Secrets of the Amateurs

So 2008 pretty much rocked. As I mentioned below, my return per tournament was remarkably close to that in 2007 (around $180). So twice as many tournaments = twice as much mobney. My average buy in was significantly higher ($205 compared to $152), and the total profit was $272K, at about $380/hour. Sweet IMO. Finally, while this is an estimate going by the average number of hands/tournament recorded in Pokertracker, I made about $120/100 hands.

I don't think many people realise how much money you can make playing online tournaments if you're actually any good and you practise good game selection. Oh alright, and you run super hot. To make that kind of money per 100 hands I'd have to be either killing $10-20 NL or very good at $25-50, and I'm almost certain that either of those would involve far bigger swings [1] (cue Dave D to tell me I just haven't run bad yet). Which would be true, but even so, you won't see me moving on from the tournaments for a while yet. This is one reason why I think tournaments are softening up ; a substantial proportion of the really good players have burned out and moved on to cash, heads up, the live circuit (lol) or whatever. The other, in response to Rob's comment below, is just through observation ; I'm sure I see more and more brain dead spazzy spewy retarted mouthbreathing plays from villains as every week goes by.

Moving into 2009, if I can just keep that at the same level I'm going to automatically make about 30% more in £ just because of currency rates. I should be able to increase my $ volume somewhat by cutting out the sites with crappy software (mostly the Euro sports betting sites) and stepping it up on Stars and Full Tilt instead. I won't be playing live much, maybe only a TV 6-max donkfest or two, and maybe WSOP ME, we'll see. I definitely won't be wasting 6 weeks chasing bracelets this year. Apart from that we'll just keep cracking on and see where that takes us.

[1] Technically far bigger downswings. Of course tournaments will always (hopefully) have massive upswings, but when people talk about swings, it's downswings that they mean. I haven't tracked what my biggest downswing is, but my worst month in two years has been a $12K loss, I haven't had 2 losing months in a row and I usually keep about $30-40K online and have never been in danger of having to redeposit. Bok ...

Update : Interesting New Year post from Ansky on Pokersavvy here. Now, Ansky is a guy I respect tremendously, his videos are really good, he plays $25-50 NL and Heads Up, and maybe higher for all I know. I'm pretty sure there's no way I could ever play cash NL as well as he does. And his target per 100 hands for this year ? $150.