Adam Winter

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.

Dana and I got back from Phoenix Saturday after being out there since Tuesday. The weather was terrific – sunny every day and about 90-95 for a high. Mornings and evenings were fairly comfortable at around 70-80.

We drove around downtown Phoenix the first few days and realized the downtown area is very very ghetto. Lots of boarded up houses, graffiti, “massage parlors”, strip joints, bail bonds, loan stores, dumpy fast food places, etc. etc. When we ventured into Tempe and Scottsdale, we liked those areas a lot more.

We found a nice 2 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom condo in southern Tempe, about 4 miles south of ASU. It has a nice community with pools, gym, sand volleyball and tennis courts. The place might be a bit small but it is really nice on the inside, a fair price, and in a really nice area.

We were both super exhausted from all the driving and searching around by the end of the trip. We’re both glad to be back in Madison for now so we can rest easy until moving time.

Took the weekend off to get some random stuff done, watch the shield, and go see Avatar in 3-d. Amazing visuals, pretty good movie. I’d give it a 9/10. The 3-d experience it completely worth it – everything just looks phenomenal. This is one of those movies that you should see in the theater before it’s gone. There’s no way any home viewing experience is even close to watching it on an IMAX screen in 3-d.

Won another 180man today, although I felt I should have done better in my other tournaments. I got super lucky twice in the 180 man I won though. But of course in the games I lost I just took super sick beats AA < AQ, KK < KT, etc. etc. The last game I played I shoved A-5 in the sb on the bubble and the bb calls off his healthy stack with 4-5! And of course wins, then later he gets all in with me with AQ vs. my AA and I lose again. Both pots were nearly 20k on the bubble in the 180man so I got 19th. It’s not even frustrating, it’s just plain stupid.

Yesterday, I decided to voluntarily resign from my nightshift supervisor position. I had many reasons for quitting this job besides the pay being sub-par. The main one is so that I can focus and devote more time to my business and playing online poker. Some other very important reason are that I want to go through life doing what I want, instead of reacting to life’s challenges all the time. Now I feel that I am the master of my own destiny. No longer will I feel trapped inside a cubicle working hours I don’t want to work, and doing unchallenging and mundane tasks all night.

The pay at the job I’m quitting is approximately $20/hr, which by most standards is a “good” job. The benefits are decent and comparable to most IT jobs, with very few side perks besides a generous holiday schedule. So I could continue to work this job, making about 42k per year, working lousy hours, and feeling unchallenged. But everyday for the past year I have gone into work knowing I want to do something else. I know in my heart that there are so many things in life I want to accomplish, and I just can’t do those things if I’m stuck working for someone else.

My last day is October 29th, which will give me two full months this year to really focus on my new business, and online poker. I will also be able to spend more time with my girlfriend, visit my parents and brother more, get on a better workout schedule, and get more things done that have been on my to-do list for years.

I want to go through life doing what I want, and be happy doing it. I realized after nearly 4 years of working for an IT company that I would never be fully happy working this kind of job. People always say find a job that you love doing, and I know this is it for me. I have over 10 years of online web development skills and about 8 years of profitable online poker to back that up. I know I can do this, and it will be fun, and challenging at times, but also easy at times.

My goals for the rest of the year are to increase profits on Smart Rakeback and add a ton more functionality to the website. For Smart Poker Training I want to have 100 videos by the end of the year, as well as phase 2 of the project completed. Profitability isn’t important for SPT yet, since it is not well known enough, but I think 2010 will be a great year for SPT once I get over a few hundred videos. For online poker, this year I am going to try and achieve supernova status on pokerstars. This may be difficult since I still need 55,000 vpps. I plan to play mostly $12 180man and $12 45man tournaments for November. At 5 vpp per game, I will need to grind up a nice roll before playing hyper turbos again to complete this goal. I do not think I could grind even close to 10k of these games in 2 months – I have too many other things to do. Although… my roi is quite good and 10k of these might net me about $25k. Hmm….

Well that’s enough of an update for now. I will post more after this weekend. Badger hockey game on Saturday, and plenty of time to get things done.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about trying to achieve supernova status on pokerstars and how much money I could earn throughout 2010. Ideally, I would like to get to supernova (100,000 VPPs) by the end of April at the latest. $1 in rake = 5 VPPs so 100,000 VPPs = $20,000 in rake fees.

There are 17 weeks through the end of April. Thus, I would need to pay an average of approximately $1176 in rake fees each week to get to supernova by April 30th. These calculations are based on SNG and tournament play. I will be playing the occasional cash game, most likely PLO, but that will be rare. 99% of my play will be SNGs and tourneys.

Obviously this seems like a ton and will require playing a lot of hyper turbo sng’s and large buy in tournaments.

500 $86+1.72 hyper turbos = $860 in rake
750 $86+1.72 hyper turbos = $1290 in rake

From my Hold ‘em manager stats, the hyper turbos take an average of 5 minutes per game. If I can play 150 games/day (~6 hours if I 2-table), then I can easily get to 750 games/week in just 5 days of play and 30 hours total 2-tabling. I feel like I could increase my tables to an average of 3 at all times since the games don’t fill that quickly. Which would mean only about 25 hours per week.

In the first week of August I was able to play 246 of the games in only 12.5 hours, or nearly 20 games per hour. A lot of this play was off peak hours, as well as me not actively trying to play a lot of games in a row. I was able to make $3000 profit from these games as well. So I know that I could easily put in more than 12.5 hours in a week and add in another table or two to increase my # of games per hour. There have been a few hours where I played 30+ games/hour.

Another thing I have been thinking about is if I do play 750 of these games per week, will my winrate suffer? If I decide to put in that much volume, I will have to play against other pros, grinders, and highly skilled players. I can still table select, but to put in the high volume I need, I will have to play some games vs. stronger competition. Therefore, I feel like a winrate of just +$2 per game might be more reasonable than my current expected winrate of +$5/game.

So if I assume that I can play 750 hyper turbos per week in 30 hours, that means I will rake $1290 per week. I am also assuming I will be able to maintain a winrate of +$2 per game, or +$1500 per week.

Using these rates I expect to get to supernova in 15.5 weeks, or by the end of April. If I continue playing through the rest of the year at the same rate of about 100,000 VPP per 16 weeks, then I can expect to earn approximately 300,000 VPP by the end of the year.

The first 100,000 VPPs will earn me 250,000 FPPs and the the next 200,000 VPPs will earn me 700,000 FPPs for a yearly total of 950,000 FPPs. I will be able to purchase milestone bonuses of $800, $2,000, and $3,000 when I reach 100k, 200k, and 300k VPPs. These bonuses cost 50,000 FPP each, which leaves me with 800,000 FPPs to spend. The best use of these FPPs is either concierge service, or a $4,000 bonus for 250,000 FPPs. Thus, I could buy 3 $4,000 bonuses for 750,000 FPP, and use another 150,000 for the milestone bonuses. In total for the year I would earn $17,800 from cash bonuses. This amounts to close to 30% rakeback.

If I am able to achieve my goal of +$1,500 per week, then over 50 weeks I will earn $75,000. With bonuses that equals $92,800 for the year. Assuming I win some small tournaments and do ok in live games, I should be able to make around $100,000 for the year.

For the past few weeks I have been talking to my girlfriend about quitting Gtech and playing poker full time. We have discussed the various pros and cons, health insurance, amount of money I would need to make, other income sources, poker legislation, risks, etc. We both agreed that starting next year, if I can get her health insurance, and the poker laws don’t kill online poker, that I should go for it.

I’m really excited about the idea since I’ve always loved playing poker. I have always been super disciplined, bankroll conservative, and savvy with my game selection. When I dedicate myself to the game, I know I can win. Being a tournament player moreso than a cash game player means that I might go one week without winning much, but the next have a huge week. Dana (my gf) and I decided that if I could not earn $18,000 over 6 months, or an average of $3,000 profit per month, I should quit. Honestly, I really think $18k will be incredibly easy.

Personally, I am fine with making less money in year than my fulltime job as long as I have the freedom to do what I want, when I want. I really can’t imagine only making $36,000 for the year as well. I think I would have to play very very badly, and very rarely to make so little. I have had 5k+ months playing in my spare time with a full time job! I just can’t see how playing full time and really dedicating myself to playing winning poker wouldn’t yield spectacular results.

If after a year I somehow hate playing full time, I can always find a new job or go back to school. My finances are very very sound right now. I have saved a ton since I started working at Gtech nearly 4 years ago. Thus, I have a healthy start on my retirement funds as well as a 24-month emergency fund. Additionally, I can always talk to my family if I ever need monetary support to get back on my feet if disaster struck.

Both Dana and I feel that starting in 2010 is a great time for me to try this out. She will be getting her graduate degree in the spring, and we plan to move out of the state during the summer. Most likely Phoenix.

Right now my online bankroll is $9350 and I plan to grind that up as high as possible by the end of the year. I have already withdrawn $5000 profit this year as well. Also, I did not play during January or February and played probably 10 hrs/wk March-June. So part time winnings of nearly $14k through 6 months in very encouraging. I feel like $50k/year is easily doable, and 100k from poker in 2010 is very achievable. My next post will analyze how I expect to make 100k in 2010 from online poker.

Arizona was awesome.  Dana and I had a ton of fun visiting my Dad and stepmom Renee after Christmas.  The weather was great – mid to high 60s each day.  I have a ton of pictures from hiking, mountain biking,  horseback riding, and the mountains.  My next post I will get the pictures up here.

Dana and I are seriously thinking about moving out there now. The real estate prices are super low according to my dad, so 2 years from now would be ideal.

I meant to update this a lot sooner, but of course I’ve been busy with a ton of things.

Arizona, gtech, playing poker, elance, working on my site, and of course all the day-to-day busy work.

My goal is to keep this blog updated, so I will try to post about once per week from now on.

I’ve been really busy with work / family / girlfriend / xmas stuff so obviously blogging hasn’t been a top priority.  So this update will be pretty short.

In a week Dana and I are going to visit my Dad and stepmom in Arizona.  I can’t wait because it’s been snowing constantly in Madison and very cold.  Arizona will be about 65 every day.  I will also get a nice 12 day break from work, which I’m looking forward to.

Towards the end of November and early December I went on a pretty bad poker downswing.  I lost about 500 from tournaments and almost another 500 in cash games.  This was about 80-90% due to running bad.  The tournaments was pretty normal variance, just losing big hands late in tourneys sucks sometimes.  The cash games I tried some shortstacking and lost 5/6th’s of my all ins which were 70%, 70%, 75%, 52%, 30%, and 30%.  Pretty bad luck too since the 1 hand I did win was the smallest pot.

After this downswing I said I wouldn’t play for the rest of the month.  As usual that meant a 1 week break.  I signed up for cake poker and with their 100% sign up bonus up to $500 I have been doing well so far, up $250.  The action has been quite good on the site, and I have been winning a lot in omaha.  Tournament variance is still kicking my ass though.

I found a very nice wordpress plugin for a javascript called HighSlide. I have uploaded a few pictures from halloween and a 5k race to my pictures page. The script is so slick, I love it.