...and God created NL cash

In November 2005, I went on holiday to Nassau, Bahamas. While there I visited one of the casinos and played some $1/$2 NL cash. The standard was poor and I left with a profit of around $500. Playing live* (as opposed to playing multiple tables online) really highlighted for me just how poor most players are. That’s when I thought that I could probably exploit this fact better at the NL cash tables, rather than the STT tables that I was currently playing.

*(Having moved to North Carolina from England in 2000 meant that I hadn’t had much opportunity to play live.)

When I got back home, I started playing multiple tables of NL cash. Initially things went very well and I finished the month with a nice profit:

November, 2005: +$7,703

However December didn’t go quite so well as I had yet to make the necessary adjustments needed for the NL game.

December, 2005: +$725

Frustrated, I decided to leave the NL cash games for the time being, and moved to mainly (low-stake) MTTs and also back to $22 STTs.

January, 2006: +$2,441

I tried NL cash again for a few days in February and had some good results:

February, 2006: +$7,589

I continued with NL cash, and moved up to playing 6 tables at a time:

March, 2006: +$7,969
April, 2006: +$12,446
May, 2006: +$10,949

I moved up to 8 tables, and then to 10. (My results don't look quite as good as the previous 3 months but that was partly due to a decrease in hours.)

June, 2006: +$8,947
July, 2006: +$7,925
August, 2006: +$1,577
September, 2006: +$5,047
October, 2006: +$6,732
November, 2006 +$5,117
December, 2006: +$9,873
January, 2007: +$6,344
February, 2007: +4,865

In March 2007, I went full-time, and had now started playing 12 tables at a time:

March, 2007: +$16,091
April, 2007: +$17,060
May, 2007: +$14,846
June, 2007: +$14,435

I’m happy with my progress to date; as of last month my total online profit was $187,891 and all 33 months have been profitable. I now have to think about where I want to take my game. I know I can continue to play $1/$2 and make a nice profit each month, with little variance, and no stress- but should I be looking to increase my stakes with an ultimate aim of playing some of the highest stakes online?

Look at Brian Townsend (blog link on right.) He was playing very low stake cash games just a couple of years ago, and now he plays the biggest games available live and online.

Am I good enough? I don’t know. I would definitely have to adapt my game somewhat if I stepped up.

I have started to open up the odd $2/$4 game. In fact, last Saturday night when I came in at 3am completely pissed, I had 6 x $1/$2 and 6 x $2/$4 going. (I was soon down almost $1,500 but managed to sober up enough to turn a near $1,000 profit.)

Perhaps I should just start introducing more higher stake games gradually? One obvious problem with stepping up is the increase in variance- not because the stakes are higher, but rather because the fewer tables I imagine you can play successfully.

Another direction I’m looking at for now is simply to play more tables. Full Tilt has a 12 table cap, so it would mean running Pokerstars or possibly Betfair at the same time. I don’t think I’d have any problems playing 16 tables.