Coming down off a rocket

Well, I finally did it guys. Here's my first post. The month's been better to me than it will normally be, as I am running well ahead of my expected earnings for the amount I've played thus far, which is a wopping.... wait for it, wait for it.... 30 hours this month. I mean, I didn't have time to play through most of the first week, but I was hoping to have a good 40-50 hours by now. Anyway, it's not really about the hours, it's more about the hands. In order for us to be super comfortable (as in less risk of losing all of our bankroll than being inside a house and getting struck directly by lightning during a storm), I need to get in 60k hands a month. I have 13k so far. That's not gonna cut it. At least not until Jesper starts beating the 50NL (which is the .25/.50 blinds game where the max buy-in is 50 dollars). Right now she is beating the 25NL, which is good because it's pretty hard for a beginning serious player to beat on a regular basis. And to be honest I thought she'd have a few more problems than what she is having now.
The swings in NL are brutal, particularly when you have to survive on your winnings. Most of the time when you get allin for your whole buyin against another player, you're hoping to be between a 65% and 75% favorite. Those aren't the only times I get my money in either, and what's worse is sometimes against some of the better players, I have to stick 75 dollars in to exploit an edge worth only a junior bacon cheeseburger. That's where a good chunk of the variance comes in. Still, even without those moments, all the times that your opponent wins after getting in with a 30% chance to scoop the pot, those can start running back to back pretty easily.
This month is the first time we have had to depend on our bankroll to live on, and I thought it would be fucking with Jesper more. I personally know that we're practically never busting out. I've used Kelly's formula on my winrate, bankroll and monthly expenditures several times by now and know how to apply it to Risk-of-Ruin investment scenarios. But she's not that familiar with it, at least not right now. Apparently she trusts my mathematical understanding though, because she's developing steadily and learning to really exploit players and use adaptive, player-tailored strategies. She's not complaining much about the bad hands. And she knows when she's right, even when the results end up being not in her favor.
I had been planning to devote most of my efforts to trying to move myself up from the 100NL to the 200, but at this point it seems pretty obvious that spending more time helping her move up to the 100NL will be a lot more fruitful. For one, I think it can be done a little more quickly. Even if it took the same amount of time, her winnings at the 100NL will nearly double our earnings. There is absolutely no way that can be true of my earnings if I move to the 200NL. Best case scenario, I'll win maybe 50% more up at the 200NL. The play is tougher and I'll be basically paying tuition (tuition is just a portion of your potential winrate which you lose as you learn to beat tougher players) pretty heavily for months. On the other hand, heavy tuition for Jesper, I can honestly say, will probably only take maybe 2 months tops to pay for at the 100NL. I think she'll be taking some shots for us by May. That is a bit faster than I envisioned being comfortably moved up to the 200NL. So for now I'll just keep us cruising by crushing the 100NL and let us grow at a bit slower but much more stable rate for the next 3 months or so. In the long run, this is definitely the play to maximize profits; besides, I really wouldn't expect to make a whole lot more by playing a lot of 200NL tables before May. Who knows, we could both be at the 200NL by December. Then we wave bye-bye to my student loans, and our wallets will belong mostly to us again.

Despite the fact that I'm running amazingly hot with the cards this month, I'm experiencing a short-term deficit in my playing ability: I quit caffeine. Again. No seriously this time. I'm still having some irritability issues ("This guy just tried to bluff me!") since I quit last tuesday (strange how the withdrawal effects seem to last longer and longer every time I quit). Also, I can't play as many tables as I'm used to. I can usually deal with 12-16 tables up for an hour or so, but lately I've only felt comfortable with 10. This is okay, but it means that I'll either have to learn how to play more tables again, without caffeine, and/or I'll have to play more hours. Right now I'll just have to put in 6-8 hours everyday until I can get the multi-tasking skills back. I don't mind working the same hours as the rest of the world for a month or two. However, I'm not gonna put up with 8 hour grinds 5 days a week for the rest of my life. Six hours at the tables is plenty, and when you're playing 10-15 tables it's actually a little tougher than most mentally-taxing jobs that you work for 8 or more hours. The bottom line is, when I spend 1-2 hours away from the table everyday taking notes on opponents and working on my game, that's gotta be enough altogether. I do NOT want poker to be my whole world, otherwise it defeats it's own purpose in my life.
More on that in the next post.