Raise or Fold:  A Year of Risky Business

Writing and playing poker as if they were activities worth doing well.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Day 84: Giving Back

Feh.

Nothing like winning a big wad of cash to prompt a person to give a bunch of it back. The Crime Scene game hoovered a chunk of winnings out of my pocket tonight with an epic series of donkey plays and suckouts (and some bad decisions on my part too). Back to the grindstone for me!

I've started keeping an even more elaborate spreadsheet for my live games now. I'm tracking my progress by category, and for the first time I have stats on ROI (return on money actually put into play, as opposed to overall bankroll stats).

At almost two and a half months into this adventure, my ROI on live tournaments is +75% and my ROI on live cash games is +20%. Including travel-related expenses, my overall ROI for live play is +14%. (Travel is expensive!)

Is that good? I honestly have no idea what a typical small-stakes professional poker-player's ROI is. I can tell you though, if poker were my sole source of income, I'd have to have a bankroll nearly ten times as large as I do now for this rate of return to generate a genuinely livable sum. And that's if the results are scalable to higher stakes, which I very much doubt.

It will be interesting to compare these numbers to my online stats, whenever I actually manage to get a hold of them.

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4 Comments:

Blogger Civi said...

Are you not beta testing PA's Prospector for keeping your online stats? Thought I a saw your request at PA.

11/12/08 9:21 AM  
Blogger bastinptc said...

With comment moderation, here goes:

The only low stakes pro I know is Poker Grump. he does respond to emails, so you might want to shoot him your questions. He's a pretty thorough-going type, so be as much of a nit as you want to be.

As for the crime scene game, in that this happens to you quite often there, what are you doing wrong? Not raising enough prefolp? Do you suppose they have a read on you? Do you need to change up?

Hugs.

11/12/08 10:28 AM  
Blogger Cardgrrl said...

@civi: PA has not deigned to respond to my request to be a beta tester.

@bastinptc: I appreciate your questions about the Crime Scene game. The biggest mistake I'm making is paying off when people make their ridiculous hand. The problem is: I can't just fold every time someone makes a humongous river bet. The other problem is: going 40 or more hands in a row without hitting a flop. You just can't bluff enough to compensate for that.

11/13/08 5:12 PM  
Blogger Chef said...

Then simply stop bluffing. When I hit a downturn, I go back to PAO and play ABC poker (you'll be able to get what I like to call 'touched by the donk' tilt out of your system). Don't forget that you want those idiots that hit their super duper mega happy 52o hand to your KK, QQ. Over the long haul, you'll mop the floor with them. Remember the long term.

You're a very good read.

11/16/08 11:37 PM  

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