14 ms·

Tournament poker is just brutal. It's entirely common to go 15, 20 tournaments without cashing. You can play great poker, sometimes over the span of a few days,

Tournament poker is just brutal. It's entirely common to go 15, 20 tournaments without cashing. You can play great poker, sometimes over the span of a few days, and suddenly get hit with a cold deck or get unlucky and poof you are eliminated with nothing, along with your chance at a 5 or 6 figure top prize. Then you have to suck it back up and move on to the next one. The variance is just insane, which is why a lot of professional players are backed, or sell some of their action or swap with other players. I played a ton online before the Black Friday days and did pretty well, and will usually try to play a few big live tournaments a year, but these days I mostly just play cash games as a fun hobby and a way to grind out some extra income. There's less variance and the money is more consistent. That being said, as brutal as the swings in tournaments are, cash games have nothing like the rush of running deep in a poker tournament. The intensity and increase in stakes/prizes as the blinds move up and more players get knocked out and you inch closer to the big money is almost like chasing a high. So for me, cash games are the way to go if your goal in poker is to make money, but tournaments are a fun way to chase the dragon from time to time. I personally don't think I would have the stomach to play tournaments full time though.

technofiend 8y ago
>You can play great poker, sometimes over the span of a few days, and suddenly get hit with a cold deck or get unlucky and poof you are eliminated with nothing, along with your chance at a 5 or 6 figure top prize. Then you have to suck it back up and move on to the next one. I specialized in small, quick tournaments for this reason. Live players still weren't used to the even faster pace of online play but with rapidly escalating blinds it was critical. They were lulled into indecision and procrastination by the low early blinds, not realizing that they escalated quickly to force stacking out of the small players. I could easily make $1k+ a day clearing Binion's tournaments. I tried playing in a couple of Venetian Deep Stack events and usually busted out. I finally adapted to the slower play, longer rounds, bigger field and frankly better players to leave after two days of play with the same payout from winning one three hour Binion's tournament. The biggest upside being able to say I got my name published in Card Player magazine. LOL. Since for me it was just entertainment and I could reliably pay for my vacation in the smaller tourneys I went back to small ball.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  When WSOP was in the early spring (when the weather is nice in Vegas and crappy in Boston), I used to go for a week and a bit every year and grind out the trip cost and then some on single table satellites. With the advent of online poker, televised NLHE, and the main event wins by Varkonyi, Raymer, Moneymaker, and Gold, it was like the universe provided an endless stream of avid, willing, timid, and fairly predictable poker players in the weeks leading up to the main event. Now that WSOP's in the summer, online poker is mostly dead in the US, televised poker mania has died down, and I have kids, I don't bother going anymore, but it was definitely fun and modestly lucrative for a while in my 30s.
  - technofiend 8y ago
    Yeah the WSOP / WPT era is what I was talking about too. So many people there to play poker! Don't forget black Friday or whatever it was called when UIGEA murdered online poker. That was the feeder into tournament live play. Thanks, Sheldon. I haven't been back in at least 8 years. Vegas doesn't care about anything but whales and slots players anyway.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
IshKebab 8y ago
This is why I don't really like poker. There's just too much variance. Unless you play again and again and again there's not much correlation between skill and the winner. I think it's why people also believe there is "beginners' luck" - there isn't really - the entire game has tons of luck. But when confronted with someone who clearly isn't skilled but wins anyway, poker fans really don't want to face the reality that the game is mostly luck. Another issue with poker - at least Texas Hold'em - is that the best strategy is folding 90% of the time, which is just boring. I'm sure there are much better bluffing games.
- trevyn 8y ago
  >when confronted with someone who clearly isn't skilled but wins anyway That’s what keeps the fish around!
- shorsher 8y ago
  I would disagree with the blanket statement that folding 90% of the time is optimal, and can be discouraging to new players who are interested in learning poker. Good players generally play around 20% of their hands, but even that vastly changes based on how aggressive the player is. Also, there is much more to factor in than just the hand you are dealt. You might want to play a tighter range (play less percentage of hands) in early position (let's say first or second to act in a betting round), compared to being last to act (where you might want to play a higher percentage of your hands). This is because being last to act in each betting round extremely useful in poker (If you want to know why, there's a lots of great articles on the internet who could explain much better than I [1]). [1] - https://www.tightpoker.com/position.html https://www.tightpoker.com/position.html
  - btilly 8y ago
    Not optimal in all situations. But if you're playing with a full table of weak/loose players, it is good to play even tighter than that. Only play a high pocket pair or AK, and play them aggressively. Your hope being to take people 1 vs 1 for all the money you can. You don't need to be any cleverer than that until people pay enough attention that they won't call you unless they think that they have you beat. Then you will have to go for a wider range and start to play a better strategy.
whbk 8y ago
Yeah, I love tournament poker but can't imagine playing live tournaments for a living. I played a ton online before Black Friday too, pretty successfully, and then was one of the top online tournament players when I got back into it for a bit while I was outside of the US a couple years back. As a last hurrah before getting back to startups I traveled to one big live festival..played terrible in the $10k main event due to poor sleep after travel and got 3-outed just before the money after playing great in a satellite to the $25k. It's one thing to miss the money after playing great for ~5 hours in a $500 tournament from the comfort of your own home...consistently walking away -$15k+ in the hole after expenses for days worth of effort? No thanks.
EGreg 8y ago
Black Friday days?
- conover 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg
Waterluvian 8y ago
Is a "cold deck" anything but another way of saying unlucky?
- MFLoon 8y ago
  GP was just distinguishing behind two kinds of bad luck - getting "cold decked" is being set up, where you're going to lose a massive pot no matter what because you get a huge hand when someone else has a better one. More garden variety bad luck would be, say, losing your 50/50 coinflip situations repeatedly.
- Harimwakairi 8y ago
  It's technically a type of cheating, but it's used here to mean profoundly bad luck. A cold deck is one that has been rigged to the advantage of one player, and then swapped in after the cut and shuffle (hence its "coldness"). Typically the deck would be stacked to give the victim a fantastically good hand, but the cheater one that's slightly better. The victim would bet a great deal thinking their hand was good only to lose at the end. Players now use the term to describe the rare occasions when someone loses with a particularly strong hand in a fair game.
  - Phillipharryt 8y ago
    Regarding your last paragraph, that would be a bad beat. A cold deck is a string of poor cards, perhaps an entire sitting without getting any strong hands.
    - jordonias 8y ago
      You're not wrong about it being a bad beat, but I think he was thinking of a "cooler".
      - ddingus 8y ago
        I think so too.
      - deleted 8y ago
jfim 8y ago
For those confused, Black Friday in this context refers to the criminal case against the three largest online poker operators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg
alexashka 8y ago
Poker is brutal no matter how you go about it. If it's not brutal - you're simply on a hot streak, or playing in unbelievably easy games. Poker at the end of the day, is a matter of who cracks mentally. It is just so tedious. You can see this in live games for small stakes most clearly when someone gets bored after a couple hours of shit cards and does something he/she would never do an hour in. They call it tilt, I call it your inner wisdom letting you know you're wasting your life away.
bashwizard 8y ago
While the swings in tournaments are brutal, they're nothing vs having a break even or small losing streak for 200k hands in cash games. I've had a few of those during my years of playing cash games professionally and when they happen you start to questioning why you're even playing, why even try to win, what are you doing with your life etc. Variance is a bitch.
- soup10 8y ago
  Even if you are winning and can tolerate the grind, as soon as you go up in stakes you lose most or all of your edge and variance goes way up. The ugly truth about poker is its only fun if there are fish feeding chips to the good players. As soon as it gets truly competitive you might as head to the roulette tables because at-least there you have consistent odds and don't have to grind out hands for hours to get your gambling kicks.

technofiend 8y ago

>You can play great poker, sometimes over the span of a few days, and suddenly get hit with a cold deck or get unlucky and poof you are eliminated with nothing, along with your chance at a 5 or 6 figure top prize. Then you have to suck it back up and move on to the next one. I specialized in small, quick tournaments for this reason. Live players still weren't used to the even faster pace of online play but with rapidly escalating blinds it was critical. They were lulled into indecision and procrastination by the low early blinds, not realizing that they escalated quickly to force stacking out of the small players. I could easily make $1k+ a day clearing Binion's tournaments. I tried playing in a couple of Venetian Deep Stack events and usually busted out. I finally adapted to the slower play, longer rounds, bigger field and frankly better players to leave after two days of play with the same payout from winning one three hour Binion's tournament. The biggest upside being able to say I got my name published in Card Player magazine. LOL. Since for me it was just entertainment and I could reliably pay for my vacation in the smaller tourneys I went back to small ball.

sokoloff 8y ago
When WSOP was in the early spring (when the weather is nice in Vegas and crappy in Boston), I used to go for a week and a bit every year and grind out the trip cost and then some on single table satellites. With the advent of online poker, televised NLHE, and the main event wins by Varkonyi, Raymer, Moneymaker, and Gold, it was like the universe provided an endless stream of avid, willing, timid, and fairly predictable poker players in the weeks leading up to the main event. Now that WSOP's in the summer, online poker is mostly dead in the US, televised poker mania has died down, and I have kids, I don't bother going anymore, but it was definitely fun and modestly lucrative for a while in my 30s.
- technofiend 8y ago
  Yeah the WSOP / WPT era is what I was talking about too. So many people there to play poker! Don't forget black Friday or whatever it was called when UIGEA murdered online poker. That was the feeder into tournament live play. Thanks, Sheldon. I haven't been back in at least 8 years. Vegas doesn't care about anything but whales and slots players anyway.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

IshKebab 8y ago

This is why I don't really like poker. There's just too much variance. Unless you play again and again and again there's not much correlation between skill and the winner. I think it's why people also believe there is "beginners' luck" - there isn't really - the entire game has tons of luck. But when confronted with someone who clearly isn't skilled but wins anyway, poker fans really don't want to face the reality that the game is mostly luck. Another issue with poker - at least Texas Hold'em - is that the best strategy is folding 90% of the time, which is just boring. I'm sure there are much better bluffing games.

trevyn 8y ago
>when confronted with someone who clearly isn't skilled but wins anyway That’s what keeps the fish around!
shorsher 8y ago
I would disagree with the blanket statement that folding 90% of the time is optimal, and can be discouraging to new players who are interested in learning poker. Good players generally play around 20% of their hands, but even that vastly changes based on how aggressive the player is. Also, there is much more to factor in than just the hand you are dealt. You might want to play a tighter range (play less percentage of hands) in early position (let's say first or second to act in a betting round), compared to being last to act (where you might want to play a higher percentage of your hands). This is because being last to act in each betting round extremely useful in poker (If you want to know why, there's a lots of great articles on the internet who could explain much better than I [1]). [1] - https://www.tightpoker.com/position.html https://www.tightpoker.com/position.html
- btilly 8y ago
  Not optimal in all situations. But if you're playing with a full table of weak/loose players, it is good to play even tighter than that. Only play a high pocket pair or AK, and play them aggressively. Your hope being to take people 1 vs 1 for all the money you can. You don't need to be any cleverer than that until people pay enough attention that they won't call you unless they think that they have you beat. Then you will have to go for a wider range and start to play a better strategy.

whbk 8y ago

Yeah, I love tournament poker but can't imagine playing live tournaments for a living. I played a ton online before Black Friday too, pretty successfully, and then was one of the top online tournament players when I got back into it for a bit while I was outside of the US a couple years back. As a last hurrah before getting back to startups I traveled to one big live festival..played terrible in the $10k main event due to poor sleep after travel and got 3-outed just before the money after playing great in a satellite to the $25k. It's one thing to miss the money after playing great for ~5 hours in a $500 tournament from the comfort of your own home...consistently walking away -$15k+ in the hole after expenses for days worth of effort? No thanks.

EGreg 8y ago

Black Friday days?

conover 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg

Waterluvian 8y ago

Is a "cold deck" anything but another way of saying unlucky?

MFLoon 8y ago
GP was just distinguishing behind two kinds of bad luck - getting "cold decked" is being set up, where you're going to lose a massive pot no matter what because you get a huge hand when someone else has a better one. More garden variety bad luck would be, say, losing your 50/50 coinflip situations repeatedly.
Harimwakairi 8y ago
It's technically a type of cheating, but it's used here to mean profoundly bad luck. A cold deck is one that has been rigged to the advantage of one player, and then swapped in after the cut and shuffle (hence its "coldness"). Typically the deck would be stacked to give the victim a fantastically good hand, but the cheater one that's slightly better. The victim would bet a great deal thinking their hand was good only to lose at the end. Players now use the term to describe the rare occasions when someone loses with a particularly strong hand in a fair game.
- Phillipharryt 8y ago
  Regarding your last paragraph, that would be a bad beat. A cold deck is a string of poor cards, perhaps an entire sitting without getting any strong hands.
  - jordonias 8y ago
    You're not wrong about it being a bad beat, but I think he was thinking of a "cooler".
    - ddingus 8y ago
      I think so too.
    - deleted 8y ago

jfim 8y ago

For those confused, Black Friday in this context refers to the criminal case against the three largest online poker operators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg

alexashka 8y ago

Poker is brutal no matter how you go about it. If it's not brutal - you're simply on a hot streak, or playing in unbelievably easy games. Poker at the end of the day, is a matter of who cracks mentally. It is just so tedious. You can see this in live games for small stakes most clearly when someone gets bored after a couple hours of shit cards and does something he/she would never do an hour in. They call it tilt, I call it your inner wisdom letting you know you're wasting your life away.

bashwizard 8y ago

While the swings in tournaments are brutal, they're nothing vs having a break even or small losing streak for 200k hands in cash games. I've had a few of those during my years of playing cash games professionally and when they happen you start to questioning why you're even playing, why even try to win, what are you doing with your life etc. Variance is a bitch.

soup10 8y ago
Even if you are winning and can tolerate the grind, as soon as you go up in stakes you lose most or all of your edge and variance goes way up. The ugly truth about poker is its only fun if there are fish feeding chips to the good players. As soon as it gets truly competitive you might as head to the roulette tables because at-least there you have consistent odds and don't have to grind out hands for hours to get your gambling kicks.