Sunday, September 12, 2010

Spending my bankroll, in more ways than one

When a winning poker player finds creative non-poker-related ways to nuke his/her bankroll, it's said that player has "a leak." There are plenty of stories floating around concerning famous poker stars who blow through their profits in record time. T.J. Cloutier, for instance, apparently pawned one of his World Series of Poker bracelets last year after (allegedly) bleeding off untold thousands of dollars the craps tables. Crazy to think that someone so proficient at managing a stack of tournament chips could be so poor at managing a bankroll.
I don't have a compulsive, degenerate leak like that. My leak is more like a slow drip. Every once in a while - about once a year - I talk myself into some new poker gear. And since there's no way I could justify spending our household finances on such a frivolity, I dip into the poker bankroll.

The latest expenditure was a sweet new poker table, courtesy of a local B.C. supplier - pokerchipsets.ca out of Maple Ridge. They have some awesome stuff, and I picked up a luscious blue-felted table just in time for the September edition of the monthly poker league I run.
Unfortunately, my stay on the new table was all too brief. After treading water for over an hour, I made a total donkey play, getting my 30xBB stack into the middle on a K64 flop. With six players at the table, I'd raised under the gun with KQ. I had two callers, including a monster-stacked player to my left who had been overbetting the pot all night long when he made huge hands. I felt I probably had the best hand on the flop, and elected to slowplay. Mr. Overbettor made it 3000 to go, which was a little bit more than half my stack. The other player folded, and after a couple seconds' thought, I shipped it. He called and turned over AK - a hand that surprised me, because I would have assumed an aggressive player such as he would have reraised with that hand preflop.
But that's no excuse. I'd watched him overbet with big hands on two prior occasions - it was clearly his M.O. for the evening - but I refused to believe him because he's very capable of making big moves and an overbet reeks so much of a bluff. Additionally, if I'd bet the flop, I could have gotten away if he'd raised. Even after slowplaying, with 30 big blinds in my stack, I could/should have been able to get away after seeing his previous showdown hands.
Terrible play by me. Lesson learned . . . I hope.
Online, I managed to lose back all of my early September profits with some rather inattentive and impatient play. On the bright side, I'm still breaking even this month, but after leaking off some cash buying the table, the bankroll is a fair bit thinner.
Bankroll = $4,700

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