Changing Times

[peterbirks]

It's a sign of them, I tell you (changing times, that is) when the World Series of Poker can start and you don't even notice for four days. Admittedly, one of those days was the casino employees competition, shuffled to the start of the series to the slot that used to be reserved for the press competition, or the ladies' competition, or something else deemed not-very-important. However, that I actually didn't even notice the kick-off (shuffle-off? deal-off?) of a $40K event shows the extent to which Harrah's has develued the WSOP brand.

More frighteningly, Mr Channing got through to the money, cashed for $80k or thereabouts, and I just kind of went "huh huh". The money stakes have definitely gone up in the past three years or so. In 2004 I, and presumably Neil, would have gone "Wow!".

I moved through $25k "in play" at the weekend (money just sitting on various sites, rather than in Neteller or the dollar accounts) and said to myself "when it gets to $30k, I'll do something about it". It took me about three years to build up my first $5k. At the beginning the height of the ambition was to pay for a holiday. Now it's in the region of paying for a house.

I was getting a kind of hankering after the place (Las Vegas) at the weekend. I haven't been there for over two years now, which was the kind of break that I needed. I'll definitely go there in early December, I think. I might negotiate a poker rate at either the Wynn or the Venetian. If we're talking $5-$10 NL, I don't really want to play at the Bellagio anyway.

Then perhaps I might put $3k or so in play at the craps table (how hard can it be?) in the vague hope of getting the comps guys to notice me.

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Having backed Diversity to win the "Britain's Got Talent" televisual broadcast (and I doubt that I have ever seen such a mistitled programme) at 11 to 1, I'm now awaiting the pound to reach $1.68 before putting in a short position. I've missed all of this rise, despite telling Channing and Ward at DY's birthday meal in March that I was quite bullish on sterling.

The one plus I got out of this was that I've been playing on Littlewoods, which converts to and from sterling as you play. This means I gain if I am playing at rates such a £1:$1.40 and the rate then moves to £1:$1.63, because I keep all my poker records in dollars, so while I think that I have won $3,200 (say), because that's the amount of dollars that I won at the tables, the current conversion rate tells me that I have won $3,600.


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Minor idle thoughts: Guy Garvey from Elbow last night reminded me of John Shuttleworth's neighbour Ken ...

And when I see pictures of a young David Crosby, I am reminded of Brian Creese's son Matthew...

Oh, and new starlet Robyn, when you catch her in the right light and impose an 80s hairstyle on her, is surely the love-child of Tracy Ullman....
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Comments

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Having backed Diversity to win the "Britain's Got Talent" televisual broadcast (and I doubt that I have ever seen such a mistitled programme) at 11 to 1

Well done! That's a heck of a touch. What inspired it?

I might have been prepared to lay Susan Boyle, so to speak, but didn't see anything more specific than that.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

A combination of Mr Purle's pearls of wisdom, a brief scan of what all the contestants did, and a look at the prices on Betfair.

PJ

An inspiring performance!

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Peter,

Very impressed by your results on the virtual felt! Have you any musings, insights or wisdom to share on the topic of bankroll management. Would love to read anything you have to say on the subject.

Thanks and keep up the good work!

PeadarOParis

Re: An inspiring performance!

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

My bankroll management is hopelessly conservative. That's better than being too reckless, but far worse than playing to a level that your resources allow. Even if you do not increase your win rate immediately, the return on investment you get from playing at higher levels is immeasurable. You just learn so much more stuff.

I still get annoyed and worried at $1k downswings, which is just plain stupid (and I'm even worse live!). I should be able to cope with $4k downswings without coming down in stakes.

PJ

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

More frighteningly, Mr Channing got through to the money, cashed for $80k or thereabouts, and I just kind of went "huh huh". The money stakes have definitely gone up in the past three years or so. In 2004 I, and presumably Neil, would have gone "Wow!".

The other way to look at it is that he made +$38k(-ish) in a tournament. That's a "good national class" result, rather than a spectacular world class result. I suspect that he's had cash games with bigger sw0ngs than that in the past. On balance, this supports what you say.

I might put $3k or so in play at the craps table (how hard can it be?)

Supposedly someone had a 1-in-10⁹ run of something like 154 consecutive non-7 opening rolls the other week, which lasted for several hours. Because it was a lady playing low stakes, they decided to celebrate the story rather than busting her as an accomplished and brazen dice mechanic.

When I read the headline "woman has record roll lasting four hours" my gut reaction was "well, there are all sorts of world records these days, but how long it takes someone to roll the dice seems like an unusually bizarre one; how did they tell she was still shaking the dice before they let them go?"

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

The reason that the good Doctor Channing has had bigger swings than the +$38k in the tournament is that he managed to persuade them to increase the stakes of his game at the Vic! But I remember a decade or so ago seeing a guy walk away from the big game at the Vic and take a cheque for £28k. It was just an unimaginable win to me then. Now it's still a great win, but it's not unimaginable. Also, in those days, I would have thought of sixty quid as a big pot. Now I'm not that bemused by the thought of putting sixty quid in preflop and seeing how things develop from there.

I'm not alone in this. Other players I speak to say that the inflation which has hit the online game has affected the concept of "big", even at the lower levels. When I started online, $20-$40 limit was the biggest game. My main ambition in life was to be good enough to play $40-$80 limit in the Bellagio. Now we see $200-$400 NL games. The theoretical bankroll required for these stakes is my new definitiion of unimaginable. Something as minor as a thousand dollar pot just slips under the radar.

PJ

Much Older Pots

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

This kind of thing makes me realise the levels at which the NGC Poker school was playing at, at cons in the mid-70s. Pots of several hundred must have been way, way beyond the comfort zone of anyone sat at the table. You obviously weren't quite so conservative back then.

Re: Much Older Pots

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Well, I would never have put in that kind of money unless I had the nuts. Dave Allen, Glyn Palmer and a couple of others were not so conservative. However, it was true that I was playing for wins and losses that made up a far greater proportion of my wealth. And the night that I lost £300 on a single hand because I forgot the rule that the hole card was wild if paired (turned my nut hand into very much a non-nut hand) was shattering indeed.

However, there is an economic rationale at work here. If you go broke when you are 20, you have a long time to get rich again. If you go broke when you are 60, things don't look so healthy. So, as you age, it's perfectly rational to have a "comfort zone" (or bankroll requirement) that is a lower percentage of your total wealth. As a rule, you get richer, so the stakes that you will play for do rise, but not in direct proportion to the increase in your wealth. Back in the 1970s I would have happily played for half the money I had in the world. Now I wouldn't be willing to sit down risking more than 1% or so.

PJ

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

I think I must have had well over $20k lodged online around the time of the Iron Man win, but it's probably no more than $5k in total now. Holidays, computers and a revamped front drive ate most of it.

I still find it difficult to play the hours I did when I still smoked - I tend to nod off, which can be detrimental to one's tournament results. Some signs that this may be changing, but it's a slow process.