In terms of an update, as had probably become rather obvious, I essentially abandoned this challenge/diary a little while back.
I had started this to boost my ever flagging motivation to play and an unfortunate perfect storm emerged from almost the get-go. This started with some relatively persistent run bad in MTT's (with some undoubted play bad too!), and the emergence of back-to-back rake races proved to be the fatal blow.
Although I have a reasonable track record in MTT's (albeit from a fairly small sample size), I just don't enjoy them enough to consistently grind away in them. My favourite part of poker is unravelling the complexity of the decision tree in deep stack scenarios (100bb+) and it truly pains me that the most important stages of a tournament are invariably reduced to the most simplistic of choices - does one shove or fold here.
My hope was that the greater share of this challenge would be played out on the cash game streets. However, rake races just make the games truly dull and tables often become a very borderline +EV prospect in the high rake environment of low stakes cash games. I also believe these kind of promotions can have a longer term negative effect on the ecology of a site given the increased speed at which the deposits of recreational players will be chewed up, combined with the greater lack of fun those players will have in the process. My volume has actually picked up a fair bit over the last week or two but a lot of this has been on other sites as I struggle to fully support a promo I feel does more harm than good to a site I am otherwise very fond of.
So, a slightly grumpy old man update but thanks again all for the nice words. Maybe I'll try and have another proper stab at doing this as the winter months draw in .
Comments
I was worried my BR challenge was going same way as yours but this must put you back up there
In terms of an update, as had probably become rather obvious, I essentially abandoned this challenge/diary a little while back.
I had started this to boost my ever flagging motivation to play and an unfortunate perfect storm emerged from almost the get-go. This started with some relatively persistent run bad in MTT's (with some undoubted play bad too!), and the emergence of back-to-back rake races proved to be the fatal blow.
Although I have a reasonable track record in MTT's (albeit from a fairly small sample size), I just don't enjoy them enough to consistently grind away in them. My favourite part of poker is unravelling the complexity of the decision tree in deep stack scenarios (100bb+) and it truly pains me that the most important stages of a tournament are invariably reduced to the most simplistic of choices - does one shove or fold here.
My hope was that the greater share of this challenge would be played out on the cash game streets. However, rake races just make the games truly dull and tables often become a very borderline +EV prospect in the high rake environment of low stakes cash games. I also believe these kind of promotions can have a longer term negative effect on the ecology of a site given the increased speed at which the deposits of recreational players will be chewed up, combined with the greater lack of fun those players will have in the process. My volume has actually picked up a fair bit over the last week or two but a lot of this has been on other sites as I struggle to fully support a promo I feel does more harm than good to a site I am otherwise very fond of.
So, a slightly grumpy old man update but thanks again all for the nice words. Maybe I'll try and have another proper stab at doing this as the winter months draw in