Eric Rizen Lynch

Some random stuff

It's been a little while since I've updated the blog, so instead of staying focused and coming up with a catchy title you're going to kind of get a 'streaming consciousness' post from me that has some random points in it, all related to poker though, of course.

First off, I'm having one of my worst months in a long time in March. It's not over yet, and there have been 2-3 months in the last few years that I've gone into the final week of the month not doing so hot only to pull out a big score or two and end up with a great month, so I still have faith that by the end of the month I'll keep my streak of months with at least $10k profit since August 2005 going, and my streak of winning months since March 2005 alive too.

That being said, I have a lot of friends who play poker who are convinced that the games are getting a lot tougher. That between the new legislation making it harder for bad players to redeposit to all the training sites out there now that our edge is eroding. I gotta say, I don't really agree. I *DO* think that the tournaments have taken on a more aggressive nature though, and that will lead to both higher variance and it could hurt previously winning players' profits if they don't adjust.

Also, as most of you know I made a shift late last year to playing more cash games. The flexibility to play whenever I want for as long as I want and take breaks anytime with the new baby on the way made cash much easier. I'm starting to get some truly meaningful statistics from my play and just thought I would share. First off, I've played 3/6, 5/10, and 10/20 all a fair amount on Stars, as well as 2/4, 3/6, and 5/10 on Full Tilt and 3/6 and 5/10 on UB. I've done most of these limits at the 6 max tables, but Stars 3/6 and 5/10 as well as Full Tilt 5/10 I've done some full ring on. What really stuck out to me is I'm a winner in all of these games except one, the 5/10 6 max games on Stars. In this game, I'm actually down quite a bit, which I found odd since I'm doing very well at the 10/20 games on Stars, and you'd think they'd be tougher than the 5/10.

I talked to a few cash playing friends, and they all agreed that the 5/10 (6 max) games are much tougher for them than many of the other games. I got to wondering why I was winning at 10/20 and not 5/10, and have a couple of facts and theories. First off, I mainly play the 10/20 game on weekends. During the week there aren't a whole lot of them running and they tend to be regular names I recognize, but I think the weekends probably bring out more recreational gamblers, especially later at night. To be honest as well, I think later at night I run into a lot of people who have had too much to drink and/or are chasing losses at higher levels. As a friend of mine recently said 'For some reason when I'm drunk I never want to play 1/2 or 2/4, it's always 25/50 and 50/100'. Guess I should be glad I don't drink.

One other thing I noticed is I'm actually a winner in the 5/10 6 max games on Stars during the day, it's late evening/early morning when I see a significant drop off, which suggests to me I'm running into a lot of cash game regulars where my edge isn't as significant as it otherwise would be. Lastly, I looked through some of my hands and on Stars 5/10 6 max I'm running very poorly as well. In 6 max games I almost never slowplay my big hands, yet I'm a loser with AA, KK, and QQ, and only a marginal winner with AK. I could be playing these hands wrong, but my win rate with them on other sites as well as the way I play them I'm pretty confident that I'm playing them well, just running unusually bad at that limit.

For those of you that are curious, here are the games, in terms of $$$/hr that I've found most profitable since December 2006 in order from most profitable to least profitable. All of these are games that I'm beating for at least 4 BB/100 in Poker Tracker, although I'm not going to disclose exact win rates here:

FTP 5/10 6 max
Stars 3/6 6 max
UB 5/10 6 max
Stars 5/10 full ring

I'm not including the Stars 10/20 here because the sample size is relatively small compared to the others, but if it were larger and my win rate stayed true it would be the top game, but I practice pretty careful game selection with it, which I think is part of the reason it stays so high.

I also found it interesting that the Stars 3/6 game was the second most profitable, beating other 5/10 games. I think this means that there is a pretty big skill dropoff between Stars 5/10 and Stars 3/6 and that even if I can beat the 5/10 game it may be more profitable long term to stick to the 3/6 game and just move up to the 5/10 and 10/20 games when I see particularly juicy ones or on weekends. I personally have absolutely no problem swallowing my pride and playing at a lower level if it means bigger profits. I have kids to send to college one day so my ego can take the hit if it means more money :)

I was going to mention some complaints i've gotten in the RSS feed here, but I think I'll do that in a separate post now since this one has gotten longer.

-Rizen