to play full games once I get to $20/$40 or above.
• It is good practice for live games, where full games are the rule and short ones the exception. I am going to have to play in real life on the cruise so I might as well get used to it.
• It is relaxing. When I look at A 9 UTG I just fold it. Actually probably well over half of the hands I am dealt I can just click fold and be done with regardless of what happens. And even with many of the others (such as blinds) I can make an instant decision. The number of hands where I actually have to see what happens before I make any decisions is drastically reduced on every betting round. This makes the game less mentally exertive and should enable me to play more hours with ease.
• I still get to play short handed a lot. Tables fill and break often at $15/$30, and I plan on staying in at least one short handed game at a time, so I will still get to play a little short handed and keep my mind sharp.
• I can test out other sites more. I could easily play 2 $15s on Party and 2 $20/$40s on Paradise. Or 3 on Party and one $15/$30 on Pacific or Bodog, or some such crappy site tied to a sports book.

I ran some numbers and I will share them with you. Keep in mind that at $10/$20 6 max I really only feel I can play two tables at my current profit rate, and that going up to 3 or 4 would basically keep me at the same hourly rate with much more fluctuations, so I am not counting that as an option. And I am assuming that my win rate at that game should remain around $150 an hour over the long haul playing 2 tables.

As far as full tables go I don’t have any real data about myself to go on, so I am going to have to get theoretical here. I will assume that I have the accepted “standard win rate” in a casino game (which we will deem to have a speed of about 35 hands per hour) of 1 bb/hr, which is about 3bb/100. I think that I can easily pull more than that at a $15/$30 table in real life, probably more like 1.5 bb/hr, but we will say that 4 tabling reduces that significantly down to 1. I will also assume that I would have the “commonly accepted” standard deviation, of about 10 times my win rate.

So given that one hour of online play at 4 tables at a time equals roughly 9 hours of live play (in terms of hands per hour, which I know from experience to be around 300 online) I would thus expect to make about 9 bb/hr, which is $270. My standard deviation would go from about $300 to $900, giving me a coefficient of variation of 0.3. My CV playing $10/$20 6 max is about 0.23, meaning my fluctuations will be smaller (relatively) playing the 4 $15/$30 games.

In practice I'm not too sure what my win rate will turn out to be. I have played a few hours of it so far and the games seem to be pretty good, but I have also seen that I can't really focus on the players as much as I do playing a couple $10/$20s, so it might end up being significantly less than the $270 theorized above. For now I will guess $200/hr and see how accurate that winds up being.

Since I listed all of the benefits of playing 4 full games instead of the 2 $10/$20 6 max, so I should list the negatives I can think of. Here we go:

• Larger downswings. Due to playing at a higher limit. Downswings of $6-7k can occur at $15/$30, which will require me to keep more money in my account and to adjust to it emotionally.
• Less action. It is less mentally exertive, but also less fun. I like to raise. Even at 4 tables I feel like I am playing a waiting game rather than a test of skill.
• I am going to have to adjust to the new game. I have started playing already and am adjusting well so far, but it is definitely a change. I look at A9 UTG and I want to pop it, then I have to just fold. That is actually less of an adjustment than the ones I have to make after the flop, where second pair isn’t nearly as good of a hand as it is in a short handed table. And get used to people who raised preflop being significantly more likely to have big hands.
• I might actually have to play against a few good players. In the $10/$20 6 max this is a rarity, but I suspect there are quite a few more competent players at $15/$30. Actually though this maybe should be listed as a benefit, since the small amount of win rate they cost you (I will talk more about the computer simulations on this topic later) might be more than overcome by what you learn from playing with them. There is going to come a point in my poker career, and probably soon, where I am no longer going to be playing with monkeys. I am going to have to beat better players. It is time to get accustomed to it.
• Inability to focus on players. This is going to be the toughest part for me, going back to mainly theory poker. Datamining and playerview might help a bit in this regards, but for the most part I will be flying blind

Anyway I will be playing those $15/$30 games under my new Eurobet name of IHateIdiots (I actually didn’t pick that one but like it quite a bit) for the next few days at least to see how it goes. I suppose sometime I should look at 2+2 as well and see how those people claim to be doing at the game too. The best claims they have for 6 max seem to be about half of what I have made over the last year at it (other than one absurd character who claims to be winning 15 bb/100 which is far beyond possible) but I think the ring games will be much different. I won’t have the huge edge over those clowns that I do in short games since I can't focus on their play, and even if I could there being twice as many other players at the table makes it much harder to exploit weaknesses. Still I rate to do at least as well as the vast majority of them, so maybe I can get a better feel for what I should expect from them.