Mental Game of Poker. Don't know why it's acronymized.

We're all going to look back on this and realize how dumb we were.

lel

Lol you live players! Tbf I've seen it acronymised more times than not, mostly in online players' PGCs. It's the benchmark for mental game info and if any of you think you need to work on that, do read this book.

Semi-serious question - if I'm paying a babysitter so I can go play poker do I need to count it in my win rate?

No lol

I would if my goal, or one of my goals, is income. I wouldn't if my goal is fun, but I wanted to keep track anyway.

I'd record it as a general life expense. It has no effect on your results as a poker player. I.e. if you're 10bb/HR normally, vs 5bb/HR when you include the child rake, you go from an excellent player to a good player because of something completely unrelated to your skill as a poker player.

If you wanted to make money I'm guessing having a child was -EV.

I barreled the turn and have 2!

Man you run so bad. :')

If you're trying to use winrate to determine skill, then absolutely not.

If you want to consider strict financial profitability, then yes.

This seems right to me. I'm the former.

I'm always on tilt. You can play so many more hands on tilt. Plus there's no diff between your A game and C game. It's all T game.

Do you deduct gas, tolls, parking, food from your winrate?

Yeah that's the rub.

I do track gas, tolls, and parking in exceptional scenarios. But gas is like a dollar a session for me and I use all my comps on food, so I actually save money playing compared to not playing unless I get an especially elaborate meal.

And yeah, if it's just about measuring skill, don't include it. But babysitters are a lot more expensive than normal overhead costs, so I'd want to include it somehow. But yeah, I suppose I wouldn't include it in my win rate. I'd just have a separate stat where I deduct that from the profit/loss.

Time:inut:incidentals:w/r without incidentals:w/r with incidentals. Easy game.

I'd track it, but separate. Would be funny if you're up like $200 after a few months but, down because of baby sitting.

I know people who do exactly this type of stuff and don't include expenses in order for them to play poker.

One guy travels an hour for a weekly game, drinks the entire time and rents a room in a hotel. He's probably a small winner, but a loser when he includes all his expenses. Gas aint cheap in Europe.

THIS

brb getting vasectomy

If one is a semi-pro player with a 20 hour a week tax paying job is it foolish to claim 100% of poker winnings during tax season? Can you claim all of your recorded losing sessions just like lost investments in the market or other places?

Not unless paid from my stack which sometimes happens for food.

Anyway babysitter was $100 and I made almost $2k so it's a bit academic now.

Expenses are a column that you deduct from your actual winnings. Win rate is a statistic that approximately determines your hourly earnings. Expenses are not something you deduct from your win rate. That makes no logical, statistical or accounting sense.

Some full time players determine their estimated win rate over a large sample with a good confidence interval and then pay themselves out of their bankroll for hours played, regardless of win/loss or the amount. For example, you had a killer 2/5 session and raped the table for 10+ buyins and your hourly is estimated to be at $25/hour (probably conservative, but likely more accurate as well). If you played for eight hours, you'd pay yourself (as the sole employee of your business) $200 for the session and put the other $5000+ back into your bankroll.

I've tried explaining this simple idea to a couple of lollive pros at my local card room and they just couldn't wrap their heads around the idea of separating your winnings and losses from your hourly earnings. To them it was all the same, and they wouldn't separate income from bankroll.

well, on the same thought, are you paying the babysitter from your stack? i highly doubt it.


fwiw, i see it as a related expense so i track it as an expense in a different column. if i played professionally, i would actually have several columns for common expenses, one for food, one for tolls, one for gas, etc for accounting purposes and then probably a catch all expenses column that picks up ancillary uncommon expenses with notes.

congrats on the 2k hit

So very similar to a long term hold on a dividend paying stock. (?) So if you decided one day that you're comfortable sticking to 5/10 but you're over rolled by 25k and pay yourself that 25k you would now be expected to tell Uncle Sam about it. Would it be best to tell him about 100% of this income or foolish to tell him about him about 100% of your untraceable income?

Also, will this only work if you claim yourself as a professional gambler? Surely the government won't care if you made 30k one year playing poker but claimed you reinvested 20k back into yourself?

Ps. I'm a tax noob and thank you for your time.

Am I using standard deviation to calculate win rate confidence interval correctly?

W/r = $48.39/hour
STD=$339.31/hour
Hours=326

339.31*1.96=664.44
Square root of 326=18.055
664.44/18.055=36.83

So, my 95% confidence interval would be $48.39+/- 36.83, so I can be fairly confident I'm at least an $11/hour winner in my game, and in theory could be up to an $85/hour winner in my game? Latter seems exceedingly unlikely.