Government at it's Worst

WARNING: In this post I will be talking about one of the dumbest US government ideas ever.  If that might be too much for you, stop reading now.

Lately I've been talking a lot about process and planning.  I believe that it's critical to have a plan if you want to make an income playing poker.  Of course, most people don't want to hear about that.  They want to know one thing: "How much did you win (or lose)?"  Before I talk about that, I have to give the standard caveat:

Poker is a long-term game with considerable statistical variance for the short term.  My definition of long-term is at least a year.

It's been going very well.  My profit in January was $76.69.  I hope to do better this month.  Ten days into February I'm up $48.49.  I hope to be cranking out some $100 months very soon.  I will be very disappointed if my profit this year is less than $1,000.  I will do my best to make it a lot more than that.

Until very recently I was playing online $1 and $2 tournaments, mostly $1.  Now I'm playing buy-ins from $0.30* to $3.30 and occasionally higher.  I played a $5.50 twice and I cashed once.  My bankroll is currently $345.07 and the bigger it gets, the more options I have for when and where to play.  I'm now using a 30-day rolling average to make sure that my average buy-in is no more than 1% of my bankroll, which means that my average buy-in should not be more than $3.45.  That allows me to play a greater variety of tournaments and better tournaments, without putting my bankroll at risk.

There is one odd financial issue that I will have to deal with as my income goes up.  I collect Social Security, and they have some interesting rules which affect what will happen when I'm making more per month working (poker) than I get from Social Security.

There is a sliding scale, but what it amounts to is that if I make most of my money from playing poker, that will reduce my Social Security payment.  That's not a problem, because at some point I'll be making more playing poker than I will collect from Social Security.  Even when that happens,  I will still get a social security payment but it will be reduced.

Hang on, this is where the government bureaucracy goes off the rails.

So, if I make "too much" money playing poker, I'll just get smaller social Security payments, right?  Wrong! That's way too simple and we're dealing with the government.  When I explain this, keep in mind how often I talk about variance in poker.  It's so stupid that I feel kind of dirty just typing the following:

When I'm making a certain amount playing poker, I will have to predict what my income will be for the following year, and my payments will be based on that prediction.  There is no way that I can make a prediction and hope to be accurate.  I could make $500 this year or $2,000, or more if I get lucky in one big tournament.  There are a lot of players living within 30 miles of me who get some big cashes on a site where I will be playing later this year.  By big cashes, I mean a $1,000 or more in one tournament.

As they say on the shopping channels, "But wait, there's more!"

So eventually I will get regular but reduced payments, right?  Nope.  Again, that's too simple and obvious.  This is the federal bureaucracy we're talking about.

Based on my prediction (which will be more like a wild guess) they will cancel some of my payments for that year: the first payment of the year, the first two, or whatever makes the numbers work for them. All of this is based on my prediction of my income for that year.

If my prediction (which will be more like a wild guess) is way off, I don't even want to think about how complicated the adjustments will be.

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**$I played a 30 cent tournaments at 0229 today because there wasn't anything else to play.  I finished 3rd of 29 players for a cash of  $2.81.  Hey, it's nine buy-ins.