Long Live Vegas!

Another summer camp in the books

It was a summer to remember. It started off with a premonition that something wonderful would happen. I didn’t win the Main Event Championship. I didn’t win my first bracelet. I didn’t even make my first-ever WPT final table. But I proved to myself that I can play my best poker almost every day for six weeks straight, and that’s wonderful in its own way. I expect big things to come my way in the game I love, and I’m never going to stop working on my poker skills and grinding it out on the felt.

We took our starting bankroll of $60,000 and won $6,145 net overall, but it somehow felt way better than that. Was it because we were stuck over $40,000 at one point? Was it because we kept playing long days and making multiple dinner breaks? What was the illusion anyway?

Photo by Fengyou Wan on Unsplash

LIVE TOURNAMENTS
I played 28 tournaments, investing $47,525 in this portion of the action. I cashed in five, a respectable 17.9%, which is right around my career average cash rate. The net profit (cashes minus buy-ins) here was $19,495, an ROI of 41%, which is well above my career live tournament ROI of 28%. Basically, I did great in live tournaments this summer.

ONLINE TOURNAMENTS
I played extensively on WSOP Online. I invested $19,800 and showed a microscopic profit of $175. That’s an ROI of less than 1% (well below my career online tournament ROI of 6%) but at least it’s positive. So that means the culprit that pulled us down to Earth must have been…

CASH GAMES
I only played in seven sessions of cash games, about once per week. Makes sense when you think about all the Day Twos and dinner breaks I was making over in TournamentLand. It was subtle but vicious; I didn’t notice at all the Hoovering effect these cash games were having on the bankroll.

Photo by Megan Ruth on Unsplash

But there it was just the same. In previous summers, I basically relied on my cash game skills to keep me afloat when the poker gods were trying to sink me. Thinking back on all the cash games I played this summer, I just remember them being juicy and filled with whales who had busted out of whatever tournament was going on that day. I didn’t spend enough time playing cash to even notice that they were costing me, overall, $13,525! I invested $18,000 playing in these seven sessions and only booked one win, posting an ROI of -75%. I know these games were great and that I was a big favorite in them; I just didn’t get enough volume in to overcome the short-term variance.

Still, 80% of WSOP players don’t come out ahead, statistically. Many lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of my friends who is an absolute beast of a player went 0-for-29 this summer. I’m happy with a positive result and mostly sad that it’s over. But there’s always next year.

I’ll be playing plenty more poker on the road this fall and will document the good, bad, and the ugly right here as I do so. In the meantime, I would love to have your subscribe to the Tournament Poker Edge Podcast, where I share strategy advice and opinions on all things tournament poker.

Thank you for being a part of this adventure!

The final bankroll is $66,145.