In terms of Gambling over the last two months I played a little bit of live poker and dabbled with Matched Betting (more on this soon) making a fairly decent amount of money in the process.  The thing about money though is that it doesn't last long .  I haven't played any volume or had a "steady income" since a little while before my last blog post and while I estimate that I have profited somewhere close to 4 figures in that time, I have nothing really to show for it as I have not recieved any income such as a wage, and I still don't get my first pay-cheque from work until the end of April.

Did I say work?  Yeah I did!  Since my last post I have done a bunch of different stuff, the most important of which is getting a job.  I am now working as a "C&E Team Member" at the Hilton Hotel Gateshead.  I got this job at the beginning of march and so far I am definitely enjoying it.  I have met a bunch of really cool people so far and the work isn't half bad either.  Infact I enjoy it there so much that I have applied for, and been interviewed for, a full-time position there (currently I am 0-hours casual) so fingers crossed.

One thing which has surprised me in my first month back in "conventional employment" is actually how much working from home and grinding professionally effected my social life and work/life balance.  At the time, I thought I had it all.  The world was my oyster, I had all the time in the world, etc etc.  If you look back at the tone of my previous posts you will see this.  What I have realised though is that I had accidentally become a boring, reclusive social nobody.  Yeah I still had friends, and I'd still get to see them at least once a week, maybe go out for a meal or for a drink but this really wasn't enough.  Picture this.  I live alone and I grind 5 days a week.  There's a good chance that the only face-to-face contact that I had with anyone during this time was me popping into the local shop for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread.  This was not enough!  I thought that because I was seeing just as much, or maybe more of my friends outside of "work" that I had a pretty good work life balance.  I never thought of all of the people who I would get to talk to, share a laugh with, help out or even just acknowledge or smile all night every night while I worked at Aspers.  While I was grinding I would IM people, text people and maybe have a VOIP convo with some friends daily but this is nowhere near a normal level of socialisation and something which I never really realised that I was missing.

At work I get to see hundreds of people in a shift.  I love meeting people, getting to know people, joking with people and helping people out.  I have already befriended a bunch of people there (who may or may not still be friends after a drunken pizza throwing incident that I can remember from Monday night) and even found a girl there who I have a proper childish crush on :$.  This is something which everybody should have, and most people do have, but it was very easy to lose as a pro grinder.  Infact my friend Ben has just gotten a part-time job in addition to playing poker for similar reasons.  A routine, some motivation, and a little social interaction were the reasons he cited if I remember correctly.  Ben isn't the only person who has spoke about this.  A guy I was speaking to in a £100nl live cash game one day who claims to play $200 HUSNG for his living told me this:  "Yeh I can definitely make more money online but I come out here and play live for the company" which was totally fair enough, and probably a good idea.

Yeah so.. Life is good, my finances aren't.  I don't worry about this though as with a little bit of hard work it shouldn't take too long to get back to where I was ~4 months ago.  I intend to work as many hours as I can and when I get a little more financially stable to play poker part-time to subsidise my earnings.  If i eventually get a decent sized BR back I will probably look into doing some more matched betting too as that seemed like a mini-goldmine which won't be around forever.

I can't really think of too much else to say right now (surprising after 2 whole months) so I'll wrap up for now.  I said that I'd talk more about matched betting later but I don't think this is the place to do it.  I actually started work on a little guide ( How I made £500 risk free in 1 month ) and a website about the subject so stay tuned if you are interested for that.  Even if you aren't, the tools I am creating will be handy for my future exploits so I should really pull my finger out and get to it.

Thanks for reading, and staying patient while I was lazy and didn't update
Peace
Stephen
x

So now that everybody knows that you can track results on sky I can discuss what happened and why I eventually moved my money off in mid january and moved to Pokerstars.  Since leaving my staking deal in October, my total profits are ~£5,400 including bonuses.  Since around mid-december though I have been breaking even in the games over a sample of ~ 100,000 hands.  Maybe I was just a breakeven play all along.. I don't know for sure but I won't be sticking around to find out.

So how did MTTs go on Pokerstars?

I can sum this up in one sentence without too much bitching.  I lost ~200 $8 ABIs.  If you wanna see how it went exactly, check out sharkscope.  Not good would be my assesment.

What went wrong then?

I have came to the realisation that when I was on sky, against the opposition at 50nl I shouldn't have been winning, I should have been destroying.  We have 99% of 6max regs playing 13/11/3, and two regs who I have played the most hands with playing 23/15/5 and 21/12/2 respectively there is no reason I shouldn't have been better than 5bb/100 in the games.  And I was breaking even! (well, .75bb/100 :p)  So basically the times I played on Sky, I wasn't putting in the work.  I wasn't winning what I should have been and I don't think I was totally ready for the pro grind.  Somehow in that time I have spent my £5.4k (Well £4.4k now after stars deposit) and have very little of it left.

What next?

I took around a fortnight off from poker completely while I guarded the withered remains of my bankroll.  I used my spare time to work on SkyHUD, and any time not spent on that was used to study poker.  After somewhere between 500 and 1,000 tournaments on stars I concluded that cashgames were where I would be making my future profits.  Cash games are where I have put the most work into my game and they are lower variance.  Low variance steady income is what I need now that I am back where I started, close to being broke.

So I have gotten together some eBooks, some training videos and a tonne of old hands in HEM to review.  I reckon that in the time off from poker I spent about 2 hours per day every day doing one or two of these things.  It is very early to say but I think I have improved my game over the two weeks that I took off more than I did over the whole 3 months that I was playing professionally.  I am sure I speak for the majority of pros here when I say that I didn't spend enough time working on my game.  The problem was that I saw my bank account growing larger at the end of each week and didn't see any need to change.  I was winning, and that was enough.

What happens next?

I have some money on Pokerstars and I am currently playing $25 and $50nl.  I say both because I am using a very aggressive bankroll management strat where I am starting to mix in bigger games when I have 10bi for that limit.  I currently have more than 10 so I am usually mixing in a table or two of 50nl with my 25nl games.  Doing this though I have to be extremely strict about moving down as sadly there will be no more deposits to follow...

As there are no more deposits left I am now looking for work harder than I ever had.  I am not yet at the point of desperation where I will be looking to flip burgers for minwage but I am looking for alot less than the £18k that I wanted to go back to work for this time 90 days ago.  Who knows, this poker thing might just work out in the end and I may stay pro but at the moment the best short term result for me would be to get a short-term or casual job with decent pay and get back some money so that I can decide where to go from there.

So.. Could I succeed as a professional poker player?

At the time of writing that article (14/08/2011) the answer is No.  I somehow managed to spend exactly 6 months working from home, with all of the benefits of being a pro but I don't think I was quite prepared or ready for what was ahead.  If memory serves I wrote the article in a way that suggested that this was an experiment rather than a committed, planned, educated choice and this is exactly what it has been.  I tried it, it worked out for 6 months but was I ready to make this work for the rest of my life?

If I could go back to 14/08/2011 today and do it all again with the knowledge and ability that I have today I would say 100% yes.  I would probably still be in my staking deal.  I would probably be playing 200nl with a 70/30 chop and maybe writing this from a penthouse in mexico or something but I am happy for the knowledge which I gained for free (well for 120 hours per month) and think that I have had a very good (and very different to most people's) quality of life in this period.  I am glad that I did this and don't think that I am any worse off financially than if I had stayed in my job.  Infact I think I am still better off AINEC.

Moving forward I will be yet again trying to succeed as a professional poker player but this time I have around 50% of the starting capital that I had in August and will be starting lower.  Maybe this time over the next few months will be stressful as I try to get my finances back on track but again this is all part of a bigger picture and the education I am giving myself will definitely help me in times of future hardship.  Let's not forget, I am only 21 and I have a tonne of choices ahead.  If I went completely cash-broke I'm sure I could sell my car and my stuff and move back home with my mother and go flip burgers.. There is no such thing as a dead-end.

On to the next chapter

Thanks for reading
Stephen

Introducing SkyHUD...

Skyhud is an application which allows the downloading of Sky Poker hand history files in a text format. It currently only supports Cash Games.

These files are readable by poker tracking apps and enable the user many associated features such as analysis, results tracking and a Heads up Display (HUD).

Get it at http://apps.groomi.net/skyhud

Enjoy! Any questions, support etc I will do via here or Skype (sjgroomi)

It all started at the end of December when Sky changed their VIP system, effectively lowering my Rakeback % from 31.3% to 28.8%. I posted in detail about this at  skypoker.com and here is a quote giving my thoughts on the changes:

So I recieve £1,152 instead of £1,250 for next month's £4k rake.  This is a 7.8% pay-cut of the majority of my income and Sky now retains an extra £98.  That is to say I make more each month from C4P than from in-game winnings.  To view it as Rakeback% we are now being given 2.5% less rakeback.  This now makes sky one of the least competitive euro sites for grinders.
[snip]
And to add insult to injury Sky are now encouraging rakeback grinding via their rake races (Full House promotion).  Assuming this promo leads to some people reaching 60,000 points this month lets also analyze the new VIP system's effect upon their Cash4Points:So as you can see the new changes are negative for all players from microstakes to high-volume grinders.

I suspect that I will be spending January away from sky searching for a new network/site so hopefully the impact won't be felt for the 50nl players who's winrates will increase to compensate :p.

Please give answers Sky as to why you have made these changes.
Stephen G
GLifUlose

So that is the new VIP system.  I was quite quickly talked down by my account manager Dan who tried to explain that it was not all bad and to be fair to him, he did a pretty good job as always.  By January 1st, for a number of different reasons I had decided to stick with it for the foreseeable future at Sky, move up to 100nl with a 10bi stop-loss for moving back down.   That is when this happened:

Not get that iPad you wanted for Christmas? Did Grandma get you a Downton Abbey pencil case instead of that 3D TV you asked for?! Well don't let it ruin your 2012 because you've got another chance…If you earn more poker points than any other player in January you will win a prize bundle worth £3,000! If you earn over 60,000 points then you are guaranteed the prizes even if you're not the top earner. It's as simple as that!

So, the 1st of January rolls over, I sit at 100nl and it is absolutely disgusting.  They also introduced "Happy Hours" at this time.

To help give players a leg up on the Cash for Points ladder, Sky Poker will be running three Happy Hours every day of the week. In that time all Poker Points earned on cash game tables from 5-10p and upwards will get a 50% boost, giving players a fantastic opportunity to boost their Cash for Points payout!

As more regs get on it the games get worse and worse and now we have the site's 20 regs playing 16 tables each compared to maybe 100 fish playing 1-2 tables each.  To put it the way I have experienced so far:  At normal peak times where I'd expect to sit with 1 or 2 other grinders on all of my tables, I am now guaranteed to be sitting with three others.  During these new "happy hours" which occur three times per day, two of which are at times when I would usually be playing, if I am to play, I am forced to share my table with a at least three other grinders.

In my opinion we have reached the sad point on Sky where I can no longer make enough money to live from by playing 50 or 100nl.  I promised that I would keep results well away from this blog, but let's just say that I made good use of my 10bi moving down stop-loss and I lost far in excess of £1,000 at 100nl for the first week or so of the month.

Yeah so in continuing my story... I moved down to 50nl and expected to continue the grind as I was in December, playing ~60k hands and expecting to cash out about £1.5k.  Oh how wrong I was.  Lady luck has not been behaving as I would have liked this month, and in total to date this month, my AIEV is around -£1,600 across all limits.  This doesn't help my bottom line when my expected value in the games is to be either slightly losing, or break-even.

So now what?

Now that I have lost my only source of income, I now need to find something else to play before I go completely broke.  Here we meet again with my old friend:  MTTsngs on Pokerstars.

I plan to play another 12-13 hours on Sky in order to maintain my VIP level and because it just makes sense given the difference in rakeback which I will receive by grinding on.  I also managed to freeroll into the £220 Sunday Roller on Sunday evening so I will be playing that also.  Beyond that, I will be cashing out what little is left of my bankroll on Monday and putting at least $1,000 on Pokerstars to start the grind over there.

I did for one month while I was working full-time choose to play 45man and 90man MTTsngs on Pokerstars with a little bit of success.  Back when I used to be a terrible recreational player used to dump off money playing MTTs over there too.  As I remember, the fields were hilariously soft and I did have a small stable of friends who all played small MTTs with a lot of success.  So... I have a lot of good people around for discussing MTT strategy, BRM etc.  Add the availability of good advice and MTT players to my confidence in MTTsngs and we have my plan for Jan/Feb.

Assuming a $1.5k bankroll, my plan is as follows:

• Play 22 days/month
• $15, $8 and $3.5r 180-mans
• $3-$11 , $51r1a and $3.3r MTTs
• Play 1,500 games per month

The volume target is based on my calculations of what is required for Platinum/Supernova status.  Assuming that the end of January goes well and I make the decision to continue to grind on Pokerstars, I would like to maintain a high enough VIP status to get at least 30% rakeback.  ie. Platinum (28%-31% according to pokerstars.co.uk).  By achieving Platinum star VIP level, I also enable myself to become a Supernova by the end of 2012.  Achieving this means that every month afterwards my rakeback is increased to 35-38% (alot!).

This plan for pokerstars is very much a first-step and as of yet I have no idea if the volume targets are realistic.  I believe that after around two or three days of playing I will be able to assess whether it is and will report back with amended plans.

If you have any experience, advice or input regarding any of my plans (VIP scheme, MTTs & MTTsngs on stars or anything else) please leave a comment below.  It would be appreciated very much.

Thanks for reading
Good Luck
Stephen

The poker is the main talking point of this blog nowadays and what 95% of the content will be about in the future but as it is a pretty fun and important part of the year I can put that to one side for a few paragraphs.

2011 has been a very good year for me all in all and for once as I reflect I am happy with most if not all of the choices and decisions that I have made.  I am now 21, I have a BA degree with 2:2 hons, I have a new car and flat, a good circle of friends with similar interests, a new job (some might not call it that yet) which so far has been very rewarding and I have a better quality of life than I can ever remember having.

2012 for me is going to be about next-steps.  Taking everything that I have now and making a conscious effort to improve on what I would call a good solid foundation which I worked towards in the latter half of 2011.  I have already decided on a few achievable and measurable goals for what to achieve in the next 12 months and this post should hopefully allow me to revisit them and see how I am doing at achieving them and sticking to the famously useless New Year's resolutions.

What I want to achieve in 2012

• Play around 700,000 cash game hands on Sky Poker at stakes no lower than £0.20/£0.40 over 11 months
• Spend a full month of poker playing MTTs and play at least 600 individual tournaments
• Make £18,000 total profit (inc: bonuses) from Sky Poker
• Move up a limit on sky and be a consistent winning regular at £0.50/£1.00 on Sky
• Get onto Team Sky Pro
• Have a regular fortnightly home game
• Travel around playing a small, select sample of live poker games inc: bimonthly long-weekend trips to Nottingham for the deepstack festival
• Increase my bankroll enough to be comfortable playing £2/£5 live cash games
• Buy/adopt a Staffy dog
• Have at least one holiday abroad
• Increase the amount of socialising that I do in my spare time

I will use this list throughout the year to check back and report on how I am doing with my achievements.  I expect that I will probably review my progress quarterly.

As well as all of the positive things which I'd like to achieve and improve upon in 2012, there are ofcourse the negatives which ought to be addressed too.  This part is usually tougher:

2012 New Year's Resolutions

• Gambling
  I'm not sure of the best way to address or measure this but I certainly want to reduce or totally stop indulging in -EV gambling (casino games, fruit machines, slots, bookies etc).  This hasn't been a major problem for me but I have definitely spent/wasted/lost more money than I would like to have over the last few years. I think getting in control of this while I still play small will help me to stay away from such games when I have the ability to punt away large amounts of potentially life changing money.  I will start by saying that for the foreseeable I will totally stop all of the above activities.
• Health and Fitness
  This is a must-have on everyone's list but all jokes aside it will be very important for me this year given my working situation.  My diet could actually be far worse and I know a great many people who spend 6+hours a day in their home office who have far far worse diets than I do.  I don't overindulge on takeaways, I don't sit all night and munch on convenience-food and unhealthy snacks either.  I always have at least breakfast, one big meal and some smaller in-between meal snacks per day.  Now obviously this isn't ideal and I should be aiming to have breakfast + 2 meals per day but I find it tough when I am awake at night to be motivated to make a big meal at 4am.  I also have problems motivating myself to cook for just one person.  If there was someone else around I know for sure that I would eat more consistently and also cook better meals with more variety.  That is the thing which I would like to improve on more than anything else.  Quality of my meals.  I often find myself digging around the freezer for a quick 20-minutes and done meal to throw in the oven but really this isn't very satisfying or healthy.  There is nothing better than having your own home-cooked steak dinner but as I mentioned earlier it is tough to justify the expense and effort when eating alone.

  In terms of exercise I made a small start earlier in the year when Ben and I chose to start jogging.  Our laziness and Ben's injured foot means that this didn't last very long.  I will keep this up and maybe have a view to joining a Gym, swimming pool or some kind of sport to keep me busy.  In addition to this, if all goes to plan and I get my puppy (yaaaay), 3 walks a day will ensure I don't become heavier than my age in 2012.

I have now basically typed myself out so to all readers, friends, opponents etc I hope you had a very good Christmas and hope you have a Happy New Year!

Stephen
x

This is just a quick blog to let you know that I have a very detailed and interesting post scheduled to be published within the next 3 or 4 days detailing my plans for the upcoming year including my aims, working arrangements predictions etc.

For now though, I shall go back to opening the rest of my presents (this is my first... New Laptop ) and probably get a little drunk.

Happy Holidays!
Stephen

So yeah.. Where did it all go wrong?  November was my biggest winning month since leaving work and second biggest winner lifetime.  As I remember I had gotten pretty complacent and lazy towards the end of the month and when December rolled around I don't think that my head was in the right place.  By the 7th day in December I had lost all of the money in my sky account, loaded up another £1k and taken out my anger over at betfair casino losing a pretty hefty sum of money playing casino games (predominantly blackjack) which I don't mention in the quoted losses above /\.  That money I guess is expenditure, but it is very wasteful and changed my mind about table games very quickly.  I will definitely have something about that in my new year's resolutions/goals post in about a fortnight.

For all the bad it has done, my massive downswing at the beginning of this month has had it's benefits too however.  It has once again shown me how cruel poker can be and I have learned that emotionally I am not as close to being ready to deal with this as I once thought I was.  It has also taught me the importance of volume, planning, discipline and motivation.  At the beginning of the month I decided that I would aim to make around 16,000 sky poker points (£625).  This would have been equivalent to around 106 hours of 6tabling 50nl.  By day 13 of this month my target has now become a far greater 24,000 points (£1,250) and already by the end of the 13th I had made 11,652 (78 hours of play 6tabling 50nl).  Coupled with the fact that at my low-point this month I spent a few days playing 20nl and moved all the way back up through the limits playing 20, 30, 40 and now back to 50nl it is a pretty impressive feat.

At this point in time on an average day I am playing 8 tables of 50nl and playing between 6 and 8 hours per day.  Assuming a 20 day working month this should net me between 24,000 (£1,250) and 32,000 (£1,875) points per month.  If you then add to this the money made in-game this should lead to me having a very comfortable lifestyle next year at 50nl.  This is before we even discuss plans for moving up.

So in 2012 I will be making at the very least £15k from rakeback alone.  This solid foundation allows me to speculate that I should easily cash out over £20k from Sky Poker next year and allow me some kind of perspective for planning my year out in terms of profit and savings goals, moving up and potentially recruiting and mentoring micro-stakes horses as my roll allows.

I am going to take a leaf out of my friend Jon Lundy's book next year who showed me a very interesting structured plan for how he was going to spend his time in 2012.  No more staying up till 9am drinking and then sleeping in until 8pm the following day and missing grind.  I mentioned at the start of this process that this is a job first and foremost.  A person who treats his job with as much respect as most grinders treat theirs will have a very unrewarding and mediocre career and I need to do my best to keep some perspective.

My next planned blog will be around the 29th-31st detailing my plans for next year, new years resolutions and targets as well as my findings from 4 full months as a pro.  Please as ever leave a comment below if you enjoyed this read and have anything for me to discuss next time.

Cheers
Stephen

As far as poker is concerned since I last blogged I have played very little.  I continued with my roll on 888poker for a couple more days and probably lost about 1bi but then I decided to cash it back out for the following reason.  I am a tablegame degen!

I realised this as a result of a number of events in the past week which has taught me that I definately have a problem, leak or addiction which needs addressing.  After a brutal losing session in Teesside I was seen spinning my change to the nearest £100 on blackjack and letting it ride.  I did about 5 spins in excess of £50 and let the original wager ride for about 5 in a row until I finally lost (not letting profit ride unfortuaneltly) and I thought that this was totally out of character for me.  I put it down to stupidity and decided to forget about it.

The next time was on Tuesday at the circus £100 game.  I played in a deep 1/2 game (with an unbelievably soft lineup) and couldn't win a pot due to being totally carddead.  I lost about £200 by blinding out, 3bet folding and folding lots of failled c-bets and left the game.  On the way to the cage to cash my chips back out I was again seen playing £50 blackjack hands and higher.  This was starting to look like a problem.

So I was playing on 888poker, had one of those sessions again, couldn't win a pot, couldn't get a 3bet or cbet through and lost a few bi.  As I felt my mouse sliding to blackjack on the way to the [x] button to close 888poker I realised I was in trouble.  I resisted, went straight to cashier and cashed out the remainder of my roll.  Having $1k sitting right next to a high limit online blackjack game is totally unsuitable until I am sure that I can resist.

Now that I have recognised that I have a problematic tilty-degenerate blackjack streak in me I must think of a way to address it.  I have a pretty good group of friends who travel with me most of the time when I visit casinos and I am damn sure that they would give me a slap around the head and ask me WTF i'm doing if they saw me spinning £100's on blackjack.  I don't want to rely on this though.  I need to convince myself that I have the self control to have £1k+ sitting in an online casino and know that it will never be exposed to negative expectation table games.

I think for the mostpart this will just require willpower and there will be no quick fix for putting a stop to this.  I think that the longer I go without touching tablegames the easier it will be for me not to play.  My friend Ben has a philosophy that he won't play table games at all.  While I respect this I don't think it is completely healthy either.  I believe that often it is fun to play micro-limit blackjack or roulette in a casino whilst drinking, waiting for a game to start or whatever but I need to address the problem of playing so high.  I think that I will attempt to adopt Ben's ideal for a little while and set a target to not play tablegames completely for a period.  Maybe another new year's resolution.

With that in mind, if anyone would like to lay me some money for a prop bet about me not playing tablegames for 1month, 3months or maybe even 6months to a year in 2012 then I'm all ears.  We should discuss it in private however.  No silly £5, £10, £50 wagers though.  It would have to be a figure which it would hurt to lose.

Back to poker... On sky this month I have stopped tracking my progress via pokerjournal and the only measure of how well I have been doing is my cashout history.  I am very happy with the amount of money I have made in the last 30 days to date but not too pleased with the volume.  I don't know for sure how much I have played but I am pretty sure I've fallen below my 120hrs/month target.  I think that I will begin tracking meticulously again in december either via PokerJournal or find a way to do it online (suggestions anybody?).  This way I will know if I've been excessively lazy and know how short of my target I have fallen.

I think that is about all I have to say this week so please leave a comment if you want to discuss anything I've wrote.

Cheers
Stephen

The past month I've been on the biggest heater of my life.  Not anything superuser like where I can feel myself winning lots more pots than usual, hitting more draws and sets than usual but when I look at the results I've achieved I can speculate pretty well that this is just me running incredibly well overall and that these results won't continue in the long term.

On SkyPoker alone I have earned around 3 months wages from when I dealt poker at the casino.  Add to this my play live also and I have had a very comfortable 4 figure month.  Only time will tell if this is sustainable but I can confirm that I would be extremely happy with half of the money I have earned.  A sick hold'em session down at Gala Teesside this week was worth about 1/3 as much as I have earned on sky which has allowed me enough liquid cash to split my online money into two seperate bankrolls.

I chose to deposit on a second site in addition to Sky for a number of different reasons.  Firstly the traffic.  Sky Poker is a very low-volume site.  Right now it is reporing that it has 1,399 players sitting across all of it's tournament and cash game tables.  According to Poker Scout, Sky's average cash game player pool in the last 7 days was 345.  Comparing this to 888poker (my new site) who achieved 2,200 gives an idea of just how small Sky is.  At peak times I play on Sky exclusively as I believe the games are more profitable.  During the afternoons and early hours of the morning however there are often as few as 3 tables, sometimes even 0 which makes grinding impossible.  It is at these times when I will add 888.

The use of Hold'em Manager is also a big reason for chosing to play on a second site.  On sky there is no tracking software available and the only measure of your success and results is the account balance at the end of a session.  I could have glaring leaks in my game and be losing a ton of money which I feel that I will be able to identify better if I have a tracking app such a Hold'em Manager for post-session reviews.

The fact that I am now using HEM2 on 888poker means that I will have some statistics, hand replays and graphs to post within this blog for all of the results-focused readers that I have.  (Yes I mean you simmy!)  I expect to play around 15k hands on 888poker over the next 30 days so I won't have too much to post on that front in the near future though.

If you have any opinions about my choice to play on multiple sites, and the choice of 888poker please leave me a comment below.

Thanks for reading
Stephen
x

Happily though, the exact opposite has happened and I am now quite confident and comfortable with my professional status and my financial sitatuion.  This is entirely due to a huuuuuge heater which I have been on over the last fortnight since I started to play on my own money and I have managed to cash out enough money to keep me very comfortable for the forseeable and give me what I consider an acceptably low risk of ruin.  Exact amounts will be kept for those who it concerns but 14 days ago when I started to grind again I considered that I needed to have a very successful November in order to continue to play poker professionally.  Now though, if I break even for the entirety of November I will still be in pretty good shape.  A losing month however is still not a good prospect.  I have a sizeable bankroll for 50nl but I still don't have my three months life expenses quite yet.

I don't really know what else there is to say on the matter now.  My quality of life is still really high and I am very happy with my work/play balance.  I am spending a fairly high amount of time relative to most socialising, eating out and going out with friends and this is the main reason why I like the idea of continuing to be a professional poker player so much.  The one thing which has bugged me a little bit recently is when for whatever reason somebody asks me in a formal environment what I do for a living.  I still haven't decided what my go-to answer is going to be to this question but when I don't see it coming I am having a real hard time thinking of an answer.  I wonder if other pro gamblers have had an issue with this but here is the process I have.  For example, my GP asked me "so what do you do?".  My immediate thought was "What DO I do?".  To say I am a pro gambler is likely to lead to loads of awkard questions from people who don't understand the principles of the thing.  My friend and fellow pro Martin and I had a discussion yesterday about the people who ask about gambling and say "So do you win every time you play", "Can you teach me your system", "If I give you (£10|£20|£50|£100) will you double it for me?" and from that I concluded that it is probably best to not discuss the idea with people unfamiliar with poker.  So for the moment my go-to has been to say that I am unemployed.

Now, for me being unemployed is a negative thing.  Somebody tells me that I am unemployed and I immediately jump to stereotypes which have grown within me as I have been growing up and it is not something which I want people to think of me.  When I say that I am unemployed but show up in a nice car, with nice clothes wearing my watch I don't want people to judge me so I think I need to come up with something new to say to people.  An approach which some people use is to be very vague, or avoid the topic but I think that this makes you seem untrustworthy or a little odd in some way.  If you ask someone you have recently met "What do you do for your living?" and they answer "This and that" or quickly change the topic then what is your opinion going to be of them.

I kind of wish that last month I had luckboxed a place on to Team Sky Pro because then it is very easy to answer the question.  "What do you do for your living Stephen?" answer: "Oh, I'm a team sky poker player".  That rolls off the tongue alot better than "I'm a pro poker player" in my opinion.  So basically I need to think a little more about how I am going to approach the subject in the future or luckbox my way on to Team Sky Pro in November.  I know which I'd rather do.

Hmmmm.  This blog seems a little rambly and chatotic so I will end it now before I get onto a nother odd tangent.  As always, thanks for reading and this time I hope there can be some discussion about /\ in the comments below.
Cheers
Stephen
x