The FTP balances

Christmas bonuses are not really relevant for professional poker players.  Even recreational players don't equate the holiday season with poker unless there happens to be a great tournament they can make around that time or the extra time off they might get from their day jobs gives them extra playing time.

This year, however, anyone who has a balance on Full Tilt Poker (formerly known, at best, as a balance in limbo) might be feeling like a Christmas bonus is coming their way.  Many, if not most, of the on-line players who had money on FT when the ground fell out from under us courtesy of the U.S. Department of Justice shut-down, had gradually stopped thinking of their balance as real money as the reality of the big freeze took hold.  The loss sank in more quickly for some, but it was painful for all.

And now, TA DAH!  The official announcement has finally come that balances will be repaid, and we can be done with hints, inklings and speculation at long last - at least regarding the legitimacy of the PokerStars/Full Tilt deal.  International players have the most clear-cut information at this point: www.pokerstars.co.uk  will be repaying balances in full.  U.S. players have to apply to the U.S. Department of Justice, which is quite a bit more daunting.

But any online player who had a balance on Full Tilt now finds their balance changing colors - again.  If they had money on the site, they were in the black.  Losing that balance put them in the red.  Now come the shades of grey.  Some view it as 'found' money and have said they'll splurge with it.  Some have 2010 tax debts that must be paid (or repaid).  Many are saying they plan to leave their balances on Full Tilt because 'the best poker software in the world run by the best poker business in the world' will be their best bet.  But the resounding feeling from all players is 'Tis the season to be jolly!'.

Poker in Prague

The city of Prague is home to many wonders, ancient and modern.  Some of the newest:
The infamous Ice Bar atop the Hilton Hotel - where the customers all look like Jedi knights once they're wrapped up in the hooded cloaks the bar provides.  Though I'm not sure Yoda would approve of the 'Minus 9', the most popular cocktail the bar serves: vodka, cranberry juice and elderberry syprup, served in a beaker made entirely of ice, as is most everything else in this balcony bar overlooking the city.

Fancy hurtling down a mountain at 62km?  The Prague Bobsleigh track begins gently enough but the pace picks up very quickly as you ride on your little sled down and down through eight looping curves.  There is a handbreak and helmet provided for the more sensible adventurist.
But possibly the most exciting experience Prague offers in 2012 is the MindSports Festival in November/December.  On offer will be Scrabble, eSports, Backgammon, Bridge, Risk and a stunning three weeks of poker events.

The Prague Poker Festival will take place 26th November through 16th December at the King's Casino and 5-star Corinthia Hotel.  Numerous titles are on offer here including World Poker Tour, PokerStars European Poker Tour and the Grand Series of Poker Live.

The WPT main event will start with day 1A on 3rd December and run through the 9th.  They've included 3 starting days for this 3300euro entry event.
The EPT main even will follow starting on 9th December through the 14th - a six day event with an entry fee of 5300euro for which structures will be published later this month.

The GSOP live begins their 1000 + 100 euro main event on 12th December for four days of play ending on the 15th.

The World Sit 'n' Go Masters kicks off the Prague Poker Festival on 27th November with a 2,200euro entry, four day event.  Another notable is the Kings High Roller two day event with an entry fee of 20k euro running 7th and 8th December.  888, win365 and PokerTraveller all have events lined up as well (many of which have entry fees around 500euro) to make this festival a fantastic reason to visit Prague and experience as many wonders as you can handle.

Carl "The Dean" Sampson plays poker at www.pokerstars.co.uk

Value betting is the key

One of the key areas where players fall down in no limit play is by not extracting the full value from their hands or as much value as they possible could. Let us say that the total possible losses in poker amount to $500,000 per year while the total possible gains amount to the same.

A good player may reduce those losses by $100,000 over the space of a year and come close to maximising their value and have $450,000 in gains. This leaves them with a net plus of $50,000 in profits. Poker is about maximising the value that you get from winning hands. If you do not try to do this all the time and you are merely "satisfied" with winning pots then you will stagnate as a poker player.

Quite often you will need to value bet in spots where other players may fear to bet at all. Like for example if you have 10c-10d and the board is 9-5-2-A-5. If you bet the river then there are many hands that can call you that called on the flop. Hands like top pair or 8-8, 7-7 and 6-6. If you do not like the thought of betting fully for value then you can dovetail the number of hands that beat you to the size of your value bet. So however thin or thick your value is can be tailored to your value bet size.

Come and play poker with The Dean at www.pokerstars.co.uk

Making a living from poker

Is it possible for a player to make a living from poker with almost no money? Well that depends on the player and how good they are. The answer to the question is "yes" but that comes down to how good the player is and not how much they have has a bankroll.

A strong NLHE player will be able to use a 20 buy in bankroll at say NL50 which is only $1000. Even a mediocre winning reg who won say $5/100 hands would make $15/hour plus rakeback and sign up bonuses.

Adding rakeback and sign up bonuses would add another $5/hour and so a mediocre winning player could make $20/hour. For a 50 hour working week then this equates to $1000/week and $50,000/year. This is not the kind of money to make you rich but we are talking about money that at least 99% of the online poker playing population couldn't earn.

In fact there is no way that even 1% of the playing population were earning $50,000+. With a global poker population of around 50 million then 1% is 500,000 people. So if 500,000 people were taking $50,000 or more from the economy then the entire online industry couldn't sustain those losses. That equates to $25 billion. I would be surprised if even one player in a thousand made $50k from playing online poker.

Carl "The Dean" Sampson plays poker at www.pokerstars.co.uk

The World of Professional Poker Part 2

The 2000 WSOP winner Chris “Jesus” Ferguson renowned as one of the best players in the world once went 18 months without seriously cashing. If players as good as that can experience runs like that then what price the lesser players. It is why behind the scenes, players are constantly swapping pieces of each other in tournaments and doing deals that the public never get to see. Then we have the mystery financial backers that are behind a lot of professional players, these are the guys that make the money without even playing poker as long as they tag on to a good enough player.

In short, the named players do not need money because they know that they can get it from somewhere or someone. If a player had to finance themselves these days to play on the circuit, there would be hardly any big name players. The top players know how demanding tournament poker can be and is why they frown on the publicity thrown on certain players all because they have won a tournament or two. They know that the reverse can easily happen and especially in some of these tournaments with speeded up structures where literally anyone can win if they are aggressive enough and have enough gamble to try and amass a big stack.

But the way that poker is promoted and marketed, it advertises BIG tournaments with BIG prize money to lure players into the game in the same way that the National Lottery attracts people to buy lottery tickets by making the jackpot well into seven figures. They know that if they spread the prize money more evenly that many people would lose interest once they knew that even if they did win that the amount would not be a life changing sum of money. But players perceive that they are in with a shot of winning these tournaments but for the vast majority of them, this is an illusion.

You will no doubt have heard of the term “dead money”. It is a term used by the pro’s to indicate the players in the tournaments that have no chance…it is just a polite way of saying it. But if you asked one hundred players if they viewed themselves as the “dead money”, how many would say yes? But when one of them gets lucky by winning one of them by overcoming astronomical odds then they are touted as the next poker superstar. Look out for part 3 of this series coming soon.

Play poker with The Dean at www.pokerstars.co.uk/poker/getting-started/free-poker/

The World of Professional Poker part 1

I want to lift the lid on just what professional poker actually is in 2012 and to wipe away the crap and the smokescreen that is created. The reason that I have included this topic in my blog is very simple. During your poker life, you will be constantly bombarded by pictures and stories about all things poker on TV, websites and magazines and such. Some of it is good stuff and some of it is not so good.

Something can be bad in many different ways, it can be bad if it is misleading and someone is trying to learn from that piece of material. In fact MIS-LEADING is probably a better phrase for the image of the poker world seen through the eyes of the average person. Let me tell you a few home truths about tournament poker. There are not many players making it pay operating solely on their own and this is not my opinion but common knowledge within the industry.

What the successful professionals are doing that you hear about is cushioning their participation by other means. Many of them have big sponsorship deals from magazines and poker sites that actually pay for or heavily subsidise their tournament buy ins. Any player that plays on the big circuit needs at least $650,000 in buy ins alone every year, add to this the air fares and hotel expenses and everything else that goes with it and it is approaching a million dollars.

A player has to win close to a million dollars a year just to BREAK EVEN. If they have a bad year then they could very rapidly get into serious financial difficulty of which many actually have. A couple of years ago, a big name World Series of Poker bracelet winner had to pawn their bracelet in a Las Vegas pawn shop because they were skint. The entire thing was kept under wraps and to avoid any embarrassment for the player, I will not name him as I know people who are good friends with him. But these stories are common in the poker world, the variance in these big tournament fields these days is frightening. I will going deeper into this topic in part 2 and so look out for that.

Come and play poker with Carl at www.pokerstars.co.ukhttp://www.pokerstars.co.uk/poker/how-to-play/strategy/

I can still play this game you know

It has been a while since I last posted but I have been busy of late playing more poker than I have in ages. In fact I have had a change of strategy since Christmas and I have been playing more deep stack games.

That has seen my earn rate rocket because of the fact that I have not been handicapped by the minimum stack regulars. In actual fact I have doubled my earn rate from around $45 per hour to around $80 per hour multi-tabling NL100 full ring. I have had a fantastic three month period and made around £10,000 in that time and so I am pretty pleased with how things have been going.

It is pretty difficult to put any tracker stats on my earn rate because I largely haven’t been using one as I have built up the number of tables to 12 and that has been going very well. Yesterday I won a massive 300bb pot with J-J. I open raised from early position and a A-Qs called as did pocket tens on the button. The flop came K-J-10 which was pretty sick as I knew that short of someone having A-Q that I had the lead. I bet out and the next player raised and the button shoved all in.

I called only to hope that the board paired but obviously not the ten as that gave the guy with tens quads. The turn card was another king and so I have jacks over kings and the straight is dead. River card bricks out and I win a huge pot and that has been a while since that happened. In fact I got AA vs KK twice during the same session and also managed not to lose my buy in with KK vs AA as well. The total session win was around five buy-ins which is huge considering how tightly I play! Now that my earn rate is higher then I should hopefully be playing more.

Come and join me at www.pokerstars.co.uk/poker/getting-started/free-poker/