Adam Winter

Well I’ve made the leap and decided to rent a condo in Mexico in order to play online poker. Here are some pictures:

I’m still waiting for approval from pokerstars, but I should be playing by the end of the month. Live poker has been so-so. Last week I went to Vegas and ran bad for 4 days in tournaments. I managed to get 1st in the nightly tournament at Aria on my last night in town which put me up a decent amount for the 5 days.

Tomorrow I’m headed to Vegas for 2 days. The trip is not a full poker trip, but more to have fun and relax. I’ll probably play 1 tourney and some plo cash at the venetian. Dana and I might see a show and we’ll for sure hit some clubs, possibly the Tao. We’re also looking forward to the drive which has some cool sight-seeing spots.

Vegas went fairly well. I played somewhat poorly at times, but did well in cash games and tournaments. I finished 2nd in the $350 PLO tournament for $3319 after we chopped it 4 ways.. basically 2nd place money. 1st would have been 5k but we were all at 30bbs so it was becoming a crapshoot.

Tomorrow I fly to England to play in the UKIPT Nottingham event. This is a £500 event, roughly $800 so it will be the largest tournament I have ever played. I’m expecting to do fairly well since the tournament format allows for me to play very nitty, which is generally my style. I should be able to play relatively few hands and make it fairly deep before resorting to any kind of push/fold strategy. Hopefully I can run good because without luck, it’s tough to win.

Online I have been breakeven for the last few hundred games. Today I got 4th in a $27 KO turbo for $600. I ran ok in the tournament but lost a big “race” if you will with A6o vs A5o when a good player spiked the 5 on me. If I win that, I knock him out and become the chipleader 3 handed. Right decision, wrong result, oh well.

Business is fairly steady. I should do well this year profit wise. I plan on shutting down my training site because I don’t think it’s worth the effort, and just maintaining the trade sites I have.

Taxes suck for the self-employed. I’m going to end up paying about 25% of my gross income for taxes… which really sucks. I’m working on finding every possible deduction I can to reduce my tax burden. I opened a SEP IRA and plan to contribute a ton to that in order to lower my taxes. Not much else I can do. I think I’ll owe about another 4k when all is said and done (and I’ve paid 8k estimated so far).

Yesterday I was playing some 3x turbo satellites and I registered for a “seat only” tournament in the UK without realizing it. Of course, this was the only tourney in the session I won, so now I have an entry into a $865 tournament in Nottingham, England February 11th. I checked with pokerstars and unfortunately I can’t sell/exchange/transfer this entry. My only choices are to play it, or forfeit the entry. My plan right now is to play some more satellites and try and win another that includes spending money and hotel. This way I can use that extra cash to pay for the plane ticket (about $1500). I’ll be playing all January to try and get this otherwise I’m going to have to foot the bill for everything else. Either way, it will be a fun experience for me. I have never been overseas to Europe so I’m looking forward to that.

Today I’m flying back home to Wisconsin for the holidays to see my family. I plan to take the rest of the year off pokerwise until perhaps December 31st because I need to clear some bonuses.

Ran really well and I think played really well today and got 1st / 5700 in a $2 turbo tournament. 1st paid $1792 so it was a nice profit today for a few hours work. I will post a video on smart poker training soon.

Last week Dana and I went to California. I didn’t play poker for ~6 days and it was a really, really nice break. We had a ton of fun going to Sea World and Six Flags, as well as seeing some friends. I’m looking forward to driving out there again as it was a great mini-vacation.

I was on about a -1k downswing due to bad play and also trying to learn limit omaha hi/lo (devilish game). During the downswing I had disconnection issues, tilt problems, and I was just making more mistakes than usual. Not a good combination of factors obviously. The bad beats, disconnects, and just poor play on my part caused me to take a few days off over the weekend and just relax. I listened to some motivational material and played a very relaxed session of 8-10 tables last night. I ran much, much, much better and won a $12/180 and finished 3rd in another 12/180 after losing AJo < K7s all in pre for 110k chips. I also cashed in a few other donkaments to bring me out of the downswing.

It’s amazing how much variance there is in 12/180s. You can go through a ton of games where you have AA in early position and get no action, and shove KQ in late position and run into QQ+/AQ+ every single time. This will make you crazy unless you realize it’s just variance. Last night I was picking up big hands in the blinds and able to call standard shoves from players and hold up. When this happens it feels like an easy game, and from my opponents perspective they are probably thinking “of course! every fucking time!”. I know how that feels, and it’s really hard not to get in that mindset.

My goal for the year is to end with a 30k bankroll. Right now I’m at ~20k so I have to get in some good grinding for the next 2 months. It’s going to be tough because of vacationing plans and the holidays. My girlfriend and I are going to California soon, and I plan to spend a week back in WI around christmas.

I’m getting back in the groove and changing up my game a little bit. Players seem to be playing back at me so I am changing up some of my preflop raise sizes to confuse my opponents which has resulted in some nice wins lately. Up ~2700 so far this month. Morning games were weak today, but it may have been unlucky table draws. There is a paul oakenfold concert in town that I might check out tonight.

won a $3 rebuy 180 man turbo today, lost a bunch of other stuff. I was deep in a bunch of tournaments and seemed to run into AA every time and not suck out… incredibly frustrating.

I’ve been watching the show Breaking Bad, about a chemistry teacher who gets into the drug trade. It’s much better than I expected.

Playing soccer tomorrow, and then a poker tournament at the casino on Sunday.

up a bit over 7k this month with bonuses. ran pretty awful today, but oh well just variance. I can’t seem to run hot deep in a tournament. It’s either I’m card dead, lose a flip, run into a monster and don’t suck out, or take a beat. Pretty standard stuff for the low volume I play.

Going to do a coaching session tomorrow. Saturday play some soccer. Sunday play a “jack and jill” tournament at the casino with Dana. We will be alternating play every 30 minutes and she will only play vs women, and myself vs guys. Should be interesting.

Sorry about the lack of updates if anyone actually reads this… My girlfriend Dana and I moved to Tempe, AZ. We rented a budget truck which had some problems along the way. The whole ordeal caused us a ton of stress, but we ended up getting a $600 partial refund because of all the issues. We were actually lucky we didn’t blow out a tire and die according to the nice people at J & D Auto, where we were held up for 26 hours.

We are really liking Arizona so far. It’s been super hot, but still very nice weather. Once it cools down later this year we are really going to enjoy the outdoors. Our condo is really nice and our landlords are super nice people and we really like them. I think we got really lucky.

Poker has been going fine. I’ve only played 7 days this month and I’m up ~$1500. I have finished a lot of 2nds and 3rds in tournaments which is nice, but 1st is always much better. Usually 2nd is ~$300 in the games I play, and 1st is ~$500. So the difference adds up. Nonetheless, I’m still really happy with my play lately and I know I’m going to hit a big score again soon. After analyzing my play through half the year, I have played about 5000 games and won a bit over $32,000. If I grind really hard for the rest of the year and get up to 10,000 games on the year, I should easily be at +60k for the year.

Business is up and down. It seems like when one of my websites is doing well, the others not so well. Poker related sites are very hard to make any money from. The reason is because the margins are very small. Most sites make their money by “skimming” as I call it. This is making a very small % from users. This can be done in many ways – offering a service such as intersite-trades and taking a 5% cut, offering rakeback, selling training videos, direct referrals to new poker sites, staking, and other misc. services. I have yet to see a way to make huge money from poker sites. Small money is easy, but big money remains elusive.