Running Like David Murray

Miracle of miracles. I'm actually back playing a fair bit of online poker over the last month or so. Now all I have to do is start winning again.

Given my rustiness, and with a little concern at numerous reports of toughening of the online game, I've been breaking myself in playing micro stakes and gradually building up the number of tables.

It's been interesting to relearn some aspects of the game, and to observe how my opponents have evolved in my absence.

One of the most notable changes is the tremendous proliferation of short stackers - even at the lowest limits.

This has been particularly noticeable on Full Tilt and iPoker (via Blonde Poker).

I found multi-tabling extremely demanding for a while, and was blaming an imagined shortening of the time to act, until I realised the true reason was other players acting much more quickly, by folding or pushing on almost every hand.

As has been noted elsewhere, this doesn't make these games unbeatable, but it does require different tactics.

Conversely, Everest seems to be the land that evolution forgot. There's still a fair number of short stackers on this site, but they don't seem to know how to play, which makes for a fishier field with the consequently higher bad beat ratio.

I've been remarkably phlegmatic about that so far. Possibly this is one of the lessons I didn't need to re-learn, as it's more of a life skill.

That doesn't make it any more pleasing to survey the remnants of several lost buy-ins, while my Sklansky bucks meter goes off the scale.

Sigh. It's good to be back. I think.