ZOMG I sold my Black Lotus for $5. I got it in my very first starter deck, along with an Abu-Jafar misprint. I assembled the complete Arabian Nights set and sold that for like $100. I could have made sooooo much more money. Kinda like if I hadn't stopped playing poker just before the boom.

hehe, that's not quite as bad as the route i took, but i didnt have that many good cards since i didnt get into it too much until unlimited. but anyways, i ended up trading all of mine for the Star Trek: TNG card game when it came out because I thought it would be way cooler and was going to catch on and surpass Magic in popularity. I was wrong

moving out of the US only give you an 80k exemption, so you'd still be paying taxes on the rest to the US. Taxes are rigged

Owned

I kinda quit the game after I realised I'd made more money in a year as the casualist of casual players at Microstakes FL with no rakeback deal/bonus, coaching site subscription etc etc than I did finishing 3rd in England and qualifying for the Worlds Team. That plus the vast expense/time-consumption of actually playing the game and trying to be good at it for someone who was just out of uni on a piffling wage with UK cost of living to chuck on top.

Got about $7k for my collection though over time (included power etc) so got something back at least.

That and the fact they decided to print 4 sets a year requiring at least a $300 investment each time to be able to compete in tournaments...license to print money that game.

I'll bite for a question:

Nina, have you ever had a poker coach if so who and how much did it help you?

pros: benefits as mentioned, income not tied to variance
cons: having to get up at 7:30 5 days a week

I, personally, could never do the full-time online poker thing. I'm not sure I'd even want to.

How do you mid-high stakes pros handle your health insurance right now? Also, do you invest any of your income?

Nina,

If you had to choose Dead Money Walking, Kit Cloud Kicker, Diamond Lie, or Me for each of the following, who would you chose and why?

1. Have dinner with your parents (and you)
2. Go out to a club
3. Go on a long road trip
4. Live with for a year
5. Have the other person choose every movie you will watch for a year
6. Get into a fight with
7. Play basketball against
8. Be your tag team teamate in a wrestling match.

Thats all I got for now.

Let's say you had two lighters. One of them is nearly full and the other is half full. Which one would you use? Why?

I'm getting coaching for LO8 right now from gergery. Its $250/hr, but its definitely worth it.

1) Diamond
2) DMW so I'll have one fewer person to compete with for possible sexual partners
3) You (already happened)
4) Same thing prob you
5) Diamond b/c he'll prob let me choose anyway
6) DMW because it seems like my best chance of coming out uninjured.
7) Kit b/c he's like 3 feet tall.
8) Either you or kit. I bet kit is a great high flier, but I've seen you run up down escalators and it takes a special kind of athleticism to pull that off.

i dont wanna turn this thread into this, but is that anywhere outside the US, or just certain places, and then after 80k is the rest taxed normal?

No tax at all for anyone living in Ireland, and no doubt other, far warmer places too

All the good questions already asked, just a few boring ones
1) What stats do you display when playing?
2) Would you encourage children/younger siblings/friends to play poker full time
3) What makes you uncomfortable at a poker table? For example another specific player having position on your?
4) Have you set goals for the year, or for your poker career in general?

Thanks

if you are legitmately curious about this you might ask/read old threads in the legislation forum. This topic has come up a number of times. I think the general consensus is that you're pretty much ****ed into paying US taxes as a US citizen. There are many people besides poker players that would like to benefit from such loopholes, so there are laws/policies to prevent it.

I think the only possible option to actually avoid taxes is to renounce your citizenship. But there are catches to prevent that as well which make it impractical.

Actually, I've never heard of the 80k exemption either. Maybe the US Gov't assumes you are paying income tax on that to whatever Gov't you're living under? Where did you hear that JDalla?

1) VPIP, PFR, AF(useless) Number of hands, ATSB, fold bb to steal, fold sb to steal, WTSD.

2) Probably not full time, but poker has taught me a lot of valuable skills so I'd encourage anyone to learn poker

3) The only time i get really uncomfortable is when I'm sitting with a player who's run hot against me for an extended period of time. I know I shouldn't think about this, but it really affects your judgment when the 40/25 whom you deem as spewy shows down toppair+ against you every time.

4) This year my main goals were to play 300k hands and to make $100k. Well, I've already made over 100k but 300k hands doesn't look to promising.

My career goals are to retire in my late twenties to early thirties at the latest. I also want to be respected as one of the best LHE players online.

My parents moved to Brazil a couple years ago. They get an 80 or 85k exemption for living out of the country, but as US citizens they are required to pay tax on all money earned after that.

ah ok, so did they pay taxes on the 80k to Brazil?

well I dont really want to get into Brazil's ridiculous bureaucracy, but I think depending on what your work is you'd have to pay tax on the money twice. Not much fair about it : /

Between which limits did you find the biggest difference on gameplay, fish, variance, etc

What did you find tougher while moving up? i.e. handling swings...

Great question, imo.

The half full one? Maybe I'm missing something.

Biggest difference was 10/20 to 15/30. 10/20 was still full of passives. 15 plays super aggressive though.

The toughest was dealing with fish that could actually hand read a little bit and would try to win lots of pots UI. You get into a lot of gross turn spots where they'll read your value check for what it is, but also punish you with thinnish value raises and semi bluffs.

the correct answer is whichever one you can find at 420... ideally you also have a backup that only works if you shake it vigorously just in case you cant find the full or half full one

Nina,

regarding the 401(k) minor discussion, anyone who reads this should buy "The Gambler's Guide to Taxes" by Walter Lewis. You should almost certainly file as a professional gambler, and take deductions for your expenses (you are playing live a bunch now so gas mileage etc. all are valid), poker books, portion of your rent for your office, internet bill, etc. You can also open and contribute to a few different IRA options, I have a SE (self employed) 401(k) and the yearly limit for 2008 is $46k, pretax.

-DeathDonkey

We're in our 20's. Pretty good health plan if you watch out for buses

Health insurance is pretty cheap if you only plan to use it for major stuff. I pay ~$100/month. And I think it's working because I'm still healthy.

Nina, besides this quote, I also saw quite a lot of posts here describing villains as a "good hand reader" or "bad hand reader", etc'. My question is - how do you actually determine if your opponent is a good or bad hand reader ?
And the next question, how frequently do you bother "reading hands" yourself ? What I am actually trying to ask about is your thought process during the majority of hands you play during a session - does this process (at least remotely) resemble a thread discussion of a hand here on 2p2, deep thinking about probable villain's holdings, odds, etc' or is it much more intuitive, instinct based snappy decision taking based on your huge experience ? Do you seem to lose focus and lighten up your decision making process when you're deeper into a session ? Are you aware of this leak (if you have it) and disciplined enough to have regular breaks ?