Rakeback Vs. FPPs: Which is better?

Rake is the money that the websites or casinos take out of the pot or out of the tournament prize pool to make a profit. At first glance it doesn't seem overwhelmingly significant, but it's like running into the wind. Over a few steps it doesn't make much difference, but over a few miles you'll be more tired and won't be able to go as far. Hopefully this post will help you get more streamlined.

As I mentioned in a few previous posts I've been shifting away from pokerstars to some degree. Pokerstars is still home and I hope I can make it my exclusive place of play again in the future, and perhaps make Supernova Elite again. But for now the games have been so tough that I've been forced to branch out.

I mentioned rake, but what exactly is rakeback? Well, it's a discount. None of the websites offer this discount directly, but rather through a few third party websites who get a piece of the pie as well for promoting the pokersites and drumming up new business. All of the major websites offer rakeback (except pokerstars) and they all offer about 30% give or take a few percentage points.

That means if you play a $55 tournament with $5 in juice then you'll get back $1.50. If you play 1,000 of those tournaments you'd get back $1,500. It's a little trickier with cash games, but as best I understand it anytime you put money in the pot they say you've contributed to the rake. For example let's say you raise preflop and the small blind folds and the big blind calls. You and the big blind go all the way to the showdown, put in a bunch of money and in the end the site takes $3 out of the pot. Even though two of you put in a lot and one player put in a very small amount it all counts equally. You, the SB and BB have each payed $1 in rake and you personally would get 30 cents back. Everyone else in the hand who got dealt in by didn't put in any money on that hand would get nothing in terms of rakeback.

This money piles up and gets deposited into your account either once a week or once a month.

This is a message for the poker players out there who read this blog; YOU'RE THROWING AWAY INSANE AMOUNTS OF MONEY IF YOU AREN'T GETTING RAKEBACK! Read it again. I mean it. You MUST start playing somewhere where you can get rakeback (with pokerstars being the one exception).

I came across a blog of a fellow poker player who played high stakes SNGs. He had made about $5,000 in the past 8 months in the actual SNG tournament play and $200,000 in rakeback and bonuses!!!

For those of you who want to know how you can get on board, let me tell you how to do that now so you don't get bogged down in the rest of this lengthy post. While I know there are other sites the one I use is rakebacknation.com. I don't know if they are the best, but they've paid me on time, I got a response for support in about an hour when I e-mailed a question, and they have deals with all of the major sites (and a few minor ones too). In short I trust them.

If you want to sign up for rakeback with an existing account, you are probably out of luck (although there is an area to submit an existing account for rakeback consideration). But it's worth it to have your spouse or a friend open a new account and then let you use it. Or you can switch sites. I know how easy it is to get comfortable at one site, but there's no reason to limit your game selection and like I keep saying RAKE BACK IS HUGE! There is a calculator on the site that will show you how much you can get back and it seems accurate to me.

If you want to sign up please do so using the referral code: wes1279. Or by clicking on the link below.

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=wes1279

I have no idea what they're going to give me if I sign someone up, but I assume it's not nothing. In fact if you're going to use my magic code (or even if you aren't) please feel free to post any questions you might have in the comments section and I'll help you to the best of my abilities.

I've written a long post already and I haven't even gotten to what the point of this post is supposed to be!

Pokerstars doesn't do rakeback because they have FPPs that are worth something (the other sites have FPPS, or other points for play, but they're not worth nearly as much). But which is better: pokerstars FPP program or rakeback?

Let's start with what it's worth to play on pokerstars. This year I'm going to end up playing about 430,000 hands of $10/$20 and above which is what it takes to generate 600,000 base FPPs. Assuming I did the same next year, as a regular Supernova I'd earn 2,100,000 regular FPPs which would be worth $33,600. I'd also earn $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, and $6,000 milestone bonuses along the way which is a total of $20,000. But each bonus actually costs 50,000 FPPs each (which is kind of a stupid mean trick they play on you) so my FPP total would actually drop by 250,000 to 1,850,000 FPPs which are worth $29,600. So for 430,000 hands of 6 handed $10/$20 I'd get back $49,600.

What could I earn playing 430,000 hands on Absolute poker? There are actually 4 components to the AP bonuses I'd earn. The first is rakeback. I'm not entirely sure about this but my best guess after some limited experimentation is that I'm paying about 28 cents per hand in rake (that includes all hands that I'm being dealt in not just the ones in which I contribute to the pot). So at first glace that looks like 430,000 hands times 28 cents per hand which is $120,400 in rake or $36,120. This is pretty close to what the rakeback calculators tell me I'd make in the amount of time it would take to play that many hands.

But there's actually more to it. The second part of the puzzle is AP's VIP program called FAME. Unlike pokerstars where it took me 365 days of last year to make it to the highest level (Supernova Elite), it took me 2 weeks of playing about half time to make it to the highest level on AP (Diamond Elite).

Playing at the diamond elite level I earn 10 VIP points (I think that's what they're called) every time I play a hand where I put money in the pot which is about half the time. As far as I can tell if I play 100 hands I'll earn something like 450 VIP points. Over the course of 430,000 hands that would be 1,935,000 points which are worth $13,723 (the let you convert points to cash at a rate of 141 points to the dollar). That's actually more significant than I thought! Actually I can only trade in $1,000 a month for cash so I'd have to take $1,723 in merchandise or tournament entries.

But wait! There's more! Rakebacknation runs what they call a "rake race" for their customers. They give out a $4,000 prize pool to the 25 of their customers who pay the most rake on AP each month (there are other rake races for other sites). The player who pays the most rake gets $1,000 with 2nd paying $775, third paying $600 and so on. I don't know much about my long term prospects of winning the rake race, but from what I see right now I like my chances. Last month the winner paid about $8,000 in rake, second place paid $7,000 and third place was in the $4,000 range. My plan above would have me paying $10,000 a month on average. Even not giving it my all I'm in second place for this month and was in first for a while. I expect that I could win the rake race at least half the time and finish in the top 3 or 4 every time. Let's call that $9,000.

Amazingly there is even more! AP also offers frequent reload bonuses. In fact there have been 5 days in the past two weeks where they offered a bonus if you made a deposit that day. For example on the 29th of last month they would match 65% of your deposit up to $150 if you entered a code that was advertised right in the lobby. So I deposited $400 and got $150 in bonus money. This money gets released in $5 increments as you earn points. In practice it takes me about 100 hands to release $5. In total I've deposited $2,260 and gotten $1,350 in bonus money. It's going to take me a total of 27,000 hands to release all of that money, so it's far from instant cash, but it's real money and in the end I'm going to get it.

If these past two weeks were typical (which I doubt a little) then I'll be adding 5 cents a hand to my profits (or a little over 15% more to my rakeback) all year long! That would be another $21,500 over the course of 430,000 hands. I think they can get away with offering so many deposit bonuses because they make it hard to cash out. You can't take any money out within 48 hours of a deposit and they have fees for withdawls (which I think is B.S.)

So in total I'd be looking at $36,120 in rakeback, $13,723 in points and $9,000 in rake race for a total of $58,843. That's pretty close to pokerstars, but if you add in the deposit bonanza it's going to look more like $75,000-$80,000 (depending on the size and frequency of the reload bonuses) in rewards. That is shockingly significant and amounts to getting close to two thirds of my rack back. If I can just win a little from the other players I'll be in great shape.

I won't take you through all the math for two other scenarios, but I'll tell you that the more you play the better pokerstars is in comparison. If you play 7,500 hands of $10/$20 in a year, you'll be a silverstar player and only earn $240 in FPPs, but you would have gotten $630 in rakeback and $240 in VIP points! That is a shocking disparity!


If you play 75,000 hands on pokerstars (just enough to make supernova) you'll make $5,880 in FPPs, but could make $6,300 in rakeback and $2,393 in VIP points on Absolute.

On the other hand if you play 750,000 hands (enough to make Supernova Elite) you'll make $37,200 in FPPs (Or $53,142 if you start the year as SNE) and $59,000 in milestone bonuses and major tournament entries. On AP you'd make $63,000 in rake back and $23,936 in VIP points.

Clearly if you can start the year and SNE and make $112,000 that's the best, but otherwise it's $97,000 vs $87,000 which is closer than I thought. Add on the rake race and it's a dead heat. Add on the deposit bonanza and it actually looks better to play on AP than on pokerstars. Surprising! I was sure supernova elite was the best thing out there. I think I underestimated the value of the VIP points since they seemed pretty worthless as I was earning them and in any initial calculations I made I didn't factor in rake races or reload bonuses! This has turned out to be a fruitful exercise!

The big problem with some of this is that pokerstars has all the games. At peak hours you can find 4 $10/$20 games on AP, but I've never seen more than that. Often times I've been stuck playing either $5/$10 or $15/$30 or 9 handed $10/$20 along with one or two $10/$20 games.

Anyway the worst possible thing you could be doing is playing at full tilt with no rakeback. Those points are pretty much garbage and there are no VIP levels.

My Weekend

My spell check has revolted so sorry for all of the major spelling errors in this post that paint me as a total buffoon!

After a terrible start to the week last week I knew I needed to put in some major effort over the weekend. It's a fact that the games are more beatable on Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays. That's when the players who play a few hours a week or a few hours a month are logged on and gambling it up.

Here is a hand from Friday night.

PokerStars Game #33562256651: Hold'em Limit ($10/$20 USD) - 2009/10/02 19:38:33 ET
Table 'Aisakos' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Stane1985 ($1133.50 in chips)
Seat 2: ACESEDAI ($1199 in chips)
Seat 3: al0075 ($683 in chips)
Seat 4: billx ($270 in chips)
Seat 5: sethypooh21 ($400 in chips)
al0075: posts small blind $5
billx: posts big blind $10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to ACESEDAI [Td 8d]
sethypooh21: folds
Stane1985: folds
ACESEDAI: raises $10 to $20
al0075: raises $10 to $30
billx: calls $20
ACESEDAI: calls $10
*** FLOP *** [6h 9h Jc]
al0075: bets $10
billx: raises $10 to $20
monk117 has returned
ACESEDAI: raises $10 to $30
al0075: raises $10 to $40
Betting is capped
billx: calls $20
ACESEDAI: calls $10
*** TURN *** [6h 9h Jc] [Qs]
al0075: bets $20
billx: calls $20
ACESEDAI: raises $20 to $40
al0075: raises $20 to $60
billx: calls $40
ACESEDAI: raises $20 to $80
Betting is capped
al0075: calls $20
billx: calls $20
*** RIVER *** [6h 9h Jc Qs] [7s]
al0075: bets $20
billx: calls $20
ACESEDAI: raises $20 to $40
al0075: raises $20 to $60
billx: folds
ACESEDAI: calls $20
*** SHOW DOWN ***
al0075: shows [Jh Js] (three of a kind, Jacks)
ACESEDAI: shows [Td 8d] (a straight, Eight to Queen)
ACESEDAI collected $588 from pot

There are a few things to note about this hand. First of all I three bet the flop with an open ended straight draw with the plan of checking the turn if I missed and betting if I hit it (the old "free card" play). But then my opponent who hit top set on the flop capped it and bet the turn. On the turn I made the second nut straight, but since I pushed the flop my opponents didn't think I had a straight. In fact the guy with the set of jacks probably wasn't thinking at all about what I had, he was just thinking he had a monster hand. and wasn't going to slow down no matter what.

On the turn I capped the betting and the guy with a set fired out into me on the river! This is pure madness. When I get capped on the turn the first thing I put the other player on is the nuts and then I work backward from that. I need a good reason to think I'm not against the nuts to put in any more money than the minimum.

Even more amazing was the fact that he three bet me on the river! I'd put in as much action as possible the entire hand, screaming that I couldn't be beaten and he had the 5th best possible hand on the river (He'd lose to 85, T8, KT or QQ). I thought about capping, but I figured only a fool would reraise me on the river without KT or T8.

Also worth noting is the other guy who tagged along the whole way until the river. What the hell did he have? On a Monday morning this pot would have been half the size it was.

I put in 1,000 hands or so Friday night and lost about $200.

On Saturday I feel like I had some of the worst luck that I've ever had. Big wins and big losses often stem from two things: big pocket pairs and 5 card hands. If you lose with your big pocket pairs or you run into a bunch of big pocket pairs it's hard not to lose. Also if you make very few 5 card hands (straights, flushes and full houses) or run into a bunch of five card hands you're in trouble. I had the perfect storm of missing seemingly all of my draws, having my opponents nail theirs, and getting my pocket aces and kings repeatedly smashed by all kinds of junk.

I also had one guy stomp me worse than I can ever remember. It wasn't that he was so good. In fact it was the exact opposite. He bluffed often and wouldn't fold no matter what when he got involved in a hand with me. But he kept making just enough to beat me.

He was one spot to my left so when he was in the small blind I was in the big blind. The table we were at was fairly tight and so we got into it heads up often. A typical hand would go like this. He would raise K4 from the small blind, I'd reraise with AQ and the flop would come down queen high. He'd check raise the flop with nothing and I'd call. He'd bet the turn, I'd raise, he'd three bet still with nothing and I'd call. On the river he'd hit the king, bet and I'd call.

This kind of thing happened over and over and over. It was maddening! Over the course of 2 hours or so I pumped at least $1,500 into his stack. I think he beat me out of at least 10 if not 15 or 20 consecutive pots where we were heads up on the flop. It was unbelieveable. It wasn't like he was getting AA or KK every time. We usually go into the flop about even or 60/40 one way or the other. If we were playing in person I'd be 95% sure I was being cheated.

Towards the end of the beating this hand came up (note that the table name is nemesis!):

PokerStars Game #33599185337: Hold'em Limit ($10/$20 USD) - 2009/10/03 17:57:06 ET
Table 'Nemesis' 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: KID 777 ($357 in chips)
Seat 2: ruwi100 ($399.50 in chips)
Seat 3: ACESEDAI ($563 in chips)
Seat 4: Goldshark ($681 in chips)
Seat 5: fishcentral ($1087 in chips)
Seat 6: Suriek ($307 in chips)
Suriek: posts small blind $5
KID 777: posts big blind $10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to ACESEDAI [Ad As]
ruwi100: raises $10 to $20
ACESEDAI: raises $10 to $30
Goldshark: folds
fishcentral: folds
Suriek: folds
KID 777: folds
ruwi100: calls $10
*** FLOP *** [Jd 3s 8s]
ruwi100: checks
ACESEDAI: bets $10
ruwi100: calls $10
*** TURN *** [Jd 3s 8s] [Th]
ruwi100: checks
ACESEDAI: bets $20
ruwi100: calls $20
*** RIVER *** [Jd 3s 8s Th] [Qh]
ruwi100: bets $20
ACESEDAI: calls $20
*** SHOW DOWN ***
ruwi100: shows [Kh 9h] (a straight, Nine to King)
ACESEDAI: mucks hand
ruwi100 collected $172 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $175 | Rake $3
Board [Jd 3s 8s Th Qh]
Seat 1: KID 777 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: ruwi100 showed [Kh 9h] and won ($172) with a straight, Nine to King
Seat 3: ACESEDAI mucked [Ad As]
Seat 4: Goldshark folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: fishcentral (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: Suriek (small blind) folded before Flop

I just about lost it. Before the flop I was 82% and on the flop I was 95%. A 19 to 1 favorite. I've lost with AA literally thousands of times. I've taken thousands of beats worse than this one. But in this case I was against a guy who had beaten me out of an absurd number of pots in an absurd number of absurd ways. When you get AA in a spot like this all you can do is think "AH HA! I'm going to get this bastard now! I'll grind him into dust on this one! PLEASE try one of the crazy bluffs that you've been running on every freaking hand!" And then I lost. Again. When I was an astounding favorite. Even though the pot wasn't that big it was devestating.

Also notice that my opponent started this hand with $399. I'd directly deposited $1,500 or so into his stack in maybe 90 minutes and he had less than the $500 he started with because he was playing like such a goof that he spewed my chips out to all of the other players like a God damn fire hydrant that had just been hit by a truck!

It was a long day. I won $1,700 or so playing $15/$30, but lost $3,000 playing $10/$20.

On Sunday things turned around. I spent the morning and early afternoon at a brunch party watching football, eating great food, and hanging out with my friends, wife and son. I got home about 3 and put in about 1,000 hands on pokerstars winning $400 or so. I felt lucky to win that much since the games were not good at all for a Sunday.

Since the games were poor I decided to switch gears. As you might recall I opened an account at Absolute poker with the plans of playing on my laptop at night and trying to win enough to pay for a cruise that my wife and I are going on in a few weeks. I'd been doing well in limited action and decided to check out the games. I jumped into four $10/$20 games and picked up what felt like and easy $500 in about 45 minutes.

By that time dinner was close to ready and I logged off. But after dinner I got back on on my laptop. I was amazed and delited by the poor play of my opponents. The were so straightforward! I totally ran them over. It was like they'd never seen someone who would bet the flop and turn without a real hand. "he's betting the turn again! He must have it! 47 hands in a row this guy has bet the turn, but I'm sure he had something every time." I made $1,500 in about 2 hours playing in 3 games.

So all in all I managed to win almost exactly $1,000 over the weekend (not counting $500 or so in FPPs and rakeback) and played a little over 5,000 hands. So I guess you'd have to call that a success.

I've won about $4,000 playing a few hours here and there on my lap top at night. Opperation Pay for Cruise has been a total success and now I'm entering into Opperation Pay for House. I think I'll just bang out about 30 $2,000 days in the next two months and we'll use that money for a house down payment. :)

100 in 100 Challenge

I mentioned in a previous post that I have a goal of playing 100,000 hands of $10/$20 limit hold'em in the last 100 days of the year. The plan is to keep immaculate records and come up with some sort of projection for what I can expect to make in 2010 with a given effort.

So far my projections tell me that I'll be turning to a life of crime by February. I've gotten off to a terrible start! 5,006 hands in I'm losing $3,612 which is -$.72 a hand.

After some time off here and there and after another $1,000 five hour beat down of the players at the Oaks club yesterday, I'm at least feeling neutral if not confident going into he weekend. I'm hoping I can get back on track by trouncing the Friday night gamblers and weekend warriors.

If I can avoid the distractions of real life I should be able to get in 5,000-6,000 hands. Showing a $1,000 profit plus points over that stretch would leave me feeling satisfied and anything much better than that would make me happy.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Bad, Bad and More Bad

I have been getting my ass kicked this week! I lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000 over the past 3 days playing a mix of $10/$20 and $15/$30 6-max limit cash games. You'd think after 6 years of playing and having runs like this 50 times It wouldn't bother me anymore. But it does! It sucks!

Everything had been going so well for past few months in the cash games. Sure I had a bad WSOP and a bad WCOOP this year, but they weren't terrible and I could always count on my bread and butter. It felt like my opponents were powerless to stop me. I didn't win every day, but I banged out a bunch of $1,000 and $2,000 days in August and September. The more I played the more I won which, of course, is how it's supposed to work!

In fact things were so steady that I fell into a bit of a trap. I didn't push it when things were going well. I made enough to pay the bills and cover my tournament disappointments, but I didn't top off the reserves. I had WAY to many days where I put in 1,000 hands and called it a day. I took too many breaks that lasted too long. I played in bigger games sometimes that weren't good, because I was bored only making $500 or $1,000 in a few hours! What the hell is wrong with me!?!

Having a good, positive, confident mindset is key to playing poker well and there's no way to fake it. If you're stressed or upset or just feel like you're going to lose, there's no switch to flip or magical tactic that you can use to take yourself back to feeling the way you need to.

So now I'm pissed! Pissed that the games have been super tough these last few days. Pissed that I'm getting bad cards or running into tough situations. And pissed that I'm pissed, because it means I'm not in the right mindset. I'm worried about losing instead of expecting to win.

Today was the last day that I get the benefits of being Supernova Elite. In 3 hours I go back to being regular Supernova. :(

I'm going to take the next day and a half off, spend some time with family and friends and then get back on the horse Friday night. Hopefully when I come back I'll be at least feel neutral instead of negative.

Back to the Oaks Club

I got my start playing poker at the Oaks Card Club in Emeryville, CA. I know now that it's a medium to small poker room (it has about 25 tables), but when I was 21 it seemed enormous and intimidating to say the least.

The games there are a little small for me now, and playing one game at a time is more than a little slow from my perspective. But about every six months my friend Jake and I go in to have a few drinks and have a good time. Yesterday, was one of those days.

The main reason I started going to the Oaks was they were the only place in town that had a $1/$2 hold'em game (at all of the other clubs the smallest game was $3/$6). We're not talking $1/$2 blinds no limit here. This was 2001, two years before Chris Moneymaker and the poker boom, so everything was fixed limit. This was a game where you could get in for $10 and most people had $20-$30 in front of them. It still terrified me because I didn't have any money.

In those days the big game was $15/$30 and it was tough. By the time I'd moved my way up to $3/$6 I knew all of the $15/$30 regulars. They didn't know me, but I watched with envy and awe as they swapped massive piles of yellow $5 chips back on table 18. I thought someday I'd somehow come up with $500 I could afford to lose and take a shot against those guys. Of course I eventually made it into that game, took my lumps at first, but eventually beat it to death for a little while and then moved on.

While I might be a little bored $15/$30 somewhere else, I get a kick out of playing at the Oaks. The place looks exactly the same, the game is played at the same table in the same spot, and while there are plenty of new faces, there are still many of the same employees and players. The difference is instead of standing on the rail in awe, I'm in the game and I'm far and away the best player. It's like going back to high school and all of a sudden being the most popular person or the stud quarterback or the valedictorian.

While a 10 handed $15/$30 doesn't have the pace, risk or stakes of some of the games I play in, it's not chump change. Everyone at the table had between $500 and $1,000 in front of them when I sat down and there was a lot of action. After 5 hours I won $900, 4 snifters of Grand Mariner, 4 beers, one Redbull and Vodka (I was buying drinks for my self and Jake out of my stack), an order of Chicken Satay and a grilled cheese sandwich (I'll call your Bud draft and raise you a grilled cheese!).

Even though Jake didn't do as well I did, we still had a great time and I always enjoy taking the walk down memory lane that I go on whenever I go to the Oaks.

Today it's back to Pokerstars. I'm going to take my stadard shot at a few $215 buy-in tournaments and do my best to beatdown the weekend warriors in the cash games.

Team Pokerstars Pro Online

Sponsorship is the dream of any serious poker pro. When I logged on to Pokerstars today I got a pop up message about "Team Pokerstars Pro Online." I'm guessing everyone who is Supernova Elite got this message.

In the message was a link to a very brief online application. Essentially I had 200 words to make a case for myself. I mentioned my WCOOP, SCOOP, and WSOP cashes and the fact that I've been playing poker for a living since 2003. I spent the other 175 words talking about how I'm really, really, really ridiculously good looking and much taller than average.

In all seriousness what I wish I could convey is that above and beyond my poker playing I would be a perfect person to promote pokerstars! I don't want to disparage my online brethren, but let's just say some of them are perhaps not as personable as I am. If I make it to the next stage and there is any sort of interview process I expect that I will kill compared to other players with equal poker qualifications. Hopefully I'll make it to the next stage.

The message said to not mention the terms of a potential contract publicly, so I'll have to leave you wondering, but I will say that it looks very interesting to me!

My biggest hurdle is going to be the fact that I'm an American man and pokerstars is looking for a diverse group of people from all over the world. My only hope is that they are looking for 100 people or 200 people instead of 10 or 20. I'll keep you posted.

2009 WCOOP Recap and Totals

I'm going to make this brief since I like much more to go into detail about good news rather than bad.

I ended up playing 24 WCOOP events and had 4 cashes: $215 PLO 6 max, $320 8-game, $1,050 limit hold'em and $215 NL Omaha-8. Sadly these cashes were not enough to overcome the 20 bricks. My best finish was 18th of 999 in the 8-game which paid $2,520. The damage or the main tournaments was -$9,085.

I played 15 satellites and while I hit the money is a few, I came up short in the two 50,000 FPP tournaments I played. In the first I was in 1st place with 6 players to go and the top 4 getting $10,300 prizes. I finished 6th. In the second I was even with my two opponents playing 3 handed with the top 2 getting $10,300 prizes. I finished 3rd (at least I got my 50,000 FPPS back in that one!). These were two of the most heartbreaking shortcomings of my career. I lost $758 on satellites.

At the start of the series I planned on playing a slew of second chance tournaments. By the time they rolled around I'd often been playing for 5 or 6 hours and wasn't in the mood to commit to another long tournament. Also most of them had short fields stacked with strong players. In the end I played 3 of the second chance tournaments and lost $955.

One thing I'm taking away from this WCOOP is I'm really down on no limit hold'em tournaments. I'm tired of playing for hours and hours and having one hand decide my fate. Also the level of play at the stakes that are worth while seems to be getting better all the time. I still have an edge, but it's not what it used to be. Maybe I'm not so much down on no limit as up on other games. Along those lines I'm more and more convinced that I need to search out every HORSE or mixed games tournament with decent stakes that I can find.

In the end I lost more than half of my $20,000 starting bankroll and finshed with a net loss of $10,803. BOOOOOOOO! Thanks to all my backers, I'll e-mail you soon.

Now it's back to the cash games! There are 100 days left in 2009. I have 3 week long vacations planned during that time and since I don't have any point pressure I'm sure I'm going to be working less. But my plan is to play 100,000 hands of $10/$20 in 100 days (I'll call it my 100 in 100 Challenge!), keep tight records and see what I think I can expect to make going into 2010.

A standard convention these days is to talk about profit in terms of "big bet's per 100 hands" or BB/100. 1 BB/100 is probably the edge of what's possible at the stakes I'm playing. That would be $100 an hour. Since I'm going to be making $40 an hour (or every 500 hands to be more specific) in FPPs (not counting milestone bonus considerations) even after my supernova elite expires at the end of the month, I don't need to make that much to show a strong profit. I think my goal is to make .5 BB/100 (or ten cents a hand is the way I like to think about it), but I'll be OK with anything over .25 BB/100. I'll do my best to keep you posted.