Money 2 A Million

It is very difficult to decide how to calculate my net worth with my US holdings (poker account and Paypal). Technically, it changes every day with the exchange rate. Of course it is impractical to change it every day so I will update periodically based on the current rate. So far I have been treating Canadian and US cash at par, but the Canadian dollar has been slipping this past year and is now only worth 77 cents US. Until further notice, my US holdings will be estimated at a rate of 1 US dollar=1.3 Canadian Dollars. Now that I have my visa bill, I can see the exact amount the $600 US was in Canadian dollars. It looks like I overshot a little bit since I have some cash currently tied up in watches. I can’t think of anything to do here, but represent my cash account as a negative number. When I finally withdrawl from my poker account, or if I sell some watches, this will be offset.

I have been thinking of what strategy to employ in my next doubling step.  So far, the overwhelming bulk of my double money has come from buying and selling things.  My first $400-ish came in the first four months (if you include the One Green Paper Flip money); the second $400 took two entire years.  Two years!  I think a big reason for this is that I wanted to shift my focus to something other than buying and selling things.  So I looked at internet marketing.  I have had some minor success with this, but certainly nothing worthy of the next level, or even the past few levels.  The only other thing that has brought me a mentionable amount of income has been my poker winnings.  In reading my blogs, I can see that over the past two and a half years I have done quite well poker-wise. I calculate that if I was able to play every night for two months, I would have completed my doubling level in two months instead of two years.  I’m willing to try this new direction since it appears to be working.  That’s right - I plan to double my next level via internet poker.  I have purchased a poker book for $37.33 as an investment - It is called Harrington on Hold ‘em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play and is supposed to be one of the ‘poker bibles’ for tournament play.

But wait Flip - Aren’t the odds against you on internet poker, just like the casino’s?  Actually, no - or at least not necessarily.   At a typical casino game, the odds are against you since if they weren’t, the casino couldn’t turn a profit.  In the case of an online poker site, the house takes a small payment out of the buy-ins (called a rake).  The odds of you winning or not has nothing to do with the casino and everything to do with the people you are playing.  As long as you are better than them, and can win enough to compensate for the rake, you will make money on average.  If that is true then the more you play, the more you will make (on average).  But wait Flip - how can you be sure you will be better than them.  Well, first of all, you can decide what level you play.  A game that costs $100 to buy into will have a lot better poker players at it than a game that costs $1 to buy into.  I just have to find the right level for my skill level.  I also have an Ace in the hole if you will.  I have a friend who knows poker.  When I say that he knows it is an understatement.  He has qualified for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) for three out of the past four years.  He has made quite a bit of money on line and has agreed to review my hand histories as I play (The poker site will record everything that happens from your view and store it as a text file on your computer).  That is a HUGE advantage - trust me.  There is one more very important factor that brought me to the conclusion to try internet poker, and that is the fact that most poker sites will try to lure you to thier site by offering a bonus if you sign up with them instead of thier competitors.  I have signed up for a site that offers a 100%, $600 bonus, which means if I play enough games (and that will be a lot of games), then they will match whatever I deposit up to $600 (see banner below).  I have deposited the full $600, so even if I break even on my play I will still make $600.  Of course I may find out that I have no business being on this site and lose all my double money, but that is what this project is all about - taking calculated risks with ‘play money’ in order to try things I never would have tried in the past.

I have actually played a few games already.  I played a few ‘play money’ games, which I apparently played horribly according to my friend.  He was right of course - I was being thrown off by the wild and insane play that play money brings.  I decided to just start and have played 4  $1+$0.25 (the $0.25 is the rake) games and have lost out on two, but won the other two, for a net profit of $4.  I think after I get comfortable I will be able to play in the $10+1 games - any higher than that and I wouldn’t have enough money to play.  I’ll get into bankroll management in another post.  I’m excited that this project has taken on a new direction for a while.  I’ll keep you updated.

As a final note - I should mention that online poker can be a very dangerous and addictive thing.  I have confidence that I will be disciplined enough to be conservative with my bankroll and keep an eye out for addictive behaviour.  Please don’t play if you think you might get sucked in.  Remember - I have a WSOP qualifier critiquing my hands - do you?

Play Online Poker

I have FINALLY doubled up to the next level. Since I overshot it a bit, I will start from there. I am now on $866 to $1732, which is between step 16 and 17 on the ‘normal’ double up charts. I am 11 doubles away from a million dollars! I can taste it now! There were a few things I had been delinquent in updating, like some pay per post payments and some interest from the money2amillion bank account, but the thing that pushed me over the edge was a HUGE night at poker last night. There were two games for $10 each. The first game I was down and out - only had 3 chips left (one a big one) and was all in against two pair, on a flush draw with a gutshot (means I needed the middle card in a straight). Turn was rags, but BAM! my five hit on the river and I never looked back. I ended up chopping, tied for first for a $20 gain. Next game was $10 again with 5 players. First place won an extra $25, which ended up being yours truly. So a $45 gain for $10 poker. Not bad. Now that I have doubled up finally, I will start thinking about what my strategy will be for this level.
Flip

Looking for a good cash back site?  Check out Ebates where you can get some good cell phone rebate and other offers. It’s simple - shop through their site and they will give you cash back - up to twenty five percent! How is this possible? Easy - the merchants pay Ebates for the people they send their way and then Ebates shares these payments with you!  They pay via paypal, but if you don’t have an account, no problem.  They will also send you a cheque.  But that’s not all - Ebates also agressively hunts down deals and coupons for you so you can save on both ends of the deal.  Check it out!

I’ve been paid another $5 from Pay Per Post. Again - you have to be careful because Google will lower your page rank to 0 if they find out - not good for internet marketers. But for now I am $5 closer to my goal.

Flip

Ever wonder where visitors to your blog are coming from? Do they use a proxy server (a way to hide who/where they are)? Well, the folks at ip2location.com have come up with a solution to that problem using a propriety IP / proxy list database. They can tell you your visitors country, region, city, latitude, longitude, ZIP code, time zone, connection speed, ISP and domain name, IDD country code, area code and even their weather station code, all with only the IP address they are using and without invading their privacy (it’s legal!). This is invaluable information to an internet marketer as this enables you to focus your advertising campaigns to the geographical areas that are interested in your products. Imagine not knowing that India was bonkers over your latest product? With this bit of software, you will know that there is a billion person market you were perhaps not previously focusing on. Really, this should be part of any internet marketer’s arsenal. Just to give you a taste of what this software is capable of, I have added two free tools (provided by ip2location.com) to this blog post. The first will detect whether the visitor is currently using anonymous or open proxy server. If normal IP address detected, it will show the “OK” message. If anonymous proxy server detected, it will show the “PROXY” message. The second tool allows you to type in an IP address. When you click ‘search’, the software will return the database information for the IP address. Easy as pie. Check it out!

I was paid $5 for the Nov 19th post below entitled, “Great site for Blog Posts”.  There are many sites that offer payment for posting, but you must be careful as Google has been actively looking for posts like this.  If they discover it they will lower you page rank, which for an internet marketer is certain death.  If I end up starting another blog, I won’t put any ads like this, but this one is already blacklisted so I might as well keep posting them.

Flip

There is so much professionally produced media out there that is not commercially distributed. The guys over at Unicorn Media realized this and decided to start a site that promotes unsigned bands, musicians and independent filmmakers with their high quality Online Videos and audio.  Check them out - some of them are actually really good, and best of all, they are free!  If you are an artist, you will definitely want to check this site out as it is one of the few that seem to provide this service with such high quality (think of how poor quality You Tube videos are).    Also check out their blog at www.unicornsightings.com

Well, it looks like all my poker winnings are finally catching  up with me.  I played again last night.  I came third in the first game, which earned me my money back and fourth in the second game which won me a sore ego.  Me and my friend were the big stacks and we were on the bubble (which means that once the next person is eliminated then everyone else is in the money).  I had Ace-King unsuited which is really good.  The other big stack went all in and I called.  Turns out he had Ace King suited (diamonds) and ended up hitting his flush.  Ouch.  That means minus $10 for the Money2aMillion Fund.  Not the direction I should be headed.  Oh well, if I can take my winnings I can take my losses.  That’s poker.

Flip

I had some work friends over for poker the other day.  Should have been easy pickings, but I lost both $10 games.   That’s -$20 for the Money2aMillion fund, but no worries.  I’ve made much more than that on poker.  I also expect $5 in the future for the post below.  Not much, but every bit counts.  I also won $20 at dice, but I had decided that this was going to be with my ‘real’ money so it doesn’t count.