The Poker Nerd

2008 was a very fallow year for me and poker. I can’t speak for the pros, but I think this happens to just about every amateur out there from time to time.I’ve been playing poker seriously in one form or another for more than fifteen years now—Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Indian casinos, tiny card rooms, underground card rooms, home games, and online. Conservatively, I’ve logged 12,000 hours over that time, which is roughly the same as six years of a full-time job. I’ve written a prototype for an online poker server and cobbled together a few klocs of other, less ready-for-prime-time code. Last year, it just all seemed to grind to a halt. (more…)

1. The Poker Nerd and the COBB-Webb group spent four days over Labor Day weekend in Atlantic City including a trip to the Borgata. We liked the poker room. There was nothing special about the play. I was in the middle of a big dip, so it’s hard to judge whether it’s going to be a profitable room for us. Unfortunately, we’re probably not going to make it back there very often unless somebody builds up some reasonably priced hotels around the casino. The ability to take a nap between sessions is important, but not so important that we’re going to pay US$300 a night for the privilege.

I played badly the first two sessions and would have been down almost US$800 if I hadn’t made up half of it in the last session. Two and a half weeks in Vegas, I did fine (other than the front-loaded US$10,000 loss.) Four days in AC, I fall apart. I guess that’s poker.

2. I continue to have limited success with online NLTHE and remarkable success with all the other tournaments. I won two back to back on PokerStars, something I’ve never done. One was in HORSE, the other in Stud/8. My placement rate in mixed games, stud, and Omaha is absurdly high while still remaining awful in Texas Hold ‘Em.

3. My little sister is descending into moral degeneracy at a remarkable rate. We in the COBB-Webb group have great hope for her continued development.

I just spent the last couple of weeks burnt out on poker.

I assume this happens to everyone. In my case, it was predicated by 70+ hours of live poker over a 2.5 week span in Vegas followed by a string of brutal losses in WCOOP qualifiers. I haven’t even logged in to PokerStars or FullTilt in the last week and a half.

I’m coming out of it, though. Labor Day weekend is going to be three solid days of poker in Atlantic City with the COBB-Webb Group, possibly including my first trip to the Borgata. And, I still want to play in as much of the WCOOP (and FTOPS V) as possible.

In the interim, I’ve been working on getting the main (non-blog) portion of the site up and running by building a CSS-based template for the content. You can see the evolving results at the alternative home page.