DonkeySquad

So I have not posted in over a month.  I have been pretty busy with photography and other things, but I want to get back into the swing of things.  My bankroll is at $668.00 and I want to move up and play bigger games.  I am finding it hard to do so at the limits I am playing and I feel like I am wasting my time at the NL10 tables. 

On the other hand, I don’t want to get crasy and destroy my bankroll on the count of “taking a shot”.  So I wanted to figure out the quickest way to earn money and move up in limits while keeping sound bankroll management in mind. 

There are three different types of texas holdem that I know how to play, Limit, NL, and SNG’s.  I have played a fair number of hours in each and I really have not figured out which one earns me the most money the quickest. 

First, I need to consider what limits I would play with the BR I have.  I should have between 50-100 buy-ins for NL, 300-500 Big Bets for Limit, and 50-100 buy-ins for SNGS.  If I hold to these guidelines, than that means I should either play NL10, 1/2 Limit, or $11 SNG’s. 

Too may surprise, Limit poker was by far the clear winner with more than 3x as much in hourly earnings vs NL and SNG’s.  Here are my calculations.

4 Tables NL10
5ptBB/100 = $1.00/100 hands
4 Tables x $1.00 = $4/hr
RB (calculated by a spreadsheet I made) = $1.75/hr
Total hr wage = $5.75/hr

4 Tables $11 SNG’s
Estimated ROI 12% = $1.32/SNG
4 SNG per Hour = $5.28/hr
RB (calculated by a spreadsheet I made)= $1.08/hr
Total hr wage = $6.36/hr

4 Tables of 1/2 Limit
4 Big Blinds/100 = $4.00/100
4 Tables x $4.00 = $16.00
RB (calculated by a spreadsheet I made)=$7.20/hr
Total hr wage = $23.20/hr

Even if my calculations were off a little, it is clear that limit poker would be best for me at this point. Limit poker games dry up at around 5/10 and that is where I would need to switch to NL. So for now, I am going to focus on Limit poker to build my bankroll and switch to NL when I reach a BR that is suitable for NL100 or greater.

My “Professional Day” did not go as planned.  I was up really late shooting a wedding and I just did not have the motivation to put in the hours on Labor Day.  I put in about 4 hours on Saturday and only 2 hours on Mon.  I ended down quite a bit.  I might still be playing too many tables.  One thing is for sure, I am not very good at the deep stack tables.  I seem to lose most of my money on those tables. 

I am not sure if NL10 is really all that beatable.  The rake is soooo high that it is hard to win.  I think the average player in my database loses 12.5bb/100!  That is huge amount to overcome.  To give you a perspective on how much that is, I paid over $40 in rake for 2,000 hands of NL10.  If we break that down, it would come to about $0.02 a hand.  If this rake was at the NL1000, then you would be paying $2 a hand to play (that is for every hand, not just the ones you are in).  That’s ridiculous!

I am just not sure if the players are that bad that I could overcome such a huge rake.   I might switch to Limt 1/2 until I am bankrolled for NL50 or higher.  I am going to continue to datamine the NL10 to see if there are actually any winner and what percentage of player are winners over a longer run. 

Poker has been on the back burner for the last 3 weeks or more.  I  have been focusing on other things this past month and it really has taken me out of the game.  I have still been reading the 2+2 forums and watching/downloading some videos, but I don’t have the urge to play. 

Time has been a premium and I have been busy with a bunch of side projects that take up a lot of my time.  The bad news is that it only looks like it is going to get worse in the next couple of months.  I have 2 weddings I am shooting in August, and 6 in Sept.  I will be very busy editing and shooting for the next two months. 

I have been re-thinking my plans for poker and I really want to make it.  It is just that I need to get more time open to play.  I am planning my the end of the year to be at a point where I could cut my hours at my day job to 20hrs and work more photography/poker into my income.  My goal is my sometime next year to be working full time in photography and poker and have no day job.  The mixture of my income from both professions will depend on the amount of effort and success in my respective fields.  I think it is easier to make decent money in photography but the upside in poker in much bigger.  I would love to make more money in poker than photography.  Any just maybe quit photography and do poker only.  Now that would be a dream come true. 

But for now, I have a long way to go and I really need to refocus myself on the task at hand and put in some hours and build my bankroll. 

I decided to give limit holdem a try.  When I first started playing online, I played limit.  I am not sure why I decided to play limit, but I was a winner from the start and never really looked back. 

I believe I started out playing 5/10 Limit at Paradise Poker back when they were the big site around.  I would play on there 5-max tables and I usually would only play very short sessions.  No longer than 1-hour.  It was fun and I could easily win $100-$300 in that time. 

The bad thing about limit is it is a pretty dead game online.  I looked at the limit games on FTP and there is only like 6-tables going at 5/10 and no tables above 20/40.  I decided to get my feet wet at the lowest limit tables they had.  It was fun and different than my normal no-limit games and it seems like a much easier game. 

I won like a whole $3.00 in about an hour at the .25/50 Limit game.  I think I can really get some good reads on players and get paid a lot on my hands that hold up.  I need to review my limit game more so I can work my way up to the 5/10 games again.  If I grin 6 tables of 3/6 and 5/10 I think I can make some good money in rake and win rate.   I still want to eventually get really good at no-limit, but for now I am really interested in just building my bankroll anyway I can.   

For awhile I had given up on poker. Poker did not feel the love for me. I deleted all of my good bookmarks, slashed my feeds in google reader, and just ignored PokerStars. Well, the new year brought a new more conservative attitude. After playing slow but enjoyable poker, I am starting to feel the need for speed.

The WSOP has really made my poker juices flow. I have no idea what is going on, beacuse I deleted everything of importance. So, now I ask you the reader, to help me rebuild my RSS feeds for useful poker sites. I could use the extra reading, in small amounts. I only have a small amount of time each day to read, so there can only be a small set of powerful sites. Help is required to feed the need for poker information and wisdom.

I was breaking down the things I wanted to do this week, and it seems like more than I can handle in one week.  Fortunately, some of these items I have longer than a week to do, but other I want to do daily.  It would be nice if I had a whole day to just work on this stuff, but that is not going to happen anytime soon.  To add to this, my weekend is booked for a vacation which means no of these things on my to-do list will get down.  I am definitely looking forward to wake boarding with my family and taking some photos of them jumping and falling, but it makes it difficult to “catch up” on the things that I want to finish.

Here is my list below with approx time it will take and how long I have to finish.  I am probably missing some things, but this is what I can up with off the top of my head.

• Learn Drupal - Work on Garcia Classiques website - 20-40hrs - 1 month
• Finish Editing Wedding Photos for Dominick - 6hr - By Sunday
• Work on Designing Wedding Album - 4-6hrs - 2 weeks
• Play Poker - 1-4 hrs - daily or 4 time a week
• Blog on Poker site - daily or 5 times a week
• Update images on photojake.com website - 4hr - 1-2 weeks
• Redesign WP Theme for DonkeySquad.com - 4-8hrs - 1-2 weeks
• Find and Post Mentor Thread for photography - 1hr - 1 week
• Call CSUF about Registering for my last classes to graduate - 2hr - 1-2 weeks
• Look into building my Credit and get a secure credit card - 2-8 hrs - 1-4 weeks

Well, it still seems like a lot, but as long as I keep focus, I think I can get most of these done.  Poker has been going good.  I only played about 150 hands yesterday, but won 1 buy-ins and it felt good.  I felt like the cards were coming pretty good, and I was playing well.  I am going to try to put in some hands tonight. 

I still need to re-evaluate my End of the year plans and goals.  I think it would be smart to shoot for $1,000 by the end of the month, but at this pase, I will not get there.  I really just need to put in the hours and grind it out.