Remember when I talked about good bankroll management? Well I'm not practicing it the way I planned to. Now, I didn't go off and venture into playing two NL50 heads up games on a bankroll of $150 like I did once a few months ago (the results were not very good, as you might be able to predict). I ended up playing one NL25 HU game on Pacific in order to pass about twenty minutes in between studies. The fact that Pacific spreads a NL25 HU game is about the only thing I like about their software, and I saw it as a good way to clear my bonus (HU poker results in you being involved in just about every hand, contributing a decent amount to the rake, and therefore blasting through your bonus). The only problem is I shouldn't be doing this with only 25 buy-ins. HU poker has huge variance, and while the guy I ended up playing against was horrible, he still managed to take me for just over a buy-in.
It was stupid on my part to even play the game and if I really want to succeed at this, I'm going to have to really push myself to play by the rules I set. And after today I've realized I need to change my rules a little.
- No HU poker. It's too high variance and I just don't have the BR to justify it. That and I'm not a very experience HU player. Maybe when I'm playing NL100 with 50 buy-ins I could play some NL50 HU, but before that I think it's just a bad idea.
- Wait until I have 50 buy-ins to move up to NL100. Originally I said 25, but I think this is a bad idea. I still plan on going to NL50 when I get to 25 buy-ins for it, because I feel if I want to do this as a living I need to be playing at NL50 at the minimum. I could do it at NL25, but I wouldn't be making enough to be able to save very much and my bankroll would be stagnant, and I'd be stuck playing NL25 forever. But if my numbers are right about NL50, I don't see why I should rush into NL100. What if I end up losing three, four or five buy-ins my first week? Or day? At NL50 that's $250, at NL100 it's $500. I want to have a lot of money to fall back on, because I'll be taking at least $500 out of my account a week to pay the bills.
- I'm playing against pure donks. Just sit at 6max tables and play TAG. I've mentioned wanting to do this before, but now I need to put it as a rule so I actually do it.
- If ever I double up at a table, I want to now leave that table. Because Pacific requires me to make my decisions so bloody fast, I don't want to have to remember where I'm 100bb deep and where I'm 200bb deep. The other day I got all-in for 200bb with KK pre-flop, which is simply bad poker. KK is a good hand, but if I get into a hand with someone else as deep as me, it's not something I should be pushing pre-flop. When I hit 150BB I'm off the table. All the tables at Pacific are bad, so I don't have to worry about table selection. (this doesn't apply if everyone else at the table has 100bb or less, it's all about relative stacks). And I know I could potentially be costing myself money here and a lot of people might say this is –EV, but I'll sacrifice some EV here to be able to play with less variance.
Overall I can run over these games if I play smart, I just need to start doing that and stop being an idiot. Stupid decisions have cost me my BR in the past, I have to learn from my mistakes here. It's time for some discipline.
