Propping the $500 Minimum Buy-In 5-10 NL

I'm back from my honeymoon, and I started my new job propping the $500 NL game at the Bike. When I left three weeks ago, the game was seldom being played, so I had the impression that I wouldn't really have much to do. To the contrary, I've played almost 30 hours already in four days. The game is pretty good - most players are too loose preflop, as usual, but other than that they play mostly okay. Of course, there are also some very good players and one or two terrible ones.

I'm a little unused to playing deep-stack no-limit. My job for the past year and a half had me playing mostly limit games. When I did play no-limit, it was always at a small buy-in for short periods of time, meaning I rarely had time to build up a deep stack to play with. So, for this week at least, I've been buying in for less than $1000 every day. There are some built-in strategic advantages to having a short stack, and I think it's necessary to be much better than your opponents in order to overcome that. Plus, I think having a short stack significantly reduces volatility. (I recently read an article in a magazine suggesting that having a short stack actually increases volatility! The claim was unsubstantiated, and I don't see how it could be right.)

I've lost three out of the four days so far, but the losses were minimal. Overall, I'm up about $600, plus my table hit a jackpot on Thursday and I won a $950 table share. (Yes, even the $500+ buy-in game has a jackpot now, to my chagrin. This has been the case for at least six months now.) I think once I get over my jet lag and become more comfortable with the game, I will have a big enough advantage on most of my opponents that I can start buying in for $1000, maybe more. On the other hand, I sometimes have issues with concentration, and that is likely to get worse as I get more comfortable with a game. I also think I may get sloppy about giving off tells if I get too comfortable. I'll have to keep an eye on this.

I hope to write my analysis of Concept 13 tomorrow. I basically disagree with it, but the analysis is complicated.