I'll pose this question to the PC community. What is poker glory to you? Is it being able to grind out a steady profit over time? Or are you more into the one time lightning in a bottle glory that comes with high stakes, high variance play and large tournament fields.
If you want you can have both really however you will have to take an unglorious path to get there in almost all cases. The more I play that is what I realize more and more. I have to constantly be working on my game, adapting and evolving with the game. Doing this will only secure me a solid profit. It doesn't assure me that one day I will take down a nightly GTD tournament or have a 12 buyin day. The key to that is playing and playing and playing. More volume the better you are but also the most likely you are to succeed into poker glory.
Sure you hear about the pro's who bink off tournaments about once a month, but usually its once every two or three months and thats not if they are on the low side of variance. Everyone sees this and is always amazed about how they can do this with such consistency. However no one who really knows this player can understand the amount of volume they have put in for that month. The days of 15 buyins with only min cashes, or all the final table bubbles 4 nights a week for two months. So is this really poker glory or just getting what is deserved. And really a win is never deserved. If your ROI is between 10% and 15% which is normal for tournaments and sngs you can acheive this with lots of deep finishes but no 1sts.
The same thoughts can be applied to cash games. 4bb/100 which is a fairly sustainable win rate in almost all micro stakes and game forms. That is a slow grind to the top my friends. Sure you can probably bust up the stakes from 5nl to 25nl or maybe even 50nl. But as you move up the stakes get higher and the win rates become tougher to come by. So lets put a number to this.
4bb/100 at 10nl. To make it a round number we will say you 4 table giving you 300 hands an hour about. This means in an hour you are making $1.2 an hour. Meaning it will take you almost 10 hours to win a buyin. Forthwith it will take you 100 hours to win 10 buyins. As you can see moving up can definitely be a daunting task. Of course rakeback and bonuses always can come into play here as well changing your winrate a little. So when you are mentally charting your career ask yourself what kind of glory are you looking for.
My own poker career has been going well as of late. I am consistently winning in the PLO arena and also binked off back to back top three finishes in a couple ninety mans. This has made me feel good but as always I would like more. However right now I am satisfied to just grind out the rest of the spring before I have to go back to work hardcore for the summer. I feel that I am really in the middle of a nice breakthrough though in my mental capacity for the game. I don't see myself exploding anytime soon but I still would like to be able to play $10 tournaments and 50 PLO someday. However I myself have changed my views on poker glory and will just be happy being a grinder no matter what level I am at.
