I'm stopping.

I'm actually not down too much more. It's not the losing streak that decided it.

On Saturday afternoon, I downloaded a ROI simulator and toyed with it a bit. Considering my normal distribution of place finishes at all limits, it's very likely that if I'm a winning player, I'm about 4% at the $13 limit experiencing some bad luck (and consequently, a 3% winner at $25s). The best I could hope to be is probably a 6% at $13s and a 4% at 25s.

Some quick math, as an aside. 11,000 SNGs at $13 would yield me $9,000 in profit at 6%. A 50/50 mix of $13s and $25s would yield me $10,500 in profit at 6%/4%. The points and total rewards I would earn would be between $3,600 and $4,800.

Therefore, the BEST I could hope to do, this year, given ALL of my poker history and the nature of the game that I'm playing, is make between $12,600 and $16,300 playing poker. That's the very best I could do grinding SNGs. Sure, I could hit a windfall playing the Goldstar. Sure, I could hit a windfall playing the $215s. It's not very likely. I'd give it about a 3% chance, if even that.

In order to play 11,000 SNGs at the level I'm playing them at, at the speed I'm playing them at, it would require me to play poker 4 hours a day every day of the year. 4 hours * 365 days = 1460 hours.

Therefore, the best I could hope to do is make between $8.60 and $11.16 an hour for 1500 hours of work this year.

The worst I could do is worsen the tendinitis in my wrist, lose my bankroll, go on massive emotional tilt, and get obsessive compulsive about a game that doesn't matter.

The most likely scenario, and the one that I'm focusing on, is that I would play 1500 hours of poker this year to make about $5-$8 an hour.

What sealed it for me was toying with the ROI simulator. The tool allows you to enter any number of SNGs and any number of simulations, given the distribution of your place finishes. I kept entering 1 simulation of 1000 games, and hitting the button to watch how the simulated ROI varied from the actual ROI, over and over and over again. The actual ROI was 4%. The simulated ROI jumped from 15% to -8% to 4% to 1% to -2% to 9% to 6% to -5% to....well you get the idea.

I entered 5,000 games, and I could not get the simulated ROI to reliably be within 5% of the actual more than 70% of the time.

I entered in 100,000 games, and occasionally the simulated ROI was still 1-2% away from the actual.

I entered in ONE MILLION GAMES, and occasionally, probably 30% of the time, the simulated ROI was still up to half a percent off of the actual ROI.

To play ONE MILLION games, I would need to play 36 games a day for 90 years.

So, playing 11,000 games this year....who the fuck knows what would actually happen. It could be anything....literally anything between -3% and +8% (in my opinion)

Given that I have a fairly good job making enough money already, and given that my girlfriend just graduated college and is in a position to double our household income, if a hit a very unlikely positive outlier and maybe even make 15 bucks an hour, what in the fucking hell would I be knocking myself out for? I already make roughly $30 an hour at my day job and could take any number of side jobs making $10-$15 an hour easily.

I want to thank all those who followed the blog and gave me encouragement. I will probably play the points I have accumulated, just for fun. All said, I lost about $950 in online poker over this experiment. Given that I won about $700 in live poker in 2010, the whole thing is a relative wash.

I will say that online poker is significantly harder than it was a few years ago.

Like most things I have tried, I wasn't able to make it happen in the way that I wanted to. C'est la vie. Hopefully, I will try something else and have greater success with it.

Now down about $500 for the year over my first 200ish games. Fun stuff.

Emotionally, this is becoming exhausting. I have not had a significant upswing since November 12th. I've had a few glimpses, and one steady positive streak that was incremental, but nothing off the charts like a lot of regs have.

2200 games in, I'm starting to once again question whether or not I'm a winning player overall. I'm down 26 BI at $13s and 15 BI at $25s. I'm about -$400 overall over the entire span.

I think if I hit something like -$700 I'm probably going to stop, in the short term.

In the long term, if I reach 5000 games as a losing player I'm definitely stopping.

It's interesting to consider that poker could very well be the same for me as Roulette or Blackjack - I might very well just have a losing expectation from the moment I walk into the casino.

* January has been a total rollercoaster thus far. I started playing a bit more $25s than I initially wanted to, just to see what would happen. I experienced a nice 15 BI downswing almost immediately! Yay for -$357 through 60 games there!

* On the $13 front, I'm about breakeven thus far in the year, still down 20 BI overall. The bankroll is intact, but limping a bit. More on numbers later, once I decide on a format.

* I did take last year's FPP and took a shot at the Sunday $215. I promptly got colddecked for 90 minutes, got KK, raised, got min-reraised, sighed at the obvious AA-QQ, and pushed into an insta-call. Villain flips up AA, I flip off the screen, and resume building the points back up after obviously getting no help.

* Depositing has also been an issue - Pstars got a new depositer and they are only letting me deposit incrementally. Thus, things are fucked up in terms of calcs thus far. When I straighten them out (hopefully tomorrow) I will start posting numbers. Now that I'm down almost $400 on the year, I can't really mess around too much until I have my full bankroll compliment, so I'm off the $25s til I can get that sorted.

Variance ho! I now have two red walls to contend with...

2,000 tourneys. Unfortunately, not quite the results I had hoped for, but not totally disasterous. I finished in 3rd place in 12 of my last 22 tournaments, which was a just a little bit disheartening.

Current Bankroll: $852.68
FPP Balance / cash value: 13864.62 / $221.83
Total tourneys played: 2,000
Average buyin: $9.33
Total amount invested: $18,657.50
Total poker profit earned: $92.60
Total additional cash bonuses earned: $100.00
ROI (including cash bonuses and points) : 0.50% (2.22%)

Primary 2011 Goal:
Supernova Status (100,000 VIP Points at Pokerstars) overall, PlatinumStar status (7,500 VIP Points) each month.

Method:
I'm going to pad my bankroll by adding $500 after the first of the year to open the year with $1,352. This represents roughly 80 (actually 79.5) buyins at an artificial level of $17 per tourney, exactly 1/3rd of the way between $13 and $25. Initially, the plan is to play 350 tourneys per month at the $25 level and 700 tourneys a month at $13. If I at least tread water or lose less than 50 BI, I will earn 7700 VIP Points in the month of January. Provided that I don't go on an initial 50 BI downswing, I should be able to stay the "$17s" indefinitely. If I do have a 50 BI downswing, I'll probably have to drop all the way back down to $6.50s (after shooting myself in the face).

Hopefully, if I can start actually WINNING at the higher levels, I'll eventually find a home at $25s and start chipping away at Supernova faster by making sure I can earn 8500 VIP points per month at this level.

Secondary 2011 Goal:
2% ROI overall at a mix between $13 and $25. I do not know if this is possible, but I certainly believe it is. I still have a negative ROI at $13s, although some of it has to be bad luck. I've had just one 130 game heater, albeit at a +33% clip, but it was followed by the worst 250-tourney cooler of my life. Over the past 500 games, I've been grinding at basically a barely positive level. The last 200 tourneys represent another downstretch of -$130. In other words, I've had several significant bad stretches, and only 1 significantly good stretch. I know this is results-oriented, as the players up at $13s may just be better than I am, but I have a very strong feeling that most of them aren't. Certainly the ones at $6.50s are a lot worse, but there are lots of fish up at $13, and with my experience and skill at the game, honestly I'm very surprised I'm not at least breaking even. Hopefully this straightens itself out over time. 1100 games at a limit isn't exactly a significant chunk yet, anyway.

Tertiary 2011 Goal:
If overly successful, move up to $39 by the end of the year.

Financial implications of the goal:
Supernova Status means that I will earn $1000 in Stellar Rewards in stages along the way, plus a $200 cash bonus once I actually hit Supernova Status.

For the roughly 100,000 VIP points I will earn, I should earn roughly 245,000 FPPs, which is the cash equivalent of about $3900. I'm not sure if I will save for the cash reward or if I will play several $215 tourneys along the way. I'm pretty sure I'll take the shots at the $215s. I have a proven, winning expectation at MTT and if I luckbox my way into a five figure amount, things will REALLY start to change.

2% ROI, over 12,000 tourneys at an average buy-in of $17, would earn me $4,080 in winnings over the course of the year.

Adding this all together, my financial goal is to make $9,180 from poker in 2011.

Happy Holidays! See you in 2011.

Well, I'm nearly done with poker for the year.

I'm currently at 1,973 tourneys with a BR of $940.88, and I'm planning to stop when I hit 2,000 total tourneys. I just made GoldStar for January this morning, and there's no way to make PlatinumStar. I can't make any more cash rewards in 2010, either. 2,000 seems like a nice, round number. The only instances in which I would stop sooner:

* I have a massive, acute upswing and get above $1,100 prior to 27 tourneys from now. At that value, I would be positive in online poker for 2010 (with bonuses), no small feat considering I donked off roughly $600-$700 in cash games. It would also make me positive at every SNG limit. It would be a hell of an Xmas present to myself.

* I have a massive, acute downswing and get around $800 prior to 27 tourneys from now. At that value, if I were to continue to play, another loss might threaten my overall positive number. That's something I'm not willing to do before this break.

Neither is all that likely, but anything is possible, I suppose. It's likely that I will just about break even, if the past 1,973 tourneys are any indication of anything...

So, tonight or tomorrow will probably be my last batch of poker in 2010. I do need a break, as it appears as though I have mild tendinitis in my right wrist, and 8 days off will do me some good psychologically (as well as physically).

After I finish the final splash of tourneys in the next 24 hours, I'll post about my revised goals for 2011.

Current Bankroll: $940.88
FPP Balance / cash value: 13567.62 / $217.08
Total tourneys played: 1973
Average buyin: $9.28
Total amount invested: $18,306.50
Total poker profit earned: $190.80
Total additional cash bonuses earned: $100.00
ROI (including cash bonuses and points) : 1.01% (2.77%)

12 more tourneys snuck in...I just couldn't leave it on that acute of a spike downward. I had a hunch if I played a few more I'd end on a slightly more positive note.

Current Bankroll: $906.08
FPP Balance / cash value: 12643.62 / $202.30
Total tourneys played: 1889
Average buyin: $9.11
Total amount invested: $17,214.50
Total poker profit earned: $156.00
Total additional cash bonuses earned: $100.00
ROI (including cash bonuses and points) : 1.01% (2.66%)

Well, a day like this was coming...a disasterous -$150 day where nothing went right. Luckily, almost all the stuff that happened was pure luck, and not bad playmaking. There was only one play that was questionable, and I think most people would play it the same way - a blinds battle with TT that I neglected to re-reraise (or call a re-raise) from the small blind, instead just pushing and ran into AA. It's borderline in any case.

My wrist is still hurting, so it's good that I'm taking tomorrow off. Still, it would have been nice to have a respite on an upswing...well, at least the total number is still positive...

Current Bankroll: $867.68
FPP Balance / cash value: 12511.62 / $200.18
Total tourneys played: 1877
Average buyin: $9.09
Total amount invested: $17,058.50
Total poker profit earned: $117.60
Total additional cash bonuses earned: $100.00
ROI (including cash bonuses and points) : 0.69% (2.45%)

A fine day at the tables, all things considered - a +$57 result. I didn't have the kind of 1st/2nd distribution I'd like (3/6), but I'll certainly take cashing in half of the 18 tournaments played. I'm going to cut it short early today for two reasons. For one thing, I'm a little mentally bushed from working my ass off this week at my job, and for another, I'm starting to notice a little mild fatigue in my wrist which I can only hope is not the beginnings of carpal/tunnel syndrome. It's a good thing that I can play out the string this year without exerting too much effort.

Notes about the current upswing:

* In my last 686 tourneys, I'm now at a ROI of 7.63% (not including bonuses) with an average buyin over $10. It's obviously a relatively small sample size, but it's very encouraging. It will be interesting to see where this recent ROI is at when I play 314 more tourneys (probably by year's end).

* I have abandoned playing continuously. I never mentioned it on the blog, but as soon as I started firing at the RED HOLE, I needed to start playing in sets again to make sure I managed my bankroll appropriately. I find that I just play better in sets, overall. I'm going to stick with that for now.

* I'm only currently down at one limit, -$83 at $13s. Essentially, it's a negative two thirds of a percent ROI over 900+ tourneys there - pretty much break even. Again, encouraging.

I should be able to play a full cache tomorrow.

One final note: Including rewards, I'm within $100 of overall breakeven for online poker this year (remember, I donked off about $600 in cash... so breakeven for me is actually $1300.)

Current Bankroll: $1,016.48
FPP Balance / cash value: 12181.62 / $194.91
Total tourneys played: 1847
Average buyin: $9.02
Total amount invested: $16,668.50
Total poker profit earned: $266.40
Total additional cash bonuses earned: $100.00
ROI (including cash bonuses and points) : 1.60% (3.37%)