Saturday, April 16, 2011

More on the Fate of Online Poker

24 hours after the Federal Government shut down online poker in the U.S. you now get a message from the FBI if you try to log on to Pokerstars, Fulltilt or Absolute Poker from the web. If you open the software you get a message telling you that U.S. players can no longer play for real money, but your money is safe and they've had to rework the guaranteed prize pools for their tournaments.

My prediction is this will be the effective end for many of the medium sized sites. Pokerstars and Fulltilt are so big that even though they've lost 50% of their customers overnight they'll be able to survive.

I don't think others will be so lucky. I expect familiar names like Cake Poker, Doyle's Room and maybe even Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker (who were all in trouble anyway) will become total ghost towns and may close up shop.

Like I said in my last post, in the long term this is good news. Pokerstars and Fulltilt are losing tens of millions of dollars *every day* that poker is shut down in the U.S. They and all the people who have been playing poker online in the U.S. finally have some real motivation to get pissed and give a real push for change.

When the day comes that Average Joe U.S.A. can deposit with a credit card and be sure that his money is safe the influx of players who have no clue what they're doing is going to be overwhelming.

I'm not just talking about people who have never played poker before. I'm talking about people who play in Vegas and people who have played in home games or local casinos too. People who feel like they know what they're doing, but are playing at a pretty basic level will be everywhere. They will certainly have no chance against me or other online pros (and former pros), and will probably get crushed by even the players who are skilled enough to be small to medium losers in the current online poker world. A pit bull might be pretty tough, but not in a fight against a lion or a grizzly bear...or a T-Rex! CHOMP!

In related news I've read that "online poker" is being legalized in Washington D.C. As far as I can tell sometime around September if you're within the boarders of D.C. you'll be able to play against other people who are within the boarders. Also there will be terminals in bars and hotel lobbies and other hot spots where you can play even if you don't have a computer.

The big red flag here is that it's going to be run by the D.C. Lottery. The worst thing for players is to have one entity as the only game in town and to make it worse it's a government agency. The software they're going to roll out is going to be a steaming pile of shit. Paradise poker circa 2000 will look like Pokerstars software circa 2015 compared to what the people at the lottery are going to put out.

More importantly - IT'S THE LOTTERY! The Lottery is the one wagering entity that is more used to squeezing every drop of blood out of it's customers than any other. Typically 40% to 50% of the money wagered on lotteries goes to the government that is running it. That is roughly 3 times worse than the *worst* bets in a Vegas Casino 10 times worse than the bad games like roulette and 30 times worse than blackjack and some of the bets on the craps table.

My guess is the D.C. "Online Poker" will have the highest rake ever seen at a poker table with the shittiest software.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Online Poker Goes KA-BOOM!

It only took 4.5 years for the federal government to act on the bullshit, confusing legislation they passed in late 2006. Legislation that was 40 pages long and didn't define anything. Honestly a better bill could have been written by most college freshman.

In a speedy 4.5 years the fuckheads in Washington finally decided to do something to shut down online poker in the U.S. They froze all of the payment processor accounts and more importantly seized the domain names of Fulltilt, AP, Pokerstars and others.

You can read the whole indictment here: INDICTMENT!

The software still works and you can still go to the website, but you can't sit in a real money game and I hear that you can't cashout from some sites.

Personally, I did however manage to cash out the last $500 bucks I still had sitting on AP (luckily I cashed out everything but that last week and the money hit my bank account today), but that doesn't mean I'll get it anytime soon or ever.

I have about $100 on Bodog and just to test the waters I put down a $10 bet that Derek Rose would average less than 25 points per game in the 1st round of the NBA playoffs. Surprisingly everything seems normal there.

The dream is that online poker will be 100% destroyed in the U.S. and will then come back with U.S. based poker rooms. If the day comes when average Joe USA can deposit with a credit card and feel sure that his money is safe, the cash is going to start pouring down from the heavens for people like me.

If I could go back to early 2004 with the skills I have now I could make $200 an hour. Full blown U.S. based online poker could bring games as good as those of that era.

My condolences go out to everyone playing online poker for a living. It's a sad day for all of you and best of luck in the transition to the next chapter of your professional lives. And a BIG fuck you to the handful of people that tacked the UIGEA onto the Safe Port Act of 2006. You're all a bunch of cowards.

Now that I've taken some time off I'm actually excited to play some poker every now and then. I imagine I'll join the ranks of the weekend warriors at the Oaks club and other bay area card rooms. I think the 2.5 million hands I've played online might give me a small advantage. :)

Sunday, April 03, 2011

Beating the Shit Out of Low Stakes Players

While writing my last post I jumped into two $10 multitables, and one $20. I cashed in all three for a net of about $75, and then took $150 off the $1/$2 tables on bodog and AP in about 200 hands. $150 isn't exactly a ton of money, but it is 75 big bets which is a beatdown no matter how you spin it.

$1,000 bankroll increased by more than 20% and up to $1,225. Suck it low stakes jerks!

Rebuilding

My bankroll is at it's lowest point in 10 years. I was a skinny, wide eyed 21 year old (OK not that skinny and maybe more squinty and shifty than wide eyed) playing $3/$6 limit hold'em 10 handed at the Oaks club about 10 hours a week the last time I had this little to work with.

But I don't really need a bankroll anymore. The crushing vise of monthly expenses is now being held open by a paycheck. A paycheck that comes in good times and bad and reads exactly the same, down to the cent, every month.

I've seen a few of the top pros start with very small bankrolls (orders of magnitude less than I have) and turn them into something significant as a personal challenge. The point is to prove to others and themselves that they could start from scratch and make it all over again.

I've forgotten his name, but one of the top SNG players set a goal to take $5 and turn it into $10,000 in one month. One thing he had going for him was that he was a mental freak of nature and had an ideal set up in terms of many huge monitors allowing him to play up to 300 SNGs in a day.

Also he cheated. He lost his $5 bankroll many times and simply started again with another $5. I could make $5 Keno bets until one hit big and then say "Look! I turned $5 into $1,000 playing Keno! In the end, if you ignore the cheating aspect, he did it.

More impressive was Chris Ferguson turning *zero* dollars into $10,000. He started with freerolls only until he could scrape together a couple dollars and then shifted to playing at the micro stakes. Once he had $50 or $100 it didn't take him long to go the rest of the way.

I had about $3,000 when I started my career as a prop player in July of 2003. In April of 2004 when I went off totally on my own and starting playing 90% online I had about $10,000. In the good times from 2005-mid 2008 I kept at least $30,000 to work with and made a great living working about 30 hours a week. From the end of the flush years until the fall of 2010 I typically had a $10,000 bankroll and was still able to support my family of three entirely from poker winnings.

Now I have a job and a $1,000 bankroll. The job pays for the 3 bedroom house in Northern California, keeps the lights on and puts food on the table, but not much else. Playing poker is going to be the difference between bud lite and burgers or pinot noir and filets for a while.

For some people it might be hard to drop so far down in stakes. After all, I've played 6 tournaments with buy ins of $5,000+, 75-100 with buy ins of $1,000+, I have no idea how many $200-$500 buy in tournaments, and now I'll be locking horns with the $10 and $20 players. For me, I don't really care. It's not about the thrill of victory or getting in Carplayer magazine any more. It's mostly about dollars, partially about about fun, and a little bit about delivering soul crushing beats to egomaniacal college kids (You know who you are! I'm coming to crush you!).

My new job has exposed me to google analytics and I've discovered that I have about 500 people visit my blog each month which is more than I thought and makes me feel like I should get back to writing at least weekly.

I'm not sure what I can do with $1,000 playing 10 hours a week, but I'll try to keep you posted. Hopefully it will all be good news.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

On to the Next Chapter

After about 3 months of part time consulting, I started working full time at www.hitfix.com last week. If you haven't heard of HitFix it's an entertainment news website with about 1.3 million unique users a month that covers music, movies and TV without the gossip.

HitFix has about 20 employees and I've been hired to be the Business Development Manager. Essentially I'll be finding and negotiating with new partners, offering input on how HitFix does everything from the smallest details to the long term strategy, and doing everything the CEO needs to get done, but doesn't have time for.

So far it's been great. I'm still working from home and I've really been enjoying using my brain in new ways. Of course getting paid every day - even on the bad days - feels like a special treat after 7 years of ups and downs.

Looking back I can't believe the amounts of money I had on the line day in and day out. I lost enough to pay my mortgage for 3 months in an hour once. Of course there were a handful of times that I won enough in a day to pay my mortgage for a year or more.

I'm going to miss those days walking around with a stack of hundreds in my front pocket so thick that it looked like I had two decks of cards in there. But I can't remember ever being so relaxed.

Amazingly I think I am gambled out. It took 10 years, of poker 6 days a week and 25 days a year in Vegas, but I've finally had enough.

I'm sure I'll eventually get back to playing somewhat regularly. When that happens I'll try to get back to posting about my experiences at what will be comparatively low stakes.

The best part is if I do play and win, I can spend that money without having to worry about saving it for my next big loss.

Thanks for reading!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Semi-retired

I started playing poker for a living in July 2003 and after more than 7 years of working for myself I got a job.

September was the worst month I ever had as a poker player. I got totally crushed and flushed the vase majority of my bankroll. I tried to recover in October, but my confidence was at an all time low and no matter how far I dropped in stakes I couldn't seem to make it work. I didn't play for any significant stakes in November or December and my action was limited to a few dozen $20-$50 multitalbes, 2 or 3 $200 tournaments in person and a half dozen sessions at the Oaks Club.

Sometime in October my wife and I decided that one of use needed to get a job. Since she has a mechanical engineering degree from Berkeley she was the prime candidate, but as we all know this is a terrible time to be looking for work.

I applied to a few jobs as well. The most interesting by far has been ring games manager at pokerstars. If you look at the list of qualifications and skills required I am a slam dunk candidate, but the guy in charge of hiring is in no hurry to hire anyone so that is still pending. Even if I get offered the job I'm not likely to take it since it would require moving to the Isle of Mann (really!). I've spent the time since I applied trying to decide the dollar about it would take to get me and my family to move 6,000 miles. It's a lot, but not so much that I think there's zero chance that I'll be offered that much.

But as I said above I actually have a job right now. I'm working in a two tiered capacity at entertainment website www.HitFix.com. The first part is developing a game that is the bastard cousin of fantasy sports but for reality TV. Our first show is going to be American Idol and the game should be up and running for the top 20 show on February 24th.

On top of that I've been working in a business development capacity generating leads for partnerships as well as doing some general quality control for the website as a whole. Some of you might be thinking "What the hell do you know about working for an entertainment website? You're full of shit!" All I can say is so far I know a lot more than I thought. We'll see how it goes.

As far as poker goes, this year I've made about $700 in 10 hours playing $13 Ultra Turbo tournaments on Absolute, but we all know that that's just running crazy hot at those stakes.

For now poker is on the backburner as I dive headfirst into the world of entertainment news!

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Let's Oak it Up!

After my recent online woes, I've been taking a break and spending a fair amount of time at the Oaks club playing against live opponents. The 15 minute commute isn't as fun as the 10 second commute from my bed to my computer, but I guess I can't complain.

The biggest game at the Oaks is $30/$60 limit hold'em and there are a few solid regulars. I have my eye on that game, but for now I'm sticking to $15/$30 where it seems not a single player is any better than just average.

Most players let their ego get in the way of making the best decisions in spots like these. Do I think I can beat the Oaks club $30/$60? I'm 99% sure that I can. But that doesn't mean it's the most profitable thing to do. Even if I'm the best player in the game, if everyone else is pretty good, I'd rather play for less money against a bunch of greatly inferior players. Even if the money is the same long term it's better to win one big bet per hour at $15/$30 than half a big bet per hour at $30/$60 because you'll face smaller fluctuations and less stress.

I've played 6 sessions averaging about 5 hours apiece and picked up $1,743 in the process. This is a very, very small set of data, but it's not an accident. There are no pros in the $15/$30 game and recreational players just can't keep up with someone who has played well over a million hands of limit hold'em against tough competition.

Another thing that's great about playing in person is players can't dodge me. Players mainly stick to one stakes and if there is only one game going they are stuck. No one is going to leave the game just because I joined and it got tougher. Whereas online there are a zillion games going and it takes 30 seconds to get into a new one.

Hopefully I can keep the money rolling in from the Oaks players for a while.

My WSOP 2023 Plans and Missions

After four and a half years working for StubHub I wrapped up my time there in March. I've been at the poker tables 3-4 days a week since...