Over all it was a pretty good day that will lead to many more good days. I followed through with several things I have been planning and trying to work on. I lowered my buy-ins a little by taking out a couple of the highest buy-ins and replacing them with a smaller buy-in MTTs. I also continued to work on ranging players and finding good equity spots. All the recent hand reviews and work with pokerstove is paying off. I did manage to make a few plays I am not to sure about, but I am sure, that I will be going over them later.
It has taken me a few weeks to get to where I feel like I am in control of my BR and my play after a long break from online. At first I was in to big of a hurry and expected to get rich the first night. I will say I did only deposit $200 and for a couple reasons. One of the reasons being I wasn't sure what to expect, I hadn't played in about 13 months and my last experience left me owed a bunch of money I will possibly never see. The other reason is because my BR just wasn't very big and I couldn't afford to deposit a lot. After BF I played a ton of live poker and did great for a while but had a horrid run at the end of 2011 that included several live MTT bubbles and the live expenses got me hella short when running below EV. I wasn't careful enough. So even though the $200 I deposited was important, I hadn't quite adopted a $200 bankroll mentality. I mean I had been playing MTTs live ranging from $135 to $2k and before Black Friday hit I had been playing highstakes MTTs online for about a month. Dropping down to $11 and under MTTs was a bit of a jump. Even though my BR was saying "hey, I'm low" my stubbornness was saying "hey, let's win a few thousand tonight".
Luckily for me the first night back I got 3rd in a $11 cube, a 1 rebuy 1 add-on MTT. The 3rd place was for 1k and gave me a little more money to get started. But, to be honest, just the fact that I was in a $11c with a $200 roll should say enough. I will say that on the first day back I did not look at it like that was a $200 roll and I would build. I was so unsure what playing online would be like after 13 months but was ready to do something. I just decided I would put some money on and try to play. I had been playing a lot of Tiger Woods 13 on PS3 and I was getting bored. I do enjoy video games but the reason I was playing so much is because my BR wasn't big enough to even grind 1/2 live in the local casinos. I have had my share of struggles recently and really wished I would have thought to come back to online poker sooner. The DOJ and BF really put online poker on its heels. I am just not the same person when I'm lounging around playing games as I am when I am a poker grinder trying to make money. I need to feel like I am earning money and improving daily, poker is the perfect outlet.
So as I was saying the first $200 didn't start with the "build this up" mentality, but after getting up over 1k on the first night, along with reconnecting with several of my old poker chat buddies, I was ready to go. To bad for me my desire out weighed my preparation and it took a few days for me to figure out the best value MTTs to play. I took my 1k to 2k and then just as quickly back to $200. It was at this time that I finally started trying to get my head around where I was financially and what I need to do to build my BR back up. I have been constantly working on my MTT schedule sense and am very close to where I need to be now with risk verses reward.
The only thing that playing outside your roll will guarantee, is emotion. To play poker at its highest levels a player needs play with emotional detachment, but playing outside your bankroll with have you more attached to your emotions than ever. To give an example on my second Sunday back I was playing in the $109 150k on Carbon and went out 5 spots from the money. When I went out, I yelled "Fuck You" right at the screen as if the guy that just sucked out on me could hear it. The min cash that I was 5 spots away from was $210. The $210 would have covered 90% of my buy-ins for the day and would have been at least a 10-15% increase to my bankroll. That is still no reason to let your emotions come into play. The point I am trying to make is if that MTT had been within my buy-in range I would never have gotten upset over a min cash, but because the min cash was for so much I got tilted. Granted I don't think this is the best example because I won a satellite into the 150k and was only in for $11 but when comparing the amount of the min cash to my BR it was substantial, so it seemed to hurt way worse. This sheds some light on the fact that staying within the proper buy-in range for your BR per proper BRM will help you maintain emotional detachment, and emotional detachment is key for high volume grinders.
I'll be honest that yelling occurrence was rare because I have trained myself to know that any one MTT does not mean much in the whole scheme of things. A decent MTT grinder is going to cash in 15% of their MTTs, that leaves 85% that you do not. You just learn that when you bust a MTT you register in another and keep going.
I was just starting to see some of my potential in 2011. I was in a poker chat daily, I was a lot of training videos, and I had taken some poker lessons and it was all paying off. January 2011 I had the best poker month of my life and really felt I was starting to get somewhere. Then the DOJ brought about Black Friday and really put a damper on my progress. I was okay with going back to the live grind where I started but was naive and didn't quite realize that the substantial online BR I had built up was pocket change to the live community. On top of all that I only got half my bankroll because AP and Full Tilt didn't pay us our money. So 1/2 my substantial online BR was definitely pocket change to the live world. Looking back I would rather have been playing online the whole time and kept improving but I did pick up some very valuable experience going to the WSOP for 32 days and playing the Main Event. I had improved so much over the course of 6 months or so before Black Friday, but I think I mostly just maintained after. My improvements were more just fine tuning along with adapting the things I learned online to live. Since being back about 3 weeks I have removed almost all the rust off my game, have plugged a few leaks, and I am back to learning and improving daily. This is where I belong, I am an online grinder.
LONG LIVE ONLINE POKER!
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