I had a few responses to my last post which I feel deserves a bit of explanation. Firstly I am not using PokerTracker for the first time in 2011 
Obviously these are new readers to the blog who have not been aware that I was originally using Poker Office in around 2008 and then switched to using both later that year and then exclusively PokerTracker in 2009. But regular followers of the challenge will be aware that one of the key criteria for this challenge of taking $100 to $10,000 was that I didn’t use any tracking software at all because the goal was to prove that anyone could make $10k playing online.
Another point that was raised was that $10,000 to $100k playing NL50 was too steep to reach it by 2012. I need to point out a few things here. Firstly I meant the back end of 2012 and certainly not Jan 2012 so this is two years and not one. Like I have said many times on this blog, it is going to be a critical part of how I play poker now to play as many tables as I can as low as I can. This means learning new skills and playing 20 tables is my goal by the year end.
At NL50 full-ring then playing 9-10 tables isn’t really difficult as you are 90% folding. With a great rake deal then you can make very good money at this level because there is nearly always value at NL50 full ring so table selecting isn’t as critical. So what we are looking at here is not ptbb/100 but $/hr as volume is going to be the key metric here. The ptbb/100 figure is going to shape up to look pretty poor but that should be offset by the volume.
I have been saying for years that coming in under the radar would soon be the future of online poker. Limit hold’em at certain levels is a solved game which basically drove me out of the game in 2007. There is still good money to be made at NL as long as your definition of “good” is $50 to $100/hour and that certainly is good to me. But the rakeback is going to be key and I have always had an angle on NL50.
The problem recently was that I was playing very poorly once I went beyond six tables at NL50. This should be so easy to do but yet I was multi-tasking and so I was getting into trouble in big pots when they were converging together three and four at a time. I recently took some advice from someone who crushes NL50 playing sixteen tables and that was to switch to small ball and simply milk the mistakes and the rakeback even if it means sacrificing EV in many individual situations.
I have always maintained that $100/hr is achievable at NL50 if you can play enough tables and I think that this number is 16-20 if you can avail yourself of a good rake deal. I already have an earn rate of around $35/hr over a very large sample size at NL50 FR and so I want to push the boat out this year…..watch this space.
The Dean plays poker at www.pokerloco.com where you can join Carl quoting bonus code DEAN600.
