Poker staking results

This will be my first post on my current results. I did not have the best start, but nothing too bad to worry about yet. So far I have 3 completed Baps with investments of $5, $5, and $10. One of the $5 investments completely busted. I got back $1.96 on my other $5 investment and $3.92 on my $10 investment. The good news is on the $5 investment that completely busted, I bought into another one of his BAPs and he doubled the bankroll plus he owes me cake. For those of you who don’t know what cake is, it’s an option a player can add to his BAP that allows you to recover lost money on the current BAP in his future BAPs. For instance I lost $5 on the first BAP, which allows me to recover that on the next BAP plus any profit.

Currently I have 12 other BAPs running. Unfortunately I am down on most of those and marginally up on a few. The thing I have to realize is that this is still poker, and there will be many ups and downs. I’m not worried about my staking results thus far. I’m confident that my picks are solid. I’m going to need a month to get a better idea if I’m doing something wrong.

I have a few things I want to mention before I go. This blog will not only be about my results and experiences as an online poker staker. I want to be able to give back to readers what I have learned. I will be writing articles on certain topics I deem important. Hopefully others can learn and become more interested in staking. I also encourage discussion on anything I write here. If you disagree with something I write, then by all means comment. If you want me to talk about a certain topic then feel free to email me or leave a comment. I will be glad to accommodate. Thank you for reading.

The Plan

In order to reach your goals you need to have a plan. This took a bit of research and some experience from a few BAPs. I also had a coaching session with cds0699 on parttimepoker. He provided me with some very useful investment strategies and bankroll management, which will include core elements of my plan. If you are interested in staking I highly recommend getting coaching from him. *Note: If you are unsure of any of the terms here, I have provided links to the glossary on parttimepoker.

Bankroll Strategy:

• 60-70% will be in low risk BAPs.
• 10-20% in mid risk BAPs.
• 1-10% in high risk BAPs.
• I will not be investing in MADs until my bankroll is at least doubled. They tend to be higher risk and more work for one investment.
• 80-90% of my bankroll will be invested at any time. This is to keep my money invested so it is not sitting idly. The other 10-20% will allow me to buy into unexpected good BAPs.

Investing Strategies:

• 3-5% buy-in rule for low risk sng BAPs. These would include heads up, 9 mans, 18 mans, 27 mans, 45 mans and 180s.
• 2% buy-in rule for mid risk MTT BAPs. For example I would consider a BAP where a player is entering 8 FTOPs events with a clause for 30x45 man sngs to be mid risk.
• 1% buy-in rule for high risk BAPs. This would be quick hitters such as someone playing only 3-4 events with potential to win big, but a good chance to bust.

These will be the core strategies for my plan. Other things I will be implementing is tracking my stakes, researching player stats and trust issues, as well as continuing research into new strategies and ideas. I will be purchasing merchguy’s tracking software on parttimepoker. I think this will help me pinpoint bad overall stakes.

That covers most of my plan. Of course nothing is set in stone. I may change this over time. If at anytime you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment and I will answer any questions you have. Thanks for reading.

The Goals

The title pretty much sums it up. I want to lay out my goals to make it clear to myself where I need to be headed. It will also give me an idea if I need to make some changes in my stakes. My plan will be how I reach those goals. I'm going to be keeping the goals flexible and attainable, considering I'm new to this.

I'm writing out my goals for the first 6 months. It will be broken down into 1 month increments. I have rounded off the numbers to make it easier. Here are my goals.

Goals:

Starting Bankroll: 800

may:1000

June: 1200

July: 1430

August: 1700

september: 2000

October: 2350

I calculated this at a 15% return on investment (roi) with a 3 week recycle rate on my money. After doing some research it seems that 10-15% roi is average if you are making profit. Anything above 20% roi is above average. So I set my goal to average so that it is attainable for someone starting out. It might not look like much after 6 months but as you can see it grows faster with each increment. After a year at this rate it will be worth it. Another thing to note in the calculations of my goals is I'm using up to 80% of my bank roll at any given time. Ideally I want to use 90%.

One other goal I have is to back a player who I think has great potential. I want to find someone I can trust in the next 6 months who I will be backing on a regular basis.

One thing to not in my posts is that I will be putting certain things in brackets only once. This is for those who are completely new to staking and investing.

My next post will be my plan to reach my goals. Thanks for reading.

Poker Staking (My Story)

Hello and welcome to my blog about online poker staking. I am new to poker staking. I recently got interested in staking after realizing it was -$EV (Expected value) to play poker on one site and a bank roll just sitting idly doing nothing on another site. So I decided to let others grow my money while I play elsewhere.

After doing a little research on staking I soon realized I was not using about 95% of my bank roll at any given time on any site. I realized it would be better to invest about 80-90% of my bank roll and play with the rest, considering I don't get enough time to grind anyway. Before I go any further, let me tell you a bit about my poker experiences to date.

Now just to warn you, I am by no means pro caliber. I have played primarily small stakes on several sites such as party poker, poker stars, full tilt and PKR. My passion for poker is the fault of my girl friend. I hope she does not read this. I believe it was Christmas 2005 when she bought me poker chips. I will be honest with you, I had almost no interest in poker up to that point. My view at that time was that poker was mostly a game of luck. I was still excited to get those chips. I was looking forward to having a weekly game as a social gathering. One thing got in the way and that is my natural competitive nature. The first home game we played was limit texas holdem. My mom destroyed all of us. Her calling station abilities were next to none. She never bet and called when she had a bad hand or a monster hand. There was just no reading here...grrr. After that night I was hooked.

I started playing poker on yahoo while looking up information on strategy. Soon there after I signed up at party poker. The free rolls were pretty good back then. I won some play money tourneys and thought I was the next Doyle Brunson. I eventually won $20 on a free roll. I came up with a brilliant idea like most new players. I played a cash game with my $20 roll. I believe I got up to about $30 when I picked up AK. I'm UTG and raise 3x BB. I get one caller. Flop was AK4 rainbow. I could hardly contain myself. I'm thinking "I'm going to destroy this donk". Of course I slow play this like the pro I was. The donk foolishly decides to bet into me. So I smooth call knowing I'm going to take all his chips. The turn card was pretty much a blank. I check again knowing the donk was going to bet again. Of course he bets and I shove all-in. The donk quickly calls and I fist pump so fast only to stop half way to see he has pocket 4s. River was a blank. I had him covered which left me with about a $1.20.

I resumed playing freerolls in an effort to get a roll started. I did this for weeks to no avail. I had forgotten about the 1.20 left in my account. One night I stumbled across the 1.20 and signed up for a $1 tourny. I managed to get 2nd place giving me $72. At this point I was a bit more knowlegable about the game and bankroll management. I started playing mostly single table sit and goes with a few cash games mixed in. I went on a heater and my bank roll reached about $800 at one point. I felt invincible. Its funny how poker does that to every player once they first start playing. If you have any amount of poker experience, you know what is coming next. The big down swing!!! I was following decent bankroll guide lines. Playing $10 games with a $700 roll and decreasing stake buy ins as my roll got smaller. Nothing I did made a difference. The beats just kept happening over and over. When my roll was about $300 I finally had enough of party poker. I decided to try Poker Stars. Everything went well for a while. I got my roll back up to about 6-700. Of course the inevitable down swing happened again.

Eventually I decided to try out full tilt. I immediately liked the structure. I deposited $50 and played mostly $1 45 man tournaments and a mix of larger MTTs. I did well immediately. When I reached about $200 I started playing $5 45 mans. My roll started to take off. While playing $10 45 mans I won a $10 MTT for $610. I finally cracked a 1K bankroll. With a mix of $26 45 mans and winning tokens for $75 45 mans I eventually got my roll up to about $3300. I then went through a break even stretch and decided to take break. I took out most of my roll leaving about $250 on full tilt. I built that back up over $600 playing mostly heads up sit and goes. I eventually put more money on pokerstars which brings me to the present.

During all this I got more serious about the game. I began to study more and improve my game. Heads up was a game I was becoming more interested in. I found a site called holdemforaliving run by trujm. I was impressed by his articles and stats. He has a %14 ROI over 10k+ games. That is insane and very rare to find in husngs. I did get a little coaching from him. He helped me find leaks in my game I did not realize I had. It was through his site I found rakethestake which is of course a staking site. It is a very young staking site. I honestly was not aware of any staking site. It seems like a excellent site. I'm definitely going to be hanging around there in the hopes of helping them grow and finding some good investments there. Shortly after I found another staking site called parttimepoker. This site seems to be the monster of all staking sites. Stakes are happening there by the minute. Anyway this post is longer than I intended. I will end it here for now. Next post will be about my plan and goals as a staker. Later.