You Know, Dutch May Be On to Something...

A lot has been said in the poker world about Dutch Boyd, good, bad, and ugly, but I'm not one to really judge anyone based on things I wasn't involved with. Anyhoo, he posted something on his blog last week that is some truly great stuff about making money and beating this damn game:

A lot of people on this thread have looked at a few things I said in interviews and on the site and somehow came to the conclusion that I don't think poker is beatable. I've never said that. I know for a fact that poker is beatable. I've sustained myself just on poker for the last five years. I do think anybody trying to beat this game for a living, though, is doing themselves a huge disservice if they are playing small and medium stakes in live casinos.

Here are a couple interesting things to think about :

1) CardPlayer had a survey a few years ago where they asked readers whether they were up or down overall. If I remember right, only 20% of readers responded that they were down... 25% were beating the game and 55% were breaking even. Poker is a great game like that because it is SOOOO easy to trick yourself into thinking you're winning. A lot of times I'll catch myself after a losing session excusing the loss.

"Well, if those Kings had held up, I'd be winning for the session... so I'm not really down. Plus I got $50 in the mail for my birthday from my uncle... so really, I'm up for the day."

2) There was an anthropology book written about poker back in the 70s by a guy named David Hayano. He broke down four different types of "professional" poker players. These types were all players who were trying to make their money exclusively by poker. He found that most "pro" players drift back and forth between real jobs and poker because they would continue to go broke. That doesn't necessarily mean that most of these pros this guy studied were losing players... it does mean, though, that they weren't making enough at poker to sustain themselves.

3) A few people have talked about how the stakes effect the beatability of the game. I don't think there is any player out there who could consistently beat a 2/4 limit game in California for anything over minimum wage. In California, they take a drop instead of a rake... so the house takes $3 out of every hand regardless of how big the pot gets. The rake ends up being a lot higher than 10% of the pot. Then you add in the dealer tokes. Bottom line is when I was propping the games in San Jose, none of the props were beating the 2/4 game. The 3/6 game is where it started getting beatable for most of us... but not for a lot. Online, however a 2/4 game is quite beatable. The rake structure is different and you don't have to worry about dealer tokes. The percentage of players who beat the 2/4 limit games online, though, is lower than the percentage of players who beat the 20/40 limit games online. The reason for this is NOT because the players at the lower limit games play too fishy and your aces are more likely to get cracked. The reason is because the rake paid is a smaller percentage of each pot, of each big blind, and of each average buyin... which leaves more money on the table to be thrown around between the winning players.

4) After spending years making my money playing poker, I can say definitively that the best way to make money for a medium stakes player (anybody playing less than 100-200 limit) is multi-tabling the limit games online. There are hundreds of online players making six-figure a year incomes and a handful of players making seven. I personally have come to the conclusion that limit holdem games is the way to go... sit-n-gos, tournaments, nl games, non-holdem games... they are all beatable. But they aren't beatable for as much as the boring but trusty limit holdem game.

5) If you are a good limit holdem player, you'll win around 60% of your sessions. Let's suppose you're like me, though, and only win about 55% of your sessions. That means the chances of any one session being a losing session is 45%, the chances of any two sessions both being losers is .45 x .45. Stay with me now... this is going somewhere. The chances of any four sessions all being losing sessions is .45 x .45 x .45 x .45 = roughly 4%. What I take this to mean is that if you have four sessions in a row where you lose, it is much more likely that you are a playing with a negative ev than that you are just getting unlucky. Going even further with this... if you put in a solid week of online limit play and multitable, it's not that hard to get in 5 or 6 thousand hands a week. This is the equivilent of a month's worth of live play. Being positive after a 5000 hand week for a winning player is a lot more likely than being positive after a single session... I'd estimate somewhere in the 80 - 90 % range. If you have two weeks back to back that you're down even though you've gotten in > 5000 hands, the sad truth is it is statistically improbable that you are just on a bad run. You are much more likely a losing poker player.

Thanks, Dutch--great stuff...