Ok, so Black Friday sucked for everyone who loves poker. From the inconvenience of not being able to play poker in the US on a mainstream and large site, to those of us who have our money held in limbo on Full Tilt and Cereus – it's bad all around. Obviously, I can't wait for online poker to come back to the states. And it looks like we might have some positive momentum. When it does, I'll be ready for even more success than I had the first time around. Because as bad as it's been, Black Friday has helped me become a much better poker player.
I am not in a situation where I can go become a live grinder but I still needed to get my poker fix. So I put a few bucks on the Merge network. Merge typically has less than 1/10th the traffic of Stars. The scale is clearly not there. They offer less tournaments and they have smaller fields. It's still possible to mass multi-table if you play everything, including $3 tournaments with just a few hundred dollars for first. But I really didn't want to put in long sessions for small payouts so I kept it small and recreational. Just 3-4 tables. I would just reg for those few tournaments and then stop playing once I bust because it wasn't compelling to start adding new tournaments to end up one-tabling for 3 hours if i make a deep run in it.
What I noticed is that I was able to actually start paying attention to the games that were happening. Instead of clicking buttons on 12 different tables based on "standard lines", I started making decisions based on gameflow and reads. I'm finding myself with much more creative strategies and way more options than what I thought i was supposed to do automatically at all stages of tournaments.
The next factor for my improvement are changes to my study habits due to Black Friday. Since Black Friday all that time that I was playing poker became available for other things. I've done more stuff outside of poker, but within poker I just have more time to study the game. So, I watch our videos (and not while I'm playing) with focused attention, then I have time to think about them. I watch poker on TV (this year's amazing WSOP coverage, and clips of The Big Game on Pokerstars.tv) as a captive audience member, not one distracted by 12 tables demanding part of my attention. I've started to think more about what I'm watching. Then, when I get to the tables again the concepts I saw in the videos or on TV present themselves in-game, and I get to leverage that learning to reinforce it's impact on my overall game.
I'm finding my ability to range other players has improved greatly. My reads are more accurate because they involve more information by watching hands that I am not in. I spend more time looking around the table at stack sizes and exploiting the dynamics that are present – that I wouldn't have noticed before. Poker is much more than just doing what you read or watched. You need to be situationally aware and creative. You have to take more than 3 seconds to assess the situation and go. Sure, some decisions are very easy – but there are always so many different things happening at the tables and so many options for your line that if you aren't developing your poker thinking all the time, you are going to fall behind those who are. I think that's what was happening to me. I was still making money at the end – but I wasn't becoming great.
The other benefit of Black Friday is that the interruption has forced me to take a step back and analyze who I am and what I want from poker. I realized that I was just increasing volume while eeking out smaller profits and it wasn't really as enjoyable as it used to be. I LOVE poker. But the things I loved about it were starting to get lost in the ecosystem that was PokerStars and Full Tilt. Double guarantees, Rush Poker, 8 table, 10 tables, 12 tables. These were just turning poker into large scale RNGs if you just click buttons. The way I was approaching poker at the end was not the same strategic challenge that attracted me to the game in the first place. The end results were there – big prizepools, money and the satisfaction of winning – but the way you got there just wasn't what it used to be.
So, I'd consider myself a thinking player again. I love poker just as much as I ever had, and when it comes back – I'm going to be a much better player. I'm sure the dangers that I mentioned earlier will be present and I'll need to manage them – but I've rediscovered the amazing game that poker is. Assuming that poker comes back, and that we get our money from FTP and Cereus, Black Friday could be a blessing in disguise for my game.
Cujokhan
I completely agree with you.