The Bat Cave

Live Cash Games

I played 967 hours of live cash in 2023 – a 13% decrease from my volume in 2022. My primary game was 20/40 Limit Hold’em, with 53% of my cash game hours coming in that exact game – a massive increase over the 9.5% I played in 2022. I played 9.5% of my live cash hours in 1/3 NL, 18.5% in 2/5 or 3/5 NL, 12.2% in other stakes of LHE, and just below 6% in various mix games.

I played 74 hours of NL cash in January and booked a small loss in those games. Even though I rebounded nicely in February in only 33 hours, I only played more than 26 hours of NL cash in a single month for the rest of the year. I won almost $8k in 22 hours of a private New York City uncapped NL cash game but it admittedly played bigger than I was comfortable with and I only ended up playing twice out of the eight times the game ran while I was in the city.

Too frequently, I would show up at Palace during the week to play 3/5 and the game would be dead by like 9 PM. It started not being worth my time and I started going to Fortune instead and played 20/40 almost exclusively for the remainder of the year.

Also, this hand in March pretty much killed my spirit:

I think I was stuck at Palace for the year after that session and I never recovered, booking my first ever losing year at my most profitable casino of all-time.

Win Rates

20/40 LHE: 2.33 big bets per hour

3/5 NL: -6.58 big blinds per hour

3/5 NL (including 2/5 NL NYC game): 2.45 big blinds per hour

All Limit Hold’em: 2.1 big bets per hour

All NL: 1.78 big blinds per hour

Live Mix Games: 2.88 big bets per hour (tiny sample)

Overall Hourly: +$53.91/hour

Top 5 Sessions

+$5400 @ Private NYC game in 2/5 uncapped NL

+$3390 @ Fortune in 20/40 LHE

+$3100 @ Fortune in 20/40 LHE

+$2988 @ Fortune in 20/40 LHE

+$2707 @ Fortune in 20/40 LHE

Bottom 5 Sessions

-$2910 @ Fortune in 20/40 LHE

-$2760 @ Fortune in 20/40 LHE

-$2439 @ Fortune in 20/40 LHE

-$2328 @ Bellagio in 40/80 LHE

-$2286 @ Fortune in 20/40 LHE

2023 WSOP

I’m writing this in April 2024 and I played my last tourney in Vegas on July 5th of last year, so I’m not going to be able to get into much detail about each event. I wrote about a lot of it here (it wasn’t pretty) already anyway and I only played eight more bullets after that post (and I cashed none of them). It was a purely miserable WSOP for me. The only notable thing that happened in the last two weeks I was in Vegas was that I got to play with one of the most accomplished battle rappers of all-time – The Saurus – during the Colossus and we chopped it up about rap music for several hours. He was super cool and down to earth and I had a great time talking to him, but then he put me all in after I opened under the gun, I snapped him off with AJ, he showed AT, and, much like the rest of the summer, that was the last hand I played in the tournament. I also played the Main Event for the fourth time and failed to make Day 3 for the fourth time.

All in all, my 2023 WSOP was about as miserable as I’ve ever been playing poker. Altogether, I fired 23 bullets in live tourneys and managed only two min-cashes. I only added one WSOP cash to my resume (a 70th in the $1500 Limit Hold’em) and my only other cash of the summer I miraculously squeaked into the money in an $800 8-Game tourney at Aria. All in all, I lost almost $32k in live tourneys, plus an additional $1500+ going 0-4 in online tourneys on WSOP.com.

I played less than 9 hours of cash games while I was in Vegas. I had a good 20/40 mix session my first day in Vegas and then got slaughtered in 90 minutes of play in 40/80 at Bellagio. I played cash three times and rage quit twice. Just a pathetic performance overall.

I did a lot of damage to my psyche and my bankroll during this Series. I think mentally and financially the end of the 2023 WSOP is the lowest I’ve ever been in my professional poker playing career. I was seriously questioning if this was still what I wanted to do with my life and wondering whether I could even justify it financially anymore. I’ve managed to survive to this point, but I’m a long way from being in the clear and feeling truly comfortable gambling for a living.

The Fortune Streak

It was sometime around late April last year when I realized I was doing something incredible that I was completely unaware of. I had just finished my fourth straight 20/40 session of +$2000 or better and I wondered when the last time I lost in that game was. I went back through my records and saw that I had won 14 sessions in a row. My mind was blown. But little did I know, my streak was just getting started. I put together four more winning sessions and had my streak at 18 straight heading to the WSOP.

I got back to it on July 11th and went +$935, +$2988, and +$1802 in my first three sessions back. Streak at 21 straight. My next session was the cheapest win of the whole stretch; I booked a +$71 in 4.5 hours of play because the game broke at 9:30 PM. That was the first time it dawned on me that this crazy streak could come to an end simply because the game broke. That would be a really shitty way for it to end. Alas, that would be the shortest session I played during the whole streak while I was aware of it and the game breaking never ended up being a real threat to ending what I had going on. My next seven wins wouldn’t be cheap ones: I averaged +$1909 per session and brought my win streak to 29 in a row. I played one more session and booked a +$750 to bring my streak to a remarkable 30 straight wins in 20/40 at Fortune before heading back to New York City to visit my girlfriend for five weeks.

It’s kind of weird to have an epic streak going where I didn’t play for 5+ weeks not once, but TWICE while it was going on, but here we are. I returned to Fortune over a month later and won $602 over 6.5+ hours. A few days later, I booked a paltry +$181 in exactly 8 hours to bring my streak to 32 straight wins. My next session would be the longest I played while I knew the streak was going… because I was losing. I started off poorly and never recovered, finally giving up just shy of 2 AM still down a couple racks. I had got in the habit of posting about my streak on social media and people were starting to talk to me about it in public, sometimes while I was playing, and that was kind of awkward, so I was somewhat relieved when it finally ended. Also, the longer it continued, the more preposterous and unbelievable it started to feel to report the next win. I feel like I would’ve stopped believing someone else around win #15. This kind of thing just didn’t seem possible to me.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the numbers.

The streak started on February 2nd and didn’t end until September 23rd. I played 32 sessions and won every single time for a total of +$43,564. That was good for a $184.50/hour wage and 4.61 BB/hour during the streak. I played 236+ hours and averaged 7.38 hours a session.

Prior to this streak, my lifetime hourly in the Fortune 20/40 game was a respectable $44.10/hour. By the end of the streak, my lifetime hourly was up to $86.24/hour.

Prior to this streak, my longest win streak in the game was 8 straight sessions. My second longest streak was four straight sessions. Since the streak ended, my longest streak is six straight wins, which I’ve done twice. My post-streak hourly has been a respectable $47.94/hour.

Needless to say, this streak happened when I needed it the most and is pretty much the only reason I didn’t have to get a day job again… yet. That hasn’t stopped me from thinking about other sources of income, but at the end of the day, my floor in 20/40 is $40+ an hour and I’m not sure what I could do for work that I enjoy while still making that kind of money.

Let’s talk about how impossible 32 straight wins is. This is going to be some rough math, but it should still illustrate just how crazy this all was. Before my streak started, I won 58% of my 20/40 sessions at Fortune. If I trim out my fluky, shorter sessions, I won at a 62% clip. All other things being equal, the likelihood that I win two sessions in a row is (.62*.62) or 38.4%. The likelihood I win three sessions in a row is (.62*.62*.62) or 23.8%. My previous longest streak was 8 straight and the likelihood of that happening is just a shade over 2%. Do you see where this is going? My streak was at 14 straight when I realized what was going on and by that point the likelihood of that was 1/10th of 1%! I don’t know exactly what .62 to the 32nd power but it’s expressed like this: 2.27265788e-7. Let’s just say it’s microscopic. It’s not just a once in a lifetime type thing, but once in many lifetimes I imagine. Just absolutely wild.

On the flip side, the longest losing streak I’ve ever had in this game is five straight and I’ve done that twice. Based on the numbers I reported earlier, all other things considered equal, the likelihood of me losing five times in a row in this game is a shade under 1%. Pretty wild that I’m twice as likely to win 8 sessions in a row than I am to lose five in a row. Numbers are fun.

Tournament Results

I fired 42 bullets and managed only six cashes the entire year. I took 2nd in the Main Event at Little Creek for just under $13K and then I cashed my next tournament at Wildhorse in April. I busted four events in a row before min-cashing the $1500 LHE at WSOP. Then I managed just one min-cash over my next 26 bullets. I finished with a -55% ROI for the year and my worst year of tournament poker ever. I did manage a 12% ROI in online events.

Updated Lifetime ROIs:

Overall: 35%
Overall (excluding WSOP Main Events): 61%
WSOP: -3%
WSOP (excluding Main Event): 40%
NLH: 74%
NLH (excluding WSOP Main Event): 160%
HORSE: 61%
Omaha 8/B: 27%
Limit Hold’em: -27%
All Other Mixed Games: -46%

Overall, it was a pretty disastrous year for me. Cash games went well, but I went way too hard at WSOP and put myself in a precarious position financially. I didn’t help myself by playing less than 1000 hours of live cash. Realistically, I should be approaching 1500 every year and not playing enough is one of my biggest leaks as a professional poker player. Also, my expenses are just way too high. Diabetes supplies cost me around $10k a year and I’m paying $300 a month on top of that for health insurance. When I look at my income, and look at my expenses, and look at my bankroll, it’s a pretty worrisome combination. I’ve already talked to Aces about getting a part-time job there, but I decided it doesn’t make much sense to pursue until after the 2024 WSOP, but don’t be surprised if you see me working there in fall of this year. Poker is still my best source of income, but I need to think about other means of earning.