First, the bad news. My work hours this month were terrible. I'm always tryng to put in at least 40 hours a week, but when I couldn't play, except for an occasional live tournament, it was very hard to be motivated. It's like my situation as a musician. I should practice, but since I'm not performing anywhere, there doesn't seem to be any point..
But music and other things I want to do are definitely on the back burner. I need to hit poker hard and turn it into a going concern. And that takes time, or as poker players say, putting in the volume. I need to make as much as I can as quickly as I can, because without a decent bankroll (more about that in a future post) I can't make decent money. Most or all of what I win in the next few months won't be spendable income, or money that I can put back into the business. It's all about getting a bankroll that's big enough, so I can earn enough, to do those things. I'm not sure what that number is yet, but it's probably between $500 and $1,000.
So, I need to get the hours in, and now that I'm playing poker almost every day, I'm much more motivated. But it's been an adjustment to change my sleeping and work habits. And there's always the problem of being Available Guy. Last week my daughter-in-law was sick and wound up in the emergency room, and there was no one to pick my grandchildren up from school. The other three grandparents were all working outside the home, so Available Guy got the call.
It's always great to see the girls, but still, that was a day that Available Guy came to the rescue, and I had no idea how to plan, how long I would have the kids, and when someone was going to pick them up, or if I would have to take them home or to the other grandparents. So,the whole day was blown up, and I haven't come close yet to getting a 40-hour week. But this week, with three days left to go, I have 23 hours in, so I have a decent shot at it, finally.
The good news, of course, is that I made some money, moe than doubling my bankroll. I deposited $50 on Americas Cardroom at the beginning of the month, and now I'm at $115. My next big goal is to get up to $250. At that point I'm close to being bankrolled to play $5 tournaments (playing with 50 buy-ins is the absolute minimum for proper bankroll management.)
The $5 level is important not only because the prize pools are bigger and I can win more money, but also because at the $5 level there are a lot more tournaments with the kind of structure that fits the way I play. Most of what I'm doing right now (small tournaments with fast structures) is a bit outside my wheelhouse--I can make it work, but it's not what I'm best at.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
A Big Win!
In my 2/25 entry, I said the following:
"Results for a week, or a month, or sometimes even a year, can be greatly affected by the results of just one tournament."
Wow, did I ever hit that nail on the head! A few hours ago I won a $2.20, 107-player MTT, for a cash of $51.00 (net $48.80) . My bankroll is now over $100. That's a very big deal, not only because I've doubled my initial deposit in less than a month, but also because the faster I get that bankroll up, the sooner I can play for higher stakes and make some real money.
The month isn't over, of course, but to be honest I was only hoping (optimistically) to grind out something like a $20 net profit for the month. After all, it's been months since I played online, and the MTT win was a very pleasant surprise. I knew that I was capable of winning a $2 tournament of that size, but no matter how good a player may be, finishing in the top 1% of a tournament is not something that happens very often.
"Results for a week, or a month, or sometimes even a year, can be greatly affected by the results of just one tournament."
Wow, did I ever hit that nail on the head! A few hours ago I won a $2.20, 107-player MTT, for a cash of $51.00 (net $48.80) . My bankroll is now over $100. That's a very big deal, not only because I've doubled my initial deposit in less than a month, but also because the faster I get that bankroll up, the sooner I can play for higher stakes and make some real money.
The month isn't over, of course, but to be honest I was only hoping (optimistically) to grind out something like a $20 net profit for the month. After all, it's been months since I played online, and the MTT win was a very pleasant surprise. I knew that I was capable of winning a $2 tournament of that size, but no matter how good a player may be, finishing in the top 1% of a tournament is not something that happens very often.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Poker and the US presidential election
I was trying to decide between two possible topics for this post, and neither of them had anything to do with politics. That changed when I saw an interview that was posted on 2+2.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57/poker-legislation/presidential-candidate-rick-santorum-comes-out-against-online-poker-1161053/
In response, I posted the following:
I'm not surprised that this is Santorum's view, but I'm surprised that he thought that it was important enough to be made an issue in the campaign.
My wife and I are Christians and conservative Republicans, and have in the past been very active both in our church and in the Republican party. I was a county Republican volunteer of the year, and my wife was president of the Republican women's group
If Gingirch gets the Republican nomination, my wife will not cast a vote for president, because she can't vote for someone who bailed on his wife while she was fighting cancer. If Santorum gets the nomination, I might be the one sitting it out.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57/poker-legislation/presidential-candidate-rick-santorum-comes-out-against-online-poker-1161053/
In response, I posted the following:
I'm not surprised that this is Santorum's view, but I'm surprised that he thought that it was important enough to be made an issue in the campaign.
My wife and I are Christians and conservative Republicans, and have in the past been very active both in our church and in the Republican party. I was a county Republican volunteer of the year, and my wife was president of the Republican women's group
If Gingirch gets the Republican nomination, my wife will not cast a vote for president, because she can't vote for someone who bailed on his wife while she was fighting cancer. If Santorum gets the nomination, I might be the one sitting it out.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Variance
My recent results remind me once again of the reality of variance in poker. On February 1st I started online play with a $50.05 deposit on Americas [sic] Cardroom. Here are my results so far this month. All but three tournaments were nine-player sit'n gos.
February 1-4: -$3.06
February 5-11: -$6.46
February 12-18: +$1.39
Febraury 19-25: + $18.73
-----------------
Month so far: +$10.60
So, one profitable week made up for the net negative results for the first 3 weeks. But if we look at my results in the three $2.20 MTTs (multitable tournaments) from this month, it gets really interesting:
2/19, 12th of 65, +$1.70
2/23, 2nd of 56, +$17.27
2/24, 23rd of 59, did not cash, -$2.20
I played 86 online tournaments, and if you take out that one tournament on 2/23, I'm down for the month. Results for a week, or a month, or sometimes even a year, can be greatly affected by the results of just one tournament.
If you're going to play this game, you better have the stomach for it.
February 1-4: -$3.06
February 5-11: -$6.46
February 12-18: +$1.39
Febraury 19-25: + $18.73
-----------------
Month so far: +$10.60
So, one profitable week made up for the net negative results for the first 3 weeks. But if we look at my results in the three $2.20 MTTs (multitable tournaments) from this month, it gets really interesting:
2/19, 12th of 65, +$1.70
2/23, 2nd of 56, +$17.27
2/24, 23rd of 59, did not cash, -$2.20
I played 86 online tournaments, and if you take out that one tournament on 2/23, I'm down for the month. Results for a week, or a month, or sometimes even a year, can be greatly affected by the results of just one tournament.
If you're going to play this game, you better have the stomach for it.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
I'm back!
A lot has happened since my last post almost seven months ago. The bad news is that a lot of the top online players (my wild guess is that it's about 500) left the United States and established residence in other countries. Canada, England and Thailand are among the most popular choices. The good news is that slowly, but most think, inexorably, the legal climate for poker in the United States is changing for the better.
Regarding the bad news, even if the president signed a favorable poker bill next week, it wouldn't help most of the expatriates. Those players were and are playing on big sites like PokerStars with hundreds of thousands of players, and millions of dollars to be won. I know of one player on PokerStars who had both net win and net loss days of over one million dollars in 2010.
Yes, you read that correctly. There was so much money flying around, and games available at such high stakes, that a player could win or lose a million dollars in a single day.
But even if President Obama signed a favorable poker bill this week, it wouldn't help the poker expats. The new US regulated sites will start from scratch with small player pools, other-than-US players might not be allowed on the sites (at least right away), and there would be a lot of competition, that is, a lot of casinos and other companies wanting to cash in on the next online poker boom. Given all that, it would take a while for the competition to shake things out, and for fewer but larger sites to emerge..
Until this works itself out, few players making six or seven figures playing on PokerStars and "sharing a sick house in Thailand with my poker buddies"* will come back to the US.
Now for the good news. Online poker is already explicitly legal and regulated in Washington, D.C., and the state of Nevada is writing regulations to do the same thing. A few other states are looking into the possibilites, and at some point there could be interstate poker compacts. An interstate system wouldn't have to be designed from scratch, as there is already a model in place--multistate lotteries.
At the federal level, congressional hearings have already been held on poker bills, and members who were against online poker are mostly on board, in exchange for regulatory concessions such as income tax reporting by the sites and strict regulations to block underage players. However, this is an election year, when almost nothing gets done. In fact, President Obama has actually stated that extending the Bush payroll tax cuts is his only legislative priority in 2012, so we're almost certainly looking at 2013 before federal legislation can happen.
A personal note here. A lot of poker players are very nervous about the income tax reporting requirements because, as with most businesses and professions that deal with cash income, underreporting is rampant. My response to that is twofold:
1. We are all required to pay income taxes, and those players who are breaking the law aren't doing anything to help the image of online poker when we're working to get state and federal legislators on our side.
2. I have always paid taxes on all of my income, including something as small as getting paid $50 for playing my clarinet in a restaurant band. The change to mandatory reporting by the sites would actually help me a lot. If I could get a W2-type document from a poker site, it would save me a lot of time and effort. I wouldn't have to keep records of my hours (necessary if my pro status is questioned by the IRS) or keep track of net wins and net losses for thousands of individual poker tournaments (though I must say that the latest version of my spreadsheet is a work of art.)
So, that's where things stand. As of February 1 I'm playing on Americas [sic] Cardroom, a US-facing state (a site based outside the US but catering to US players.) More about that in future posts.
-------------------------------
*A phrase from a iconic commercial for a poker coaching site, where a poker player (a real one not an actor) describes the results of improving his game by using a poker coaching site.
Regarding the bad news, even if the president signed a favorable poker bill next week, it wouldn't help most of the expatriates. Those players were and are playing on big sites like PokerStars with hundreds of thousands of players, and millions of dollars to be won. I know of one player on PokerStars who had both net win and net loss days of over one million dollars in 2010.
Yes, you read that correctly. There was so much money flying around, and games available at such high stakes, that a player could win or lose a million dollars in a single day.
But even if President Obama signed a favorable poker bill this week, it wouldn't help the poker expats. The new US regulated sites will start from scratch with small player pools, other-than-US players might not be allowed on the sites (at least right away), and there would be a lot of competition, that is, a lot of casinos and other companies wanting to cash in on the next online poker boom. Given all that, it would take a while for the competition to shake things out, and for fewer but larger sites to emerge..
Until this works itself out, few players making six or seven figures playing on PokerStars and "sharing a sick house in Thailand with my poker buddies"* will come back to the US.
Now for the good news. Online poker is already explicitly legal and regulated in Washington, D.C., and the state of Nevada is writing regulations to do the same thing. A few other states are looking into the possibilites, and at some point there could be interstate poker compacts. An interstate system wouldn't have to be designed from scratch, as there is already a model in place--multistate lotteries.
At the federal level, congressional hearings have already been held on poker bills, and members who were against online poker are mostly on board, in exchange for regulatory concessions such as income tax reporting by the sites and strict regulations to block underage players. However, this is an election year, when almost nothing gets done. In fact, President Obama has actually stated that extending the Bush payroll tax cuts is his only legislative priority in 2012, so we're almost certainly looking at 2013 before federal legislation can happen.
A personal note here. A lot of poker players are very nervous about the income tax reporting requirements because, as with most businesses and professions that deal with cash income, underreporting is rampant. My response to that is twofold:
1. We are all required to pay income taxes, and those players who are breaking the law aren't doing anything to help the image of online poker when we're working to get state and federal legislators on our side.
2. I have always paid taxes on all of my income, including something as small as getting paid $50 for playing my clarinet in a restaurant band. The change to mandatory reporting by the sites would actually help me a lot. If I could get a W2-type document from a poker site, it would save me a lot of time and effort. I wouldn't have to keep records of my hours (necessary if my pro status is questioned by the IRS) or keep track of net wins and net losses for thousands of individual poker tournaments (though I must say that the latest version of my spreadsheet is a work of art.)
So, that's where things stand. As of February 1 I'm playing on Americas [sic] Cardroom, a US-facing state (a site based outside the US but catering to US players.) More about that in future posts.
-------------------------------
*A phrase from a iconic commercial for a poker coaching site, where a poker player (a real one not an actor) describes the results of improving his game by using a poker coaching site.
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