LOL I guess there is a big difference between having a question in your head, and making sense on paper!! I will try again...

I have been reading you for a long time, and it seems like much of your success has come from being able to extract full stacks from players making mistakes (you have a set and they call all in with TPTK etc)...My comment and question is---

If you stack off against a guy in 200 or 400 NL for a full stack and bust him, your BB/100 will be quite high...If you do the same at 1000 NL, and he has only 300 or so bucks, couldn't this be affecting your BB/100 quite a bit?

Hope this made more sense....

I think the reason it's low is because he's been on the wrong end of situations that don't happen all that often. Because this happened in a short period of time it really effects the overall numbers quite a bit. If any one of these full stack hands goes the other way the numbers would change drastically. In other words, the short stacks arn't a factor as much as his variance since the project started is. Like he mentioned when this started his buddy can have a 2k month and the next have a 30k. In the long term he's going to kill these games, just not this month.

That would makes sense except that Ive been playing mostly at Prima since the beginning of the year. Even when I was playing $1/$2, there were plenty of short stack players there also. Prima just lends itself to short stacks because the min buy in is only 10BBs instead of 20BBs like most other places.

Here are the factors I think are leading to the lower win rate

1) You just arent going to get a guys whole stack with set vs TPTK at this level very often. Not a full stack anyway. This I expected.

2) Ive had more than my share of bad luck. Just the 5 set over sets and the one large $4000 pot are enough to really skew the numbers over 10000 or so total hands. I lost 5 set over sets and won none.

If I lose 3 and win 2 which would be more normal ratio over a longer period, thats a $4000 difference in total winnings.

Forget about me winning the $4000 pot (even though i was all in with the nuts). If that hand just doesnt take place, theres another $2000 in total winnings. If I get the EV of the hand its a $3200 difference in my total winnings. If I win the hand, its a $4000 difference.

So, long term results wise, I shouldve won $3200 extra on the big hand and about $4000 extra in the set over set catagory. Thats $7200 extra which would put my win rate somewhere around 11-12 BB / 100 hands

3) I havent really had any hands that were big pots because the other guy had a very good but second best hand like has been happening in the smaller games lately. (either that or they are making hellacious laydowns, which I doubt)

Everyone always wants to know how many hands you need to determine your true win rate. I have over 10000 now at $5/$10 but obviously I dont have enough for the EV of some of these hands to even out yet.

I will be on the winning side of some set over sets over time and some of these other big pots will find there way to my side of the table eventually, also.

Ive been frustrated with this month for 3 reasons.

1) I having my best month ever ( in total amount of money won), but the stakers are basically break even and are probably thinking "this guy has broken even for more than 2 weeks, hes nothing special"

2) Im not winning what I know I will be winning at $5/$10 over time and while thats not really a big deal especially when Im having a great month otherwise, it still sucks for it to happen in your 1st real month.

3) I cant just log on and play $5/$10 whenever i want because of extreme limitability of tables. This is probably about to get worse because next month Expekt.com is pulling out of the Prima network. Thats where all the swedes play. Some of them might want to stay at Prima and may switch to another skin, but some will probably stay with Expekt and move to whatever other network theyre moving to. This will do nothing but cause there to be less players at prima which means even less table selection.

Having said all that, Ive seen enough of how everyone plays to be fairly certain my long term win rate will be 8-10 BB / 100 hands and I'll be very happy with that. I'll just have to continue to play $2/$4NL when need be.

The PT database I started when the $5/$10 project started shows my true win rate to be about $80 / hr with a MT ratio of 2.05. This includes all the $5/$10 games, some $1/$2 6 max and quite a bit of $2/$4 NL

If / when my $5/$10 win rate stabilizes at around 8BBs, and if I can get my MT ratio up to 2.5 or so, I will be making a killing.

if you wouldve told me 2 years ago that I would be making $80-$100/hr or more, I wouldve thought you were crazy.

One more thing Id like to add.
Im quite sure Ive over-analyzed this to death, but I know my win rate should be higher than it is based on what I believe my skill level to be.

If some of that bad luck hadnt occurred, we wouldnt be having this discussion at all.

About 3 months ago I moved up to $2/$4NL in what was going to be a permanent move. I played about 15000 hands at Party and while I won somewhere around $4500 which wasnt bad for 3 weeks or so, my win rate was only somthing like 7.5 BB / 100 hands which i wasnt real happy with.

That time I also suffered some pretty bad luck. At least 3 times that i can remember, I got all in with a set (full house) and got outdrawn. One of them I had 55..board was something like 58AA...he had AJ and rivered an 8. 2 of these were for 1 stack and a half.

So 3 hands like that and then I flopped quads and lost to runner runner str8 flush.

So after 15000 hands I wasnt happy with my win rate, and although I had a suspicion that most of the reason for the lower than expected win rate was bad luck, I didnt want to make excuses and blame the bad luck so I moved back down for a while.

This time, pretty much the same thing has happened but I have enough experience that I can look past the concrete win rate number and try to calculate what my true win rate might be with avg luck. So thats why Im still happy with my progress even though im frustrated with my results and lack of being able to win money for the stakers.

Notice that this time, my win rate at $2/$4 is sky high as I havent hit any really big bad luck hands like I did last time. Actually my $2/$4 win rate is overinflated because Ive hit more than my share of big hands. I cant remember exactly what it is right now but its something like 24BB / 100 hands.

The moral of the story is that the more experience you have, the more you can put these streaks into perspective.

I didnt play last night. My son went to the Ranger's game with his grandfather, so my wife and I went out for dinner and a movie. We saw "4 Brothers". Its a pretty good movie. I recommend it.

Today, so far, Ive played 310 hands (at $5/$10). I may get another session in tonight.
I won $922.50, yoyoing the stake back into the black again at +$640.55

I finally got a guys whole stack with a flopped set vs AA.

I lmped with 55 after 2 others. He raised to $55 from the SB. We all called making the pot $230.

The flop was 965. Everyone checked to me so I bet $100. Mr AA in the SB check raised me to $250 and the other guys folded. I flat called.

Pot was now $730. The turn was a J and he pused $500 all in. Easy call obviously. I need a few more easy hands like this

The rest of the session was pretty much break even. I did have a $300 outdraw. I raised to $50 after a limper with AQ. Limper folded but the BB called with his mighty A4. Flop was Axx all diamonds. I didnt have one but he only had $100 left so I put him all in. He called with his mighty top pair and rivered a 4. He didnt have a diamond either.

Later while playing $2/$4, I raised a limper to $20 with AA. He called.
Pot $46. Flop T87. He checked, I bet $40 and he called.
Pot $126. The turn was an ace. He had $150 left so I put him all in. He called with 77

I need a few of these in the big game. My win rate for the month at $2/$4 is 20.8 BB / 100 hands

Win rate for the entire $5/$10 project is 5.4 BB / 100 hands.

It includes all $5/$10 hands played since the project started originally which I think was on July 29th.

I was hoping that nobody would ask that. The 3 or 4 days that the deal was not in effect were VERY good days. The stake profit would be a little over $6000 if there was no break at all.

I feel bad because the stakers missed out on this, but it was total coincidence. You all know the story of why the deal ended temporarily and it just so happened that the next day, I started winning like crazy. Everything went exactly right. When I decided to allow people back in if they wanted in, I had a bad feeling that the good 4 day run would end and of course the timing could not have been worse for the stakers because the next 2-3 days were bad.

To a skeptical person, this could look like I planned it this way or something and I hope that nobody thinks that, because I could easily just say that I broke even during the time the deal was not in effect and nobody would know anything about it.

********** Announcement ************
Im going to end the staking deal as of right now. I played 70 hands this morning and lost $524.50. I basically folded everything because I had lousy cards. I got KK and flat called a $70 raise. The guy had QQ and the flop was Qxx. Luckily I sensed he had me beat and I only lost half a stack. Most of people (including myself sometimes) wouldve raised that flop and gotten busted.

The total stake profit is $116.05 right now. I know I said the deal would end of the end of the month, but the last thing I want to happen is for me to have a very nice month and the stakers to lose money. There is only 2 more days to recover any possible losses. I would hate for people to be walking around for years saying "yeah, I staked that guy and he lost my money". Even if its only a little bit. As before, I think this is a perfect stopping point. Last time , people thought I was pulling the rug out from under the stakers and they were losing out on potential profit, but since theres only 2 days left, that cant really be said this time.

Like I said, Im having my best month ever, but for whatever reason (bad luck, having stakers being a jinx for me, unexplainable cosmic forces) I cant seem to make any money for these guys. Im still very happy that I did the deal, mainly because I have no idea how long I wouldve avoided moving up. I now know that I belong in the big leagues and I owe a great debt of gratitude to these guys for helping me out.

I hope everyone has enjoyed reading about all this. There have been alot of ups and downs and I think everyone can learn something from it. I know I have.

Stakers please PM me with how you would like your money returned.

... I'm confused. It's really none of my business since I'm not a staker, but I'm going to ask anyway.

I ask just to get you to think about this. I think you're being too conservative and too hard on yourself. I don't need an answer. YOU need the answer...

Your stakers are in this for a reason. Even when you were down and offered to let them out at even, they wanted to stay in. They believe in you.

Two posts ago, you stated you made 6 grand in 4 days.

What's 2 days? Could be 3 grand.

Why do you want to end this early? Fear? IIRC, you're ex-military, a cop, and a damn fine poker player. The word "fear" should not be in your vocabulary, except as it relates to others' impression of you, if they're going up against you.

But that's the only reason I come up with in all this... you're afraid to lose your stakers' money. Even more afraid than they are.

Noble, but... Why?

Again... just food for thought.

Ive also lost $3K in 2 days. If it happened again, it wouldnt be the end of the world, because I would win it back, but the month would be over and the stakers would have a bad taste in their mouth no matter what they say.

Months from now, there will be discussions of this staking arrangement somewhere. I may talk about it when asked a question about staking someone, the stakers will talk about it at work, bystanders will talk about a staking deal they heard about a while back....whatever the case may be....I dont want the talk to be negative.

I can hear it now. "So how did the staking deal go?" "Well I lost money if thats what you mean". "Yeah, I figured you did. Those things are a rip off".

Now the reasons for losing money dont matter months down the road. people onl remember that you lost money. Just like it doesnt matter that the Steelers were 15-1 last year and beat both the SuperBowl teams in back to back weeks when they were both undefeated. Nobody thinks they were the best team because they didnt win the SuperBowl.

After the fact...months down the road...the only thing that matters is the final result. Its the only thing people remember. And I dont want the fact that I lost peoples money to be remembered about me.

Obviously that was a possibilty from the beginning, but the odds were against it. Now with only 2 days left, its probably at least 33% likely that I will lose in the next 2 days.

This way, nobody is left with a bad taste in thier mouth, nobody loses money. All is good in the world.

I think the best thing to take from this situation is that staking is not a good idea. Especially in this situation where you don't actually need the money. Now if for some reason you went bust or had to use the money for some kind of emergency a stake would make sense.

I will say that I strongly considered this but after giving it some thought I didn't feel it was a good idea. The key to my decision was the fact that you didn't "need" the money. I not for one second doubt your poker skill. That point will not be argued hopefully by anyone.

I hope that all that have followed this situation learn from it. Sure there will be some who will be immature about the situation but that is unavoidable.

Actually, I think staking deals are decent, providing you're staking the right player (and I view Ice as one of those "right" players).

Raymer was staked for the year leading up to his WSOP victory. I think the year before that, too.

Stu Ungar was staked into the last WSOP he won.

Happens all the time.

I think the thing this deal taught me about staking deals is that longer-term is better. Even a top pro can go into a funk for a month or longer (as Daniel Negranu and Gus Hansen recently seem to have). But over the course of a year, they should win.

Given the short term and nature of this deal, I think I'd view break even as a very good result.

But Ice is right. In 3 months, the discussion about this staking deal is going to be "win/lose", and all the detail will be forgotten. From that perspective, perhaps ending 2 days early is a good thing.

Thanks for the ride Ice. I think this project was a great idea, it allowed our BTP community to participate in the project with genuine interest and as you can see from the way the journal grew there were many discussions about the game, the deal and other things. I have no doubt that If anyone was in it expecting to ride your coat tails into a big payday they may be disappointed but I can tell you I am happy.

To tell the truth, the money I used to stake you was money in my BR that I am not using anyway (I am happy at my current stakes and making money, no real desire to move up right now) and there just aren't many players I would trust to play my BR. Besides, without this site I don't think I would have my BR anyway, it's all been donated by generous players at Party and the Crypto's .