As I started playing poker full time, one theme that kept coming up is what game type I should focus on in poker. Should I be focusing on tournaments or should I be focusing on cash games? As a recreational player this is something that I never gave to much thought too. I still put an effort into improving my game and studying strategy concepts about poker. The difference between then and now is that I was not dependent on the profit that I could make from poker. If there was a tournament available in my area, then I would play it. If I felt like playing some poker on a Friday night, I could go to the casino. Sometimes the guys would get together and have a night around the table playing cards. When I started to transition into playing full time, it became extremely important for me to learn how to pick my games to play.

The other thing that became clear to me as I transitioned into playing full time is making sure that I could always find a good game or at the very least know where there was a decent game that I could play. This meant that I did need to do a little networking and learn what the casinos were like in Vegas. I really did not have an idea how I would go about doing this other than personally going to each casino that I knew had a card room and checking out the action for myself. Slowly I began playing at different casinos in search of knowledge, knowledge of where the good games were and what rooms to avoid because they were full of grinders, understaffed, or the action was just not good. There was some progress and it felt like I was learning which card rooms to go to for a good game. This was about the time the pandemic started to spread and eventually led to everything shutting down.

So instead of playing live poker I spent 2020 playing online poker. The online poker environment is completely different than live poker for two main reasons. First, there are micro stakes available to play online, which I think makes it easier for many people to start playing poker. The second reason is that depending on your geographic location, players tend to be restricted to a handful of sites. This can become frustrating because the internet is a big place and not everything is always legitimate. This meant that I needed to start learning more about the online poker environment and where I could play. The most important thing is that I needed to know that I could get access to my funds with relative ease.

Now its 2021 and things are changing fast. It seems people are starting to get more comfortable with the idea of an airborne virus floating around whether they choose to get vaccinated or not. I have been vaccinated and by the time this post goes live I will be making plans to go play live poker again. I had not really given much thought to all of it because it all just felt like normal everyday life was happening. That was until my wife and I decided to switch internet service providers, we found a good deal for gigabit fiber optic internet and made the switch. The only problem we had was trying to get it installed which ended up with us not having any internet for a couple of weeks. This forced me to spend more time with my thoughts… thinking about what I have been doing with my life, how my poker game had progressed, and what life is going to be like soon.

Even though it was forced it was nice to have a break from poker. Spending most of my time playing for hours a day, it felt good to be able to use my time for other things. Mentally I did prepare myself to be ready to return to live poker. I had discussions about where to go to play and what to expect. Thought about how the game may have evolved since everyone was forced into playing online poker. I wondered if all the studying this past year I had done will pay off. Did I do enough to improve my game? Is there anything else I can do? The goal is to crush it when I go back to playing. I feel excited and anxious all at once the more I thought about returning to live poker, so I left it alone. I know it will come and I have worked hard at my game. I thought about playing poker online. Will I stop playing online? I do not think I will stop because I enjoy playing online. Playing online gives me the opportunity to focus on certain aspects of the game and experiment with strategy concepts that I am studying. At some point I realized maybe I was over thinking it all and I needed to just relax. If I stay focused and do my best to play my A game, I will do well.

Bizzy’s 2021 gains: -$342.31