Update in my Poker endeavors:
This is my 3rd year of playing online poker. The first year was spent mostly reading books and forums, watching videos and playing break even poker. The 2nd year was spent mostly playing 100NL 6 Max but also studying 5 hrs a week. I made about $12K last year. I spent half of it on electronics and sporting goods ($3K HDTV and computer equipment, $3K fishing and sports equipment). My plan for 2009 was to move up to 200NL 6 Max and set my target for this year to make $30K. As of now (after 5 months of play) I am up $14K US so I am well within reach of my target for 2009. Self assessment is key here and I have been good at assessing my skills and moving up and playing at the right level based on my skill level. This maximizes your hourly rate. Discipline is also important in terms of playing my style (TAG: Tight Aggressive) and playing mistake free poker. Minimize losses by not making mistakes yourself and you win when someone else makes a mistake. You basically want to play like a machine and not play based on emotion (ie. tilt). You also have to be disciplined to play within your bankroll meaning don’t play with more than 2% of your bankroll. My goal is to just keep increasing my bankroll and not spend any of it. I did take out $8K US and convert it to Canadian since the exchange rate is getting worse. To get an actual physical check in the mail for my hard work is self-satisfying as when you are playing online poker it feels like you’re playing with funny money. I still have $7.5K US online at 3 poker sites right now.
So after 3 years, I think I have succeeded in this venture of which I budgeted $1.5K for. That $1.5K was taken out of my winnings in 2008 and returned to my savings account so I am free rolling now (ie. playing with money that’s not initially mine). I don’t want to paint a rosy picture that winning at online poker is easy. Infact, only 20 to 25% of online players win in the long run. I researched all this before I got into this venture. Actually, learning how to play good poker would be rated 7 out of 10 in terms of difficulty. Getting my BASc Computer Science from the University of Waterloo would be rated as a 9 out of 10 in terms of difficulty. Being math oriented made poker easy to grasp. You can’t make big mistakes if you know your odds and make plays based on pot odds instead of emotions. I spent hundreds of hours learning and watching training videos. I think it would have been 5 times easier if I had a friend who I could learn from but I learned everything I know from reading and asking questions to strangers. I am pretty much past the learning curve for No Limit Holdem so it has become monotonous work now (ie, boring). I have been playing and studying Pot Limit Omaha the past few months as an avenue to play something else if I get bored of No Limit Holdem.
I changed my poker tracker over to HEM (Holdem Manager). I find this poker tracking software easier to use than Poker Tracker 3 and Poker Office. HEM also supports Pot Limit Omaha. I moved from the PokerSavvy training site over to CardRunners. I will likely cancel my membership soon since I have most of the fundamentals down pat and any detail analysis is better suited to posting on Forums like “Two plus Two”.
Went to Casino Niagara a month ago to meet a friend from work. Players there are terrible. I mean they play so predictable and display tells most of the time. It was fun to play live but the hourly rate will never match online poker since you are playing 300-400 hands per hour multi-tabling online versus 25 hands per hour live.
Not sure how long I will continue to play poker. I will always play but not sure how many hours per month I want to devote to it. I am currently looking into developing a software program that will estimate MLs (Money Lines) for sports (baseball, hockey, football). I always look at what skill sets I have and what skill sets my friends have that I can rely on in order to predict if I will be successful or not when I pursue a new hobbie/challenge. Having a background in computer programming and math/statistics, I think I have the right skills to pursue my next venture. BTW, having a program that can estimate MLs accurately is worth thousands of dollars per month. Poker is nice but you have to spend time playing it unless you decide to develop a poker bot which would not be too difficult…but, unfortunately, poker bots are not allowed by the online poker sites. A good ML program for sports would do all the work for you after you have it developed. All effort and time is spent on developing and testing the program. Once it is working, it becomes a self-sustaining cash cow with very little maintenance. Having multiple ways of increasing your bankroll is a good thing.
