I gotta get out of this place!

Internet Poker / Matthew Pitt / 25 June 2010 / 2 Comments

I know you're jealous of my silky Paint skills!

I am a far better player than the stakes I currently play suggest. I've got to get out of the micro-stakes and get out for good and now is a good a time as any.

Anyone who is even half knowledgeable about online poker knows that the rake at the micro-stakes is an absolute killer. Although the percentage taken, 5%, is still the same as high stakes, proportionally it is a huge amount compared to how much money is on the table.

I received an email a couple of days ago from Poker Table Ratings, a website that tracks almost every hand played across a number of sites, that revealed they had done some analysis of micro-stakes pot-limit Omaha and found the rake was astronomical.

Basically, the email showed that just to breakeven, not win, a player needs to have a win rate of at least 13.87BB/100, which to be honest is a frigging joke. This means if you are playing on a $0.02/$0.05 table you need to win $1.38 per 100 hands. This may not sound like much but when you consider a really good win rate at PLO would be in the region of 10BB/100 you can see that by these figures almost everyone will be losing to the rake. At a six-handed table where everyone is sat with full stacks of $5 and assuming nobody reloads, there would be no money left on the table after just 2,173 hands! Way to rape the little guy!

I've been playing micro-stakes PLO for the past month or so and although I have been winning at around 8BB/100 on top of the required 13.87BB/100, I feel as if I am being royally ripped off. With that in mind I am seriously considering waiting to learn the game fully until I can afford to play at least $0.25/$0.50, where the rake is proportionally far less.

One way I can build my roll to a sufficient level is to hit some HUSNG where I have always been a consitant winner. I've left tournament poker alone for a while now, partly due to the fact Baby Pudding never slept properly and it was not fair to expect Mrs P to stop whatever she was doing on a night and tend to him and also because I simply did not have the right frame of mind to handle the variance.

Well both things have changed, Baby Pudding has been sleeping like an star for the past six months or so, often going 15 hours, yes 15 hours the lazy little sod and I have not moaned about variance once since playing PLO. I think that the natural swings in PLO have desensitised me to variance as I have been used to getting my money in with slim margins and we all know the results that produces.

Also, I have written a lot about the WSOP over the past couple of weeks and I really want to hit up some MTTs. It happens every year but as mentioned above, I'm never in the right frame of mind to log a large enough sample size. I have earmarked five or six tournaments I could realistically play on an evening/night that would be within my bankroll and I think I am going to give them a whirl for a couple of weeks and see how I fair. They range from a massive $1 and go up to $6 but they average 300-600 runners which is the perfect sized field for me.

Whilst I will never be on a par with the game's greatest players, I am a far better player than the stakes I currently play suggest. I've got to get out of the micro-stakes and get out for good and now is a good a time as any. I have a settled family life, have stopped taking my loony medication, am more knowledgeable than every before and ready to prove I am not a micro-stakes donkey but at least a mid-stakes one!

I still have a lot on my plate at the moment but I am slowly catching up with that and I should be on a level playing field by the time the weekend is over. I have a $50 bonus waiting for me that I am going to clear through the crazy game that is Rush Poker and this should push my roll over the $400 mark. I then plan to play a mixture of $5.25 and $10.50 HUSNG so that I have a steady stream into my bankroll and then on most evenings I will be playing the tournaments I mentioned. No more pretending and pussyfooting about. I am Yorkshire Pudding and I will succeed.

As always, thanks for reading and the very best of luck at the tables!

Comments (2)

1. simon jones | 25 June 2010

   Get out of the shit mate, u beeen there waaaay too long. GET OUT!

2. Rossi | 25 June 2010

   Hey Pud, take me with you m8. GL