Who Me? Staked?

Still not motivated to grind, which is strange for me. I normally almost always want to play. I blame the kid (obviously). How am I supposed to care about work with him about?

I did force myself to play a little bit today, and start catching up on band emails. I even opened up some mail, so I'm slowly starting to shift back towards being a contributing member of society. The lack of volume has allowed me to reflect on this whole mass-tabling approach, and I'm definitely having serious second thoughts. To be clear, I still think it's good at least in theory. But I think I jumped to 24 tables far too quick (basically straight from ~12 to 24 with only a brief stop around 16) and should back it up and work my way up much slower.

It's not just the time off that's got me thinking that, tho. I have entered into fairly serious discussions with an uber-successful midstakes multi-tabler about a staking agreement. It's kinda odd, because I had never remotely thought about getting staked, and he's never staked anyone before. But I had some exchanges with him on 2+2 and liked his way of thinking about things, so I asked him about coaching. As his hourly is quite high grinding, he wasn't really interested in coaching but was interested in talking about a staking arrangement (which would obviously involve some coaching, but would have a potentially higher return than just an hourly rate). I have no idea if it's going to happen or not. I think we're gonna figure it out in the next few days, but who knows, we've been talking about it a while. But if he does make a formal offer, and it seems fair and all that, I'm probably going to go for it.

But anyway, as part of this process, I recorded a table of myself 6-tabling. I have to admit I was fairly shocked by how different it was from 24-tabling. Of course I knew it would be somewhat so. But it was like, totally, completely different. I realized most of the time 24-tabling I've just been playing my cards. I mean, obviously I'm stacking off lighter against a 50/30 than a 14/11 or whatnot. But especially preflop, I've basically been playing from a chart. The thing is, it's not that the game, when 24-tabling, moves too fast to make more involved decisions. It's just that it moves fast enough to kind of lull me into this bad rhythm of just looking at my cards and clicking raise or (mainly) fold. There is time to take that extra moment to make a more complete decision, for sure, but forcing myself to do so is not a skill I currently have down.

So the last couple sessions I've played 12 tables (I know that sounds like a lot, but when you've been playing 24 it feels slow like live poker). At someone's suggestion, I've got it set up like I'm tiling six tables, but with a stack of two in each tiled spot. I'm having total problems getting used to playing in that configuration, but I'm still finding the pace of the games much more manageable and I think I'm playing a lot better. My plan, if the staking thing does not happen, is to 12 table at 50 until I'm comfortable with it, and then, roll-willing, keep 12-tabling at 100. If it continues to go well, I'll maybe add like two tables at a time, so long as I feel like every decision is still a thoughtful one.

It's also possible I'll go all the way back down to 6-8 tables and try to play slightly higher stakes. My best months were when I was doing that, so it's always in the back of my mind as a possibility.

Man, blogs are self-indulgent.