When I was at Harrahs a few months ago I overheard a conversation between 3 of my horses, all of whom were deep in makeup.

Two of them were very very depressed and were concerned that they would not be playing their best because they were so broke and also not going to get paid for a while.

The third horse was far more upbeat and had a much positive outlook on things, and told the other 2 horses why. He told them that if one is going to be a mtt grinder it is very important to have a very nice surplus of cash and/or a way to generate cash flow outside the backing arrangement.

He went on to say that he is able to keep playing his best for us because he plays cash games on the side on his off days and has money put away. Now I know that is simply not reality for alot of people, but it goes to show how one guy can plan for the inevitable downswings in mtts and be so wise. It was very helpful to have someone with this kind of outlook, so this wisdom can be imparted to others etc.

Oh...I forgot to mention...this horse, as it turned out, had been stealing from us for 8 months on a remarkably planned and consistent basis, hiding the theft with fraudulent reports, and siphoned the money through 2 other accounts for the purpose of playing cash games and or just cashing it offline.

That is certainly one way to generate the cashflow needed to reduce the impact of a downswing.


Love this Business (tm)

i'm pretty sure that <10% of mtters in makeup could beat 400nl 6max, and thats generous.

edit: sheets wins thread

sheets did you get any of the money back from the horse?

Meaning right now if you threw them in there or if you gave them a bit of time to adjust/study?

Yes, fortunately I was able to discover this while a there was a cashout pending so we were able to recover that at least, which was about 10% of the total, and he apparently is paying us back the rest over time.

But we will see.

I'll take the over on that but probably not by too much.

agree esp since beating 400nl 6m takes a lot more time and commitment than someone playing mtt's full time has

this is rly interesting and im inclined to agree, but i have not given it much thought and you would prob know better. ill go with this

pretty sure seabeast is like the best poster ever. so it's weird reading his posts and thinking you're actually reading salesbeasts, the worst poster ever. anyway in the spirit of the thread i am something like 0 for 17 and -75k on a live deal atm, weee

lmao, i thought i was the only one with old school parents........mine thought the exact same when i told them, but more so thought my legs would get broken if i didnt win..

deeb will always be better than you at losing live, pwned

u have a live only deal!?.... lucky bastard =p

most makeup i ever had was approximately 75k, but then i won the 2nd chance and bought out

being in deep makeup is the nut worst when you have money/means to play cashgames on your own. motivation/effort/guilt all turn for the worse.

i play everything on my own now, though I do sell action for bigger stuff. kelly criterion dictates my life now, and while it will probably keep me from hitting a 500k bankroll anytime soon thanks to taxes, I estimate I will never need to be backed or anything like that again. baby steps ftw.

I'd set the line at around 20%. Strict game selection can benefit certain people at 2/4 sixmax. eg playing on other networks or only finding really soft games.

if your definition of 400nl 6max means opening up six random tables on stars or fulltilt, then yeah 10% is about right i think.

================

also for people saying seabeast is too harsh, i disagree. there was a stretch where seabeast almost went online busto in tournaments (from reading his blog), just completely whiffing everything, so I think he has a decent idea as to how the mtt variance game works.

hey clayton just out of curiousity, when you say you bought out of makeup did you win 2nd chance on your own?

Brag:
i almost hit the mythical 500k BR

Beat:
things went bad :/

Variance:
I'm prob. scooopin a WSOP event

of course it does, table selection and bumhunting aren't tough skills to learn.

I was around 200k iirc after whiffing WSOP, but was out by September.

meh, not that it is measurable, but i'm inclined to think that seabeast's results the past 6 months are far greater than what his skill level at mtt's rates him to win (and that's with me putting him in the top 25 online mtt'er category)

and 100% true for you too clay (minus being one of the top 25 )

no, winning the 2nd chance got me still in makeup, but a tiny amount, and i bought out

never argued that point, just saying hes had a stretch of negative variance. but it wasnt in terms of makeup.

i know. i think the difference is you are defining that as negative variance while i am defining it as, simply, variance.

w/e.

point is edges are smaller in mtt's, buy-ins are bigger across the board, and backers do degen things with horses when they get in makeup. all this leads to higher makeup fig's for longer periods of time even for proven winning players.

people that play everything live/online with 100% of their own action either had a huge score relatively early on in their poker career or make a lot of money in cash games and/or high stakes sngs or are wealthy from another means.

*there MIGHT be a few exceptions to the above statement, but in general it's pretty spot on and/or the exceptions will be broke in a year and backed themselves

** by 'everything live/online' i'm saying there isn't an event they won't play b/c of buy-in size aside from maybe a high-roller event or something

not that we could ever set this up but i would definitely take the under, dont think its very close at all. set the line at 5% at it might be pretty close imo.

edit: if were talking random small sites and bumhunting then 5% is obv not my answer, thats just for random tables on stars/tilt.

which backer is holding the most makeup?

he did last wsop....

what's so interesting about people that play almost all of their poker <30bb having a hard time adjusting to postflop play

just a guess but i'd imagine it's sheets/bax followed by durrr. i'm sure ivey before he dropped his horses was up there and same with jj prodigy if he even still backs (stealth accounting for 1.3m of it ). then there are a lot of backing groups that back 7-15 people that are all probably within a few 100k of each other

*all this could be way off fwiw and i'm not 100% sure ab a few bigger name live pros that i believe back a bunch of ppl so i'd put them up there if i was more sure on my info