As more of a tournament player, I have continually insisted that I have had more success playing during the early morning hours. I usually start playing shortly after midnight, and usually don't enter any tournaments after 11 AM. I also don't do very much playing on weekends, aside from a few satellites into the big weekly tournaments, and of course, the big weekly tourney itself, if I qualify for it. My argument is that the increase in players during prime time hours, increases my chances of being donked by some recreational player that is going to end up getting knocked out ten minutes later. Again, this is from a tournament player's perspective.
Of course, all of the cash game players insist that prime time and weekends are the best times to play. After this weekend, I would have to say that I agree with them whole heartedly. What happened was that I had been playing $1 satellite to kill some time until another tournament began. Shortly after midnight, a thunderstorm hit and the power went out. Due to some confusion on the part of the power company, we didn't get service back until late in the afternoon on Saturday. By then any of the tournaments that I might have played were either well under away or already over. Somehow I talked myself into joining a 50NL table out of boredom.
Actually, I told myself that I wasn't going to play. After all, I don't really care to play that much on weekends. I choose to let the fish have it. But fish are what you want in a cash game. I thought I would just observe a couple of $50NL tables just to see what the play was like. But the second, I saw how much action there was at the $50NL tables, I couldn't resist. I played a total of 7 hours over the weekend, mostly in 2 hour stints and only on a single table at a time. In that time I showed an 85% ROI and earned an average of $20 per hour. I'm not saying that those are the most impressive numbers you'll ever see. It's just that the thought or possibility of losing money never ever seemed to occur to me. Even when I lost a buy-in when someone shoved on a draw and hit flush on the river against my flopped straight, I shrugged it off, re-bought and grinded it out until I had won back my buy in plus a $20 profit. After that I took a break, came back a couple hours later and joined another table and tripled my buy-in in just under an hour and a half. It was like they say, easy game.
I have to admit that these CardsChat cash game players seem to know what they are talking about. I still prefer off peak hours for playing tournaments. However, weekends and prime time on weekdays seems to be the right time for cash games. I might have to knock the rust of my cash game skills and give multi-tabling a try in the next weekend.
