Update June 3rd

Good news, I have been running good since I last posted. I completed a total of $500 worth of investments with a total profit of $165.60.

The bad news is I did not reach my May profit goal of $200. This was the result of not recycling my money fast enough. It was slow getting it initially invested. I don't think this will be a problem in the future because I now have over 90% of my bankroll staked out. I also try to roll over my money to my player's new BAPs. I dont think I will have a problem reaching my June profit goal.

My ROI is 33.12% over the course of 30 completed BAPs. I dont think this is sustainable long term, but it does look awesome!! As of this posting my current running BAPs are about break even. I'm not worried about this because most players will end a BAP once they hit a good score. Players almost never end BAPs down; they just keep playing until they are up. So this tendency to close BAPs when they are up makes it very profitable. In addition I have been rolling over money to players I'm invested in. This has been very profitable for me as well.

Hopefully I can keep this up. Unfortunately with poker when you are up it will eventually be followed with a down swing. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for my next article about trust in poker staking.

Results Update

I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is I'm down on my current running BAPs. The good news is I'm up on my completed BAPs.

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.

Honor roll (Abigfish)

I would like to congratulate players who have done exceptionally well for me. So I thought I would create an honour roll for them. The first player I would like to congratulate is Abigfish. He turned a starting bankroll of $3,000 into $12,000 in 16 days. He was break even for most of the BAP until the 16th day where he took first place in the $55 50k guarantee on Pokerstars for $9,150.

The unfortunate thing is I had a measly $10 invested in him. I think I was getting low on my bankroll because I did not consider his plan high risk. I ended with $26.56 for a profit of $16.56 and a whopping 166% ROI. I invested $30 into his new BAP. Hopefully he will have similar results. So congratulations Abigfish for making the honour roll.

Why Poker Staking?

Why should you get involved in poker staking? This is a question I asked myself many times over my poker playing years. I honestly did not think I would get involved in staking. I thought, why should I give my money to someone else to split the profits when I could get one hundred percent of the profits for myself. Not to mention I did not like the thought of giving my money to someone I did not know. So why should you get involved in poker staking? Well read on and I'll show you why staking can be a lucrative investment that you should not be so quick to overlook it.

Online poker staking has grown in popularity in the last couple of years. You don't have to go far to understand how popular poker staking has become. Go to any poker site like twoplustwo.com, pocketfives.com just to name a few, and it will not be long before you can find posts about staking. Run a search in google for poker blogs and you will notice most of them will talk about some ongoing stakes they have. It seems to have become widely accepted in the online poker world. Why are so many players willing to give their money to people they have never met in person?

There are several reasons for this. First and foremost is a player's reputation is on the line when he is given money from another player. Thus it is in his best interest to treat that money as if it were his/her own. The great thing about online poker is you can't change your username in most poker rooms once created. This allows a person to keep track of a player's statistics. This brings us to the second reason why people are so willing to give money to strangers, which is poker staking sites. Sites like parttimepoker have a system setup allowing players to sell shares of their action to multiple persons or create a stake between two parties. On these staking sites a player is made to post his poker room usernames which cannot be changed. There are strict rules to be followed by the stakee. If the stakee breaks a rule he can be given gear, which is now seen by everyone. There are different types of gear that shows a person what rule you have broken. Gear can be permanent or temperary depending on the situation. In some cases banned gear can be given. This is usually done when a stakee does not return the money to the stakers. With all these deterents in place their is a strong incentive by players to follow the rules so they can continue to get staked. In essence what the poker staking sites have done is create an honor system that works well. This system was a big hurdle for me in getting involved in online poker staking.

Another reason why I got involved in poker staking is for the profit of course. As an investment poker staking can provide a better return then most traditional forms of investments. For instance stocks have a long term investment of about 10% annually. To put this into perspective, if you invest $1000 in various stocks that gives you a 10% annual return, it will take about 7 years to double that. That works out to be a return of $143 a year. With the reality of todays stock market you would be very lucky to find a 10% annual return. To compare with poker staking, your annual ROI could be much higher. I read a thread on parttimepoker discussing annual return versus monthly return. The average monthly ROI of the OP in this thread is about 8%, which works out to be about a 92% ROI annually. If you look through more threads you will notice this number is not uncommon, if you are choosing your investments wisely. Not only does poker staking have a better ROI, it is easier to research your investments. When buying stocks in a company you can find information on them that the company provides. As we all know they like to tailor their information to inflate their value. When investing in a player you can find out every game he has played as well as his ROI. You can also ask questions to players and watch their games. You can't watch companies at work unless you are Warren Buffett who can afford to fly there. As you can see this was one of the main reasons I was drawn to poker staking.

Another reason to get involved in poker staking is to invest idle money. Depending on the game you are playing you are only playing a certain percentage of your money at any given time. Even players who multitable more than 16 tables can only have a certain percentage of their money in play. If you have 60% of your money just sitting there idle, why not have someone grow it for you. As of this moment I have about 80% of my bankroll invested which does not leave me much to play poker with. But I could always get staked and use my bankroll for staking others. I think this is a better use of my time and money. It is a good feeling knowing you dont have to grind to grow your bankroll. Allowing others to play with your money will allow you to buy into more games than you would if you were only playing with your money, which brings me to my final point.

Your worst enemy in poker is variance. As you know poker is a game for the long run. The more games or hands you play the more skill will take effect. If you look at a graph of a good player with 100 games played you will see many bumps in that graph. If you look at a graph of a good player with 10,000 games you will see an almost perfectly straight positive line. Poker staking allows you to get involved in more games at once, thus allowing you to reduce the luck factor providing you choose your investments correctly.

As you can see there are many reasons to get involved in poker staking. Poker staking has become mainstream in the online poker world thanks to online poker staking sites creating a system of trust among players. Thus poker staking has become more common and in my opinion has made poker more profitable overall. So if you are new to poker staking please feel free to post any questions or comments you have. For those of you who are already involved in poker staking on a small scale I encourage you to stake more and stake more often. Thank you for reading.

Poker staking (Bankroll status)

Well I'm getting close to having 80% of my bankroll staked out. I was having trouble finding some low risk BAPs. I created a thread on PTP discussing the current trends in BAPs. I was noticing more high risk BAPs than low risk BAPs. Low and behold shortly after I was able to find some good low risk BAPs. Since my bankroll is getting close to being staked out to where I want it, this will slow down on the amount of BAPs' I will be investing in. As a result I will be a bit more picky in what BAP's I will choose.

Currently I am down from my original bankroll. I don't have specific data yet. Unfortunately, I am having a few issues with my data, which I'm ironing out. Once that is fixed I will be posting my bankroll results in more detail.

I'm not too worried about a slow start. The thing I have to realise is this still involves poker. As you all may have experienced, poker is a game of variance. I'm confident my investments are sound. One thing I have been doing that has improved my skill in choosing BAPs is viewing posts by players who are having trouble selling their BAPs. I review their BAP and give them an honest opinion from an investors point of view. Sometimes I find a good BAP to invest in. It's little things like this I believe will improve my ROI over time. By the way if you ever want an honest opinion on a BAP you are trying to sell, then feel free to post it here in the comments. You can post the link here or break it down in point form. I will be only too happy to help you improve your BAP. Thanks for reading.

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.