The Bat Cave

Welp, if I don’t post this in the next hour or so then it’s probably never going to happen since my WSOP technically kicks off in 2.5 hours. I just figured I’d post something about how my 2023 has gone leading up to the World Series.

I think the most notable change for me so far this year is that I have transitioned back to Limit Hold’em. In 2022, 74% of my live cash hours were in NL and only 15% in LHE. In 2023, I’m at 42% NL and 49.5% LHE – but that split is even more drastic over the last few months with 67% of my live hours being in LHE since April 1st.

It makes sense though. NL has been going poorly and LHE has been going, uh, spectacularly. The results have certainly been part of it, but also the 3/5 games at Palace have largely dried up during the week. Sure, it still gets off the ground pretty much every day, but it gets really weak in the evening and frequently breaks long before I’m ready to quit playing for the day. This has led to me thinking I’m better off just going to Fortune and playing 20/40 there. Interestingly, when I was driving down to Vegas last Friday, Palace somehow had three 3/5 games going. That blows my mind. 3/5 is actually pretty steady on Fridays and Saturdays – and I was playing there on Fridays every week at first, but my doom switch is fully activated – I won on my first 3/5 Friday session of the year and I haven’t won again since. I’ve only played three Friday sessions at Palace since the end of January though but they have all gone miserably: -$1499, -$1356, -$1542. All told, I’m down over $5500 on Fridays at Palace this year – on what is supposed to be my best day of the week there. Granted, this is a 44.5 hour sample size we are talking about here – barely a week’s worth of full-time play – so this is all just noise, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some accumulated tilt going on and I have found myself preferring to play 20/40 at Fortune on Fridays the last few months. So yes, the sample size is tiny, but when I get back from Vegas in late July, I’ll be able to say I haven’t won at Palace on a Friday in almost seven months and that sounds pretty fun and dramatic, right?

Also, this one pot I’m about to share is the difference between me being breakeven at Palace in 2023 and me being a solid winner:

I feel like things at Palace have gone poorly overall, but when I filter Fridays out of the equation, my results actually look pretty reasonable: $72/hour @ 3/5 and $20/hour @ 1/3. The problem is the 3/5 tends to be fragile on other days of the week and I really don’t want to play a ton of 1/3 but smaller games have accounted for almost half my hours when I do show up to Palace Monday through Thursday. It’s just become increasingly hard for me to walk into Palace these days. I think 1/3 would be far more tolerable if they increased the maximum buy-in to at least $500, but still, I’d much rather play 20/40.

Yes, my love of Limit Hold’em has returned. I mean, it never really left. I’ve always enjoyed playing 20/40 over playing 1/3 or 3/5 whenever I go to Fortune. I just enjoy the pace of the game so much more. Yes, NL is far more complex and mistakes from opponents are far more costly, but I just love the bang bang bang pace of playing limit games.

I knew I was having a really good year at Fortune, but I didn’t know exactly how good until I strung together four +$2k sessions in a row and lost that streak by booking a +$549 and wondered how long it had been since I actually had a losing 20/40 session. I was astonished to discover I was at 15 winning sessions in a row! I’ve played a ton of Limit Hold’em in my life and I’ve never come close to that kind of winning streak before. I was shocked. I’d guess that the absolute best streak I’ve ever gone on is probably like 9 or 10 wins in a row but certainly nothing like this. Variance is just so high in Limit Hold’em. Looking at my lifetime results and filtering out sessions of less than 5 hours, I lose about 4 out of every 10 sessions I play. That’s losing nearly half the time I show up to play so stringing together 15 consecutive wins is unheard of. I haven’t lost at Fortune in over four months! It’s crazy!

There was some luck involved here. I didn’t know this was happening so there were a couple times during the streak when the game broke after 2 or 3 hours and I happened to be winning at the time. At least one other time, I was summoned home early and happened to be winning. Since I’ve become aware of this streak, I’ve had three more wins, putting my streak at 18 wins in a row heading to WSOP. Now that I am aware of the streak, I do feel like I’d consider it still in tact if the game broke after two hours and I was losing. That would be a shitty way to “lose” it. Likewise, I don’t feel like I can quit after three hours when I’m winning just to keep the streak alive. I’d say six hours is probably the minimum number of hours I’d like to play for qualification. Also, this streak is specific to Fortune 20/40. I lost at Last Frontier in La Center earlier this month and I’ll certainly be playing some 20/40 in Vegas during the WSOP.

Overall, I’m somehow running at 3.64 big bets per hour in 20/40 at Fortune in 2023 and 4.32 big bets per hour during the streak. So yeah, kind of hard to talk myself into playing at Palace when I’ve been making almost $150 an hour at Fortune this year. It’s been awesome, but this isn’t real life. My LHE win rates always level out between 1.25 and 1.5 big bets per hour annually, so I’ll eventually come back down to earth, but I’ve also never had a streak like this before so my 2023 20/40 win rate will almost certainly be bigger than it ever has been before.

Pretty insane stuff. Note: I know it says 19 of 19 there, but one of those sessions was split up because the feeder game broke and I jumped in something else while I waited for the main game. Streak is at 18.

Pre-WSOP, tournaments have gone well for me so far. I’ve only played eight tourneys across parts of four different series that I mostly didn’t partake in. I have 3 cashes with my best one coming in the Main Event of the Little Creek series in March, finishing 2nd of 77 for a nearly $13k score, which actually cracks my top 5 of all time. I thought I was pretty much a lock to win it when I got heads up with an older woman that looked like a doppelgänger of my own mom, but she pretty much owned me heads up… by having the best hand every time. She played better than I thought she was going to, but I don’t think I lose very often if the cards are even remotely cooperative.

Anyways, that finish has me sitting on a sexy ROI of 191% for the year as I head into a WSOP that is going to drastically change that number one way or the other.

One last thing, someone posted a brutal / hilarious comment on my last music post. Here it is:

Love your blog man. But the music/movie lists are kinda brutal. Maybe you should make a second blog? A list of your top 20 most watched actors for the year?? Lol come on man. Give us that poker/life content. No one cares what you’re listening to, sorry.

Poogs

I mean… ouch. But also, message received. I don’t think it’s necessarily true that NO ONE cares about that stuff, but it is true that very few people seem to. I still think it’s fun to track for my own personal amusement though, so if you’re ever curious about my music stats and what I’m listening to, I’ve created a page I will update every month or two with that information, but the only posts I make on music from now on will either be album reviews (which I seem to be done with) or a year end write up. Check out my music stats here: Music Stats.

Crazy. I was looking for my 2021 results post for reference and I couldn’t find it. Did I never post one? Sheesh. Just my 2021 WSOP results? I’ll be damned. I could spend some time talking about how 2022 was a transition year for me, but ya’ll already know that by now. Let’s just get into the numbers.

Live Cash Games

I played 1101.5 hours of live cash in 2022. My primary game was 3/5 no limit Hold’em, with roughly 55% of my live hours coming in that exact game. I played 15.6% of my hours in 1/3 NL games and 9.5% in 20/40 limit Hold’em. No other specific game accounted for even 4% of my live cash hours. Pre-pandemic – and for as long as I’ve been playing poker pretty much – I probably played 95% of my live hours in limit Hold’em games. In 2022, limit Hold’em accounted for 15% of my total cash game hours and no limit Hold’em took up 74% of my volume. It has been quite the shift. I’ve enjoyed the transition – especially financially – but I actually want to play more limit Hold’em in 2023.

Win Rates

3/5 NL: 16 big blinds per hour (7.52 bb/hr in 2021)
1/3 NL: -5.33 big blinds per hour (18.7 bb/hr in 2021)
20/40 LHE: 2.97 big bets per hour (1.45 BB/hr in 2021)

All no limit Hold’em: 9.86 big blinds per hour (14.81 bb/hr in 2021)
All limit Hold’em: 2.89 big bets per hour (1.3 BB/hr in 2021)
Non-Hold’em cash games: -$21.21 per hour** ($11.19/hr in 2021)

**Mixed games made up only 10% of my live cash hours and I’m not sure how to best express how well or bad I did. Overall, I lost money – and a decent amount. Some of the games had no limit or pot limit mixed in, so expressing my win rate in big bets isn’t super accurate. Basically, my year in live mix games can be summed up like this: I did well in home games; I did well in the 10/20 HORSE game when Little Creek was running that; I did poorly the few times I played 10/20 O8 at Palace; I got crushed over two sessions in a 30/60 mix game in Houston.

Top 5 Sessions

+$5808 at Fortune in 20/40 LHE
+$4390 at Bellagio in 40/80 LHE
+$2921 at Palace in 3/5 NL
+$2870 at Palace in 3/5 NL
+$2742 at Palace in 3/5 NL

Bottom 5 Sessions

-$3900 at private game in 5/10 NL
-$3329 at Palace in 3/5 NL
-$2675 at private game in 5/10 NL
-$2400 at Prime Social in 30/60 Mix
-$2324 at Palace in 3/5 NL
-$2215 at private game in 5/10 NL
-$2084 at Palace in 3/5 NL

Notes:

-That 20/40 session at Fortune was not only my best session of the year, but it was also my second best cash game session of all-time.
-My pain threshold found new levels this year. I’d never lost more than $2300 in a single session before 2022 and then I went it did it five times just last year.
-I included more than 5 sessions for my bottom because three of those results were in private cash games that I’m staked in. While they technically count when looking at my overall performance, they don’t affect my bottom line nearly as much as sessions where I have 100% of myself.
-Ignoring the private game results, the -$2400 in the 30/60 Mix was a record worst loss for me at the time – and then I demolished that mark with the -$3329 in 3/5 @ Palace. Good times!

Live Tournaments

I played 330+ hours across 47 entries in live tournaments in 2022. I managed a mere 7 cashes for a paltry 14% rate of finishing in the money. I made trips to Houston, Vegas, Lincoln City, Sacramento, and Pendleton – and I only had one winning trip the whole year. But it was a big one. I took 1st of 388 entrants in the Lincoln City Main Event for around $52,000 – a career high tournament score. Thanks to that win I finished the year with over $66k in cashes versus $46k in entry fees and a 44% ROI for 2022. After never having a losing year of tournament poker in my life, I booked losses for 2019, 2020, and 2021, but managed to snap that cold streak this year. Sort of. Without my big win, I would have had BY FAR my worst year of tournament poker ever. Tournament poker is funny that way – one score can change EVERYTHING. Also, even though I ended up regretting it, not playing the $10K Main Event helped my end of year numbers, as bricking a tournament that is over 10x my average buy-in has a huge effect on my final numbers and is largely why I had a losing 2019 and 2021 in poker tournaments.

Top 5 Cashes

$50,174 1st of 388 at Chinook Winds in $600+$200 NLH Main Event
$4440 19th of 471 at WSOP in $1500 Stud 8 or Better
$3900 28th of 522 at WSOP in $1500 Limit Hold’em
$3700 8th of 269 at Wynn in $600 Omaha 8 or Better
$1525 30th of 407 at Wynn in $600 PLO Turbo

Career Numbers (since summer of 2013)

ROI: 55%
ROI (excluding WSOP Main Event): 83%
ROI at WSOP: 57%
ROI at WSOP (excluding Main Event): 122%
ROI in NLH: 100%
ROI in HORSE: 93%
ROI in O8: 38%
ROI in all other games: -33%
ROI in entries of $2500+: -63% (2 cashes/9 entries)

WSOP cashes: 20
Current GPI Ranking: 3526th
Washington All-Time Money List Ranking: 72nd

The Hand That Won Me $50k

It’s been over three months since I won the Main Event in Lincoln City, so this hand history might be a little fuzzy. But it was something like this: we were already pretty deep in the tournament – in the money already with maybe 3 to 5 tables left. I had heaps. Both my opponents in this hand had heaps. I think I started with something like 900k and they both had me covered. We were all well above average chip stacks. I think the blinds were 5k/10k with a 10k big blind ante and I was in the big blind with 77. Under the gun opened to 20k, the very next player called, and it folded to me and I defended the big blind.

The flop was 987 with two diamonds. Pretty nice. I check, the preflop raiser checks, and I believe the next guy bet 40k. This is obviously an extremely wet board. Our first instinct is to raise and be willing to put all the money in the pot. However, this board also absolutely smacks this player’s range as well. 99, 88, and JT suited are all hands I can see him flatting an under the gun open with from early position. He can also have some overpairs – like TT-QQ – some big diamond draws, and some straight draws. I end up deciding to check-call to keep things under control and see what develops on the turn. The preflop opener folds.

The turn card is perfect for our hand. It’s an offsuit four. None of the draws get there, but it also doesn’t really change the dynamic we had on the flop. I check and he bets 100k. I think about raising here also, but again elect to go with check-call.

The river pairs the four. What else could we want? Quads? I strongly consider leading out, but after giving it a lot of thought, I end up checking again. He bets 200k. It seems like I have an automatic jam here but the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t come up with hands that he was likely to call with that I could beat. JT was about the only one. I thought my opponent was a sharp dude, so I didn’t think he would call a jam with hands like TT+. If he was blasting off with a busted draw he obviously wasn’t calling with those hands (and he probably wouldn’t bet this sizing on the river either). So if he’s only calling with JT suited, 99 and 88, that’s six combos of full houses and four combos of straights. I shouldn’t have to do that math for anyone to know that jamming would be bad in this scenario. I didn’t see the merit in going all in and finally said, “this is probably a mega nit roll but…” and put out the calling chips. He turned over 99 for the nut full house and I continued on with a stack that was still well above average.

I’ve talked about this hand a lot with my friends and I still can’t explain exactly why I played it the way I did. Sometimes your instincts are going off for a reason. I’ve learned that not trusting my instincts is usually to my own detriment and trusting them in this exact spot absolutely saved my tournament life and allowed me to go on to make the biggest tourney score of my life.

From 8-1 Underdog to Champion

Sometimes when I go really deep in tournaments, I start fantasizing about winning the whole thing, particularly in bracelet events, but during this Chinook Winds Main Event run, the thought never really crossed my mind until the first big pot I won during heads up (although I did have a brief moment after that 77 vs 99 hand where I wondered if destiny was calling). The guy I was playing against was applying tons of pressure at the final table and doing most of the heavy lifting. I was basically just sitting there watching everyone else get bullied and knocked out by him, so when I did make it to heads up play, he had a MASSIVE chip lead and I was rather content that I was probably going to finish 2nd.

And then he opened his button and I defended with the 98 offsuit. The flop was 822 and I checked it to him. I can’t remember blinds or stack sizes but he made a c-bet and I decided to jam on him since a pair of 8s wasn’t exactly the kind of hand I was looking to check-call down with on the majority of runouts. He snap-called and I figured I was drawing to two outs. I rolled my hand and he was immediately disappointed because he thought I had him outkicked. But then he turned over his hand and was even more disappointed: he had 75 offsuit. In a stunning development, he turned zero equity and I quickly had a full double with a mediocre pair with a mediocre kicker and absolutely no sweat.

A few hands later, he raised his button and I defended with the 86 offsuit. The flop was pretty solid: T97. I checked, he bet 200k, and I raised it to 650k, he called. The turn was an unfortunate 6 and I decided to check it over to my guy since he had shown a tendency to attack weakness and overbluff. He obliged with a bet and I merely called. The river was a blank and I again checked it over to him and he didn’t disappoint by jamming for several times the size of the pot. I didn’t play my hand this way to fold to this kind of player, so I snap called and all he could produce was K3. We were pretty close in chip count at his point, but when the dust settled, we realized I had him covered and that was it. My biggest tournament win of all-time.

A Note About Volume

Altogether I played 1432 hours of live poker in 2022. That number is up from 1206 hours in 2021, but I only played 13 hours outside home games during the first three months of 2021. The rest of that year, I played an average of 123 hours a month. In 2022, I only averaged 119 hours a month. Somehow I went from being married to not being married and played less poker. Huh.

I addressed this problem of mine in a previous blog and I made a bet with a couple friends that I could play 320 hours of live poker over the last two months of 2022. It was a lock. I had trips to Pendleton and Vegas planned. And I still fell almost 30 hours short. Amazing. Granted, we didn’t bet enough for me to care about losing, but damn! That’s embarrassing! I think a reasonable goal for 2023 is to play 1600+ hours. That’s about 30 hours a week and since I plan on studying WAY more in 2023 and that number still represents a 15% increase in volume, it feels like a fair challenge.

2023 Goals

-Play more limit Hold’em at 20/40+ stakes

-Maintain my win rate at 3/5 locally

-Get out of makeup with my cash game backer

-Show a profit at 5/10+ NL

-Travel somewhere I’ve never been before

-Play more live mix games

-Play more live NLH tournaments

-Play WSOP Main Event

-Play 1600+ hours on the live felt

-Study at least 2 hours a week

-Teach my girlfriend how to play and get her in 4/8 games by spring

-Have my best year ever in poker

Overall, I’m pretty happy with my results in 2022. I wish I would have played more. I wish I played the Main Event. My cash game results were great and my tourney win added some nice cushion to my bankroll. After three mediocre years, I’m back to the level of success I enjoyed from 2016 to 2018. I fully expect 2023 to be my best year yet.