Stephen Groom Music Producer? Poker Pro? Sports Bettor? Tune in next post to find out

One full month as a poker pro and many more to come

So the month is over and I figured I'd round it up with a summary of my results since I left my job.  This is hopefully going to be a rarity as I don't like the idea of disclosing my finances publicly for all to see.  I am doing it this month however to give my friends, family or any interested parties an idea of what is possible grinding cashgames.  Specifically £50nl on sky.

I have no doubhts that I ran pretty incredible this month and despite the fact that I had a couple of ~£500 losing streaks during this period I believe that my hourly rate and monthly profit figures are unrealistically high and are an example of an above average month.  Despite this however, I was very suprised at just how much money was made and it very quickly gave me confidence in the idea of playing poker as a means of income.

So here follows my results from the 22nd of August to date.

Sky Poker Cash Games (£0.25/£0.50 and under, 50/50 split with backer)

These results while pretty aren't completely telling of the money which I made from playing on sky.  The way the staking deal works is that cashouts occur at the high-point of the graph and any time I am below that I am in make up.  This means that at the end of this period I took a 50/50 split of £1,799 and am currently in £152 of makeup.  This simply means that I will not see any more money from the staking arrangement until I make the £152 back at which point we begin to split profits again.

As I started this period in a significant amount of make up the total earned from cash games on sky on my side of the staking arrangement was £687.  An hourly rate of around £6.60.  This hourly rate may seem low but it is not when you consider that I hadn't cleared makeup until the 29th of august at which point I was already winning £500.  I take this to mean that I was roughly £500 in make up at the start of the month.

Live Cash Games (£0.50/£1.00 up to £2.00/£5.00, 50/50 split with backer)

A graph is pretty meaningless here as this doesn't account for much volume at all.   A much more useful groups of stats follows.

Total Cash Game Stake (50/50 split with backer)

So this means that I earned £2,212 over 125.5 table hours for an overall hourly on the month of £17.61.  Take from this ~ £500 of makeup that I had to clear before I earned any money and we arrive at £1,712 over 125.5 hours.  Of this I earned £856 over 125.5 hours giving me an hourly for the month of ~£6.80.  This is a rather low hourly and I definately wouldn't be quitting work if this was my expected monthly keep.  I have to take into consideration however that these figures involve clearing that £500 of makeup and also I wasn't allowed to sit higher than 50nl on sky this month.  This brings me on to an interesting development!

Moving up!

That's right.  Last month went so well that my backer has decided that he is confident enough in my ability to allow me to sit in 100nl (£0.50/£1.00) games on sky.  If I am able to beat these games at anywhere near the rate that I beat the 50nl games then I should see a significant increase in my winrate.  In addition to this I will also recieve a far higher amount of rakeback playing at 100nl.  I did a little bit of number crunching yesterday and concluded that 8 tabling at 50nl ~£4 of my hourly winrate comes from rakeback.  I should see this increase twofold at 100nl although I will be playing less tables to start with.  I speculate that 6tabling 100nl I will be making ~£6/hr in rakeback.

I think I've typed enough for today and I will continue to try to publish a blog weekly with a far lesser focus on money and results.  I will hopefully start to reflect and discuss the impact that not working in a conventional job has had on my personal life.

Thanks again for reading and please post any requests, comments or hopefully compliments in the comments box below
Cheers
Stephen
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