Is The Internet Game Too Tough?

Yesterday, I blogged about my appalling week at the poker tables where a $550 chunk of cash flew out of my online bankroll. Now much as I put this down to good old-fashioned bad luck, it is still clear that even if I had won those key hands, I would still not be THAT much beyond break-even, if at all.

Furthermore, although last year's poker playing saw me reap a steady profit of around $10K, it has to be said that since the second half of last year I haven't exactly made a great leap forward or taken the poker world by storm. In fact the meagre profits gained are practically negligible. Some may cite the mass exodus of the French from the PKR site last summer as a possible reason why online poker in the UK has become more difficult but this isn't really fair. Some may point out that players may have just started to wise-up and are catching up with the regulars but the fact remains that my data tells me that online poker is just not the walk in the park that it once may have been.

I know I maintained earlier that there are weak players out there but, I have to say, they just seem fewer and far between these days. Similarly the percentage of regular players at the tables has gone up. Whereas a year ago there may have been just 2 or 3 good regulars at a 6 max table, nowadays that figure seems more like 4 or 5 and is often even 6!! In short, soft tables are becoming increasingly more difficult to find.

For this reason I have decided to place a "stop-loss" figure on my bankroll, giving me an exit strategy or the chance to pull out before I end up as one of the big donators. If I fall to this "stop-loss" sum, I'll reconsider my position and probably end up focusing much more on the live game.

However, rather than pull the plug completely, I've decided that if I fall to $4K I'll just write off that loss of $2K as a bad investment. I'll then cashout $3.5K and put that in my ISA from the beginning of April. The remaining $500 will then be used to do something like a "$500-$5000 challenge" or something of that nature. This way, the blog still marches on. What I will definitely do though is conclude that the online game has just become too hard to crack and bow out gracefully from the small/mid-stakes cash games. As I say, I will then concentrate much more on the more lucrative live cash games.

I know this sounds very negative and almost as if I'm throwing in the towel already, but it's just where my mind is going at the moment.