A winning poker player

I see on a couple other blogs that some people track their bankroll on their blog and report on their wins and losses. This sounds reasonable - at least you always have a topic to write about (although it might be very similar to the topic you wrote about the day before. Or the day before that.)

I have an Excel sheet to track my bankroll on Empire, but it's a bit rough. I originally bought in a couple times for a total of about $350 of real money. Money from the day job. I've since withdrawn that but it's still handy if I need to pump it back in, which I will do occasionally if there is a bonus I want to go for.

Aside: bonuses, oh god, why do I bother? That last Empire bonus was such a pain in the goddamn ass. I slaved three-tabling .50/$1 limit games for hours at a time for days to finally clear that, and for what? $40? What the hell was I thinking? If I wanted $40 more in my account, I can dump in $40 from the real job without even noticing. (A side effect of living in Tokyo and being used to the cost of living here.) Unfortunately, the obsessive-compulsive in me would have none of this. I separated the money and am playing only on my profits now, right? So, can't dump more money in now! Also, I can't just let that bonus expire now, can I? The completist in me insisted I finish what I started. (I had to watch Star Wars ep 2. I had to watch Alien 4. Hell, I even had to watch Alien Versus Predator.)

Anyhow, I started on limit games, figuring it would limit my losses as a beginning player. I struggled with them for a long time trying to eke out some profits but never had much to show for it. Eventually I decided to give no-limit a try. My bankroll graph makes a fairly sharp upward turn at that point. I'm about $600 in profits at the moment, most earned from NL play.

It's still too early to brag, but it does seem like 6-player NL is my best game so far, thanks mostly to the Bigger Idiot Theory.

One of my housemates in university had a theory to justify whatever weird purchase he made from the classified ads, when he obviously already had enough cars, guns, hang gliders, electronics, etc. "However big an idiot you are to buy something, you can always find a bigger idiot to buy it off you at a profit if you look hard enough." Joel was a very sharp guy, and his theory worked very well for him. I credit him for theoretically inventing eBay that day.

I've found that if I play tightly in NL on Party/Empire, even if I make some idiot mistakes there will almost always be a Bigger Idiot at the table that I can make the money back from. I'm working to get the Bigger Idiots to pay for my new flat-panel hi-def television, but it might be a while longer.