Week Before Christmas, Crypto BRM/Life BRM, & Melbourne Trip
So I've been rather slack lately on my volume as well as on my spendings. I definitely expected this though. Plenty of raves and parties and whatnot which means naturally my volume is going to suck for the next couple weeks or so. I've been eating out a ton lately though and it's just getting a bit unnecessary - that coupled with expensive nights out on the piss makes for a pretty expensive December.
Anyway, best thing I can do is tighten up my spending a bit and make sure I'm putting in good volume on the days I'm not partying. And take less days off. Rest of the week will look like this for me (I'm writing it here so I stay accountable).
Tuesday - Poker 8+ hours
Wedesday - Christmas shopping, date with girl, no poker
Thursday - Poker 8+ hours
Friday - Rave night
Saturday - Poker 8+ hours
Sunday - Poker 8+ hours
Monday - Christmas with family, no poker
That leaves really only 32 hours for poker for the next 7 days which I'll be happy with considering it's simply that time of the year. After Christmas, I want to get back into the swing re grinding and as far as I can see I'll only have 29th booked for a rave and 31st NYE party somewhere.
Then the plan for January is to just grind hard til about the 19th. Will fly down to Melb and play Flight 3 of the opening 1k on the Friday and hopefully not have to fire Flight 4 on Saturday. These two flights should be the juiciest. Then the plan is to just play a bunch of 5/10 for maybe a week, maybe a few days - just depends largely on results and how long I'm able to stay at my mate's place.
When I return home, which could be anywhere from 21st-30th of Jan (who knows maybe longer), at that moment I will make some fairly big life/financial/crypto decisions. Basically, do I move to Melbourne now, immediately, or wait til closer to May. Ideally I'll want to leave ASAP but it basically depends on the availability of 5/10 game - basically I'm hoping my trip in January confirms that Melbourne is the right place for me. It also depends on the price of BTC and ETH at that particular time. If BTC is anywhere around 20-25k USD and ETH is 700+ then I will likely sell up and so I have a 5/10 bankroll. Also depends on my poker results @ Melbourne... i.e. did I lose a bunch or win a bunch on the trip. If I lost a good chunk of money, I might want to stay in Bris and rebuild for a bit. If my results over the next month or so are bad/losing, then I might want to move a bit later. Realistically, I can fairly easily move whenever and just play 2/5 or 5/5 if there are bankroll concerns, but I'd definitely prefer to be able to instantly begin playing 5/10 right from the get go in Melbourne. I think the net worth I'm looking for to do that is about $57k. That gives me a $30k bankroll (30BIs) and $25k as a liferoll - or 35k as a bankroll and 20k as a liferoll, however you want to compartmentalise it. And that leaves me with $2k to aid with the transition down there, maybe take a few days off to relax/party here before leaving. I also need to be able to find a reasonably priced apartment that's within walking distance to Crown. Ideally I'd like a one bedroom/studio because I'm honestly already sick of living with messy roommates... after having been out of home only for 4 or so months :'). If I can score something for $350-$400 a week for a furnished apartment, bills and internet included, ideally in Southbank, that would be perfect. Being walking distance to a card room that's open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week will be absolutely perfect for degenning some long hours if I need to.
So that's basically where I'm at - roughly a month til I need to make some fairly serious decisions. Re Bitcoin specifically, if the price gets to US$25k before that day comes, I'll more than likely sell. I see people on Reddit posting saying they sold all their BTC and I just smh like it's pretty silly to sell your entire portfolio imo and because of that, I don't really want to sell all my BTC. So I think what I'll do is, when I reach that $57k net worth, instead of throwing it all into the bank and getting to work on the 5/10 games, I'll keep probably 10k of that as an "investment" fund. I want to take investing proper seriously because while I love poker, I think it'd be wise to put myself in the position to give myself the opportunity "retire" early so to speak. Whole not putting all your eggs in one basket thing as well. 10k won't be much obv, just 20% of my net, but I want to treat this money as though it's effectively dead to me... As in, I couldn't really care less if BTC bubbles out and I lose the 10k. I also think it's wise initially when moving up stakes to be a little more conservative regarding BRM. I have played 40 minutes 5/10 lifetime. I don't really have no idea what my winrate will be. I imagine a lot of the donations you get in 2/5, which largely comprise my winrate, you simply won't get at 5/10. I could see my hourly realistically being anywhere from $50-$100, I simply have no idea what to expect. Heaven forbid the games are just goodreg filled constantly and $50/hr is unattainable... Realistically speaking, if I can't make at least $50/hr in a 5/10 game, either I have a lot of work to do or I'm playing in stupid tough games and need to move again (if that's the case, I imagine I'd be looking at Sydney or London, although I hear the games are tuffer in London, but maybe my hourly at a London 2/5 could be higher than $50, idk). I would guess that $70/hr is probably definitely attainable in Melbourne 5/10 games though... I also plan on taking these games extremely seriously, profiling different players and making more of a concerned effort to "study". 2/5 for me ATM is simply cruise control. It's just sit down, sit on phone disinterested, wait for a hand or donation. That's it. But when I begin playing 5/10, I want to ban my phone, force myself to watch everything, be 100% focused and alert the entire session, take breaks, improve posture, etc - basically put myself in the best position to win as much as possible.
So as I was saying, the $10k I set aside for "investing" I think will be entirely for crypto and with a large focus on alts. Until I have a larger investment bankroll, I don't really care too much for investing in anything other than crypto because I'm basically chasing the highest yield option until I have enough money that diversifying into other markets becomes wise. And besides, staying on top of the altcoin grind really does take time if you do it seriously. If I were to guess, ATM my strategy would look something like the following:
~20% BTC
~25% ETH
~20% LTC
~20% Ripple, IOTA, Neo, Augur, Monero
~15% On some really aggressive punts, new coins, ICOs, etc
I'll do it properly this time and actually track everything - will be super cool to see how much someone can make % wise in a year with this sort of setup.
Also once I've settled into the 5/10 games, have saved a bit of money, as soon as I get the opportunity to (maybe at 70k net worth) I'll start funneling more cash into crypto. I think we have a fairly small window left before crypto goes mainstream and so I want to ram cash into it as fast as possible - I think it would probably be smarter for me to invest spare cash in crypto before MTT series and whatnot because I think there's just an insane amount of money to be made.
If I have a spare $10K, I could have some fun playing a few MTTs... depending on travel costs, any one MTT trip might average out to something like 70% ROI - but obv it's EXTREMELY high variance. However if I throw $10k into crypto, although the duration to see a return is longer (i.e. a year) I think you would EASILY see >70% ROI ainec. I don't know anyone in crypto who hasn't made an insane return on their investment, so I think that it would be more wise for me to pick investing over MTTs when I start earning some money from 5/10.
Literally just rambled on about **** for waaaay too long. OOh, I also bought this book today:
So far so good, mostly quite dense philosophical stuff. Metaphysics, ontology, new realism, etc. Should keep me entertained while I sit on the wait list tomorrow!
Also wanted to see how "on track" I am for the year re volume. Said I want to play 2000 hours a year now that I'm playing full time (i.e. 40 hours a week). I basically have til Jan 28 to play another 260 hours or so if I want to be at 1,000 hours at the 6 month point. That's another 41 days away. On average I need to play 6.3 hours a day for the next 41 days. Or 44 hours a week - simply won't happen. End of year festivities are slowing things down instead of speeding them up and the move to Melbourne will be another obstacle. The good news is, if I'm able to find a place near the casino in Melb, the fact that there's plenty of tables which means I'll spend significantly less time on waitlists should mean that I can get my weekly volume average up in the second 6 months. I'm not too concerned at this stage, I kind of like the idea of degenning 50 hour weeks toward the end of my calendar year - kinda reminds me of the old Stars days where you'd get guys playing insane hours to chase down VPPs for SNE. Basically, i'm hoping that with the move I'll put myself in a spot where getting a ton of volume in is easy work. I wonder how many hours I've wasted sitting in the casino this year alone waiting for a seat.
Anyway, enough drivel for now.
Last edited by meale; 12-18-2017 at 08:42 AM.