Warning tl;dr

Good afternoon all -

My name is Blake, I play on FTP and PokerStars as Botboy141.

“Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.” – Gail Devers

History
Many of you followed my previous challenge threads including “$50-$1000 4 Tabling Micro to Low Limit SNG’s” as well as my “Three Stacks of High Society Challenge.”


Current Situation
I am creating a new challenge thread due to a drastic change in circumstances that makes my “Three Stacks of High Society” goal one that is not quite lofty enough. I found out on January 4th, that I will be laid off from work come the end of the month (January 28th will be my last day).

I have decided to utilize un-employment combined with poker to make a realistic shot at “going pro”.

I have taken on a backer/coaching deal (Ram Jam Inc) despite being well rolled for the games I would currently be playing on my own ($6.50-$13 90 mans on FTP). I am instead currently playing $3.30 and $6.50 90’s on FTP with the goal to improve and quickly move up the levels.

My reason for choosing a backer to make my attempt at playing online poker as a profession is two fold. #1 I don’t want to have to worry about a downswing wiping out my roll and leaving me crippled and unable to earn an income. #2 Coaching, my two backers are well versed in the games I am playing in and are extremely knowledgeable. Their knowledge of the games will help me to improve and move up the ranks much faster than I ever could on my own.

I will also be playing some live tournament circuits this year with a backer as well (my father) who is more than willing to cover all entries. We have a standard 50/50 profit split deal with makeup, where he will re-invest the majority of his profit for me to move up stakes in live tournaments. Next up on the agenda are a handful of events at the Chicago Poker Classic at the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana at the end of February. We have not yet determined if I will be playing the $3125 main event.

The Plan
Grind the 90s on FTP up to the $13 level. Get to the point where I am comfortably 16 tabling the $6.50-$26.00 90 mans on FTP with an ROI > 25%.

Unemployment should be providing me more than $2000 a month. This means that to make my monthly nut (pre-tax), I only need to earn an additional $1000 playing poker. For obvious reasons, I will be looking to earn much more than $1000 a month playing online.

With an ABI of $13, 25% ROI would net me $3.25 per game. 16 games per hour with an average duration of 1.25 hours (75 minutes), I should be completing roughly 12 games per hour (12*$3.25=$39.00/hour). If I can hit volume goals and work out a profit incentive with my backer, I should be earning upwards of $25.00 per hour for my play time.

This is my short-term plan. I am looking to play the $13’s and higher consistently by the end of February or mid March. Once I have established myself and these games as highly beatable, I will look into moving on to some other games where I can hopefully boost my hourly (probably not until at least June as I want some consistent profit off the get go).

The Goals
1.) Beat up to $26 90 man KO’s on FTP
2.) 16 table $6.50-$26.00 90 man KO’s on FTP with an ROI greater than 25%
3.) Achieve an hourly win rate after profit split of $25 per hour or greater by April 2011.
6.) Earn $40 an hour post profit split (or playing on my own by end of 2011).
4.) Earn $50,000 by the end of 2011.
5.) Ship a live donkament

All graphs from May 1, 2010 until present. I was a breakeven tag fish prior with no concept of BRM or anything else really. The graphs just look ugly if I include the previous stuff.

FTP 9 Mans


FTP 90 Mans (lol volumez, all in due time)


All MTTSNG's since 5/1/10


All games, All sites since 5/1/10


Anyways, wanted to start this new thread to chronicle my move from a winning part time player to become a volume whore who is destroying the games as a full time player.

I will likely be updating with my thoughts at the conclusion of each day or session of play and would be happy to answer any and all questions.

Criticism, constructive or otherwise is welcome. Feel free to call me crazy for trying to go pro with only $2000 in earnings over the last 8 months...

Good luck. hope it works out.

GL Blake! You have the discipline for this for sure. I wish you luck, subbed and will follow.

GL GL.

Looks like you've though this through pretty well. Nice that your dad is going to back you into the live stuff. One or two binks in those will probably be set you up nicely to hit your longer term goals.

GL.

GL MY MAN. I WILL BE SEEING YOU AT THE CPC IN FEB. GL!

TY for the good luck.

I'm certainly hoping I have the discipline and drive to pull this off. Thanks for following.

Ty Ty.

Obviously a live bink would help things out dramatically. I was close in 2010 in the one major event I played (WSOPC Event #9 @ Hammond, $560 BI, 405 players). Final tabled the damn thing but took 8th after getting one outered for a 2 to 1 chip lead over the next largest stack (QQQ v 888 AI OTT, river 8). That still haunts me a little bit but hopefully I can avoid the one outer next time and ship the damn thing =).

Ty ty, hit me up via PM if you want to grab a drink or something. Always looking to meet more degens =).

gl, hope to see you in the 90s soon enough

-koded

Will be loading $3.30s and $6.50s in equal proportion tonight so you will see me soon enough. PM me your screen name so I can spite call you with Ten high?

Not tl;dr at all

Read the whole thing and want to say good luck. Like most things in life, what counts is not ability but dedication. If you put in the effort then you should get the results you deserve.

Only one thing I'd take any issue with, and actually quite serious

Unless your father is fabulously wealthy, or very well versed in the variance which is associated with poker (and by that I mean he already plays/stakes or is otherwise somehow working in the gambling industry), having a close relative staking you is a pretty bad idea. However much he may try to deny it, he is certain to have an emotional investment in your success or failure, whereas an independent backer's interest will be purely financial.

You can play the best you've ever played time and again and still not cash; a professional backer who simply sees you as one of his horses will understand this and sees your unfortunate losses as simply the price of doing business. But to someone who doesn't intimately understand the natural swings of this game, and just how brutal they can be, losing large sums of money at liveaments could end up seriously jeopardising your relationship with your father.

If you're not rolled for live poker then I would seriously suggest you either don't play them yet, waiting until you're rolled, or get a separate staking arrangement for your live action, either with your SNG backer if he is amenable, or with a different stable if he can't/won't.

Have a think about it!

Whatever you choose though, best of luck

Thanks for the comment TT. My father is actually well off and ~$10,000-20,000 swings are expected. He is an investor and entrepreneur by trade and is very well aware of the risk/reward ratio of this investment. He is actually the one encouraging me to play in the CPC $3125 main event, however I am more hesitant as I don't want to wind up in 3k in make up out of one event. At the moment, my plans are just to play $200-$500 buy-in events and after we've made some profit, consider branching out into larger buy-in tournaments.

Definitely a good point to be made though. As a rule both of us prefer to not do business with family but we have worked together on several occassions previously (primarily when I was working as a day trader in the future markets with a similar set up, his cash, 50/50 profit split). Took about 6 months, lost about $15,000 and our relationship was unblemished (actually it grew greatly due to the time we spent together reviewing different trades). He is also an amateur poker player and well understands the sick variance this game entails.

Once again though, thank you very much for the enlightened comment. It's definitely not an option nor something I would recommend to most people.

------------------------

Had a great session in 90's once again this evening. Squeezed in 32 games 10 tabling in a little over 4 hours. Was an even mix of 16 $6.50's and 16 $3.30's. Finished the night +$150.20 after a bit of run good in the $3.30's.

January:
Games: 227 (211 @ $3.30, 16 @ $6.50)
ROI: 68.9%
Winnings: $551.17
Time: 34.1 hours
Hourly: $16.18 / hour
ABI: $3.53

Looking forward to getting in similar volume again tomorrow after work continuing to mix in the $6.50 games at 50/50 ratio to $3.30's. I will likely step back up to 12 tables tomorrow as the $6.50's really don't seem to play much differently to me than the $3.30's just a couple more regs (like 5, lol).

I hope everyone has a fantastic evening.

Hey BAE - best of luck on this new phase of life. From what I've seen, I'm of the belief that you can make it.

Nice start as well ... always helps

GL GL fellow Ram Jammer

Good luck with that op, it's good that you have a plan.

Keep in mind there's a HUGE difference between playing (and winning) part time and doing nothing but poker for money - try not to do as I did:

a) recognize that there is a difference but;
b) totally underestimate it

When your volume creeps up, after awhile the game WILL change for you - it will likely not be nearly as enjoyable and motivation will probably become an issue. Do not assume you can play 40 hours per week over the long run - some people can do this but I think for most of us, it's pretty sick volume that we just can't put in (seriously).

IMHO utilize that unemployment income to put in a few hours each week working on a plan B/career research/vocational assessment/training etc. *even if* you expect to one day return to the position you were laid off from (doesn't always happen).

Why? Because the grind grinds on you. For some of us, it becomes more monotonous than our 9-5 stuff.

Not trying to be Debbie Downer, just an additional heads up.

Good luck, run goot!

The quick run goot has definitely been a nice way to get off the starting line. Thanks for the encouragement.

Thanks whore.

Thank you very much for the insight. I am most certainly looking forward to playing full time but not because I enjoy the game of poker (which at this point I still do) but I fully recognize that this will be a monotonous grind and will most certainly be "work". Thankfully, although I was only playing part time, I have spent the last 3 months grooming myself for this experience by treating my part time (20-30 hours a week) of playing as a job as closely as I could. Whether I wanted to play on a given night, I set myself a minimum number of hours that I had to play, and not once since early October did I come up short of that goal.

My primary cause for excitement about this transitional period in my life is that I have spent the last 6.5 years traveling full time for work, typically heading to the airport or driving out of town on a Sunday night only to return Friday evening. This has put immense strain on the relationship with my wife and I am very much looking forward to relieving some of that strain by being home full time. Obviously this will take some adjustment on both of our parts, she is also extremely nervous about me making a living in such a high variance manner, however, she is confident I can pull it off and is behind me 100%.

More than anything, even if I have to play 50 hours a week, I am just looking forward to being home and not being forced to pull myself away from my family (wife and two dogs) for 5-6 days every week.

Additionally, money is a great motivator, and I know that whether I am running good or bad, that if I continue to work, improve my game, and put in the volume, that I will eventually be making the type of money that I want to make, working a schedule that I want to work, and having the freedom (perhaps limited due to number of hours being played) to do as I please in my off time. Obviously, being without a supervisor and dealing with customers is always a plus side as well.

I'm not saying I want to spend the rest of my life grinding out $25.00-$40.00 per hour playing poker online for a living, but more just a gateway to help me get to where I want to go long term.

As far as utilizing unemployment for vocational, etc, I am definitely considering going to college part time come the fall semester depending on how everything is going. I would at least like to get my bachelors degree if nothing else.

Thanks for your input.

Hi Blake , iv'e been following your threads for some time now and i just wanted to wish you the best of luck . You're inspiring me to give myself some targets .

gl this should be very good read!

Will be followin u...wish u the best of luck.

Thanks for continuing to follow bro. Sorry for the 4 different threads you've had to keep up with !

I'm curious to see how our hourlies match up a couple months from now. I'm sure my ROI will crush yours but very curious to see hourly since the 90's take so much longer. May eventually transition to $12-180's if the hourly is significantly better. Obviously would have to improve my multi-tabling skills in order to increase over 16 tables.

Thanks for the well wishes!

A pretty meh night tonight. Hadn't slept a ton so planned from the get go to stop regging ~ 9:00. A bit under 4 hours of play time.

Ran really bad across 31 games, 17 $3.30's and 14 $6.50's. Couldn't close out on the few FT's I made.

Finished the evening with a $25.10 loss.

January:
Games: 258 (228 @ $3.30, 30 @ $6.50)
ROI: 55.5%
Winnings: $526.07
Time: 37.9 hours
Hourly: $13.87 / hour
ABI: $3.67

432,321 chips below EV so far on the month despite the crushing stats. Can easily turn that around with a little bit of run good deep.

Until tomorrow.

So...I decided to pop onto stars for a few as I was watching "The Big Game" just before bed. Fired up a couple of 180's as I hadn't played them in forever. Loaded a single $2-180 and a single $12-180.

Busted the $2-180 about midway through, however, I managed to final table the $12-180, and take 2nd after losing a couple flips heads up (about 40 hands heads up but was just me slowly taking chips, then losing a flip or a 60/40 as a favorite. All standard. Was playing v tkbowler. Not bad for the first $12-180 I have ever loaded...

Anyways, bed time for me =). Have a great night everyone.

Year 2011 to date. My basic stats I'll be giving out on a consistent basis will only include sessions from my staking arrangement, but I will try to keep you all in the loop on the one off games I may play on Stars as a getaway for the 90's.

Really curious to see how hourlies compare between $12-180 regs and $13 90man KO regs. Due to the speed of the games, I'm thinking a transition may be required at some point in order to maximize hourly. The other nice part about playing 180's on stars instead of 90's on FTP, is the ability to load 45s to get sessions started and to wind down in order to maximize hourly. The 12-180s are definitely higher variance but trying to determine what may be best going forward. At this point, I still fully plan to play the 90s until at least the end of February and we'll see how things go from there.

Hi again Blake! nice going , grats keep it up ! ok can i ask some questions regarding the $3.30 90's on FT? I have been trying them out and damn they are full of fish , if it is ok how would you recommend i should approach them? i seem to be struggling when i am short stacked with about 3rd of the field left any pointers or is there a thread on here maybe you could recommend which will help me ? Many thanks and grats again!

Early Stages (up to $t100): Only Iso-Raise for value with strong hands (top 6% or so). Limp behind in position with pocket pairs 22-99, maybe even TT if none of the limpers are folding. Key here is to play tight. Only limp behind or call to set mine with pocket pairs if your implied odds are better than 15-20 to 1. Avoid hands like AJ/AQ when out of position.

Early Middle Stage (up to $t200): Same as the first stage but towards the end of this stage you can start to look to re-steal from aggro fish in late positions with appropriate stack sizes.

Middle Stage ($t240-600): Start to open up your game, unless you are deep, you should likely be shoving the large majority of your range. Check out topics in the Single Table Tournaments forum here regarding ICM, push/fold strategy for turbo tournaments.

Late Stage ($800-inf): Similar to middle stages but at this point you should have a plan for every hand pre-flop. You should either be raising with the intention of calling a shove from short stack, and folding to big stack shove, or calling from one aggro 3 bettor and folding to the nit if he 3bets. If you aren't raising with the intention of calling at least one player to act behind you, fold or shove. Anything else is spew.

Hope this helps.

Recommended Reading:
Kill Everyone by Lee Nelson and others
Sit 'n Go Strategy by Collin Moshman

Recommended Tools:
Sit 'n Go Wizard
Hold'em Manager
PokerStove
SSMTT forums (free)
JitXperts Pushbot Spreadsheet, (free) just google it

Gluck bud. Crush these games !@ =)