Questions for the early 'retirees' on the board

[alwaysinvert]

Alwaysinvert,

I would like to read (maybe its own thread?) on how you started from ? and growing it to $1.5M through online poker. Just for leisure interest of time lines and Im sure the drama that must have accompanied the ascent!

 

Don't worry, I DO NOT intend to try to replicate your feat through poker. I can't even get through 2min of watching the stuff on TV!  Every time I feel like relaxing on the couch (away from my computer/phone) I will click it on the sports station and then I curse when I realize they are broadcasting a poker tourney!

 

Everyone in my family loves poker except me.

 

Whatever you do with your $, similar to what the others have warned,  BE CAREFUL of SPENDING ON SWEDISH TWIN DANCERS!!!!!!

 

That's a pretty long story in the full version but I will tell you a bit about it.

 

I started from zero. Literally zero. I was underaged, and couldn't deposit in any way. Not that my parents would let me. I played in my brother's name. Started with one-table freerolls (that is tourneys with free buy-ins) which paid out something like 6 cents for the winner and 2 cents for 2nd place, or some similar ridiculously low sums. I found out I could pretty much just fold myself into the money because the others played so crazy. I guess that's the most odd tidbit about my poker playing.

 

I remember when I had played for 6 months - I was 17 at this point - or something like that and made about $10k in total. My daily results were recorded in a notebook (in those days I didn't use fancy databases yet). After having a mare of a day where I dropped something like 3k (my money management wasn't top notch at that point) and recording it in my notebook, my dad - who had been reading it in secrecy - gave me a real hard time about it, telling me I should know when to quit and fallacious stuff like that. I didn't think his point was valid and decided to just stop recording my wins and lossses where he could see it and stop telling my parents any details about my progress.

 

Of course, they knew that I made a lot of money during the following years - but not how much. I never discussed sums with them, because I knew it would stress them out. I lost and won annual wages on most days. A couple of months before I moved out to my own place and when the poker thing was slowly starting to wind down, both in sums and hours, I just jotted down the balance on all my accounts on a slip of paper and handed it to them. Those disbelieving stares were something for the history books  ;D   

 

I played extremely high stakes at one point in late 2008 and early 2009 (as high as $250/500 with buy-ins of $50k). Admittedly, I very rarely took all the action at those stakes. That would be batshit crazy money management. Selling of percent in yourself is the norm at higher stakes. Very, very few poker pros can afford not to.

 

It's been a while since I ran simulations on this but - without going into too much technical detail - even if you have a decent edge on the other players at those tables, you should still expect to lose 50 buyins from time to time. You could see where that would take my RoR having a 100% in myself at 250/500, given that you know the ballpark of my networth.

 

There are more funny anecdotes but many would require real familiarity with the game and even so I can't come up with anymore right now :)

 

Me and a couple of my friends were also very early adopters of a game theory approach to poker (I was certainly not the brain in that gang). In those days the great majority of the community thought we were mad to take that approach. These days, what we did then would seem primitive compared to what most midstakes pros do now in terms of game theory analysis. We weren't the very first ones, but we managed to get great success by stressing mathematical analysis, hand range weighting and other stuff like that instead of the psychological 'feel' aspects, which in our view mostly consisted of post hoc rationalizations of decisions, that most pros were focusing on at that point in time.   

[Rabbitisrich]

Why didn't you simply employ a Martingale strategy as described by David Choe on the Howard Stern show? I have cashed out my investment accounts and am heading to Macau to make serious +EV. Will keep everyone updated!

[beerbaron]

Why didn't you simply employ a Martingale strategy as described by David Choe on the Howard Stern show? I have cashed out my investment accounts and am heading to Macau to make serious +EV. Will keep everyone updated!

 

Martingale incurs the risk of losing everything and theoretically require an infinite amount of money. I see is as picking pennies in fort of a roller coaster. I'd much prefer Kelly or half Kelly.

 

BeerBaron

 

[stahleyp]

Invert, were you naturally good at math and things growing up?

[Smazz]

Invert,

seriously, your story would make a great movie. I know, I know, there have been movies on people and poker and blah blah blah but the little sharades of you no longer recording in your daily log to suppress your parents fears and just the fact that you were so young and playing under your brothers name at 16 and doing so well. Could just imagine what other shenanigans were going on.

 

haha.. I enjoy to read whatever else you write about it - and thanks for writing what you did.

 

 

[alwaysinvert]

Invert, were you naturally good at math and things growing up?

I'm by no means a math whiz and have no higher math skills, but I've always been good at logic and I can count fast in my head. And I have always had the ability to focus intently on things I find interesting, which probably was my most useful asset. Poker mathematics (if you are not programming a bot) is not necessarily very advanced, but you have to be able to think in steps and see how each step interacts with the other and keep an eye on what each individual play implies about your general game.

 

If anyone is interested in this, you could read the book Mathematics of poker for an introduction. A warning though: it's not a light read even if you could skip most of the equations and not impair your general understanding of the subject.