This blog is about my trials and tribulations with online poker staking. It also includes my experiences as a part time online poker player.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Results Update
My currently running BAPs have a ROI of -3%. I have $645 invested with a value of $625.66 out of 25 BAPs. All it will take is 1 or 2 of those BAPs to do well for me to get back in the postive. Another thing to note is these BAPs are not finished so I'm not too worried about these numbers.
My completed BAPs have a ROI of 22.94%. I invested $245 and recieved back $301.2o giving me a total profit of $56.20. I'm very pleased with these results.
I would have liked to have more BAPs completed, but it took me longer than I thought to get the money invested. Now that I have most of my money invested it will be easier to recycle it. My goal was to have a $200 profit by the end of May. It is looking like I may not reach this unless my BAPs start to complete quicker. I think what slowed this down was trying to get the money initially invested. I'm well ahead of my ROI goal and my recycle rate for invesments is on par. Overall I'm very pleased with my results. Thanks for reading.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
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.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Poker Staking (My Story)
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.