Money 2 A Million

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

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 5:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.