Future for me in poker?

Cool.

Been doing loads of 'normal' 'work' for the last two weeks which has been a lot of fun. Spent most of my time at Edgbaston Cricket Ground, mainly on a team-leader's wage (though not doing a great deal of team-leading) working behind various bars around the ground and also spending a lot of time pissing about in the cellar, throwing a ball around and changing the occasional barrel. Again, on a team-leader's hourly rate(?).

Taking a step back from poker has given me a chance to have a serious clear-headed think about my future (or lack of it) in the game.

There have been many times over the last few years where I've gone through spells of playing poker for money instead of working. During these times I have hated the thought of giving it up to go back to work.

And, so, it never fails to confuse me that, when the time comes to go back to work, I always enjoy it and can't think of anything worse than giving it up to grind the poker.

Especially in the summer.

So, given that work has almost always earned me more money than any 'healthy' spell of pokering has, I'm not even sure why I have played (and sometimes continue to play) poker as a sole source of income. So I will probably not be doing so in the near future.

I say 'probably' because:

As it happens, having played what I would consider enough hands at the $25, $50 and even the $100 level of O8, I genuinely think I could beat the game quite well. I am not prepared to put in the volume of hands required to earn a living at the $25 or $50 level (as do-able as I think it is, I would rather be out of the house working this summer than grinding out 6/7hrs of poker a day for a similar return), but if I had the BR not to worry about the swings of $100 and $200 PLO8 it would probably be worth my while taking some time off work to earn some decent money!

So, as it's very unlikely that a spare couple of grand is going to come my way in the form of a BR, I'll 'probably' be working for the rest of this summer. I think this is the sensible decision and does not at all feel like the disappointing realisation that maybe it would have been a couple of years ago. Instead, it's actually something I'm quite looking forward to.

A word on Hold'Em:

I have obviously played a lot of Hold'Em in my days and I simply don't think I'm good enough to beat that game at any meaningful stakes consistently. I don't even enjoy playing endless hands of Hold'Em any more so, even if I am capable, I have no desire what so ever to sacrifice work to make a living playing Hold'Em poker.

So, with Hold'Em completely out of the equation and given that I have no wishes to grind away at the smallish stakes of Omaha I can afford, I have cashed out most of my BR (total cash out for the month of $495.09), and have left just $20 'fun-money' in my account.

I have a potentially disarrrsterous plan for my small BR which I'll come onto later.

I don't intend to cash out from Stars at all over the summer as I'm hoping that work will continue to support me well enough (and start paying off debt at the same time...). I hope to continue playing the odd hour on a night with the micro/small stakes.

If I have built up a big enough BR by late 2008/early 2009 and it still feels right, I will consider putting in some hours at the money-making stakes.

So, that's all the long-term poker shit I've been thinking about over the last couple of weeks, have I been playing much?

Hardly at all. Took a few pot shots at 25c/50c and maybe a bit of 50c/$1, not sure. I had one half-hour of fun when I decided to sacrifice $40 by sitting with $20 on two NLO8 $50 tables with the intention of really gambling it up and leaving if I lost the $20. Well, I quickly lost one of the buy-ins and was down to $4 on the other table before rallying back to eventually leave the table with $55 for a $15 profit! Good times. Wish I could show you some of the hands, winning and losing but the pokerhand site isn't working. Had some great banter at the table as well with a couple of the regulars who, having 'played the game for years', thought I was a right wally. It was actually quite amusing as I have been playing O8 for only a month and know for a fact that most of them are easily rapable (and the not-so-easily-rapable ones are at least easily playable).

Also played a couple more O8 tourns ($17 ish outlay for no return), but the most interesting thing I've experimented with poker-wise since my last post is the 6-max tables. The average pot sizes at most stake sizes of the game seem larger than at the full ring tables. This seems a little odd and at the 1c/2c tables the av. pots are massive, usually $1 but sometimes as big as $3.

This got me wondering whether it would pay to see 100% of flops at these tables.

So, as I don't think I'm mentally or financially ready to start playing poker seriously again yet, I am going to set myself another one of those 1c/2c challenges just for fun.

My goal is to prove that the 6-max PLO8 1c/2c tables are beatable when seeing a flop with 100% of hands.

My first instinct here is that the reraised pots in which I have to see a flop with terrible starting hands could prove a little too expensive for my monsters to make up for but hopefully I'm wrong. Even if once every 200 hands I'm forced all in pre with rags vs two monsters I'll be struggling to make even that loss back over the next 199 hands let alone show a profit. Anyway, we'll see.

Don't expect any great volume. Or profit. Inabit.