Although since people seem to be rushing to the site to get a peek at the amazing content they have been putting out, I wish I did!

I have been hearing so many people reference me as the owner of Dragthebar.com, I just thought I would clear that up for the record. Dragthebar.com is owned by a few individuals within the poker industry who I am not sure whether they want to be named or not so I will play it safe and not mention who owns it. They are doing an amazing job and there are so many awesome coaches that are a part of the site that I don’t think it is fair to anyone for the site to be perceived as being owned by me, when in fact it is not. The site has been doing amazingly well and I am very glad to be a part of all of the amazing things going on there.

Right now I am sitting in my hotel room after wrapping up a session on Poker Stars. I have been trapped in this hotel room for about 8 days now because of the volcano that has spread ash all throughout the European skies, prohibiting flights all across Europe for the past week and change. I am missing my family very much. To make matters worse, my computer was having troubles and I could not use Skype or play videos on my computer. Randomly a couple of days ago my computer started working again and I have been able to use Skype which has probably saved me from severe depression because now I can do video chat with my wife and my child which has made me feel a heck of a lot better.

My baby girl, Lennon, has been making a lot of progress in using her hands and forming some baby talk, so it was depressing to miss out on that completely. Tonight I got to see her eat solids and actually swallow them for the first time in her life, so that was quite a thrill. It’s amazing to see her progress. It is definitely an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything.

I am starting to make peace with the fact that the high stakes cash games are so much more difficult to beat than they have ever been in the history of online poker. I have been winning at a much slower pace than ever before. A healthy chunk of the reason why is simply because I have run absolutely awful since February. But even without running poorly, my win rate has declined quite a bit over the past 18 months and I just never felt like I was playing that bad. But since I wasn’t getting the results I was looking for, it kind of bummed me out quite a bit as I was wondering what happened.

Well, after doing a lot of research looking at most of the long term win rates of the regulars at the high stakes games, it became crystal clear to me that I wasn’t going crazy or playing poorly, the games are simply brutally difficult to beat and most people at the high stakes games appear to be simply scratching and clawing to maintain any win rate at all. So I am actually doing pretty darn well for myself and clearly my expectations were too high. To put it in golf terms, I used to shoot 68 or better more often than not. Now I am shooting 71, but on a much tougher golf course. I was getting bummed because 71 is much worse than 68, but when I looked around and noticed most everyone else shooting 75 now, I guess I should be happy with my 71. Anyway, that’s the best analogy I’ve got.

I think right now myself and every other high stakes pro needs to realize that the game evolves constantly, as does the landscape of poker. In 07’ (which was still post UIGEA, so we’re not talking about the true glory days of Party Poker in 05’) the world economy was healthy (at least artificially). You usually could log on and often just take an open seat with a weaker player. The regulars made tons of horrible (and I mean HORRIBLE) mistakes. There was no such thing as a short stacker who was leveraging their short buy in against you to take advantage of a flawed buy in allowance by the poker rooms. There were times you could play on the weekend and in the evenings where there might be a dozen 25/50 tables all with a weaker player at the tables. In fact I remember early in 08’, I loathed even having to sit at a 5/10nl game because I was so often able to spread a dozen 10/20nl and above games at once.

Fast forward only 2 years later and if a weaker player sits down it doesn’t take 30 seconds before there is a list 10 deep. Short stackers are everywhere. Most everyone at 5/10nl has no major leaks in their games. There are plenty with some minor ones, but usually not any glaring holes in their games. 25/50 and 10/20nl games run once in awhile, but good luck finding one that is half decent. The landscape of high stakes poker has completely changed. In fact, I am now happy to spread a half dozen 5/10nl games and the rest of my tables are 3/6 and occasionally even 2/4nl. I guess it feels like a huge demotion, but we are in the middle of a global recession and I’m sure poker, like anything, will ebb and flow.

Ignore this blog completely if you are a low stakes player. If you play low stakes, it is a great time to be in poker. The Stars bonus program is amazing, training sites (such as Dragthebar.com) are there for super cheap to teach you how to play winning poker, and poker in general is headed in a great direction overall (in my opinion anyway). Sure there is the UIGEA thing, but more people are playing poker than ever, the perception of poker improves each year, and it is possible the legal landscape will improve with this pending legislation that is in the House. In short, poker is still marching along just fine and overall I couldn’t be happier to be playing poker for a living.