Staking: AKA How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sit & Go

Whilst job interviews had been hard to come by prior to last week at least one application came back quickly with a positive response.  I applied to a couple of poker staking sites last month and got a fast positive response from the team at Sharkstaking.com.  After six months from poker hell it is at least a confidence boost that they were willing to set me up with a deal based purely on my previous MTT results and without having seen me play a single hand.

In all respects I am beginning to realise I probably should have done this years ago.  When I took a shot at going pro it was more from a necessity to move from my job than from being in the best bankroll position to consider it.  It was a case of see how it goes.  With a total of $6,000 in my poker bankroll it was about a third of the ideal minimum amount to play poker professionally.  Somehow I muddled through for two years without quite getting the result that would have given me the extra comfort space to get me through the downswing this year.  Of course if I had considered staking earlier on it would have taken the pressure off sooner and maybe kept me in better shape.  I guess that a combination of pride and the thought of having to give away 50% of what I made each month kept me from properly considering it.

My rather amusing start to life as a staked poker player... run bad, run bad, run bad...BINK!

So for starters Sharkstaking are providing me with a $750 stake.  On one level it may not seem like a lot but the advantages are many.  First of all the stake gets topped up to that amount each day so there are no worries about running out of funding, unless the company decides to stop the agreement.  So although a prolonged period of run bad would mean not making any money at least some one else gets to pick up the tab for my inability to win almost any hand where I get the chips in good .  There are plenty of other advantages.  They are going to set me up with a coach and provide at least two coaching sessions a month.  This has been delayed so far as the guy they want to set me up with has been in Vegas solidly for the WSOP over the last month.  I should also get an automatic upgrade to a VIP Moneybookers account which will be very useful.

As a lot of my problems this year came from trying to grind cash games on nitty sites I have decided to go back to basics.  My success has been predominantly from MTTs and I neglected the sort of volume I should have been putting in for the first half of the year.  Sharkstaking will only back a maximum of 50% MTT so at least 50% of my play will be Sit and Gos.  If I have neglected any discipline in recent years it has been the sit and go.  I played a lot when I was first learning the game but since I have played mostly on PKR and it is a pretty poor place to put in sit and go volume I haven't played many in recent years. Hopefully this is where the coach will be beneficial as I know my SNG game needs bringing up to scratch and I'm also happy for a different point of view on my MTT play. So I can play up to $20 sit and gos and $30 tournaments with an option to review things further down the line.

Whilst I used to get bored of sit and gos grinding a large volume of them has felt like a breath of fresh air this time round.  I really want to crack absolute bankroll discipline this time and the deal and what I am playing should very much encourage that.  I can't say I started well prior to my big MTT Sunday on the 15th.  I didn't run well to kick off with but I'm also aware that I wasn't playing a great sit and go game.  First of all I had no hands on anyone so obviously I ended up making some bad decisions against good regs and bad regs.  I also just ploughed into a huge range of formats including 5, 6, 10 and 30 seat games mixing up turbos, regular speed games and double or nothings.  This was a mistake.  Playing one format at a time stops you making silly errors.  On several occasions I made terrible ICM shoves in double or nothings on the bubble because I was playing 3 regular payout turbo sit and gos alongside it.  I also seemed to be doing better in the 5/6 seat games than the 10 so I have decided to focus on these for the moment.  So now I play the 30 man turbos on 10 seat tables which take a while to fill and either 5 seat top 2 paid games or 6 seat double or nothings depending on what I feel like.  Hopefully I will start running better, plug a few of the small leaks I am half aware of and begin to start nosing my results into profit. 

My next blog will be all about the deep tournament runs from the other week and I will probably include some of the hands if I can get HEM2 working properly.  It is annoying me greatly at the moment due to a variety of odd bugs.  They really need to get some updates sorted as it just feels so clunky compared to HEM1 at the moment despite a lot of potentially superior features.