17
Enough railbirds have told me they miss my blog that, being a man of the people, I decided to stop being lazy and update ya’ll on what I’ve been up to. So here are some random developments in my life
-I’ve re-signed with DeucesCracked. I’m going to be making 48 videos over the next two years: making videos is a pain which is why I only made 8 last year, but DC made me a great offer and now I’m fully on board. 16 of the 48 videos will be DearFoxwoodsFiend vids, and the rest will be a mix of 6-max and HU across various different stakes
-I’ve been doing a ton of coaching. I have something like 20 1-on-1 students and I’d say I average working with maybe 7 students a week. It’s really draining combined with all the group coaching I’ve been doing
-As for group coaching, it’s been a mixed experiment: I’ve worked with 5 groups. One of them, a guy decided group coaching wasn’t for him after just 1 session. The other 3 have done 5 lessons with me already and we’re still going strong. In another, half the group switched over to 1-on-1 coaching because they decided they wanted more individualized attention and then the group disbanded. My third group I started off with just 3 players and one of them dropped out. And my final group is relatively new and we’ve done 3 sessions together.
My take on group coaching is that I started off without a clear plan of how to keep everyone engaged and without a real program: we just did a lot of sweat sessions. I think the initial groups broke down because I wasn’t putting in enough effort. But my more recent groups have been very productive and I’m starting to get the hang of handling so many students. And let me tell you something: it is A LOT of work. Gameplanning for 4 different groups while answering any HH questions that any of my group students and 1-on-1 students send me feels like a (VERY EASY) full-time job. I’ve got another couple of groups I’m about to form and I think I may have to reduce the 1-on-1 workload because I’m worried I’m just spread too thin
-As for poker, it’s been going really well. I’m up roughly 120k in only 50k hands and a lot of that has been at low stakes. My EV bb/100 is 9.5 and, if it weren’t for one 40/80 session where I inexplicably just tilted off 50k after making one wrong thin call, I’d be crushing (of course, you can’t cherry pick your stats: they reflect how you play and, at the moment, I’m still having trouble adjusting to losing: I lost so rarely back when I played pre-law school and then I took 6 months off of thinking like a poker player that I find losing to be way more frustrating than ever before)
-I’m learning PLO! I spent a week getting a primer on how to play PLO from Flawless_Victory: let me tell ya: I’m insanely lucky to be great friends with the guy. I feel like in one week he basically gave me a shortcut to understanding the game that saved me months of work. It’s so fun learning a new game: I’m grinding 5/10 up to 25/50 (if the game’s good). Not only are there always games running, but the feeling of being a noob again and having to challenge myself with a new form of poker is invigorating: these days, when I show up to work and start playing poker I actually enjoy it. It’s a feeling I haven’t had in a long time
-Finally, and this one pains me to say, I’ve become somewhat of a bumhunter. Now, that’s not to say I’m not playing the very good players: I’m just not playing them whenever they sit in against me like I used to. I’ve played HU with Observer84, KPederson, Halozination, takechip, and (on a few occasions) I Win Flips. Not exactly a soft lineup. But I’ve sat out against quite a few good players. My reasoning is twofold:
a) I hate variance. It sucks, because I also hate game selecting, but I’ve decided that looking back at it, even though I made a lot of money playing tough opponents heads-up, from a life EV perspective the times I lost a lot made much of my playing not a good idea. HU fucks with your head: losing streaks sap your confidence, and you start questioning your play. The stress, worry, and general pissed-off feeling I get after losing 6 or 7 buy-ins just isn’t worth it. I’m sure this will change as I start playing more HU and getting back into the swing of things (I’ve only played 22,000 hands of HU NLHE this year), but for now I’m game selecting
b) Relatedly, since the competition is so tough, it just always seems like I have something better to do. Back when I wasn’t studying PLO or coaching that much, the only way I could make money was by playing whoever would play me. Now, I just have better options than multitabling vs. LarsLuzak or someone equally good and getting into a high-variance pissing contest. When am I going to learn PLO if I quit my sessions every time somebody sits in to play 50/100 NLHE? Those guys will all be there later, they’re not going anywhere, and I don’t feel the rush to play them. Additionally, while coaching is very good money and it’s irrational to link the coaching to my play, if I coach for 6 hours, make 5 or 6k (with some 1-on-1 mixed in with my groups), and then play somebody and drop 20k, I just feel like shit. Coaching’s hard work and it’s hard for me to not think I did it all for nothing, even though that’s obviously not the case
I still play regs HU if I have no other games going or aren’t coaching and I”m not burnt out from playing already, but that’s more and more rarely the case. Plus, when you add in all the work I’m putting into RapGenius.com, my time’s just spread too thin and the HU matches are the first to go. With that said, in the spirit of intellectual honesty, I’m sure that in a month or two I’ll be taking on all comers once again as it is irritating sitting out a lot and saying “I’ll play you some other time, but not right now” over and over. In fact, I’ve tentatively scheduled a 50/100 match vs Observer84 tomorrow just because I feel like challenging myself
All said though, my return to poker has been awesome: I’ve been bringing in the kind of money from coaching I had wanted to, I got a great deal from DC, and I’m up money in poker while discovering a new game. Life is good
