Now What?

I think that most of you folks reading my blog are poker players, so I won't go into the gory details of Black Friday.  For those of you who aren't in tune with the daily comings and goings in poker, April 15, 2011 is now being referred to as "Black Friday."  Last Friday, the DOJ and FBI essentially seized and shut down online poker for US players.  This is very devastating for so many US players who play online poker for a living.  For me it is not as devastating since I am a recreational player.  Also, I only had about $800 online and a few Step Tickets.  But, I know of many players who had up to $50k online.  With sites like Full Tilt and Pokerstars, as well as payment processors being shut down, withdrawing those funds are near impossible.  Like I said, I don't have much money online, however, I just started running pretty good in cash games and ran ungodly in the Single Table Super Turbo Step Tournaments.

My goal the last couple of weeks prior to Black Friday was to play and collect as many Step 4 and 5 tickets as possible.  Step 4's are valued at $75 while Step 5's are valued at $215.  I was going to use these tickets to try to win seats into this years WSOP satellite events in Las Vegas.  My biggest disappointment as a result of Black Friday, is that I won't be able to cheaply take a shot at winning one or more seats to this year's WSOP events.

Now that online poker has been shut down for the most part, I think I will use some of my newfound time to play some more live poker.  The problem is, to play live poker, a person needs a much higher bankroll.  Online, I can play a full schedule with $200 with the long term expectation of of increasing my bankroll by 10-20% per session.  Even if variance gets the best of me, and say I run at -80% Return on Investment (ROI) in a session, I will still end the day with $40 plus the rest of my bankroll that wasn't used.  Now to play in a live $1/$3 NL cash game, I realistically need to come to the table with about $500.  In the short run, anything can happen.  I could sit down and immediately get dealt pocket Kings, only to get coolered by pocket Aces and lose my whole roll for the day.  Unfortunately, I don't have a $10k - $15k live bankroll to play with, so short term variance on the bad side could be devastating.

Since I have lost my chance to win a seat to Vegas, I think I am going to set aside all my profits from live cash  and put it towards a trip to this year's WSOP.  Hopefully I can make friends an enjoy a nice three-some with Lady Luck and Ms. Variance.