Online Poker.....

It’s only in the last year that I have really started playing online poker. I have to admit that I am yet to crack it. I have played at various times on Pokerstars, Partypoker, Paradise Poker, Victor Chandler and Betfair.

Looking back through my online records for 2004 I can see that despite gambling A LOT of money online I am only about 10/15% up on my entire stake. I am up on Paradise and Victor Chandler, even on Betfair (somehow) and down on Party and Pokerstars. A lot of this has come down to my game selection. My best game no doubt is still PL Omaha though I feel like I have improved my NL Hold em game a lot in the last year. My swings at playing the 2/4 Omaha on Party/Paradise/Pokerstars have left me to decide for the time being anyway that I will stick to playing Hold em online and leave the high stakes Omaha playing for when I go to the casino.

I can pinpoint exactly why I have lots of losing sessions online and here are the three most significant factors in order.

I play when drunk
Quite often when I have been to the pub or something I will play pissed. Whilst I can still play when drunk if I get unlucky my tilt is much worse than when I am sobre. I have been trying to find ways of stopping myself from doing this. Any ideas I would be extremely grateful.

I hardly ever play to the best of my ability
In my spreadsheet I decided for all poker I play…. Online/offline/cash/tournaments to give an honest rating of how I feel I played out of 10. Here are my results based on my average performance since June.

Online cash – 4.65/10
Live Tournaments 6.4/10
Live Cash – 7.1/10

I clearly have a problem playing well online a lot of the time. A score below 5/10 as an average is clearly shocking. With such a low rating its probably only the number of bad players especially on VC and Betfair that have kept me in profit.

My game selection
My two best games for making a profit are Omaha and Sit n Go’s. Due to the fact I play Omaha cash live I decided to not play big stakes Omaha online. Sit n Go’s I find quite frankly tedious. So I have recently been playing NL Cash Games where the swings are very big and I go on tilt a lot when players get very lucky against me.

I need to look at my game selection and only play when I am in the mood and to try and concentrate better. I think I will start playing the $100 Sit n Go’s as a starting point. If I play 2/3 at a time it should stop me getting too bored.