So about five years after the passing of the UIGEA I make my triumphant return to online poker. I figure "Hey, if the UIGEA has had minimal effects in five years, things should be pretty well settled by now, eh?" Five years after all the shit was cleaned up from around the room it was thrown right back into the fan. So hopefully I can help end some of the speculation about the fallout of today's (fuck, it's 12am. I guess I'm mentally in Hawaii right now, so I'll count that) news. The effects of this will be either one of these two scenarios or somewhere in between: 1) Nothing happens and online poker will continue with business as usual after this minor hiccup. 2) Complete shutdown of US online poker until the end of time. Feel better? Me neither.

I think what's a bit interesting to me is the political climate of 2006 compared to today. Rewind back to when the UIGEA passed. The Republican Party controlled the House and Senate. The economy was by all accounts doing pretty well. Sure, the warning signs of the impending recession were starting to crop up, especially here in Michigan, but overall we were doing OK. The major political issue at the time was the Iraq war. Budget deficits and national debt were being ignored as always. The right wing congress was often described as "the religious right." Gay marriage was a hot button issue. This was the climate that struck down online poker. Gambling is bad. Won't someone please think of the children! Please government; make sure my 15-year-old son can't gamble online! Well, this congress managed to brute force this bill through. Kind of like winning a sit and go by just open shoving every hand and getting lucky. These types of republicans took a hit in the 2006 elections and were pretty much destroyed in 2008.

Fast forward to today. Republicans again control the House and have a strong showing in the Senate. But things feel a lot different than in 2006. Now the right wing message is "Don't tread on me, get your hands off my fucking money, government regulation is socialism." For the love of shit they try to put the words "job killing" in front of every bill that involves government spending or regulation. So which political climate seems more conducive to removing restrictions on online gambling, if not legalizing it all together? That's what I thought. I'm not going to hide the fact that I'm a true blue Democrat and am more than a bit concerned by the message preached by the TEA party, but I am really hoping they are on our side on this one. I was not entirely surprised when reading the comments on the drudge report article that said stuff the effect of "Score one for the Obama Socialist regime" etc. I think most of us can agree that it was Republicans (maybe not the party as a whole, but definitely a few of their members) that helped create this quasi-legal poker climate. I just hope that today's Republicans are a bit different, and while I don't agree with their party line, I'm more than happy to have them join us on this one. The government does have some rights to regulate commerce in this Country, I don't see why they need to use that right to crack down on online poker.

We've been essentially playing in the equivalent of an old NYC underground card room for five years. While they seemed relatively safe and legit, we always knew that the cops could come busting through the door and shake the place down at any moment. I suppose that happened today.

I guess I don't really know where I'm going with this blog. I'll just say that I'm still optimistic that today's political climate in the U.S. is more conducive to legal online poker than that of 2006, and this could all blow over with minimal effect on our ability to play. My heart goes out to all the professional grinders who may lose their livelihoods if the ultimate does happen here. If you have the ability and determination to make a living at poker, you can do anything you put your minds to, even if it seems like things might be tough for a while. One thing I have learned in manufacturing is that things get worse before they get better. There is always an "adjustment" period when changes are made when productivity is less than it was before. I'm hoping this analogy fits here, and that what we are seeing is the getting worse before it's better.

What a week. My volume was pretty craptacular. I only got in about 4500 hands and dropped a couple buy-ins at 25NL. The swings and struggles continue at that level. I know I'm not crushing the level, but I definitely feel like I'm better than my winrate suggests. Here's my year to date results at all 3 levels so far.

I see Verneer completed his $200 -> $10k challenge. I'm coming for him but at a much slower pace. So far I've gone from $200 to $664. At around $850 I'll make the jump to $50NL. I was hoping I could get in some good volume and a heater this past week to make it there, but it just wasn't my week.

On a personal note, I mentioned in my last blog I was a soon to be father. Well, it's getting even closer. My wife and I are adopting a baby who was born on Saturday. I was putting in a session while she was out shopping and got a call that mom went into labor at around 9:30am. We live a couple hours away and got there just shortly after he was born. He's a cute little guy, 7lbs. 14oz. He will go into what is called a host home for a couple of weeks until the adoption is finalized. Legally the birth mother could change her mind at any point before the court work is done, but she seems pretty content with her decision. We are hoping we get to bring him home in a couple of weeks.

I was actually in the middle of a couple of big pots when the call came through, so I was trying to process all that and play out the hands. This was the one that kind of got my attention. I feel like my weakness is that I sometimes play a bit too straightforward. Bet/bet/bet with TPGK+ just doesn't get the job done like it did in 2006. I read a lot of 2+2 back then and never remember hearing the words "pot control." So I've been trying to take a few more non-standard lines to get the best of the regs. I watched the first three videos of Verneer's "You too can crush the micros" series and found the section on dealing with the bully the most helpful by far! Of course playing rush this is really hard to do since I don't have much for postflop reads on people. So against a guy with TAGish stats, is this the right line here?

Full Tilt, $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
[url="http://www.cardrunners.com/pokertools/"]Poker Tools[/url] by [url="http://www.cardrunners.com/"]CardRunners[/url] - [url="http://www.cardrunners.com/pokertools/hand/8909472/"]Hand Details[/url]

BTN: $25 (100 bb)
SB: $25 (100 bb)
BB: $23.72 (94.9 bb)
[b]Hero (UTG): $25.07 (100.3 bb)[/b]
MP: $34.18 (136.7 bb)
[b]CO: $31.53 (126.1 bb)[/b]

[b]Preflop[/b]: Hero is UTG with A:club: Q:diamond:
[color="red"]Hero raises to $0.85[/color], [color="grey"]MP folds[/color], CO calls $0.85, [color="grey"]3 folds[/color]

[b]Flop[/b]: ($2.05) 3:club: 9:diamond: 7:spade:[color="blue"] (2 players)[/color]
[color="red"]Hero bets $1.50[/color], CO calls $1.50

[b]Turn[/b]: ($5.05) Q:heart:[color="blue"] (2 players)[/color]
[color="red"]Hero bets $3[/color], CO calls $3

[b]River[/b]: ($11.05) T:club:[color="blue"] (2 players)[/color]
Hero checks, [color="red"]CO bets $7.25[/color], Hero calls $7.25

[b]Results:[/b] $25.55 pot ($1.27 rake)
Final Board: 3:club: 9:diamond: 7:spade: Q:heart: T:club:
Hero showed A:club: Q:diamond: and won $24.28 ($11.68 net)
CO showed A:diamond: J:diamond: and lost (-$12.60 net)

I don't know if he had some read that a double float here is a good play against me (it might be, I'd play 22 the same way on flop/turn), or if he's just an idiot. But I am pretty sure I got a lot more value than if I would have bet the river.

I also put in a little volume at 10NL Rush PLO this week. I watched a few videos on that game and am starting to get a feel for it. It seems to play way passive. It was a little frustrating when I bet a rivered set after flop/turn/river got checked to me, only to get called by a bigger set that checked 3 streets because there was a possible straight on the board. I got in a bit of Stud8/StudHi too. Someday I'd really like to have a good feel for all the various games. NLHE is still my bread and butter, but so far I enjoy Stud8 (StudHi blows, it seems like such a crapshoot), Limit O8, and PLO.

Hopefully next week gets a bit better. I am pretty close to done with school for the next 3 weeks and am taking a week off of work when the baby comes home. I'm also dropping to one grad school course this summer, so between now and then I really hope to get in some killer volume. I would say my goal is to get my roll up to $6800 and start shot taking at $400NL by August. I think at that point I'll probably give up on the Rush format and switch to standard tables. Hopefully next week you'll see me at the 50NL tables!

Greetings blog readers,

You are apparently very bored because you have decided to click on yet another persons very first blog. I guess since you are here I might as well give you something to read about. My name is Mike, I'm 27 years old, and I've been playing poker for about 6 years. I was sitting around during Christmas break my senior year in college watching poker on TV and thought it looked fun. Then a friend of mine shoots me a link to pokerroom.com play money. I google some basic strategy (if I remember it was the nittiest advice ever) and I logged on to play. I somehow end up playing LHE. Every pot was 10 handed capped preflop. Then I remembered that I was 21 and about 30 minutes from a casino, as I lived just north of Detroit at the time. I called up Greektown to see what they had, 3/6 was the smallest LHE game, and it sounded very expensive. But I didn't think I could learn much playing crazy shit free money poker so what the hell. One session, $75 gone, and I was hooked. I think I went to Barnes and Noble the next day and bought every poker book they had (I was hooked and didn't have time to wait for Amazon's shipping).

The rest of that year I dinked around playing 3/6, then got online and played some micro stakes LHE and MTT's. Just a bunch of small buy-in crap. I think I had a couple $500 MTT scores that were exciting at the time. I probably won a whopping $1000 online that year and broke even live. Then in 2006 I discovered NLHE cash games. I got a bit more serious about the game, and started doing a lot of 3-tabling $25NL 6-max on Party Poker. These games were so incredibly soft, I remember winning about 30bb/100 over a fairly large sample. I wouldn't even stay at a table that didn't have at least 3 50VPIP fish. It was pretty much as easy as flop TPGK and win a buy-in. Repeat. I even considered doing it full-time for a bit while I was in between jobs. I took a few shots at 50NL and remember never being able to have anywhere near the success at 25, so I stayed there. But grinding got boring for me. I would do some stupid things like put half of my roll on one table. I tried to stay motivated to do it but I just couldn't at the time.

In the summer of 2006 things got flipped around a bit. I got married, moved, got a new job, the UIGEA hit and Party Poker shut me out. That kind of killed my motivation to play, and I was done. I played a little bit live here and there over the years, but other than that I was pretty much done. I always had the itch to play online again but never was able to scratch it, until about 2 months ago for some reason. I talked to my wife about it and to my surprise she actually supports it (I may have exaggerated my potential winnings, but shhh...) I started reading 2+2 again, and was surprised how things have changed. Most players at the micro's have stopped limp calling A3o. The games are definitely tougher, the swings wilder, but so far I'm still making money some how. I read into Rush poker, which sounded right up my alley. I always hated the chore of table and seat selecting. I also hated multitabling. I would get stressed out when I had two decision to make at once. But playing Rush I can get in a ton of volume 2-tabling, without the stress of getting dealt 8 playable hands (how do you guys do it?)

So this time around I'm back to playing and studying. I'm trying to balance my job as an Electrical Engineer, grad student (1 more year!) and family life (soon to be father!) with poker. What I really want is to be a high stakes baller. So I figured I would implement an aggressive bankroll management strategy. I move up when I hit 17 buy-ins and down when I drop below 14. I figure that will have me bouncing around a bit, but I think I can handle that. Feeling like I'm just a few big pots away from the next level keeps me motivated. So I'm following verneer's path and run up $100. I can't put in anywhere near the volume he can, but I'm off to a good start. I started with $100 on FTP and jumped into 5NL rush. With the initial deposit bonus and RB I was up to $10 pretty quick. This level was pretty easy too, and I made it back to my old realm of 25NL, where I have been on one hell of a roller coaster. I got knocked back to 10NL but made it back up pretty quick. The swings continued, but I've managed to stay above the 14 buy-in threshold. I can actually feel my game evolve as I play up which is pretty cool. I'm on a good heater at 25 right now, and have $750. $100 more and I'm back to 50NL, my old nemesis. I'm actually looking forward to that level for more than one reason. I'm struggling to earn enough FTPs at 25NL to keep a full month of CR membership (I won't be able to blog the last week of April). So between that and Full Tilt's take two promotion this month I think I'll be around all May.

Still reading this? Wow, you should probably go and put in some hands instead of reading some lame ass guy's blog. I assure you your poker game is no better for having read this. In fact, I'll bet it's killed off a few brain cells and made it worse. The only reason you might have for reading my blog is to know when I'm about to make it up to the stakes you play. Because once I do you might as well just quit, because the party's over and your money is mine. See you at the tables.