I first heard of Dusty Schmidt a few years ago on 2+2 but the guy has become a legend in online poker. In fact I have no problem whatsoever paying homage to a player that realises his own weaknesses, works on them and then concentrates on his strengths rather than trying to be some big shot. Indirectly by doing what he does best then Dusty Schmidt has become one of the most influential players in online poker today. His landmark achieving of “Super Nova” on PokerStars was huge and is depicted here in this video.
It may seem unremarkable especially as many have done the same feat and some in less time than Dusty but what I like about Schmidt is his attitude to poker which comes through in his book called “Treat Your Poker Like a Business”.
People like George Lind have become names by making SuperNova and all of the perks that this brings. Although what me and Dusty do not share is the strength of our respective games. Dusty’s game is stronger than mine and I would much rather make my money against weaker players and playing more tables. George Lind’s philosophy to grind that many hands was to set himself targets that were not monetary. This allowed him to keep going when grinding itself become difficult.
But behind all of these ventures is rakeback or something similar on sites like and the attaining of it and this is why I have been totally transforming my poker game this past few months with tremendous success. Why play top players or even good players when you can play novices and earn money in a straight forward way? Has Dusty Schmidt (nickname “Leatherass”) ever won a big live tournament or title……NO!…….but he is miles ahead of 99.99999% of all poker players when it comes to earning money and that sure as hell is a lot of nines.
You can contact Carl at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk to speak about advantageous rakeback deals and you can play with Carl at PokerLoco quoting bonus code DEAN600.
I have really been putting the hours in recently with my poker challenge and now the $4000 mark has been passed with the current bankroll of $4441 now nearing the half way mark. I am starting to get a little fed up of playing again and have decided to take a break from grinding NL50 for a week or so. But I also want to dovetail my poker challenge next month with testing out my latest poker system that I have been working on which is “The Fox”. This system is built for low-stakes limit hold’em games at six max.
When I say low-stakes then I mean $0.50-$1.00 up to possibly $2-$4 although $1-$2 is more feasable. Before you start to poke fun at me playing so low then consider this, a good player at $1-$2 six handed limit could make three big blinds per hour and so $6/hour is possible. But the players at those levels are so weak that if you could play eight tables then $50/hour is possible.
Also the games at six handed $1-$2 limit are brutally raked and I reckon another $30/hour could be made in rakeback if you get a good enough deal. I mentioned this in an earlier post but it would be absolutely amazing to make $80/hour. A gruelling 50 hour week could make $4000/week and although I am not aiming for this, I really owe it to myself to see how well “The Fox” actually does. I really think that this system has the power to blow the Vulture and the Jackal out of the water for one simple reason. This is because the return on bankroll required is potentially staggering. To even contemplate that a $200k income is possible playing this low beggars belief when you consider that at $1-$2 then a $500 bankroll would suffice.
Most middle limit professionals don’t make $200k and the people that have that type of income need serious five and even six figure bankrolls.
“The Dean” plays poker at www.pokerloco.com and you can join Carl quoting bonus code DEAN600. Carl can also be reached at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.ukif you would like to receive advantageous rakeback deals.
The term “rakeback pro” is something that has been in common parlance now for quite some time in online cash poker games. As a poker writer and player of some years then many people expect me to basically be something that I am not and that is a high stakes poker player. To put the record straight this was something that I tried to be some time ago but the tough part is not in becoming good enough to play those levels but in finding enough value to stay there. You also need a strong element of mental toughness to be able to withstand the huge swings at the higher levels.
The level of variance and the standard deviation are directly linked to your edge and when your edge shrinks then the swings get larger. I just couldn’t hack it mentally and this is something that gets deeply entrenched on a psychological level as you get older. So these days I am not ashamed to admit that I am a “rakeback pro” when I play and my methods these days involve playing large numbers of tables at easy levels that I know I can beat and getting the best rake deal that I can.
But like I said yesterday, breaking even can make you an awful lot of money in poker these days. In years gone by then breaking even on a poker table long term would have been a waste of time as a money making exercise and the only thing that you would have got out of it would be the entertainment value. These days if you can replicate breaking even over a large number of tables then you are in heaven so to speak.
Also when you are in this situation then the dynamic totally changes and you do not need to bust a gut to make money from the actual games. Suddenly making money from poker becomes far easier because you are not having to press all the time and you can tone down your aggression. Over pressing is one of the primary faults of players who struggle to make money at poker.
I had to make a decision once upon a time…….do I want to become a “player” or do I want to make a lot of money playing online poker? When I heard of a player who was making $7000/month just in rakeback playing sixteen tables of $1-$2 limit hold’em then I was staggered. On top of this was the fact that this player was making another $50/hour from the games themselves and he was playing full time. I just could not comprehend how someone could make $15,000/month playing so low. If you said to anyone that you played $1-$2 limit then anyone would think that you were a beginner and so would I have done once upon a time. But yet these online earnings are pitching in with the very best in the world in terms of earnings. It was staggering to me and still is but it highlighted that I had to change my ways……and I did.
Following on from yesterday’s post on rakeback and I need to make it clear where my own stance is regarding online poker these days. Everybody is going technology crazy and everybody is either using trackers or they are becoming very serious about poker. But let me let you into one huge secret about poker…..you do not need to be a great poker player to make an awful lot of money from it and I proved this with my poker challenge on . That statement may sound odd but not once you begin to understand just how you can make money from poker.
Let me put something to you……do you need to be a great football player to make very good money from football? No of course you don’t and football agents are classic example as are managers, chairman and heaven knows who else. It is exactly the same with poker and this is the point that I hope that I am getting across. My earnings in poker quantum leaped when I stopped trying to be somebody and stopped trying to be a “player”.
When I stopped trying to be a Dwan or a Townsend then not only did I become far happier but I also made far more money. Let me let you into another huge secret…..you can make fantastic money in poker breaking even!!!!!!! How the hell can this be?? Well if you break even on one table then with a great rake deal you still make money. I know players who make $50/hour multi-tabling $1-$2 limit hold’em just from rakeback who break even on all of the tables that they play.
This totally changes the playing dynamic and remember that the online poker environment is totally different to a live one. Online card rooms want your money…..FACT! But they also want it before the other online card rooms get it…..FACT! They also would like all of the players who play on their sites to be of roughly the same skill level simply because everyone would lose money to the rake and recycle money…….bottom line…..card rooms get more of your money.
But there are ways to get some fantastic deals and anyone who wishes to contact me about this who is interested in possibly waging war against the poker sites and getting the best deal that they can is welcome to e-mail me at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk
“The Dean” currently plays at http://www.pokerloco.com and you can join Carl quoting bonus code DEAN600.
Poker sites are our friend’s right? Well not exactly because they are in business for themselves and if they thought that they could take our entire rake from us and that we would stand for it then they would. But the online competition is fierce and so this forces their hand tremendously to offer us better deals and better rakeback deals. I have been playing my $100-$10,000 challenge on recently and this has given me the idea of what I call “Total Rakeback”.
This is basically to get the best rake deal that you possibly can by whatever means possible. Poker is a dirty business and you need to get dirty to win at it and if this means going to war with the poker sites then so be it. Keep a close eye on Pokersharkpool over the coming weeks as my blog will be daily and also I will be revealing some inside stuff in terms of you being able to get some rake deals that are better than standard shall we say.
People who are interested will be able to contact me personally by e-mail but one thing is clear with online poker and this is that you need to start treating it like a business. Your overheads are the rake and in a tough competitive world that is online poker in 2010 then you need to be reducing your overheads to a manageable level. Look at it this way, if two identical players played 40 hours a month and both lost $2000 by the year end then who would be the worse off?
Strange question but what if one player made $500/month in rakeback? Suddenly this makes them ahead by the year end to the tune of $4000. What if a 30% standard deal became a 60% deal and they made $1000/month in rakeback? Suddenly $4k profits become $10k profits and the prospect of playing 40 hours a week and going full-time pro becomes a reality. All because the barriers to making money were largely removed. It is far easier to walk without a monkey on your back you know.
Watch this space……CLOSELY!
“The Dean” currently plays on www.pokerloco.com where you can join him quoting bonus code DEAN600.
I am pleased to report that my $100-$10,000 poker challenge that I started on the 1st April has surged on to a new high of $3721. This may not seem a lot but I have played around 40 hours per month and so an average of around $600/month means about $15/hour which isn’t bad considering that I was playing for peanuts when I first started. I am pleased to see the end of August and September after moving house and a close family loss left me wanting to have nothing to do with poker.
But I have come back refreshed and I have really pushed on in terms of the number of hours played. I have received massive motivation after reading Dusty Schmidt’s book “Treat your poker like a business”. I was surprised to find that myself and Dusty share very similar poker philosophies but that guy is an absolute legend in poker whereas I am still a mere mortal so to speak.
But my challenge will undergo a huge transformation when I reach $10,000. Notice that I said “when” and not “if”. This is because at $3721 then I am 100% convinced that if I remain at NL50 that I will reach $10k. I have done it before at that level so I know that there is value at full ring. I may move to NL100 which would be pretty staggering considering that my original bankroll was just $100. But I had something of a brainwave while watching a movie in bed a few days ago with what to do with the challenge.
I want to take this on to $100,000 and that would be really massive but yet I don’t see that I need to do this playing and grinding. So my idea is to split the $10,000 bankroll into two halves and use the first $5000 myself to play NL50 or NL100. The second $5000 will be split into twenty units of $250 where I intend to bankroll 20 serious players at $250 each. When I say “serious” then I am referring to players who are serious about working with me and making money.
I may reduce this to ten players at $500 each but the deal is for me to mentor these players and supervise and manage their bankroll. In short I am not looking for great poker players but players who have a desire to succeed in poker and want to work with a professional. By the way….expect my blog to be daily from now on…..AT LAST!
Carl “The Dean” Sampson plays poker at www.pokerloco.com and you can join Carl there quoting bonus code DEAN600.
I have always thought that many players who play six max no-limit hold’em are still trying to play post flop poker too much. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this but you really want to be playing post flop poker with either the initiative or strong implied odds and so calling raises is not really going to be profitable. This is especially the case at the middle limits where more and more players fire double barrels and triple barrels where they stack off.
Sure their ranges may be polarised but it is still tough to call players with jack and queen high. I love players who have PokerTracker statistics in six handed NLHE of around 24/10. They get good VPIP but achieve it in totally the wrong way and call raises too much and limp in too much trying to take small ball too far. Irrespective what anyone else tells you, when you play no-limit then your PFR should not be too far behind your VPIP figure.
There will be times when you limp from the small blind in a family pot or lip behind with pocket pairs for implied odds but your PFR percentage needs to be very close to your VPIP figure in six max. This means 25/22 and not 25/10 or 25/12. Are you one of the players who calls raises with speculative hands and then releases? If players limp or call raises then they are conceding the initiative. This is even more so if they are chronic floaters as well. This means that when they call your flop bet then you can simply fire another barrel on the turn.
Or you can mess with them if you hit the turn by checking. This to them looks like a successful float and when they step in and bet the turn then you have extracted another street of value than if you had bet. You can carry much of the advice from six handed play and apply it to full ring because after all, when four players have folded in full ring then you are essentially playing six max anyway.
Play with “The Dean” at www.pokerloco.com quoting bonus code DEAN600
Apologise if I haven’t posted for a while but September has been yet another bad month for me on a personal level and time wise. I had a family bereavement to cope with this month and all of the arrangements and the sorting out of the estate has been left to me. So this has followed on from my moving house which has sort of knocked me for six so to speak. But my poker challenge has been put on hold for a while although I am still in a healthy position at $2909.41.
I received an e-mail from a guy last week about PokerTracker and PAHUD. PokerAce HUD stands for heads up display and this converts your PT stats and places them on your monitor as you are playing the game. The best feature for me even though it is taken for granted is how the automatic update makes the data increasingly accurate. You also have the option to customise your HUD so that the data that is relevant to you personally can be displayed clearly.
If you click on a certain opponent then you will get to see even more useful statistics such as how your opponents play per street which is a key component in how you dovetail your strategy against individual opponents. If you get raised after value betting the turn with one pair or on the river and you get raised and your opponent is showing raise statistics of almost zero on this street after a meaningful sample size then you can fold with impunity as you are clearly beaten. Do not even think about making a hero call.
You can only make a fold like this when you see statistics on your PAHUD otherwise you are calling blind. It would only take one mistake and a call in a pot where you are clearly beaten to pay for PAHUD all by itself. If you were playing NL400 and made a $200 call in a pot where you mistakenly thought that your opponent was bluffing then PAHUD has more than paid for itself, you simply cannot afford to be without it when you put it into context like that.
In fact for me as you start to move up into levels where the players are more sophisticated but who are not sophisticated enough to conceal their patterns or even try to then this is where PAHUD is worth its weight in gold. This is because many players have certain biases when it comes to bluffing or slow playing and once you know what these are then these situations can be some of your most profitable in poker.
If you want to get the best out of PokerTracker then you are going to have to play so that your statistics are meaningful. I didn’t use any kind of tracker program for ages until about 2008 simply because I site hopped too much. I have done numerous different things during my poker life but a very rocky and dangerous spell at $25-$50 left me feeling somewhat spooked at playing high-stakes poker and without going into too many details, this was when I decided to site hop.
I simply did not want player’s data mining me or sharing information with other players and I was on my own at a level where I shouldn’t have been on my own. Back then I was blinded by visions of grandeur but a rapid changing of the guard so to speak left me lagging behind the very best players.
Still…….no point in crying over spilt milk and if there is one thing that adversity has always taught me is that it is a prod in the right direction. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it were not for the bad times. I remember some years ago when I was a very keen Chess player and was almost master strength. The novices who I played and beat (usually workmates) were so enamoured of my ability as a Chess player that they often remarked how I must not have lost hardly any games in my life.
This statement shows a lack of understanding of how one becomes good at something…..you become good by losing a lot and then learning from it. I knew in 2008 that I was finished as a high-stakes player even though technically I had never really been one. There is a world of difference between playing high-stakes poker and being a high-stakes poker player. In 2008, it was becoming increasingly evident to me how online poker was becoming more and more technology minded.
You can choose two three paths with PokerTracker and the use of it. You either are ignorant of its use and if you are then at least reading this has been educational. If you are ignorant then I hope for your sake that you never stick your head above low levels. Or you could become very knowledgeable and then look to site hop to avoid the better players like I did. The downside to this is that your sample sizes for many of the metrics if you are using it never get large enough to be accurate but the plus side is that your opponents stats on you will not be conclusive either…..hence the reason for hopping.
The third option is to stay on the same site and simply amass a highly formidable database and online poker these days is based on information retrieval, storage and accurate use.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson plays poker at www.pokerloco.com and you can join him there quoting bonus code DEAN600.
This weeks theme seems to be how much time does one spend studying poker? I have been asked this question no fewer than four times this week which is something of a record. I am going to quote PokerTracker again in this post because it is highly relevant to both areas of poker and this is the playing of it and the study of it. PokerTracker for me is the industry standard that every other tracker needs to follow or to match and this is a serious reason as to why so many poker players have advanced their games in a very short space of time.
The ability to use computer software to analyse your performance has been used in other fields to great effect and so it was only a matter of time before the same thing happened in poker. It is no coincidence that a record number of Chess Grandmasters rated at 2600ELO+ are active now in the Chess world. But the balance needs to be right with regards study time and playing time.
Let us say that you have a projected earn rate based on 120k hands of ring game play at NL50 of 7ptbb/100. This is giving us a dollar figure of $7/100 and if this player is multi-tabling and seeing 300 hands/hour then our PokerTracker stats are showing us that this player is making $21/hour from the games. Now imagine that this player can only manage 20 hours of poker or study a week due to work commitments. This player would have a weekly projected earn of $420.
Now look at the situation if they spent 10 of those hours studying or doing other non playing activities. This would reduce their weekly earn by $210/week. This is fine if your study is an investment that will return more than this figure. But if you are a winning poker player then everything that you do that is not connected to actually playing poker is theoretically costing you money unless that extra knowledge is an investment to make you more money at some future point in time.
This is a crucial side of PokerTracker that is rarely discussed because if you know your earn rate then you can measure how much studying is actually costing you and whether you are making an investment or simply wasting money.
