Professional Poker Player Seeks Mentor

Hi,

I'm 24 yrs Male living in Dudley, West Midlands, UK. I play poker online for a living and have been for the past 3 years.

Last year I made in excess of $188k USD (Tax Free) on a single poker site and can provide statements to prove this.

I'm hoping to find a full time professional trader with an interest in poker, that would be willing to mentor me in forex trading in return for my mentoring them in online poker.

I would only be interested in working with a trader that has a proven track record, as I do @ poker.

I may also be interested in having a trader manage an account for me if someone suitably qualified was interested.

If anyone is interested please PM me with your details and relevant trading expierience and we can set up a chat session on MSN or similar.

Regards

Karl

what site did u play and was it through cash or tourneys you made your revenue.

also is that figure pure profit you gave

Hi,

I play predominantly Cash games. I like the fact that there can be less variance (or drawdown as traders might call it) in cash games as opposed to large field tournaments.

I have accounts with pretty much all of the poker sites, the figure shown above is the "withdrawals" I made from my Primary site Pacific Poker during the previous 12 months and is therefore pure tax free profit.

Cool. I love reading success stories.

Just out of interest, how long did it take you to learn poker before you decided to do it for a living ? And what current levels of cash games do you play ?

Thanks

hi if your withdrawals were 180 k what were your estimated deposits

I have been playing poker in total for approx 4.5 years.

I play 2/4, 3/6, 5/10 and 10/20 NL

Some poker players might say they play a certain level exclusively but I think game selection is very important for a winning player. I don't let my ego interfere with profit. if I look through the 10/20 tables or the 5/10 tables and the lineup is tough I will search the lower levels. I know in a tough lineup I will have an edge, but it will be small and thus my profit less and variance is greater.

If your the 9th best poker player in the world but choose to sit at a table with the only 8 better players then your the Fish.

The withdrawals are all profit. When playing poker professionally you have your bankroll. This is the money you use day to day to play poker and this stays in your poker account. This amount should be sufficient to handle any downswing you might have due to statistical variance (when running bad), if you do have a significant downswing then you would usually move down in limits both to increase your bankroll to a level sufficient for higher limits, to rebuild confidence and also to monitor your game to be sure you do have an edge in the higher limit.

On the other hand when your bankroll grows bigger than you are statistically likely to lose playing at your chosen limits you can withdraw this as profit. If you are confident in your ability to beat your current limit you could leave it in the account and move up in limits and the profit becomes your new bankroll.

You also can use tracking software that monitors your play and that of your opponents. This software can give you statistical information such as how many hands you play, how many hours you play, how much profit you make etc. This is invaluable in determining if you can beat the individual limits and in monitoring your improvement as a poker player. It also allows you to spot weakness`s in your game that you can work to improve.

I'm attaching a screenshot from the tracking software showing my sessions for september to date. It shows I have played a total of 12,729 hands. I played for 44.57 hours, 2.6 tables at a time on average (MT Ratio) and made a profit of $10,841 or $243.25 / hour.
Ive been running well during this period, my hourly rate over my past 200k hands is a little over $180.

Ive also included a graph showing the same sessions, just to give you an idea that its not all plain sailing, there are loss`s along the way, but I would certainly call it an uptrend

wow, nice going there

may i ask what poker tracking software you use?

thanks

Hi Wallyuk

If you are consistently making money playing poker I would suggest to you, don't bother with day trading, it doesn't matter how you're making money as long as you are making it. However I play poker myself part time, I must say not that good but it's more of a hobby pass time, maybe I play for 1 hour to 2 hours with a nice can of larger on the weakened.

I think many members would agree with me on T2W that Day trading is tough its totally different animal to playing poker."You cant play Day Traindg.".....I say stick to Poker if you're consistently making money and set a goal to play in the $50 then on to $100 NL games.

Good luck

Hi Laptop1,

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Id disagree with your idea of "playing" poker and take a small amount of offence at this.

As you have said your interest in poker is merely a hobby, entertainment for yourself, so therefore it is a game to you. This would also suggest that you don't understand the intricacies of the game like many other recreational players.

"Poker takes minutes to learn and a lifetime to master"

On the surface it looks like a game of luck with cards, but it couldn't be further from the truth. This is what keeps losing players coming back. They blame loss`s on bad luck because they don't understand the mistakes they make. A recreational Golfer would never play Tiger Woods for money at golf, however inferior poker players continually sit at tables with players of much better abilities and don't even realise that this is the case.

To become a consistent winner at poker is hard but derive a full time income is extremely difficult.

If it was easy to make consistent profit everyone would be a winner. Poker is a zero sum game, your winnings must come from losing players. You also have to make enough to cover the rake (a fee similar to spread) before you make any profit.

This means there are "very few" percentage wise that are consistently profitable. Maybe 5%.

Also I think you have misunderstood the games that I play in.

3/6 = $600NL Buy In
5/10 = $1000NL Buy In
10/20 = $2000NL Buy In

So my goal is to progress to $5000nl and $10000nl buy in games not $50nl or $100nl as you mentioned.

Why do I want to learn to trade if I'm making a decent living playing poker?

Well poker is great for earning a living in terms of hourly rate, but once you have savings what then? You cannot compound with poker.

I have savings that I want to put to good use and feel that conservative trading would give me a better return than say banks or property.

I'm not looking at trading to make say $500 a day to pay mortgage or bills. Instead I'm looking to make maybe 30% per year. I see it more as aggressive investing, but like that I will be taking an active interest in my investment.

Also I plain enjoy challenges. I love the competition and the satisfaction when you succeed. Failure just means you need to work harder.

You could say all that in reverse for trading Forex. Once I have got my discipline into gear, I'll just be happy to grow my balance steadily by just trading and not worry about working or doing other things to earn money. Well, when I say work, I don't mean work for someone else. I would invest the money into a business as it would end up as another source of income and be less risky than trading. Have you considered this?

Hi Shadowninja,

Prior to playing poker I ran a successful small retailing business.

It started in my bedroom ( lol ) selling a few Poker related items on eBay and progressed to a 1000sq ft premises. It involved importing full container loads of Poker products like Poker Chips, Tables, Roulette and Blackjack products from China and retailing online.

During this period I was playing Poker part-time but soon became obvious I could make a good living simply by playing full-time. Poker has many advantages including no tax (no books, VAT, accounting), much freedom, no predefined hours etc (many similar to those of trading) and I also wanted to travel some, so I decided to close the business and concentrate solely on Poker.

I do have some regrets as I wonder where the business may have gone. I had just branched out into other sports areas, Mini Motos (which were fashionable at the time) and some fitness related items. On the other hand I have had a great last 3 years travelling all expenses paid to Australia (Aussie millions), Singapore (befair asain poker tour) and Las Vegas multiple times, competing in Poker tournaments. Overall I think I did make the right decision for me at that time.

I have considered opening up again on a bigger scale. I learned so much in my short business adventure, mostly through trial and error, and it would be relatively easy to jump back in. But whilst I'm relatively (cough) young I will enjoy the freedom poker gives me and leave it on hold.

Fair enough. Just sounds like an all-eggs-in-one-basket scenario for you at the moment.

Me personally, I have two other businesses that I am slowly nurturing in different industries. If I can balance those two with trading, then it will make for a very interesting and rewarding way of earning money.

Karl,

Did you checkout the links I suggested in the PM I sent you ?


Paul

Hi

Shadow Ninja,

I agree with you regrading all of my eggs. This is another reason for wishing to learn to trade. In effect I would have 2 business`s in Trading and Poker both of which give me the freedom I crave.

To quote t2w member CLB928 from a private message :

"There is a very high co-relation between expertise in poker and skill in trading."

So much of the skill set I have honed as a poker player will cross over including Psychology.

Hi Paul,

I have looked through the links you gave me with interest, many thanks.

I will definately spend the time investigating the ideas and methods of the authors further.

Karl