Cake Challenge III

Adam had posted about how he was targeting the $1000 bankroll figure and that got me interested in targeting that goal as well. He was thinking a challenge like Cake II where there would be a certain deadline. I was proposing a race to $1000 instead since I think it would enforce better bankroll management than having a set date. Case in point, when Adam went for broke (the first time, around June 1) because that was the *only* way he could have a chance to win the Q2 prop bet.

There are pluses and minuses to both but I was trying to think of a different mechanism. *Assuming* that the challenges are about bankroll management, then there are many options that could be used to help enforce that notion.

* Make it mandatory that certain bankroll management rules are followed like not exceeding x% of your roll on a table at any one time. The first person reaching $1000 without breaking BRM rules would be declared the winner and that would prevent players from taking excessive risk in order to try to win the prop bet.

* Lowest negative variance. Not sure how this would be done but I have to think there is a statistical measure which would allow us to determine who had the swingiest chart without penalizing positive upswings from big tourney cashes, RB payouts, bonuses, etc.

* Smallest negative downswing. Could just say that the person with the smallest (or smallest 10 or whatever) downswings percentage-wise would be the winner. That would allow for unlimited huge upswings and only measure negative bankroll movements.

I'm sure there are many more ways we could structure it to keep BRM as a defining factor in the challenge. Or it could just be a no holds barred race if we don't want to make BRM such a factor.

Bottom line is that I know that I do much better when there is a carrot in front of me to chase after. Ever since the April 1 deadline came and went I have lost focus and incentive to play well or manage my bankroll well so I would welcome some sort of competition to get me over the $1K hump.

Death of Cake

Well it looks like a good run has more or less ended for me. I plan to cash out most all of my remaining balance on cake after a rough run post WSOP. The final straw was not being able to fire up any O8 tables and then having to multi table $1/$2 PLO with Wind Tunnel at my table.

Wind Tunnel is an exceptionally good player who typically plays the highest stakes available on cake. I would typically see him at $5/$10 and $2/4 and even $25/$50 when it used to run.

Everyone rousted him for playing so low to which Wind Tunnel responded "Come on guys there is nothing running". I then asked him if he was up for the year. He said he was about even after being down $100K earlier. If a player like Wind Tunnel can't make any money then I had to ask myself what I am doing here.

I plan to more or less stop playing on line for the summer and then will evaluate the options available in the fall. I can't beat the game on Poker Stars and am not motivated enough to try to make Supernova this year. The game has clearly evolved from the 9 high callers on the river who thought they had a low in PLO8 to 24 tablers in PLO and PLO8 ( I have now met 3 people who claim to do this profitably).

In any case. I am most thankful for an amazing journey and an amazing run.

For the stat junkies out there, here are the stats on player traffic at cake and other sites:

Poker Traffic Article