60,000 hands before making a profit at 50NL - yikes!
The learning curve at 50NL was steeper than I anticipated. On 28 December 2009 I transitioned from 25NL and like jumping from a plane, the decent was immediate and steep. I lost $241 the first day; almost 5 buy-ins. My downswing hit bottom a month later on 28 January 2010. I was down $1,142. 46 days later on 3/15/2010, I am up $89. I started with a bankroll of $3,200 and made some bonuses on Pokerstars putting my bankroll at $3,761. This was an important time for my learning. Which shouldn’t be surprising given I have 60,000 hands under my belt at 50NL now. So what did I learn?
1) My bankroll strategy has been validated. I started with 64 buy-ins giving me a buffer between having to move down if things went south, as the graph above indicates they did. There’s nothing magic about 64 buy-ins except I wanted some number above 50 buy-ins so I could use 50 buy-ins as a threshold for moving back to 25NL. As it happened I did surpass that threshold and got to the low $2,300s. Anyway, you should expect when you move up that there will be a learning curve so it makes sense to prepare for a potential downswing. And there is no guarantee of a downswing, but the point is to have sufficient room to give the new limit a serious shot.
2) There is a limit to the number of tables one can play profitably. I started out playing 6 tables but noticed my results improve almost immediately after dropping to 4. I knew at one time that playing more tables decreases your win rate but could still be more profitable because the marginal profit when increasing tables by 1 could more than compensate for the total decreased profit at the current number of tables. Where my assumptions were off was where that break-even profit was for me, or put in economic terms where the marginal revenue was equal to the marginal cost. I played 6 tables sometimes 9. And when I tilted I might even play 12, which is a disaster. It’s like having negative margin and trying to make it up on volume – not sound math.
3) Most importantly, I have simply improved at the tables. Almost more than the money, I enjoy looking back every month and thinking how cool it is to be a better player than the previous month. What the Japanese would call “kaizen”, I believe in the philosophy continuous improvement. Poker is an academic exercise made up of many concepts and disciplines of every day life. These include, but are not limited to, risk management, strategic thinking, math and game theory, psychology, meta-game, observation, focus, patience, self-control, etiquette, emotional control, confidence, competition and on and on.
Whether work or play, take what you do seriously. Be in it to win it.
Good luck!!
-Mike