Grinding away at $2/$4

Bankroll: $1550.22

Published on January 24, 2006 By PacDragon In Gaming

I broke even last night. Well, not exactly. I actually made about $12 after three hours of play. Party Poker will give me a $100 bonus if I can get 1,000 raked hands before the 26th. So last night I was just trying to get it up to 500 hands, then I'll do 250 hands over the next two days.

I buy-in to each table with $150. Since I play two at a time, that's $300 I keep in play at any one time. Kind of nerve wracking, having all that money at risk. I have to keep telling myself it's just a score and my bankroll can handle some swings, but it still makes me nervous. I can't imagine the chutzpah it must take to play high stakes.

I don't seem to be doing as well at $2/$4 as I was at $1/$2. Instead of crushing the games, I just hovered at about even the whole time. I really was only one pot away from being ahead or behind. No real progress or table-crushing going on. I did lose three hands when the pots were huge and my opponent caught a long shot draw (he never had the right pot odds to continue). If I had won all three of those pots, I would have been able to quit $150 ahead.

But that's just a bunch of “what-ifs”. The reality is that I've only been able to earn about $3/hour this year. Hrmm... but I suppose that's average. I was told to expect to earn around one big bet per hour. Since I played $1/$2 for the first part of the month, then $2/$4 for the rest, I guess it averaging out to $3 an hour is expected. I haven't played nearly enough hands this year to draw any kinds of conclusions, but I suppose those stats still make me feel a little better.

I noticed some changes with $2/$4. For one, tables break up quickly. The fish lose their buy-ins much faster at this level. Once they're gone, the sharks leave and the table dies. I have to constantly switch tables to keep looking for fresh money. Probably related to that, there just aren't as many fish as I would like. At $1/$2, it was trivial to find a table with 4 to 5 calling stations. Now, I'm lucky if I can find 1 or 2. But there are so many players feeding off of them, they just go broke right away.

I only need about $250 more to move up to $3/$6. This level is pretty short, so hopefully it'll be a quick jump to move up. Once I do, I'll finally be graduating from micro-stakes and into small-stakes. Then maybe I'll be that much closer to earning minimum wage from the game

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