Thought you'd never see me again, eh? Well, can’t say I blame you. When I was last playing regularly, Stars had changed their buy-in structure in a wonderful way eliminating 50bb max NLHE tables and making them 40bb minimum with separate CAP tables. I got about a month or so of play when Black Friday hit.

After Black Friday, I was pretty devastated as far as online poker goes and not much has changed on that front. I stopped playing for two main reasons: (1) I was irritated and not as motivated and (2) I thought it would be stupid to deposit any money on another poker site. After 6 months, I got an itch and briefly started playing again on Carbon with a small $120 deposit, however, I was very frustrated with the lack of tables and the difficulty of the games. $4NL, the lowest stakes, was much harder than I thought it should be and the discouragement was just too much for me to continue to want to play. I only put in a handful of days and stopped playing.

Flash forward another year and I just couldn’t stand being on the sidelines any longer. One universal theme that keeps popping up for me is that I am always drawn back to the game any time I take a break for any reason, which to this point has been because of the UIGEA, burnout, and Black Friday. I love the math. I love the psychology. I love the money. I love winning. I love trying to find ways not to lose. I cherish the skillset I’ve accumulated over the years. I also love the social element in live play. I even love many social elements of online play like this web site, 2+2, training sites, and even checking my HEM/PTR graphs.

I resumed starting over @ $4NL on Carbon, which is what I still believe is the best site for Americans to play online in today’s climate. I was still disappointed in the lack of table selection, but unless I move to a foreign country where online poker is legal, my options are very limited. I’ve narrowed it down to Carbon or if you can find a way to play on Intertops with rakeback on the Revolution network. After about a month, I won $159.46 or 40 buy-ins. I also accumulated $34.06 in rakeback or 8.5 buy-ins. Add that to my $120 deposit and I’m sitting just over $300 and rolled to play $10NL.

Another discouraging aspect to the games since Black Friday is the difficulty of the games. My wife asked me how the tables were one night recently and I explained that $4NL is not “difficult” but it is not nearly as easy as it should be. $4NL should be similar to $5NL when I was playing on Stars moving up the ranks. It was like printing money, albeit at smaller bills at a time. You actually have to work and pay attention to win in my opinion. The rake feels high, too, so you’re up against that. The skill level resembles how I remember $25NL on Stars several years ago. If that trend holds true, $10NL will be like $50NL was, $25NL will be like $100NL was, $50NL will be like $200NL was, and $100NL will be like $400NL was.

Even with all that, it wouldn’t be so bad if there were some darn tables running. That’s the other equally daunting challenge. Some nights there’s only one $100NL FR table running. To help combat this, I’ve decided to try to take on 6max and add those tables as part of my repertoire. This is an endeavor I have tried briefly and unsuccessfully in the past and abandoned out of luxury. I am going to try again out of necessity. My first foray with 6max near the end of my $4NL climb was awful. To that point, I had never lost more than 2 buy-ins on any one day and I lost 6 that day. I decided I was trying to transition too fast and reduced my number of 6 max tables to 2 and the remaining 5 are full ring. That has been working well early going. I’m also only going to play @ $4NL for 6 max until I’ve proven myself. I’ll keep an eye on my 6 max winrate and after I’ve won 30 buy-ins, I’ll allow myself to move up stakes there, too and maybe add more tables as well somewhere along the way.

My expectations moving forward are very low. If I could somehow move up to $50NL or $100NL and pull a $10 to $20 hourly (with or without rakeback), in this apocalyptic poker world, I think that would be fantastic. But, I may find out soon the party is over at $10NL. Who knows? Just having fun and staying motivated to keep playing I think would be a victory. I’m having more home games, too. The first game I had after my first full week of playing online, I cashed out the biggest profit I’ve had or anyone’s had at my game $319 profit in a 50 cent dollar game. Playing online keeps me sharp for live games. I think I may drive down to Tunica during their WSOP events and play some cash games.

To move from $10NL to $25NL, I’ll need to pad my bankroll with 45 $10NL buy-ins because $25NL (the level I want to play) times 30 (the buy-ins I need) is $750 and $750 (the buy-ins I need) minus $300 (the bankroll I have) is $450 divided by $10NL (the stake I’ll be playing) is 45.

Despite the post Black Friday gloom and doom, I still hold out hope for the possibility of glory days yet to come when legislation will be passed at the state or federal level and online poker will be legal and available for everyone to play. If and when that day comes and I’m here to see it, great things will be in store for myself and others in the same boat.

Here’s my $4NL HEM graph:




Onward to $10NL …