Happy New Year to all!

Since I last posted to this blog, I have changed my game a couple of times online.

Following the WSOP, I switched to playing short-handed limit, either 5 or 6 handed. I started out at .5/$1, and then moved up to $1/$2. Over a period of around 4 months I played around 4k hands/month (less than I was playing earlier in the year, as my new job prevents me playing so much in the mornings). I enjoyed these games more than full-ring limit, but I was only a marginal winner over this period. The swings are particularly vicious in short-handed play!

Then, in the autumn, the leader of the free World(!), George Dubya, decided to forget the lessons learned from the last failed attempt at prohibition in the USA, and attempted to ban online poker!

As all of the poker sites are off-shore companies, they couldn't actually target the sites themselves, so they decided to go after the banks instead, making it illegal for US banks to conduct transactions with poker sites. This was achieved by scandalously attaching an amendment to a completely unrelated bill covering ports security.

This led to the publicly listed poker sites like 888.com and Party Gaming, taking the safety-first approach of banning US players, whilst the privately-held companies including FullTilt and PokerStars decided that the law didn't apply to them, and carried on as normal.

The net result is that traffic at all poker sites is down at least 50% compared to 3 months ago, more at the smaller sites. Fewer players means fewer games to choose from, and more worringly, fewer weak new players coming to the game for the first time, and losing their money.

This had a particularly dramatic effect on the Limit Holdem games, which is a variant played almost exclusively in the USA. Suddenly, there were far fewer Limit games, with those left being populated mainly by much better players. My win rate in these games suddenly plummeted.

It was time for a change of focus. In november, I quit Limit and began to play Pot Limit, and then eventually NL. (I actually prefer Pot Limit, which arguably requires more skill, but again, the games are scarce in off-peak hours)

So far, so good. I still have a lot to learn about NL, but I posted a solid win in December, and my game has improved dramatically over the past few weeks.

I may even play in a NL event at the WSOP in June, rather than Limit as I played last year. I won't decide until the schedule is published, which should be any day now.

Only 5 months to go until WSOP 2007! I can't wait!