Take me to the river...
So... What have I been up to lately?
School is out for summer break, and I've decided -not- to take summer classes. I am no longer working at the market research firm, because of the yelling tirades of the owner (I just really don't like to be around people who yell when they're angry, particularly when they are people who become angry at the drop of a hat), and his unwillingness to pay me what I'm worth.
So what am I doing now? Why, driving a cab, dearly beloved. Talk about interesting work. more on that another time... It's not what I wanted to write about today.
So what -else- am I doing now? Funny you should ask, dearly beloved. I'm playing poker. And lots of it.
I've always been fairly ok at poker... Then I started seeing all the texas hold'em on TV. The first such show to really grab my attention was Celebrity Poker Showdown, on the pro-homo network, Bravo. Soon, an opportunity to play a no limit one table tournament with some friends ensured that I would never willingly go back to five-draw or seven-stud. (after they explained the big & little blind system to me, that is.)
I fairly crushed that first game, and went looking for more poker on TV. Next, I noticed some World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker broadcasts, as well as some others. I started watching those, then I started looking for more live games.
The TV commentators of one WSOP game mentioned Doyle Brunson's Super/System book with much awe and reverence, so I went out, bought it, and read it.
My problem was, I wasn't finding many local games... Crushing every local game I sat in on probably didn't help, but c'mon... What's a girl to do? (Oh, yeah... There was one local game I was not invited to sit in on, because I'm a girl. Can you believe it? In 2005?!?) I was still more than a little nervous about going to a casino to play at that point... The one time I did, I slowly bled money all over the table until I was tired of it. (No... I'm not stupid. I only stayed long enough to lose a hundred bucks, exactly the amount I had decided to "spend" on that test/lesson.)
At the casino, they played a version I was wholly unfamiliar with - limit hold'em. At that point I'd read only one entry level book (the BadAss Girl's Guide to Poker by Toby Leah Bochan - An excellent entry level all-around poker book, but, as I learned later, very entry level) and part of S/S. All I'd played or seen on TV was no-limit, and you simply can't play limit hold'em the same way and expect to win. Further, the cheapest casino game was $1/$3 limit, which gets to a max bet of $6... Which means you can lose about $36 - $48 bucks on the 2nd best hand in a heavily bet round.
Clearly, the book portion of my education was incomplete. So I went and bought about a hundred, hundred fifty dollars more in books, and started reading. I got Brunson's new Super/System 2, and several others by the likes of Mike Caro, David Sklansky, Phil Gordon, Phil Hellmuth, and many others. I bought and read a -lot- of books. I discovered a lot of "leaks" in my game... Things I was doing wrong or poorly, in local games and at the casino. No surprise that, at the casino, it cost me.
The more poker I saw on TV, the more I saw poker sites and casinos advertised, the more I realized everybody is playing poker now! If I had what it takes to be even better than ten or twenty percent of 'em, it could be a profitable hobby. So, my goal was to find out if I had what it takes to be even a good poker player. I expected a learning curve, and I expected it to cost me money, but not at the rate that casino game was costing me. I needed no-limit games, and I needed them to be worth less money each. So, again... What's a girl to do?
One thing every game I watched on TV had in common was advertisments for online poker... And one thing every book (except the original Super/System, which was written in the seventies) had in common was a mention of online poker, and, for all intents and purposes, the way they talked about it. Without notable exception, these pros said in thier books, when they first heard about online poker, they thought "Yeah, right... You've got to be kidding." But, also without notable exception, they all say they now consider it to be an excellent way to get in the maximum number of games, when you want, at the limits you want, and that they all spend considerable time playing online. So I went looking.
Any time, day or night, I can now find a poker game, ranging from as low as 1 penny and 2 penny blinds, limit or no limit, hold'em, omaha, stud, razz, draw... The limits go up to $500 & $1000 blinds and higher. There are tournaments with prize pools from a few dollars to a few hundred thousand. And every site that has real-money poker has play-money, free poker as well. (You really need to play free money for a few hours per site, to get used to the way everything works on that site. Going all in when you meant to fold is a lot less painful when it doesn't cost you several hundred dollars.)
So yeah... I've been playing poker about 3-6 hours a day, on the days I'm not driving a cab. I track my wins and losses, along with a scad of other details, in an excel spreadsheet... Because all the books say most players delude themselves about how much and how often they win... So I track the kind of game I play, which site I'm playing on, the stakes involved, the number of players involved, hol long I play, and how much I win or lose.
So far, I make $7.48 and hour playing poker, playing at low limits, averaged over the whole time I've been keeping records. This is after about twenty days of serious play spread over about a month and a half (although I wasn't keeping records the whole time). I can track how, at first, I was slowly losing money, then I was breaking even, now I'm slowly winning money. All the books talk about the fact that there will be long, long "losing streaks". As much as skill and math have to do with this game, it's still based on a random distribution of cards, so there are times you lose, period. I haven't hit any long losing streaks yet, but i haven't been playing long enough to have any streaks at all, really.
Anyway. I'm having fun at it. Expect me to bore you with more about poker later. If, by any chance, you want to come play, let me know. Most of these sites will give me a bonus if I turn in my friends or family, and if they do, I'll split it with you.
School is out for summer break, and I've decided -not- to take summer classes. I am no longer working at the market research firm, because of the yelling tirades of the owner (I just really don't like to be around people who yell when they're angry, particularly when they are people who become angry at the drop of a hat), and his unwillingness to pay me what I'm worth.
So what am I doing now? Why, driving a cab, dearly beloved. Talk about interesting work. more on that another time... It's not what I wanted to write about today.
So what -else- am I doing now? Funny you should ask, dearly beloved. I'm playing poker. And lots of it.
I've always been fairly ok at poker... Then I started seeing all the texas hold'em on TV. The first such show to really grab my attention was Celebrity Poker Showdown, on the pro-homo network, Bravo. Soon, an opportunity to play a no limit one table tournament with some friends ensured that I would never willingly go back to five-draw or seven-stud. (after they explained the big & little blind system to me, that is.)
I fairly crushed that first game, and went looking for more poker on TV. Next, I noticed some World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker broadcasts, as well as some others. I started watching those, then I started looking for more live games.
The TV commentators of one WSOP game mentioned Doyle Brunson's Super/System book with much awe and reverence, so I went out, bought it, and read it.
My problem was, I wasn't finding many local games... Crushing every local game I sat in on probably didn't help, but c'mon... What's a girl to do? (Oh, yeah... There was one local game I was not invited to sit in on, because I'm a girl. Can you believe it? In 2005?!?) I was still more than a little nervous about going to a casino to play at that point... The one time I did, I slowly bled money all over the table until I was tired of it. (No... I'm not stupid. I only stayed long enough to lose a hundred bucks, exactly the amount I had decided to "spend" on that test/lesson.)
At the casino, they played a version I was wholly unfamiliar with - limit hold'em. At that point I'd read only one entry level book (the BadAss Girl's Guide to Poker by Toby Leah Bochan - An excellent entry level all-around poker book, but, as I learned later, very entry level) and part of S/S. All I'd played or seen on TV was no-limit, and you simply can't play limit hold'em the same way and expect to win. Further, the cheapest casino game was $1/$3 limit, which gets to a max bet of $6... Which means you can lose about $36 - $48 bucks on the 2nd best hand in a heavily bet round.
Clearly, the book portion of my education was incomplete. So I went and bought about a hundred, hundred fifty dollars more in books, and started reading. I got Brunson's new Super/System 2, and several others by the likes of Mike Caro, David Sklansky, Phil Gordon, Phil Hellmuth, and many others. I bought and read a -lot- of books. I discovered a lot of "leaks" in my game... Things I was doing wrong or poorly, in local games and at the casino. No surprise that, at the casino, it cost me.
The more poker I saw on TV, the more I saw poker sites and casinos advertised, the more I realized everybody is playing poker now! If I had what it takes to be even better than ten or twenty percent of 'em, it could be a profitable hobby. So, my goal was to find out if I had what it takes to be even a good poker player. I expected a learning curve, and I expected it to cost me money, but not at the rate that casino game was costing me. I needed no-limit games, and I needed them to be worth less money each. So, again... What's a girl to do?
One thing every game I watched on TV had in common was advertisments for online poker... And one thing every book (except the original Super/System, which was written in the seventies) had in common was a mention of online poker, and, for all intents and purposes, the way they talked about it. Without notable exception, these pros said in thier books, when they first heard about online poker, they thought "Yeah, right... You've got to be kidding." But, also without notable exception, they all say they now consider it to be an excellent way to get in the maximum number of games, when you want, at the limits you want, and that they all spend considerable time playing online. So I went looking.
Any time, day or night, I can now find a poker game, ranging from as low as 1 penny and 2 penny blinds, limit or no limit, hold'em, omaha, stud, razz, draw... The limits go up to $500 & $1000 blinds and higher. There are tournaments with prize pools from a few dollars to a few hundred thousand. And every site that has real-money poker has play-money, free poker as well. (You really need to play free money for a few hours per site, to get used to the way everything works on that site. Going all in when you meant to fold is a lot less painful when it doesn't cost you several hundred dollars.)
So yeah... I've been playing poker about 3-6 hours a day, on the days I'm not driving a cab. I track my wins and losses, along with a scad of other details, in an excel spreadsheet... Because all the books say most players delude themselves about how much and how often they win... So I track the kind of game I play, which site I'm playing on, the stakes involved, the number of players involved, hol long I play, and how much I win or lose.
So far, I make $7.48 and hour playing poker, playing at low limits, averaged over the whole time I've been keeping records. This is after about twenty days of serious play spread over about a month and a half (although I wasn't keeping records the whole time). I can track how, at first, I was slowly losing money, then I was breaking even, now I'm slowly winning money. All the books talk about the fact that there will be long, long "losing streaks". As much as skill and math have to do with this game, it's still based on a random distribution of cards, so there are times you lose, period. I haven't hit any long losing streaks yet, but i haven't been playing long enough to have any streaks at all, really.
Anyway. I'm having fun at it. Expect me to bore you with more about poker later. If, by any chance, you want to come play, let me know. Most of these sites will give me a bonus if I turn in my friends or family, and if they do, I'll split it with you.