Sunday, May 09, 2004
Are you Tracking?
I love telling friends about playing poker. However, I'm always a little cautious about encouraging them to get involved. There are so many people around that have a problem with gambling and I would hate to see someone ruin their family/career/life in part due to my encouragement. So when someone expresses interest to me about playing poker I try to be brutally honest. In general I pass along a few words of advice.
1) Play within your means. These are new players and I'm not talking about the concept of bankrolls and having enough big bets to play a certain betting structure. If you can afford to spend $200 or $50 on entertainment and you decide to spend that money on poker instead of something else, that's perfectly fine. Do not plan on winning. Do not having dreams of making 10x your money in a weekend. Yes, these things do happen. They will not happen to you! :) If you lose your buy-in, don't immediately jump back in. Take some time to determine why you lost your stake. Read a few more poker books. Above all else, only gamble what you can afford to lose!
2) Track how much money you win or lose! I don't care if a new player spends the money on Poker Tracker right away. However, I do want them to write down and keep a running log of at least the following:
-Every time you deposit money on-line
-Every time you withdraw money on-line
-How much you win or lose from each live session
Those three items coupled with the knowledge of how much you have in your online account(s) will always let you know where you stand. Are you a long term winning player? How much have you won or lost since you started playing?
Now, if someone is willing to log every session, limits, and results...even better. For someone like LordG, who is playing for a living, this is an absolute necessity. He needs to know when and where he wins money, how well he is doing, and there are all those important tax records as well.
Maybe I'm preaching to the choir on this issue, but this is a consistent problem with gamblers. It is really easy to tell everyone how you did so well at the tables yesterday. It is much more difficult to mention the three previous sessions where you were down much more. We can even make ourselves forget about the downtimes and justify them by saying we must be ahead overall.
In the same spirit as gambling, if you have never kept a personal budget before...start! You will find out all kinds of things you did not want to know, but on the same hand have a huge impact on you and your family.
Why the hell am I wasting your time with this garbage? Simply because in the last few weeks I've had several people tell me about their poker success stories. The people telling the stories are friends, co-workers, etc. I imagine some of these people are decent players. A few of them might even be long term winners. However, if I were to believe everything I'm hearing then 90+% of them are long term winners. The number is absolutely ridiculous and I don't believe it for a second. The scary thing is, as mentioned above, I think most of them even believe what they are saying. They really think they are ahead...
Many of these people are the fish you and I make our profits from. Don't worry though; I'm not scaring them away. I'm happy to listen to their stories and see through the BS. I'm only providing advice to those who ask, those I'm really close to and of course the ether. At the same time, I'm secretly hoping they don't get in over their heads and do some damage in real life.
I love telling friends about playing poker. However, I'm always a little cautious about encouraging them to get involved. There are so many people around that have a problem with gambling and I would hate to see someone ruin their family/career/life in part due to my encouragement. So when someone expresses interest to me about playing poker I try to be brutally honest. In general I pass along a few words of advice.
1) Play within your means. These are new players and I'm not talking about the concept of bankrolls and having enough big bets to play a certain betting structure. If you can afford to spend $200 or $50 on entertainment and you decide to spend that money on poker instead of something else, that's perfectly fine. Do not plan on winning. Do not having dreams of making 10x your money in a weekend. Yes, these things do happen. They will not happen to you! :) If you lose your buy-in, don't immediately jump back in. Take some time to determine why you lost your stake. Read a few more poker books. Above all else, only gamble what you can afford to lose!
2) Track how much money you win or lose! I don't care if a new player spends the money on Poker Tracker right away. However, I do want them to write down and keep a running log of at least the following:
-Every time you deposit money on-line
-Every time you withdraw money on-line
-How much you win or lose from each live session
Those three items coupled with the knowledge of how much you have in your online account(s) will always let you know where you stand. Are you a long term winning player? How much have you won or lost since you started playing?
Now, if someone is willing to log every session, limits, and results...even better. For someone like LordG, who is playing for a living, this is an absolute necessity. He needs to know when and where he wins money, how well he is doing, and there are all those important tax records as well.
Maybe I'm preaching to the choir on this issue, but this is a consistent problem with gamblers. It is really easy to tell everyone how you did so well at the tables yesterday. It is much more difficult to mention the three previous sessions where you were down much more. We can even make ourselves forget about the downtimes and justify them by saying we must be ahead overall.
In the same spirit as gambling, if you have never kept a personal budget before...start! You will find out all kinds of things you did not want to know, but on the same hand have a huge impact on you and your family.
Why the hell am I wasting your time with this garbage? Simply because in the last few weeks I've had several people tell me about their poker success stories. The people telling the stories are friends, co-workers, etc. I imagine some of these people are decent players. A few of them might even be long term winners. However, if I were to believe everything I'm hearing then 90+% of them are long term winners. The number is absolutely ridiculous and I don't believe it for a second. The scary thing is, as mentioned above, I think most of them even believe what they are saying. They really think they are ahead...
Many of these people are the fish you and I make our profits from. Don't worry though; I'm not scaring them away. I'm happy to listen to their stories and see through the BS. I'm only providing advice to those who ask, those I'm really close to and of course the ether. At the same time, I'm secretly hoping they don't get in over their heads and do some damage in real life.
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