I have been having some discussions abut metrics recently, both in the forum and in live games. Let’s try to Let try to review a few key points.

First, a winning player is a winning player. If you win something (after rake), you are a winner. Speaking of rake, your session totals should count the money you started with and the money you ended with. I sometimes get e-mail where someone tells me their results not counting the rake. That is like a store owner counting profits but not subtracting rent. Rake counts. To be a winner, your bottom line assumes you have already accounted for rake, tips to dealers, cocktail waitresses, and anyone else you tip. Some people who eat at the table count dinner costs separately. That’s OK, but I never did.

How long does it take to determine if you are a winning player? Long. The exact length depends on how much you win and how high your volatility is. the more you win per hour, the faster you will have an idea if you are winner. The higher your volatility (standard deviation), the longer it will take. Your actual likelihood is a function of the two.

A couple of thousand hours live (75,000 to 80,000 hands) will give you a good beginning [note this is equivalent to a full time job], but is not nearly enough to be definitive. If you play on-line and have recorded 100,000 hands, you have a start of an answer but not a final result. Again, results analysis tools like StatKing will give you answers telling you with what degree of certainly you can trust your results. It is accurate but fairly depressing to see how little you can be certain of for quite a while. Poker has a very large luck factor, which I alluded to in my column on “Hidden Luck.” If you have been winning three big bets per hour for a few months, good for you. But do not quit your day job because those results may be very inaccurate.

Let’s talk limit first. Is one big bet per hour good? Sure. Can you make more? Certainly, at lower and middle limit games, and maybe higher. Can you make less and still be a winning player? Yes. In fact, you can be a pro and never make 1 big bet per hour. As already mentioned, some pros grind out $25 per hour in a $20-$409 game and put in the hours it takes to make a living.

No limit has higher volatility for most players, but lower variance for experts, they tell me. In any event, aim for five to seven big blinds per hour. Yes, top pros can do better, but that is a good average expectation for a good to very good player. I don’t know enough about NL standard deviation, so I won’t discuss it.

Tournament take a very long time, since, somewhat like video poker, you need to hit an occasional jackpot to make your results reflect your overall chances. Sklansky has said that if you enter 80 similar events and are still a loser, chances are you are not a winning tournament player. I have no idea, but I believe him, as he is a very smart guy. In the long run, tournament players should expect to win one buy-in per tournament, but it may take years to hit some sort of meaningful average. (Less if you play only tournaments with small fields, more if you play only huge events.)

Sit-n-Goes are not really tournaments, because they pay 30 percent of the field. A decent metric for these events is a minimun15 percent expectation in terms of money. So if you enter many $50+5 SnGs, you should average a better than $7.50 per event. Percentage win is interesting, but not as important as money returned.

That was a quick look at metrics. Like height and weight charts, they do not apply to the entire poker population, and you may make more or less and still be a good player. If I have made any errors, I’m sure someone will correct me.

Here we are at Thanksgiving. It has been another fine year of poker, despite the Internet hassles and promise of more to come. Live games have been terrific, and poker in Las Vegas has been thriving.

More importantly, I have a wonderful wife, and great friends who have been both helpful and encouraging during the year, and especially in support of the work I have been putting into the book.

So I thank them, and I thank you for coming here and reading my material, and for reading my Card Player columns. To those of you who have joined my forum, thank you. And to those who have actively participated, posting questions, offering opinions, and engaging in the give and take, extra thanks as well.

Very special thanks to the folks at Zelfanet who support and maintain this website, so we can all enjoy it.

I hope all of you have a great Thanksgiving, and a wonderful holiday season.

New topic:

Starting in the next issue of Card Player, I am doing a series on how to play the turn when out of position. This is a difficult topic, because the variables are great, but I hope my thoughts on general continuation will help people think about this subject more clearly. I expect it will run five parts, perhaps six.

Let’s look at a hand I played a few weeks ago. An aggressive middle position player raised and I called in the big blind with 9c 8c after the small blind also called. The flop was Kc 7h 5s, so I had a gut shot and backdoor flush draw. We both checked to the raiser, who bet. SB folded.

I was roughly an 11:1 dog to hit a six, and only getting 7:1. A backdoor flush is worth one extra out, but this one was not the nuts so it cound not even be a full out. Could I expect four more small bets or more if I hit?

I think so. If he had anything, I ought to win one big bet on the turn and one on the river at least. Plus, because he was an aggressive player, he might not have much, so I could bluff at the turn if the Jc or 10c hits, giving me extra straight outs as well as flush outs. (And yes, I would do this with a real hand like K-Q as well).

The turn card was my miracle six (a result of good living, no doubt). Now what should I have done? In the middle limit games I have been playing, a bet here frequently is a combination small value/semi-bluff, made by a player with, say, 8-7 who now has a pair and a straight draw, and hopes the original raiser has very little. Aggressive players (like me) when they have made hands almost always punish this delicate try with a raise.

I thought that a bet by me would look to the raiser like just this sort of play, as most players who make a big hand like mine wait to check-raise. Plus, if he had a hand like J-J, he might check the turn and I wanted to pressure him to call in case I was making a play.

So I bet and he raised. The choice was close, but I decided to reraise right then. Luckily his hand was good enough to pay me off all the way, so I got great value for my plays.

The point here is that whether or not to bet the turn with a made hand is not automatic. Many players are in love with the check-raise, because it is a cool play. Sometimes, though, just the boring play of betting your hand makes the most money.

The following is another excerpt from the working draft of my book. There is no guarantee that this will show up in the book, or that it will be recognizable if it does. I am writing a good deal of material, and some of it may hit the cutting room floor. Please also remember that this excerpt is surrounded by much more detailed information on how to recognize, execute, and get away from situations such as I describe. Please do not think you have learned the material from this tiny piece. OK, enough disclaimer. Here is the excerpt:

The vast majority of winning players wait for hands that have positive expectation, then put in many bets. This is the essence of the selective-aggressive philosophy that has been proven over the years to be a winning one.

I agree with it, and have profited significantly doing exactly that against players who lose patience, take the worst of it, gamble to excess, or simply cannot separate +EV hands from minus ones.

If you play a selective-aggressive style and have patience, you can beat most games because they contain enough bad players. Waiting to have the best of it against poor players who can’t get away from hands is the bedrock method of making money at limit hold’em.

Bluffing. Let’s go off on a tangent for a moment and talk about bluffing. You understand that bluffing is an essential part of the game. If you never bluff you become predictable, and your smarter opponents will simply stop paying you off. However, if you play opponents who will pay you off whether you bluff or not, you should not bluff.

Eventually, most opponents will realize that you never bluff, and you will find it hard to get action on your winning hands. You can stop there and just live with the decreased profit, partially because bluffing can cost you money when you try and fail. If you do, you sacrifice the significant profit that comes from winning pots when your bluff is successful, AND you are giving up the extra calls you would get once your opponents realize that your bet might be a bluff.

If you realize this, you will bluff at pots at least occasionally, not to show that you can bluff, but because in the long run, a proper bluffing strategy (or even a less proper but occasional bluffing strategy) will be +EV.

When you bluff, your hand at that moment is not +EV. Your play is. You hope to win the pot by betting, but even if you don’t win this pot, your opponent will now doubt you when you have the goods. You may have started with a +EV hand, but by the time the river comes around, you can’t win except by bluffing. And you realize that there is a good chance you won’t win (if you bluff into a 10 bet pot, you need only win one time in 10 to be profitable).

Now you understand the fact that you can at times be betting with the worst hand in an attempt to win the pot and sometimes you will win it. If you don’t, you lose extra money right now, but will probably make it back in the long run because of the doubt you have planted in your opponents’ minds.

Situational Play. What would happen if you extended that philosophy into other situations? In fact, what about looking for situations in which your actual hand is not as important as the fact that you may be able to win the pot by brute force, and if not, you may get action later?

You would now be making plays with hands that are not +EV (in fact, your specific hand may not even be relevant), but the situation is. These situations would require your putting in many more bets than a single bluff, and, if you fail, you would lose considerable money. You would need to be able to tolerate considerable swings. If you can’t even tolerate losing a single bet when you bluff, then this strategy is not for you.

Like bluffing, if you can make these plays work often enough to show a profit, or even a small loss, but increase your action on your better hands, then you gain from this approach.

There is no need to do this if your opponents are paying you off. And like bluffing, you need to do it sparingly, with the right opponent, and when you have the right image.

Time for an example. I was at the Rio during the World Series Of Poker killing a few hours. I jumped into a $20-$40 game that was just forming. After 10 minutes, it was clear the game was playing very tightly, as many game do when they start and many games do when tournament players switch to cash games. We were seven-handed, and I held Kd 3d on the button. The early players folded and a very tight gentleman limped from the cutoff. I did not think anyone limped from the cutoff anymore, but he did. Certainly that meant he did not have a premium hand or even anything close, so I raised. My objective was to create a situation where he would have to hit the flop or give me the pot containing 6.5 small bets, assuming the blinds folded.

This time the big blind did not fold, and the cutoff called. I flopped a king and bet out three times, the blind calling all the way and the cutoff folding on the flop. I won the showdown over the big blind’s pocket eights. If the big blind had a lesser hand, I would have won on the flop whether I hit my hand or not.

After the hand, the cutoff turned to me and told me he had Ac 6c. His point was that I was stupid raising with K-3 when he was smart enough to limp in with A-6. I’m sure many players feel that way, but I was happy with my actions, and the prospect of later profits if I should happen to raise pre-flop with a real hand.

I was reminded of something that I heard once in a bridge tournament, “The losers all go home complaining about the terrible play of the winners.”

Today will complete last week’s Thought with a look at the negative side of pro poker. I want to make clear here that in general I am talking about becoming a full time professional, where you make your living from poker alone.

We will discuss the following:

· Few people can make good money
· Losing streaks are inevitable
· You are living out of your bankroll
· The stress is great
· The stress extends to your family
· No work, no pay
· Insurance is expensive if available at all
· Mortgages are tough to get
· The games get tougher

Few people can make good money. For every “pro” you see on TV raking in millions, there are many toiling away in 10-20 and 15-30 games for $10-$15 per hour. Many of the millionaire pros on TV are not pros at all; they are “trust fund pros” who play a great deal and can afford to lose for years without any consequences. They can afford to travel to every tournament, enter every event, and eventually make a final table and win one. Others are sponsored, based on past success and the competition among Internet poker sites, so they don’t pay their own entry fees (and how long is that going to last, I wonder). Go to any tournament and hang around and you will see many unsponsored “pros” on the rail begging for sponsors. For more on this, take a look at this column by Nolan Dalla.
(Don’t forget to read Daniel Negreanu’s response, linked at the bottom of the column).

People have no idea the skill it takes to beat a middle limit game for $100,000 per year for over ten years. Roy Cooke played professionally in Las Vegas for 16 years, and during that time, there were maybe two or three players who were able to make a constant living out of the game. (In spite of his poker success, Roy went into real estate and now plays 5-6 times per month for fun.) In six years, I have seen dozens of wannabes show up, declare themselves pros, and then vanish within two years. If you can’t beat a $20-$40 or $30-$60 games for $50/hr at least, then you your income level will be fixed somewhere below that. And it will be very hard to increase it.

If you are talented enough to make $25/hr or $30/hr as a pro, you will do much better than that in a real job. Probably with less work, though it may not seem so. Many pros toil away in 4-8, 6-12 and 8-16 games for $7-12 per hour, working 80 hours per week to make ends meet.

Losing streaks are inevitable. In the long run, the best poker player will win the money (assuming the rake is such that anyone can win). But the long run can be very long. And every winning player experiences serious downswings. In limit games downswings of 200-300 and even more big bets are almost inevitable. In no limit, that can be even higher as you lose a few huge hands to suck-outs of better hands (witness Daniel Negreanu’s horrid streak in High Stakes Poker on GSN).

We all play great when we are winning. We connect with flops, make great reads, our bluffs work, and we can do no wrong. Then the flip side happens, where we never see a flop we like, our opponents are constantly taking shots at us, our bluffs fail, opponents find new and different ways to draw out and we just sit there in a funk and rebuy.

It takes something out you not only in money but also in psyche. You have lost five times in a row, the bankroll is getting thin, you play for the sixth time that week, you get KK on your first orbit, you raise and lose to the big blind’s 63, and now you still have to sit there and play great poker, making excellent decisions. This is not an easy task, and few are up to it.

You are living out of your bankroll. Professional poker has the unique drawback that the same money you use to play with is also the money you use for rent, food, transportation and any other expenses (like your kid’s college fund). You have to judge how much you can spend to not damage your bankroll to the extent that you can’t afford to play in game you can win enough in to keep your nut (total of your monthly expenses) going. If you get it wrong and overspend, you will inevitably go broke, or be forced into lower limit games.

This also makes planning difficult. Can you afford the vacation your significant other wants to take? Even if you can now, will you still be able to when the time comes?

The stress is great. The uncertainly of the pro poker life, plus the losing streaks, plus the pressure to win, makes for a highly stressful existence. If you handle stress by somehow spending money (drinking, vacations, gambling, purchasing or pursuing sex), your stress level will actually increase. You may be able to handle it once, but year after year it can really wear you down.

The stress extends to your family. Many young single players get into professional poker because it is fun, the lifestyle is great, and the freedom is unparalleled. They have limited expenses and lots of fun. Eventually they decide it is time to settle down. They have a family and kids. Now the stresses of losing streaks, uncertainty about how much money there is to spend versus keep in the bankroll create stressful times for the family and major tensions in the home. Plus, the family has to cope with the stress of the player. It has been done, but it’s very tough.

No work, no pay. No sick leave. No vacation pay. If you want some time off, you will be spending money and not earning any. If you get sick, or have an accident, you will be depleting bankroll for doctors and medicine with no money coming in. If you want to take a week or two off, again the money goes out. As a result, many pros who are not the top earners never take time off, and work when they are ill. And that means they earn less money because vacations and a clear head are requisite for great play.

Insurance is expensive if available at all. Speaking of getting sick, there is not much health insurance available to pro players. (In some married homes, one person gets a part time job just for the benefits). And as you age, health insurance becomes more expensive. So either you go without and go broke if something bad happens, or you add another significant bankroll drain in case something does. If you have a family, you will want to add life insurance. No one is immune from accidents or disease. (I did not turn pro until I had guaranteed insurance from an employer as part of an early retirement package, as I am uninsurable for health or life).

Mortgages are tough to get. Few banks want to loan money to a poker pro, as it is impossible to substantiate your income. The only proof of your earning is your tax return. And if you decide to understate your income (or hide altogether), you will not able to get loans of any sort, except from friends, relatives, or loan sharks. Unless you are going to buy cars and homes for cash (many successful pros do), you will need proof of income for several years. Even then, without a steady income stream, you will pay higher interest because you are a risk.

The games get tougher. Finally, not only can’t you ever get a raise unless you improve your play or move up in limits, but your income may actually decline even though you continue to play well. With the exception of the recent poker bubble, games tend to get tougher. Right now, there are pros in my game who will not be able to continue as 30-60 pros because the games will get tougher as the huge influx of recent players reduces itself. Poker is a ruthless meritocracy, and only the strong survive. The almost strong do okay for while, but instead of having their incomes grow as they age, their incomes actually decrease (or their hours increase).

This concludes my view of the negatives. For another view of the pros and cons, please read this.