Black Friday

The laws of the state I live in have always made playing poker on line risky but Black Friday sealed the deal for me.  I had been keeping only few dollars on Full Tilt when they pulled the plug but my success in play chip play was remarkable.  In about 14K hands I went from $1,000 to over $5 million, nearly 7 big bets per 100 hands (two BB per 100 is considered crushing a game).  The competition in play chip wasn't stellar but on the serious poker sites like FT many of the real money players also play for play chips and most complete neophytes stick to the games on Facebook and such.

I had been meeting with some mild success at the local card rooms in town.  My studies, success at play chip play and finally Black Friday led to me decide to take a crack at maintaining a bankroll and tracking my results in live play.  I found an ap for my Iphone called Poker Income Pro.  I can enter all the details of a live session and my cash out amount at the end of a session.  It will keep track of my bankroll, win rate and can graph out my results in a lot of ways.  For example, I can see what card rooms and days of the week are most profitable for me.

My first run at this was a disaster.  I was terribly under funded.  I was playing 4-8 and 3-6 with only a $300 bankroll.  I'd dwindle down to about $50 and make a $200 deposit only to watch that go up in smoke.  My lack of skill, tilt factor and variance doomed me.  In a fit of hopelessness I gave up.

Some woodshedding and a few winning sessions a few months ago persuaded me to try setting up a bankroll again.  This time I saved up $800 with the expectation that I could easily loose half of that in the first couple weeks.  It's impossible to say "how well" I'm doing now with such a small sample size.  As of today I've only logged 32 hours.  This time next year I'll take an honest look at things (if I'm not broke by then).  I think I've armed myself with a couple tools that give me a better shot than my last adventure. I'll write a bit about some of those in the next week or two.