how i got a good winrate (8bb/100+)by longple, March 29
I just went through my whole database and came up with a couple of realizations
it probably will be tl;dr but if u are a struggeling nl50, nl100 or nl200 player i think it can be a good read
during most of 2009 and until the summer of 2010 (july 2nd to be more exact) i was a masstabling rakebacksmallstakesgrinder, i did a database check looking through all the sites i 12 table++ ed on, 80% of hands are probably from stars 24 tabling
July 2nd was the day that i cashed out my roll from stars and started 4 tabling
i thought i was good at poker, i had watched all the videos out there, read most of the books etc, though i was a decent thinker, making all that rakeback $, running under EV and whining about it thinking i should make so much more etc made me paralized and i kinda got stuck in my improvement
during these hands i made about 17k$ in rakeback and lost ~4k$ at the tables pretty much breaking even as u see in the graph under
(i sorted out all my hands on all my aliases before 3rd july 2010 and after july 3rd 2010, alot of hands before that from the 10nl 25nl days etc are lost, i have no hands from 2008 left in my database
where i basically posted a cry me a river graph about running under EV, and that i was doomswitched etc and i was close to giving up on poker.
After this blogpost i took a break, and then grinded out the last hands to achive my next 100k VPP milestone + FPP bonuses
after that i cashed out my roll from stars, i finally started 4 tabling on bossmedia and ipoker and found myself beating nl100 and nl200 at a pretty good rate and it felt good to feel like a winner again, and not a rakebackwinner. then i started to grind alot of my volume at a swedish site where i play alot today. (if u seen some of my hands lately/blogposts with graphs they are mostly posted with the swedish currency SEK, as the tables run with SEK on the swedish site svenskaspel as i speak of)
I started taking more notes, play more pots with fish, pound on weak regs and had more time to look through stats, even though im not really a stats guy. The biggest thing i done so far probably is started thinking on my own, reading hands and ranges from simple logic breaking it down from start to finish what my and villains ranges were instead of just looking on 2barrel and riverbet CBet numbers and trash like that
i pretty much removed my hud except for the basic vpip/pfr/3bet/fold3bet from haveing a shitton of numbers befor as i felt a need to have that while i masstabled to get an idea on the villain even though it only made it worse pretty much.
all i look at nowadays is what ranges people open from different positions (the raise 1st in stat) it tells alot about peoples ranges, some 23/19 regs open different ranges, notable positions is EP BU and SB especially, i guess the steal stat pretty much is the same as this, but pound on these guys who open alot in the SB, dont give up position
the biggest thing i came to realise for REALS is how important position is, position is everything, especially the deeper u get.
pounding on people who open wide in the CO and SB from BU/BB is something u really shouldnt skip just cuz he seems tight, look through his stats, u will find that even the ones with nitty stats opens wide enough in the SB for example for you to call and 3bet more from the bigblind
and ofc be prepared to adjust to his adjustments, if he starts calling more 3bets oop or if he starts 4bet more etc and adjust ur 3bet range accordingly
for my results after the 3rd of july i was really not expecting these kinds of concistent results, as u play fewer hands/session it feels like u have more swings then u actually have longterm, its sick really :D
i havent done a complete database check for a very long time and im happy to present it soooo
here it is: (after leaving the rakeback grind on july the 3rd)
winning at almost 10bb/100 with close to 0 swings. it has taken me many hours to rake in 340k hands obv 4-6 tabling, sometimes 1-3 tabling even, but in just 8-9 months ive moved from a retarded breakeven 100NL player to a big winner on 2/4 3/6 and probably 5/10 aswell (dont have as big sample there yet, but so far so good)
it has made me sooo much better, i cant really push enough on how much playing less tables have improved my game and as u see the results speak for themself.
ive moved up from 0.5/1$ to 5/10$ in less then a year by 4 tabling.
As a tip to all of u out there who struggle at lower stakes, cut down on tables, play more heads up, take a shit ton of more notes, always try to rake in as much quality volume as possible
and seriously, playing heads up and 3 handed with good regs will not hurt u if ur a 100nl 200nl or 400nl player that want to improve
obviously it all comes down to what kind of goals u have as a player, but if u wanna get good, playing good players will get u there and not bumhunting.
but if u are happy bumhunting the lower stakes without much stress, without any ambitions on getting better at the game, go ahead
cuz exactly what gave me the opportunity to move up stakes this year is playing more deep tables, playing more heads up, and not to instasitout as fast as its 3 handed with 2 good regs
play, and improve, and u will be rewarded. there are no shortcuts in this game : ) except for MTT luckboxes obv ;D
to results, the graph with 300buy ins in 330k hands after july 3rd 2010 is played on 6 different sites, € $ and SEK, but i made some fast calculations and it ended up being about 85 000$
if any of you made it this far in the post, seriously, if u wanna get better u need to challange urself, dont be a bumhunter, crush the souls of every reg, they all suck, no one is good under 5/10 (no offence), some decent 200NL grinders, and alot of solid 400NL grinders out there for sure, but if they really were good they would have played higher already, and the good ones, that plays lower probably 16+ table to maximise their hourly so they are all just solid nits whom are not much to fear
but just get out of the mindset of getting xx$/hour on low/midstakes, as i did i calculated and only cared about the rakeback i could make. strive towards improvement and constantly try to move up and play thougher opponents, and if ur smart u will do just that
but obv u can make good money playing under 5/10, but imo alot of u guys should strive just as me to be the best possible player u can be, and for that u need to work really fuckin hard
cliffs:
-dont masstable if u wanna improve
-put down more quality volume try thinking about ur and villains
ranges in all spots instead of looking at stats clicking random
buttons
-u need to realise that u need to work hard to improve in this game,
be the best player u can be
-dont be a bumhunter unless ur happy playing the stake ur playing, then go ahead and maximise ur winnings on this stake or w/e even though bumhunting is kinda anoying
WELL after messing around with play money for a few years, I finally suckered -- I mean, convinced -- a friend to freeroll me some real monies into my account. I railed him till well after my bedtime (I work full time, give me a break) plus won a side bet so yeah, I deserved it!
I haven't been playing online as much as I used to so I'm starting this slow. Ended my first session in the micros up a little so that was kind of nice. Nothing noteworthy, other than the fact that I had a slight downswing and lost half my br at one point but s'all good now. Played an SNG and won that so was up a little more, then lost a couple but I blame a very unfortunate misclick for one of them. I really should start using a mouse instead of my mousepad...
I don't expect to be able to supplement my income with poker, especially at micro stakes, so for now this is just for fun. I don't have the patience or resources to dedicate too much time to poker at this point either. And why am I blogging about it? Bored at work I guess.
Almost. An employee looked like he was going to take a swing at me the other day after we got into an argument, so I filed a complaint with HR. Big mistake I guess, because he's best friends with the president of the company. President just called me into his office and chewed me out, saying if I complain or take it any further I'm fired, and that he shoulda let me go 6 months ago (not sure why he didnt then). I wanted to get into it with him but was pretty sure he would have fired me on the spot so I decided to bow out and just stand there getting yelled at. Pretty embarassing since I'm sure some employee's heard it, and office gossip will surely spread it around.
So back to the job hunt for me. At least I'm still employed, but obviously thats just borrowed time. He knows firing me within days/weeks of complaining about another employee would be an instant lawsuit so I figure I have anywhere between 1-6 months before he can get away with it.
Extra sucks that going poker pro is not yet an option for me. Lost 20 BI's in the last 2 days half stacking NL5, not even the worlds biggest heater could save me financially at these limits.
I havent played poker online for long time. But since i won that donkament for 1200. I am playing 10nl after work then i can. I just wanna prove myself that i am still winning player. But atm down -23bi. I know my leaks and have tried to avoid to get into those spots in most recent sessions.Atm -23bi down, since i lost few buyins on 25nl also. But mainly i am loosing 3bet pots vs huge station loosers who just hit every river mosly. They call 10$ to win 8$ pot with gutshot on turn and hit every fucking time or lower pair and get set on river. Lost 5 aa-s in row. Everyone aa was in 3bet preflop.
What i noticed ppl fold very easy to cont bet on 25nl. While noone gives repsect on 10nl and call any flop almost every time. I mostly 12 tabled sh. But now cut tables to 9 more easier to play. I still got 1k left i really hope i catch some break. Sound silly 100 Bis but i like it. Wanted to move 25nl then hit 1500$ but need alot of work.
lol finally gonna try to start learning ladder. trying 2v2, slowly makin my way up. Keep getting stupid allys who make like 15 workers then stop, or build build build and not do anything, etc etc. fk im getting all the passive lawl players.
here's what march turned out to be for me. fucking faggot nl 50 short stackers, why I oughtta...
As a CEO of a new poker site, HeroPoker.com, the most obvious difference between other sites is our VIP system.
Coming from a PC gaming industry background, I'm really familiar with leveling systems and I understand what is appealing about them. Of course every site's VIP reward's system is very important and can be central to a site's success and being from PS, I thought I knew what was up..so I thought.
Before I took on this role of CEO, I had been involved in many discussions as to the use of a site's VIP rewards system. For many sites, they use it as a selling point as to why should you play at their site. In reality, this type of thinking is flawed because, ultimately, for the vast majority of players, rakeback trumps the absolute rewards of most plans with the exception of PS's supernova elite. But besides that exception (which takes some major grinding devotion), the VIP system, no matter how unique, is not a good selling/marketing point to get players to join your site.
Rather, the true nature of a good VIP rewards system (which is pretty obvious if you think about Air Miles) is actually player retention. People don't play World of Warcraft because it has a great leveling system, but they continue to play it because it has a great leveling system. With that in mind, I made a VIP system with 300 levels. A bit overboard, I know it seems, but there was some reasoning behind my madness. That being said, I recently just adjusted the lower levels of the VIP system at Hero Poker, how recently? Like 3 days ago recent. Now, these changes don't change anything for any serious grinder, but for an entry level player, it may provide them with the most critical aspect of retaining them, namely a sense of progress. After all being a level 81 Barbarian is pretty cool right?...
MISSING THE POINT OF THE VIP
The problem with being in an industry like poker, for a long time, is that you forget what it is like to start off as a new player. Since poker is such a lifestyle oriented activity and touches many parts of your life; you just assume that everyone knows what is 'playing your position', '3 betting' or 'betting for value'. I think most companies are guilty of loosing touch with their target market in this way, and while I did have a clear intent when I set-up the 300 level VIP system as a retention tool for my new players, it wasn't effective at all. A majority of the rewards actually kicked in after about $127.40 total rake (ok, exactly that); of course there was the VIP point exchange that would automatically return 10% of VIP points, but that would not convey any sense of progress.
I had made a classic mistake in saying that I was structuring a VIP system to retain new players, but when you are playing micro stakes on a $20 deposit, $127.40 is a helluva lot of rake before the real retention aspect of the progress kicked in and who really cares what level you are when your bankroll is nearly zero? The key is providing some type of reward that adds to the playing experience and I missed that for the critical early levels. I am surrounded by professional poker players, from my own team of Pros of Gavin, Terrence, David, Julian, Rekrul and Mig.com to even eating dinner with John Juanda or my wife going shopping with Joe Hachem's wife. And so I had more of this 'image' of making a cool looking VIP system that would be embraced by the poker pros that I knew who would think it was 'good idea'. Having a bit of reality check, 'Hey is my site really geared towards new players or am I just going through the motions?'. A bit embarrassing, but yes, I was going through the motions. Because the players who needed the feel of progress weren't getting it.
MAKING CHANGES
So I've thought about it for week now and just made the changes and so now the VIP starts giving out minor tournament tickets for each level reached after just $1.50 is raked. Now, do I expect that suddenly the site will start to retain each and every new player. No, but at least I think I've adjusted one part of the site so that it is more focused to the original objective. For instance, now the first tournament ticket is a .30 cents tournament ticket to a $25 guarantee tournament which runs a few times a day. Now this has no appeal to someone who has a 10k bankroll, but it may mean a world of difference to someone who starts off with that $10 deposit.
NEW RICH FISH PLAYERS
I do have one private equity acquaintance who is worth about 120M in net worth and he just recently got into poker. So when he found out I had taken on HeroPoker, he said he'd like to play on it. Obviously I'm not going to tell you what his user name is, but in any case, for someone who has played poker like 10 times live, he dropped a lot (which is nothing to him) and has no idea about bankroll management as he just wants to play at a single table. Now, he stopped playing for a while for two reasons. #1 He was embarrassed because he knows that I can see how much he has lost and of course this guy is a really smart guy and wants to look good, and #2 I offered to get one of my pros to meet up with him on his travels and give him a couple hours of coaching. So I hurt his pride a bit, but regardless of how rich you are, it isn't going to help you learn faster.
In fact, when you are playing the higher limits in online poker, the skill level is even more pronounced. But recently he came back and reloaded and blew it in about a few hours. But he has earned a lot of VIP points relative to the time he has played (because its weighted contributed, obviously this works in his favour as he is likely playing and betting every hand) and so when he is busto, he has all these unused tournament tickets in his account from the VIP system. In many respects, it's completely beneath him to go into a $1 dollar sitngo table with is tournament coupon, and it's not like I'd like one of the biggest fish (sorry mate if you ever read this!) on my site to be playing 2cents/4cents, but what I do want him to learn the game and realize what poker is really about. So for the last month, when we've spoken, I did not mention my site at all.
But just yesterday he brought up the topic and talked about the VIP reward tournament tickets and how he had won with them. Now, does this additional 1 dollar that he won mean anything to him whatsoever, no, but the fact that he could win at a SitNGo, made him reload again today (you'd better catch him quick before he blows it again). So even to a mega rich guy like him, this VIP system did have some level of retention (and yes, I will be leveraging my professional corporate background to get some more corporate type fish playing - probably organize a poker seminar with Terrence in Hong Kong for some bankers sometime soon).
STARTING FROM LESS THAN NOTHING
The ideal player this VIP system should appeal to someone who wants to build up their bankroll from as minimal investment as possible. Minimal is relative, even Mig.com (Corwin Mackey), deposited a total of $150 USD before he took off (3 $50 dollar deposits), but I reckon/think he is very much an exception. I can say I've probably invested about 1k in loses before I really started to understand the game. But a player who starts playing online with a training site or is committed to learning and really reading as much as they can, I think that this VIP system will do what its supposed to do. Namely provide clear progress before you start using something like 'Hold'em manager' and a steady stream of tournament tickets you earn after level 5 (which may add chances to build to a sufficient starting bankroll). After all, rakeback doesn't mean much to a player who has deposited $10 dollars. I'm sure there a few more adjustments required for the VIP system, but I'm hoping that now it's more focused for the starting player. (Ha, now its time for me to start finding these guys like José "Girah" Macedo, the "Portuguese Poker Prodigy")
I'm not the youngest guy out there, 36, so I've been around the block a bit and I have a pretty good work ethic, and I'd like to think that I'm really talented as a business strategist. But this is such a competitive industry and the market conditions are pretty sick and I do take it as a challenge. There was a lot of arrogance on my part starting this site because I was regional director at PS, because I was a management consultant at a major global firm and I looked at my other competitors at the network skin level and thought, 'hell, I can do this'. But the reality is that the learning curve is pretty damn steep and the fact is that for the most part, every skin, regardless of quality of management is in a pretty screwed position, on an absolute scale. So no matter how good I thought I was, it pales in comparison to the task at hand. It's like being the best sniper and even if your snipe rate is 100% and 20 snipes per minute, that doesn't help when they got tanks, airplanes and 30,000 men with clubs. Maybe the competitive space isn't that bad, but it's close. So, the biggest thing was to really admit, I know nothing, even when I think I have it figured out, because the problem is that complex. But I'm going to take it one step at a time, not because I want to simply things, it's just that somethings that are this tough need time to work itself out.
Oh lawd... I'm not going to put much effort into this rant just b/c all of you will know where I'm going with it.. just a very tilting email one of our obese employees sent out this morning. Her husband had a brain tumor, had it removed, and the doctors said they found no traces of cancer. Apparently this is special, and living in the bible belt the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that it is a miracle by god. Nevermind the fact that you got the tumor in the first place & his bitch ass would be fucking dead if it weren't for medical science, prayers are the reason there is no cancer. But what really grinded my gears was the *very next* sentence which goes on to say that he will need continued checkup's & treatment to make sure no cancer develops for the NEXT 3 YEARS. But what the fuck, I thought god was the reason he has no cancer in the first place. So why the hell do you need future checkups? Why not just pray mother fucker? I mean I can understand being so diluted as to attribute any positive outcome to an invisible sky man, but if you are going to preemptively pray away the development of cancer, then there should be no need to visit doctors ever again. Obviously they didnt do shit so why waste the time and money?
You may have noticed earlier I emphasized the point of this person being obese. Given her size I am certain she qualifies as morbidly obese, but thats beside the point. The point was that a recent study was released conducted over 20 years that directly linked religiousness to obesity. Again, not too hard for you to fathom, but I'll spell it out anyway; Those found to attend religious functions at least once a week and who classified themselves as religious ended up obese in later years. I think it was something like a 90% correlation. These were people originally of healthy weight, who virtually all became obese 20 years later. Conversely, those who did not identify themselves with religious beliefs, nor attended religious functions with any regularity, were almost all within normal guidelines for physical health.
Point? Meh, I dunno. I just see her dumb fat fucking ass with her dumb fucking religion and think "how fitting of you".
THE CURRENT STATE OF POKER
If you go to Macau, right now, you can play no limit Holdem and Omaha and daily live tournaments with guarantees on the weekend and for the regional stops like the APPT and APT. At the Grand Lisboa, you have the PokerStars Macau room, so they have a regional event every other month or so; you'll find that there are lot of lower limit entry level tables there and they tend to play more ABC type of poker. But of course during tournament periods, the place is packed and the games very diverse. Whereas at the Wynn, there is more of a varied level of limits and Omaha as well. The action is more fast and furious here and there is even VIP high rollers section which is right beside the main 8 tables. David Ewing and Julian Powell live at these tables when the games are too good to spend time sleeping. In fact Julian's biggest single session there was about 650k (but he didn't have 100% of himself)! The really fishy players are now at the Venetian, just because they have so much walk through traffic and games at the Hard Rock are not up all the time, but given time, maybe every room will be packed in just a few more years.
FISHES THE SIZE OF WHALES
In terms of general skill, there is an influx of new players learning poker all the time, the thing is though, most Asia players are a really quick study; even the high stake fish have been getting beat on for the last couple of years and so their own ability has risen and plus they don't have any hesitation to shove and risk a million on the table, unlike some pros without that kind of bankroll. So overall, a Vega regular would be very profitable in Macau, you'd still need to put some hours into it; the money won't be a downpour from the skies, but it ain't like anywhere close to a drought either. But you'll find the best time to go to Macau and play is when there is a regional or local tournament going on. You'll get a contingent of Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, Filipinos and Australians making the trip up. It truly is the the center of poker in Asia and probably is the opposite pole to that of Melbourne Australia.
THE FRUITS OF MY LABOUR
I recently was in Macau and witness the fruits of my labour, with registration line just overflowing with people with having Day 1A sold out. And now that I'm the CEO of HeroPoker, I've cross that line and while normally welcomed with open arms after my resignation last year, the staff at Grand Lisboa need to be a bit more reserved now. But the head of business, Fred comes up to me and says, 'see, look at all this, you should have stayed for it all, you earned it'. But I look at him and say, 'you know, what we did here it was an impossible thing, but we did do it. And I want to do the impossible again'. He looks at me and laughs, 'well Dave, you wouldn't be you if that wasn't your attitude!' But, I do hope in the new future to have an event in Macau for our HeroPoker Players, not necessarily a tournament, but a poker event. I’ve already gotten a few casinos on board for it (thus the meetings in Macau). But yes, I do love, not a challenge, but the biggest challenge I can find.
MACAU ANYONE?
If anyone has any questions about going to Macau, let me know, from transport, to hotels to food, I basically lived out of hotel room there for 8 months of the year for nearly 3 years, so I pretty much know it like the back of hand. But if you want to see poker in the midst of some mad growth, regardless of continent, Macau is the place to be.
POKER IN ASIA
I had to visit Macau a few of weeks ago for a number of meetings as well as the igaming conference they had at the Grand Hyatt at the City of Dreams in Macau. Over the past 4 years, I could say that myself and one other key person were directly responsible for much of the growth of poker in Asia. Now that quite the statement I know, but it is true and will likely stand as one of my greater contributions to poker in general (it also helped immensely that PS that was backing it all). But such a task, even with a big backer still has quite the high failure rate, even the great Walmart pulled out of a market like Korea. I probably know more about the Asia poker scene as a whole than anyone out there, at least from an industry and recent historical stand point. So I'd like to share some stories about a few places in Asia, starting with Macau.
MACAU
Macau and me, well we have a love/hate relationship and of course it involves poker, 24 hour work days and living out of a hotel room for most of the year, but I digress. The first time I visited Macau was back in 2005 and I was working as a business license negotiator at that time. A Korean client of mine had meetings with some Malaysian contacts, so we all met up in Macau. Macau is just a hour west of Hong Kong by ferry (or 15 mins by helicopter). At that time Macau was on the verge of becoming a mega city, there was only the gleaming Sands there, which had set interest ablaze regarding the gaming possibilities of Macau. But it was still a town that was very rough around the edges with more dirt than glamour. Fast forward to 2011, Macau has more annual revenue than the entire state of Nevada and likely by next year, more than Nevada and Atlantic city put together and every month it breaks gaming record after record. You have the Venetian Macao which is the second largest building by volume (if you forget something in your hotel room, you're looking at a 15 min walk back from the conference rooms) and right in front of it is the City of Dreams (Crown/Melco) which has the Grand Hyatt, Crown and the Hard Rock Hotel and beside the back of the Venetian you have the Galaxy Macau, which will open sometime this year and when it’s fully completed it will be bigger than the Venetian!
THE ISLANDS
Macau is composed of three islands and a lot of reclaimed land, Peninsula (main island), Taipa, and Coloane (no casinos but wonderful scenery). Between Taipa and Coloane is 'Cotai" which is the reclaimed land between the two island (thus the Co- and the Tai- from the other island names to make Cotai) and there lines the not-yet-overly-famous 'Cotai Strip'. Each island has a different flavour with the Peninsula being the most populated with most of the casino located there including the infamous 'Lisboa' (and the ‘walk’ on the b1 floor) and the newly build 'Grand Lisboa' both owned by Stanley Ho and through his public company, SJM. Other major casinos include the Wynn/Encore (which the main building is a smaller version of the Vegas one), Sands and the MGM. But it’s the Peninsula that has all the nightlife and cultural spots in Macau and nearly all of the smaller casinos are located here: Waldo, Rio, Pharaohs etc. Crossing over to the bridge to Taipa there are the new mega casinos with the Venetian, City of Dreams (Crown/Melco) and soon to be open Galaxy Macau and one mid-sized casino, the Grand Waldo. And the story about poker in Macau actually starts here.
THE HISTORY OF POKER IN MACAU
I'll try to do this story justice before it gets lost in the sands of time, but there was this young man named Elton Tsang from Hong Kong and he wanted to do a poker tournament in Macau. So he had the necessary connections to a single casino which was willing to do it. Elton had contacted the APPT and then it became one of our major stops in the 1st year in 2007. So the first name of the tournament was the Asian Poker Open APPT Macau, I can't recall if it was APPT presents Asian Poker Open or vice versa, but in any case, it was the first international poker tournament in Macau and in some way, China, but that would be stretching it (as Macau definitely isn't China on so many levels). At the time Matt Savage and Danny McDonagh ran the tournament and I was there doing my senior manager role and just making sure everything was as smooth as possible (of course it was a chaotic time, but exciting and we were professionals so we got the job done). It was a great success except that there weren't any cash games!
WHAT? NO POKER? WTF?
If you had gone to Macau any time before mid-2007, you would have been extremely surprised that you couldn't play any live poker! There wasn't any except for some poker pro electronic tables at the Galaxy Starworld, because previous to 2007, there was no legislation for the introduction of poker. Now there could have been, as Jeff Lisandro had actually gotten some type of real confirmation to open up the first poker room in Macau in early 2007 or so, but because of political issues (wont' get into that, but not really anything to do with Jeff, really more cultural business issues) the final approval didn't happen. So after the success of the first APPT Macau Asian Poker Open, PS was allowed to hand in a submission for the legalization of poker in Macau. So myself, Danny McDonagh and the Grand Waldo executives, worked on it and got it approved. But lo and behold, waiting in the wings were the Grand Lisboa, who had been waiting for months to start a poker room and after the approval was given, Grand Lisboa quickly opened a poker room of 8 refurbished baccarat tables and off they went! We were next with the PokerStars Macau room at the Grand Lisboa. After that it was the Galaxy Starworld, then the Wynn. Finally LKF has a poker room for a month (closed quickly) and then the Venetian opened one up just this past year followed by the Hard Rock Hotel.
THE START
Now, the player that had come to our room were relatively the better players and it was a beautiful room which was a converted luxury VIP junket room, but had you gone to the Grand Lisboa when it first opened, the players were so new that they were going all-in with Queen high on a board with flushes and straights. It was a crazy crazy time. But the real game changer was the Wynn. Wow, they opened fourth, but they did it right with two great operators from their room in Vegas, AJ and Beau. What set them apart was that they put the poker room right on the main floor where there was still some high roller junket foot traffic. The stories started to flood in of these high rollers who simply where curious about ‘poker’ and wanted to play and bought in for 10,20,30k USD equivalent amounts and it was their first time playing! Soon there were 50k buy-in in really short order and the local pros were pooling all their cash together for single buy-in to get a hand on these uber high roller fish. At that time the market still was quite small, so with four poker rooms having opened in such a short period of time, PokerStars Macau moved to join with the Grand Lisboa and a new era was really born.
True to things, PokerStars Macau mainly focused on providing tournaments and also cash games while everywhere else was just cash games (this eventually changed), but over a course of just a couple of years, the Macau Poker Cup (founded that with Danny), which started with just 30 odd players in the main has hit over 500 in recent weeks. So yes, things have changed drastically in the last few years. After the APPT was formed, the next year the APT was launched. Then a super duper major junket operator, Sun City took over the Galaxy Starworld poker operations and focused on created the biggest and most regular cash game in the world. Now how big? Like players losing 2-5M per session at times with some business men taking an 8M loss in one session. And yes, that is the USD equivalent. While they only get one cash game up, damn it’s a big one, but don't think if you have big bucks you can just get in, it’s by invitation only. But if you really want to get in and have at least a 2M bankroll and are willing to spend at least 2 weeks there to play, PM me and I'll see what I can do. =)
"This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck."
— David Foster Wallace (This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life)
There are hundreds of blogs of players who document their ‘challenge’ to take a small bankroll of $10 dollars and turn it into $10k, or else, there are blogs where winning casual poker players decided that they are going to go professional and go all-in with their decision by moving to Vegas or grind online for 12 hours a day.
This blog is along the same lines, but from a different perspective… I'd like to do the same thing, but with a poker site, Hero Poker.
Hi, my name is David Jung, I was the Regional Director of PokerStars in Asia and nearly singlehandedly established poker across Asia, and I am the current CEO of Hero Poker, a new site on the Merge Gaming Network. I'm on a quest to make Hero Poker, the world's premier boutique poker site.
I am going to blog about the trials and tribulations of this challenge and I've chosen two poker communities to really work with during this time and one of them is LiquidPoker.net.
STACKED AGAINST THE HOUSE
If you think becoming a poker pro has some odds stacked against you, taking a new network poker site and trying to break into the top ten of global poker sites is virtually drawing dead. Even if you hit that two outer, no amount of corporate chip stack is going to prepare you for the 900 pound gorilla of the market leaders. And I should know, I worked at PokerStars as a senior manager and director from 2007 to 2010. I know the nature of the beast and from a competitive standpoint, the online poker jungle has its obvious hierarchy, we know who the lions and gorillas are.
AND THE WORD FROM VEGAS IS…
Recently I got word from Vegas that the word on the street is that, if you don't have 100M USD for seed money for online poker, you can forget about even competing. I'd reckon that would be the case for these major US live casinos (with the exception of Harrahs/Cesears) as probably they would donk off the first 50M to every type of marketing agency out there. Another 25M would go to useless online promotions and the last 25M they would start to use properly, but then realize that they actually short stacked at this point. Then things would really start to fall apart as ‘reloading’ your capital/bankroll as a public company has some major costs. And what is really shocking/breaking news is the joint venture with PokerStars and Wynn. Now the significance of Wynn making a relationship with PokerStars means that they think that the market is so damn competitive that even the legendary Steve Wynn is willing to make a joint venture...its pretty heavy news.
SO WHERE DO I THINK I COULD DO BETTER?
This is the part of the blog where I justify that my past experience will help me get the job done. And this also will lead to comments of 'good luck buddy you haven't got a chance' or 'prop bets to see how long this site will actually be up for'. And the truth is, no amount of experience could prepare one to take on such a complex and difficult task, even if you had 100M in chip. Because I accept this, I’ve let go of trying to compete with the beasts. Before I joined PokerStars, I was a senior management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers (the biggest global accounting firm). At the time I was specialized in business strategy, international negotiations and casino investments. What I loved about my job was that it wasn't a typical bs consultant's job. My main role wasn't to take a nearly bankrupt company and bring it to life again, or turn a so/so company into a super duper company with some wonky market strategy. Rather, my role was to make strategy that allowed companies to sidestep the competition. The key thing about this kind of strategic approach is that it isn’t flashy or mind-blowing stuff, it just looks to focus on one good point that everyone would normally take as a negative.
FOCUS IS GOOD
There comes a point when a company completely controls the playing field or that there is so much competition that there is no space to manoeuvre. This is the case with the online poker industry right now. For the stand alone sites, the market leaders have a lock on it; for the smaller network sites, their own network partners can be both friend or foe. So how to side step it all to make the competition irrelevant for a moment so that you can create your own beach head in this battle? So what is the obvious most negative thing and how to make it positive? And what is the most negative thing in online poker? Player liquidity…
PLAYER LIQUIDITY NUMBERS
Without player liquidity, players sometimes can't even maximize the use of their tournament bankrolls because there isn't enough tournaments to register into. Player liquidity affects the selection of the game in term of available limits, number of tables and tournament prize pools. But everyone is so focused on player liquidity, it is easy to forget liquidity doesn't always add to the quality of the game. It is a common fact that playing at one of the major stand alone sites is a harder game to win, because the players are more educated, they use HUDs and there is just a bigger tournament field.
THE QUALITY GAME
There is this single huge cash game in Macau, the biggest in the world. It's a single table and this table moves between Starworld to Lisboa to Grand Lisboa and sometimes makes a stop at the Wynn in any given week. And this game is by invitation only. You've heard of this game, it's a game populated by casino owners and VIP junket operators where there are single 1M USD pots and you can be up 5 or 8M or be down 2 M in the same game, and to them, this is still a fraction of their worth. This is the single table game that every pro worth his salt would die to get a regular place in it. But that is at one end of the spectrum. About 6 months ago I was in Shenzen (just across the border of Hong Kong) for a casual game of poker and three guys came down from Shanghai. One guy's family sold yachts and the other two were just full on wealthy and they had just started playing poker. But since they had a lot of disposable income, we played a $10/$20 and I bought in for $1200, but in just 4 hours I was up $3000. One of the guys looks at me and says, 'Wow you are so lucky, how come you always have a flush or straight' and I said, 'this is a game of skill, you allow me the cards to make my hands' and he just laughed at me and said, 'this is just luck and you are one lucky guy!'. Now that was a quality game.
LET NOTHING COME BETWEEN YOU AND THE CARDS
In live poker, you play that single table and can't multi-table (unless you're at the WSOP and you have that option). Now a lot of internet poker players feel that playing live poker is quite boring at first. The two aspects of continually trying to read your opponents while trying to set them up is different for live play than online, in that, it is far more intense. After setting up two poker rooms in Macau and being part of countless live tournaments working on the floor, I know that live poker players want to be, above else, comfortable. But comfortable here doesn’t mean it’s ‘Cheers’ and everyone knows your name. It’s when players know that someone is actively looking out for their interests so they can simply just focus and play their game.
I'm not saying that I want to turn an online site into a live poker room, I'll leave that to PKR, rather, I want to provide an experience where the players know that they can directly speak with the CEO and have that level of comfort to simply play their game at their best. If you’re going to play with us, then we want to provide that environment where you know you can talk to the management and get answers.
FISH COME AND GO, BUT QUALITY LASTS FOREVER
No matter what anyone says, size does matter, but size isn't about the general liquidity, but it’s about the amount of quality. To this end, we've focused our entire site on newer players and low stakes tournament players. Our focused marketing is casting the net wide to actively target and develop new players for low stakes tournament poker. Hero Poker is already part of a network that has low stake guaranteed tournaments with consistent overlays. This is the perfect environment for a low stakes player to play in relatively smaller fields with value. That being said, there are a lot of pending changes to the client and while we are one of the fastest growing poker networks, you can't ignore player liquidity as a major factor for the long term survive and competitiveness of our site. But right now, its a matter of allowing the disadvantage be a benefit and if I'm right liquidity will follow.
Now, in terms of LiquidPoker.net and HeroPoker, LiquidPoker is a bit nearer to my heart in that it is a 'sister site' to 'Teamliquid.net' where I've been a long time member. While I've kept things very separate, I do know that there is cross over, I'd just like people to respect the separation and not post on TL about whatever I'm doing business wise on LP; and while some of you already know, David Jung is MightyAtom. I still have a great love for SCBW and SC2 and of course E-sports. If I do something on TL, it would be sponsor a SCBW tournament, not that I have anything against SC2. While I do keep a blog on TL.net, its more on general business discourse, while this blog will really get into the nitty-gritty details of what is going on. I am maintaining two separate poker blogs, but I'd say that LP is quite different than the other community, so I will be a bit more personal here as I guess I can slightly let my guard down a bit more.
WE DO HAVE SPONSORED PROS, CLICHÉ, BUT SERIOUSLY THEY ARE WORLD CLASS PROS
HeroPoker is fortunate to be joined by six seasoned but still young veterans of the game, Gavin Griffin, Terrence Chan, James 'mig.com' Mackey, Daniel 'Rekrul' Schreiber, David 'u_dirty_dog' Ewing and Julian Powell. All of them play at the highest international level either both online and/or live. I know that many people in this community know Rekrul and Mig.com, obvious that was intentional from the beginning as I knew that one of the markets that I would like to focus on was the gamer market. Both Rekrul and Mig.com agreed after much discussion, I think both of them don't need sponsorship, and so our discussions weren't about the benefits more than if this was a good fit. I know both of them don't want to make a big deal out of it and don't want to seem like air headed figureheads, but that is what I'm going to do (although Rek is resisting like mad).
I know both of them are very talented but very different in personality. I don't think I need to go into details about them both here at LP, but I'm very very grateful and fortunate to have them both on the team. I've know Rek forever, and I did sponsor him for the 1st Team Asia Pros for PokerStars, but after I used him after one year, dropped him ^^ and Mig.com was introduced to me by Nazgul. I actually asked him for the best pro that he could think of that wasn't sponsored and fit what I was looking for, someone who could hold their own and was the best at what they did, and the first thought that came to him was Mig.com. Rekrul was there as we at the OGS-Liquid house (SC2 training house in Korea) and when I asked him his opinion, he was just basically speechless and said, 'Mig is as good as it gets'. After a couple weeks of talks, I had my full team. I'll get more into it about sponsored pros later, but I just wanted to share that story. I know that Rek is a controversial person and I'm willing to work through, not ignore, whatever come up because I do think he is worth it, but I'll leave it at that for now.
We will be running some type of promotions for LiquidPoker members exclusively, from some freerolls to some different type of promotions; we can even run a PLO freeroll, but honestly there isn't much PLO action on Hero Poker yet.
MOVING FORWARD
I will write about everything under the sun when it comes to the poker industry, professional business, careers and the trials and tribulations of this task and for all those who are doing the same thing but on the other side of the coin as a player. Feel free to request a blog topic and if I can write something decent about it, I will.
I’d like to leave you with this.
‘There Is Nothing Impossible To Him Who Will Try’
Alexander the Great
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