john banks

Ditto but with guarantee that I get my capital back

LG John

I’d be very confident that I could do it – as sure as sure can be really.

I’d play (as I always do) on a site with rakeback (which awards you a percentage of the rake taken of you at the tables back each month). Full-time play at NL£2/5 (known as NL£500) would generate enough rakeback per month to outstrip my current income as a planner. Therefore if I broke even on the tables for the year I’d have sustained my current lifestyle and you’d have lost/gained nothing. For full-time pro play I always assume an average of 30 hours a week for 40 weeks of the year (thus 1200 hours). If you assume a very modest win-rate of 3bb/100 hands then I’d make 3x£5 or £15/100. At around 350 hands an hour on average (about right for 4-5 tabling) that’s £52.5 an hour or £63,000 a year This of course assumes no big multi-table tournament wins and that I don’t move up to NL£1000 at any point, which I probably would.

FWIW my average bb/100 over the last 90,000 hands I’ve played is around 6.something/100 and that includes some horror runs.



P.S. I can’t wait for the next inevitable question from someone

LG John

John, with 100x the buyin any good winning player should have a very, very low risk of ruin. This is especially so if they don't have a monster Standard Deviation (which I don't). However, if a person is actually a long-term losing player then no bankroll will ever be enough!! You can even reverse the maths to countdown to bust If a player was spewing money away at 3bb/100 then he'd blow £63k a year!!!

Just as an interesting aside, short term variance in poker can be frightening from a statistical point of view. I've booked a number of 15,000 hand runs as a break even or marginal losing player. I know I'm a winning player overall and such downswings are just par for the course. However, if you consider that in a bricks n' mortar casino/card room you'd only get through around 30 hands an hour then that is the equivellent of a winning player making no money/losing money for 500 hours or 5 months if you play 25h a week!!!! It happens! Prior to the internet solid pro poker players could, and did, go on year long bad runs - its a true testiment to their self-discapline that they could get through that and still play a good game. Online you could put a run like that to bed in about a week! Oh, and the reverse is true - so when you are at the casino and some guy is schooling you because he's been winning for 3 months straight playing a few nights a week take it with a large pinch of salt - he could still be utter sh*t

Mitchy260

Surely if you were so confident in your abilities, you'd take out say a £25k unsecured loan and 'invest' it into your poker playing skills

Lets assume doubling your £££ each year.

50k at year 1
100k at year 2
200k at year 3
400k at year 4
800k at year 5
1.6 million at year 6

So give it 6 yrs SB and you could have invested that 25k into 1.6m.

No property is going to give you that amount of profit

So why not give it a try if your so confident, or are my examples above ludicrous??

SiPie

Mitchy

You've missed previous threads on here where this has been debated in depth and I'm certain that Kenny is on the brink of doing this full time, hence his knowledge

Cheers

Jerome

I can't believe gambliing as a method is being discussed seriously whereas the sure fire method of doubling your money - property - has barely been touched on.

Surely house prices will double in 2 years, because there is unlimited capacity for people to buy houses at any price. 25 times salary mortgage anyone?

LG John

^^^THERE'S THE QUESTION^^^

Right, (deep breath),

The reason I won't take a loan out for it is that I'm risk averse. Borderline very risk averse! I don't dive into things and even if there is only a VERY small chance that something will go wrong I'll not risk putting myself into debt with that chance in place. If I took out a £20k loan over 6 years it would cost around £330 a month. Straight away that's a drain on my poker finances per month but that's not the big concern. The big concern is if I spectacularly failed for whatever reason - I'd spend 6 years paying for that mistake!!

I'd rather, and I'm planning to, make the £20k first from part-time play and thus if I fail I'd have no debt and I'd lie to all employers and explain my year career gap as 'world travel'. I could put it down to experience but not suffer the penalties for years to come. This is why if someone approached me with a staking arrangement I couldn't and wouldn't guarantee their capital. If I was willing to do that I might as well have spunked the £20k loan I got for the S2000 2 years ago on poker.

With regards to your projected income you assume that its always possible to proportionally reinvest in the system (poker) and achieve £ for £ the same result. This is not possible. In my example I talked of full time play at NL£500. At NL£1000 the players are harder so you'd probably not make double the win-rate despite doubling the stake. Then when you get to NL£2000 you are in the same boat again but with a new problem. You simply won't be able to play 4-5 tables of NL£2000 for anywhere near 30 hours a week as there won't be tables full for that long. That said I remember only a few years ago NL£1000 was the TOP game online and now there is NL£8000 and some massive buy in tables on the $$$ sites. Who knows, maybe 5 years from now getting a game at NL£5000 or something would be easy and you'll not even be playing the top level with the top players as they will be playing NL£50,000 with £5million in front of them at any one time!

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

I would love to see my missus face when she spots 50 grand is missing form the joint account,

Cue missus, looking, worried and angry,

'Why is the account missing 50 grand'

'Cos I have invested it'

'What in, you better not lose it'

'I won't, it's fine, I have given it to a bloke I met on the internet, he is called Saxo Boy and he is going to use it to play poker and win so we have 100 grand !, fantastic isnt it !'

Thud as missus expires onto the floor.


I would say, pick a particular car, Say Mini's and research them to death, buy and sell them, a mate of mine from school got very rich doing this with Lotus Carltons, he reckoned that 90% of the LC's in the country had been through his company.

LG John

LMAO

Incidently, I have staked a player myself once. My ex-flatemate adam was short on poker money until the 1st April just past (bonus from work) so he asked me to stake him $800. I know he's a solid winning player so for 6 weeks I just let him got on with it and he's transfering $1396 back to me this eveing. As far as ROI goes I'm pretty chuffed

Olly

OK lets clarify things a bit:

Already do the property thing, but currently got a bit of a "lame duck" cottage, and the tenants have asked me if it they could buy it: the capital gains I would pay is equivalent to the money i would have to spend on it in the next couple of years.

So against my better judgement I am considering a sale. Don't tell Petem95

Poker sounds like fun Kenny, but I am generally a bit too stupid for that, plus I like sunlight and fresh air too much

Not averse to hard work, as long as it doesn't affect my day job. Miracles don't happen.

Not averse to risk, although would prefer not to lose the original capital.

And suggestions of drug selling, roulette wheels and curry recipies are all highly amusing :rolleyes, but not exactly was I was looking for. Sorry.

Any more ideas?

john banks

Maybe you've partly explained, but why can't you just play with a £50k float in a single game, and you'll make money faster? They do more exciting things in the average Bond movie. Presumably if you play with enough funds then the time playing will be cut dramatically?

davyboy

Surely if he 'was' any good, he's not be short?

It almost sounds like a no lose way of doing business with better returns that nearly anything else.

....I mean why wouldn't you do it full time?

I bet there something you're not telling us, or admitting to yourself.

Gamblers Anonymous in the UK

Join before it's too late

john banks

If I had a strategy that worked and was say 90% likely to leave me sitting on a huge gain after a given number of sessions I would risk all my capital over that number of sessions. I would want higher than 90% if it wasn't my own money though

EddScott

My boss doubled his money playing with Indian Warrants last year in a few weeks (was only 5K to 10K though). Not 100% on how they work but he did well.

Mind you, he only likes to talk about his successful buying.

LG John

John, the reason nobody with half a brain would do that is because poker, just like stocks n' shares, and pretty much any other investment carries a degree of short term risk - look at my 15,000 hand downswing examples above! There are games on the internet where you could sit down with £50,000 in front of you. Let's say you did that and in the first hand you get dealt AA and get into a raising war with another player that covers your stake. The chips go in preflop and the cards are turned over. He has KK and trails your AA by around 75%. By showdown he's picked up a king and you are screwed! A 25% chance of being flat broke in one hand - no thanks!

Davy, my mate enjoys his day job and plays part-time for extra cash. His problem is that he regularly cashes out his winnings to buy stuff, etc and thus he never gets going. If you remember i said I could turn £50k into £100k in 20 weeks of full-time play. However, by the same logic it would take me as long to turn £500 into £1000 playing full-time with the same bankroll rules. My mistake for a long time was I kept cashing money out of poker for other stuff such as a holiday and part-payment on a car. I blew up £4000 worth of Peugeot 406's and bought an S2000 in a 6 month period - I cashed in my entire bankroll to do that. As much as I absolutely LOVED the S2000 I do regret doing that. It's taken me most of that time just to slowly grind back to where I was!!

Don't worry Davy. I actually hate gambling. In fact, the ONLY bet I've put on outside of poker in the last 3 years was a football bet this weekend. The only reason I did it is because the bookies had not priced the game correctly in my opinion. I lost the bet but I'm not bothered as it was the right bet and I'd make it again. They got the price wrong and offered an advantage to me the punter. This is very rare though and generally I leave all forms of gambling well alone. I'll not even stick a spare £1 in a puggy.

With regards to the last hand of Casino Royale the chances of that happening are less than Elvis and Hilter arriving together in an alien space craft to seize control of the earth! A nut flush into a full house, into the nut-full house into a straight-flush IIRC - LMFAO Billions to one!

LG John

Of course you would but you are well established. You have a solid profession as back up and prior to pulling out of the property market you had paid off your mortgage IIRC and almost certainly had a number of other nest eggs.

Would you take the same risk if you had just remortgaged (and stretched yourself to do it) had an outstanding car loan and generally speaking your disposible income each month was not enough to save serious money. If I knew I had a roof over my head and food on my plate each day I'd chuck every penny I could lay my hands on into poker. But I can't take undue risks with the house!

LG John

Theoretically though if I sold up my house paid off my loan and mortgage I'd probably have a reasonable capital sum left over to go for it. I could then rent a cheap *** place with broadband and get stuck in. I fear change though....and I llike my house I'd rather mastermind it all from my own spare room

john banks

Did you blow up BOTH 406s?

20 weeks work to turn £50k into 100k - may as well go and be an IT contractor and just make that with no risk and no up front capital?

If you could take the next 20 weeks and turn your 100k into 200k then it would get worthwhile.

john banks

I would take the 90% risk on my present pot - ie house equity and savings. If I got the 10% unlucky risk I'd just start saving again and keep doing the day job. If you have a reliable job then you can afford to lose your house if the upside gains are THAT good?

LG John

Hey, on the topic of investments - where's imlach these days!! He's usually the first to saxo bash when I talk about poker (or anything for that matter)

LG John

Technically no, the timing belt snapped on the 2nd one. Blow up is easier than typing engine failure though

Turning the £100k into £200k in the 2nd half of the year can and has been done. But you are definately going to have to venture into waters with some of the best online poker players in the world though. Rory Mathews is a young (20) lad from Edinburgh that turned his £100k bankroll into over £300k in about a year. I've not talked to him in a while but I'm quietly confident he's over £600k now (probably well over to be honest). He did buy a new 911 turbo

You are absolutely right. At the moment though your pot is pretty liquid as I understand and thus it would be easier to do. In fact, I sense you are constantly looking for new places to put your money since you lost faith in the housing market. On the other hand what little money I have it tied up in the house and short of selling there is no way to get at it. If I was a plunge sort of guy I probably would sell up given the reward but having just done it up, I like the house. So does Laura, she'd never agree to that. It'll take me longer building capital part-time but I'm confident I'll get there

Incidently if you want a very interesting read on short-term poker variance and players with real gambling problems read this blog. It was written by a teenager from Wales with massive gambling problems. He ran a few hundred up to over £160,000 in under a year and then blew the lot. His bankroll management was somewhat questionable. Some of the UK's best online players scream at him in the comments to change his ways but he doesn't listen and completely crumbles. Please, please, please do not take this guy as a roll model. His blog shows what can be done with poker his style was not sustainable

Norman D. Landing

I'll play the imlach role if you like.

I'm sure your maths are spot on, but can you explain how a 'win rate of around 3bb/100 hands' (assuming you are referring to big blinds) works out at a profit?

If, for example, you're playing on 10 man tables and your BB is say £5, then after 100 hands you'd have stumped a minimum of £50 and probably more and won (3bb/100) £15, more if there were any empty seats for a while.

Doesn't sound like a profit to me but then I'm sure I've misunderstood you.

PS I turned $98 (A deposit of £50) into $332 this weekend in just 2 single table sit and go's and one cash table after taking just $20 in. By my reckoning that makes me a better player than you ! (But I wont go into my long term results)

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

6 months to make a piffling 50k, I am not disputing your methods Kenny but could you really wait 6 months working 6 hours a day just to make 50k, surely a half decent poker player could make that amount in a few hands!

I couldn't as I have no idea how to play poker.

LG John

In poker terms when we refer to profit in terms of bb/100 then we are talking about the money we make after all subtractions derived from the game itself. Posting the blinds isn't actually how you bleed money in poker to the sites because that stays amongst the players and everyone takes an equal turn to post. It's rake that kills most poker players! When you win a £200 pot you really don't care too much about that £2 rake but believe me it mounts up! There are many players that can technically beat the 'average' player out there but can't do so by a margin that allows them to beat the rake and thus they are losing players overall. A winning player must be able to beat the other players and the rake over a sustained period of time.

Wurzel, £50k in a 6 months works out at £100k tax free a year for 30 hours a week with 12 weeks holiday. That's surely better than than 99% of the GB population and better than 99.99% of the world population. I don't understand the 'waiting' either - you earn as you go along.

john banks

Kenny, you're right, I am really struggling to invest in anything I believe in strongly at the moment. I'm having a dabble in large cap Japanese companies, but they seem to get the jitters with any bad news that comes out of the US. I struggle to think of much else that hasn't already had a mad run. Few seem to believe in risk any more, and credit at all levels is inflating speculative bubbles everywhere. I'm feeling quite negative about UK property, US property is already crashing taking subprime lenders with it, UK/US stock markets have had a long bull run now. BRIC markets and commodities may have more to go, but the spectacular recent growth suggests caution to me. M4 money supply is getting pumped up like a cartoon character and interest rates are suspiciously low for most people's inflation levels (last time RPI was 4.6% interest rates were much higher). Gordon has milked everything and now there's nothing left.

LG John

What about property abroad? It would no doubt take a considerable amount of research and time to establish where they are but there must be some countries where property investment is as safe a bet as it was in the UK 10 years ago.

Why not just buy a Ferrari f430 whilst you figure out what to do. Sure, you'll probably lose £15k in the next 18 months but it would be money well spend IMHO

Luan Pra bang

Why diddn't you lay it on betfair if it was priced wrong. If you can claculate the odds fast enough you should try betfair poker you back or lay anyone of four hands each round of cards trying to pick the winning hand out of 4 on the table. People are generally averse to laying bets which can work in a persons favour if you can do the maths fast enough.

LG John

Actually, I ended up looking at Betfair when I was searching for the best price on oddschecker but I didn't understand what it was all about.

When it comes to poker I know the odds of drawing hands to within 1% within about 5 seconds. Beyond poker though my generally probability calculations are pretty slow. I'm not very strong mathematically.

Surely there isn't a 'game' where you are shown 4 hands and told to bet on which one will win? If that was the case you'd just use an online odds calculator to input the 4 hands and it would tell you to the nearest 0.whatever which is favourite on every street and you could price accordingly. These programes are free and available to everyone.

In relation to poker though such calcuation wouldn't generally be relative to poker play. For example if you have a flush draw on the flop your chances of hitting the flush on the turn or river are approximately 38%. But that's not your chances of winning then hand as your opponents hand is unknown and you are forced to make certain assumptions. If you knew he had bottom two pair then you could hit your flush on the turn and he could river a full-house. Alternatively you might not hit your flush but catch running cards for 3 of a kind or a better two pair. Therefore calculating 'what wins' percentages is different to calculating drawing odds in a real game of poker.

john banks

A lot of property abroad has also been ramped up - Eastern Europe, Spain etc. German or Japanese property might be a good investment perhaps because they've been in the doldrums for quite a while I gather. In many countries where there isn't a crazy cyclical property market like ours based on credit cycles/boom/bust, the long term growth is very modest and seems to be outperformed by equities.

F430 would be fun, but I wouldn't feel I was getting value for money.

GazTheHat

Although Poker is more skill than luck, there's still luck involved. Whilst i make money at the game, i wouldn't use it as a get rich scheme.

Fair play for all your calculations though. I'm impressed!!!!

Big Slick never wins.