blonde poker forum

Just though I'd post a quick thread to ask people who they know (businesses or others) who are out there providing staking to live cash game players?

I've managed to dig myself into a bit of a whole with my current MTT staking. Tournament variance is insane and I've found myself living from savings for a while now.... apparently they run out after a while, who knew?!

Not really a direct request for staking, I'm just interested in where I might go or who I might be able to discuss this with. I used to be a reg in the 1/2 and 2/5 games at DTD, but I'm at a point where I can't justify playing 1/1 without high risk.

Not really sure what other solutions I have as I am currently pretty skint and although getting a job could work.. I feel I'd have a far greater hourly doing this. I guess there aren't a lot of jobs floating around either!

Anyway any ideas welcome. Would rather not have to leave the Goulder/Stato/PJ household and move back to NORFOLK... sigh haha

the thing is that there are so many utter shitters around the poker scene that are backed, that there must be a tonne of muggles with money from outside the poker world somewhere, just gotta find them.

K&K? Are they still staking?

Yeh they stake me for MTTs. Not really into cash game staking.

I'll have to read my OP again, it's probably awful. Tilt wrote it when my car decided to break down. #WhenWillItEnd !

downswonging then having ridic high and unexpected outgoings is THE UTTER TILT.

The only way you will be staked for live cash is if you find someone who knows and trusts you 100%.

There are no staking companies etc that do it.

Lol yer this is very true. I don't even really want to sit deep in 1/2 or play 2/5 either. Happy grinding it out. Just tough from a br in the negative numbers.

I feel yo pain.

cant count the number of times I've played with someone been chatting and then they've said 'xyz because i'm backed or w/e' and I just do a double take, watch them play a bit more and just facepalm that there are that many stupid people with money.

some of the utter chumps that are staked for mtts blows my mind.

Yeh thought this might be the case. Hopefully I'll find someone.

Thankfully the mother is lending me her car so I can get home and justice bink all the Sundays tomorrow.

Unless your backer is going to sit in the same games as you to monitor wins/losses its going to be really rare as it relies on huge trust, only know of one staker/stakee who have had really successful relationship thus far.

Job time for a month or 2 to get some £s back in the bank? Horrible timing with mtts being as soft as they ever are but might have to be done.

Either that or get 100nl stake on the side if MTT backers will allow it until you have enough to take shots in 1/1 1/2 games and cut your outgoings in the mean time.

Get an online stake for 2 months, then with your profit play live? seems like a no brainer can also play on the side when youre 1-4 tabling mtts

Don't Alex/Stato/Mitch all go to Vegas shortly? Sounds like DTD games will be ok and there is a slice of pie for them and you there. Unless I'm missing something here they have all the requirements a live backer would want?

ive staked for live cash in the past with great success, but it only works because the person i staked was a close friend and someone i trusted 100%.

The only way you will get a stake is by getting it off someone who trusts you 100%

I guess, but would obv never ask anyone like that directly... seems quite rude and would be putting them in an awkward situation if they wanted to say no. Yeah ideally i'll sort something along those line... or take the route of online->live as pleno suggested. It'd be nice to be able to do something (like playing cash) where I can do that for a few days of the week and still have Sun/Mon at least to grind MTTs while the WSOP is on.

Thinking about it, it really does take a great deal of trust to enter into something like this. It's why I think doing something like this and just putting my name in the ring is best, rather than appoaching individuals. Hopefully I can work something out with someone and fade getting a job (not sure how easy that would be), but if I have to then i obv will.

It's been pretty tough cutting outgoings too. Really don't want to get my parents involved or let them know things are tough... they'd snap just do everything they could and offer to pay for everything (even though they don't have loads), but there's no way I want that... they've done it for my brother before and I know how tough it was for them. So continuing to travel home for cricket every weekend over summer, costing me ~£50 a pop in petrol etc.

If anything this has taught me a lot about appreciation of money. I've always been a saver of money and thus always had plenty. Being in this position you realise just how much every little thing costs even when you're a nit like me and spend very little.

fantastic start to the diary though.

i heard theres a very tall guy in notts who just won abit of money and is a live poker specialist and knows eveybody who would play on the same tables as you.

altenatively you could do a blonde cash "roll" where you update each day, like I say very unlike you to do anything untoward because people who are on your table will read your staking thread too.

I wondered how long it would be before this was said. Longer than I expected to be fair.

Yeah I know, I gave him a lift to Wembley and he didnt give me half his winnings, wtf is that about?!

That's certainly an idea. Yeah i'll always know people in the games i'm playing. Obviously would never do anything like that anyway, a) i'm not a douche and b) staking deals (and trust) are precious, jeopardising that would be very stupid imo.

If it reaches the stage where you need to get staked to play live 1/2 then poker as a life solution is over.

An actual job, that's the way forward now.

In general I'd agree with this but it's too much of a general statement and can't apply to everyone.

I don't know much about Tom (only met once or twice) but he's a young pro in the very early stages of his career. Many guys will go bust - he doesn't have a wife, kids or a mortgage yet so going broke isn't the end of the world, as long as he learns something from it. Whether it's about variance, BRM, volume, tilt, studying more or playing a different variant of the game altogether, it could be the early lesson he needs that will set him flying.

GL tomorrow thigh xx

Poker's not getting easier any time soon.

If he's young then he's got time to learn something useful, which will lead to a career where wages scale upwards over time, rather than downwards (like poker).

incorrect.

please explain why?

nor is it getting harder.

I've been busto multiple times, sure got anything to do with skill factor, so pretty naive to just assume otherwise and pretty ridic to just say get an 'actual' job.

GLGL getting sorted mate.

Good post Raymernd.

I'm guessing Andrew wouldn't make the same post to Dubai or Lil D, who would also be honest enough to say they've been busto several times before.

i think lots of poker players are quite deluded though, especially younger ones, thinking just about today and not about tomorow.

Although you can go busto several times you should still plan pretty far in the future without just relying on binking a tournament

There was a thread on 2p2 concerning how much savings players said they needed and always keep no matter what, i.e withdrawing from BR to make sure they had the savings.

I cant remember the figures but I think it was then when I tried to be more sensible. I'll try to find it.

The reason Pads moved to Bulgaria becomes clear,  an imminent Abramovich style takeover and he's buying the country out :D

What about some form of part time work? Would ensure you have pin money to pay bills, and you can focus on grinding yourself back to a better position.

Totally agree, i'd be the first to admit i've been guilty of that, mostly because it's not something i've ever had to do before and thus never really taken the consequences of not being stringent. It's certainly something i'll be very concious of from now on. As you say I don't have a lot of responsibilities at the moment, no wife/kids etc. so i'm confident I can get back to where I have previously br wise, provided I can find a way to make a start.

I'd also agree that making money from poker isn't something that greatly worries me moving forward. I don't think the game is getting very tough (yes it is a bit), having been to Wembley I realised pretty quickly just how much money there is to be made in poker still. Some of the things I saw were just hilarious.

I don't agree with this at all in general, but certainly not in the 1/2 games Tom plays. Many are 500-1k deep and to be rolled properly for that you would need a considerable amount of wedge behind you.

Regarding Tom as a player I think he's very good, I've been on day 2 with him a couple of times this year and he's just had spots where it just hasn't gone his way when 50% of the time it does go his way.

On cash, i would say he is on par with say an Alex/stato/PJ/Sean/x reg player (maybe a slightly nitter version of Alex, not a bad thing) and would say he would defo grind people a good profit.

It's nothing to do with whoever OP is, or whether they've been busto or not.

The time to decide to be a pro poker player is long gone.

In the past, variance bit many good players on the bum, but games were soft enough that they could get on the right side of variance and make a living.

Now? Not so much.

I know Pleno can grind to make lolBB/100 but how many of the rest of us can be BITB?

Edges are thinner, more people know what they're doing, and no one's ever going to win the world playing 1/2 live, less so if some staker is getting a huge slice of the profit.

If you're good enough to still make ££ after all this, then you can make £££££ doing something else.

Certainly a posibility. Not sure what kind of things I could get into. Unfortunately for me at this point I don't have any work experiance, which would obviously count against me.... also didnt finish my degree (i'll spare everyone the sob story on that one), but I guess that's fairly irrelevant for part-time work. Obviously i'd prefer not to, but it seems silly to rule it out completely if needs must.

BTW if anyone reading is interested (assume it will be people i know fairly well), feel free to drop me a text or a PM... i'm obviously very flexible about what i'm willing to do in terms of getting something going. Ty for the support everyone too.

No I wasnt trying to be condescending etc sorry about that.

I just mean anybody who wins 50k+ has a very nice bankroll for themselves they should never really go broke after that if they are sensible. I dunno maybe I'm wrong?

Anyway heres the thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/56/medium-stakes-pl-nl/how-many-months-expenses-do-you-set-aside-1219453/

I disagree. See my blog.

The games are not significantly tougher, people are significantly lazier.

If you want to be a Doctor, you gotta study 7 years and keep studying.

Just because you watched a deuces cracked video doesnt mean you are a poker player.

In the ever evolving game you need to be studying a lot, every day if not week.

The current games are very exploitable and the lazy ones will be left behind.

I would say it is very much a good time to be a professional player assuming you want to commit to it properly.

This is so freaky how this has been posted when a guy has posted on Facebook asking backing into 1/2 games. A player who actually crushes the local scene & a player who I rate very high, although its icredibily tilting to sit next to him.

Actually thinking of backing him, but not sure of roll & apparently he was on 65/35 in his favour (erm?) and I'm stuck to be offering him 30% for him. He says he is busto be side of life, not sure what this means.

Not sure where to start and possible roll, he often sits deep into games, was looking into backing upto £5k, but at my absolute maximum there and don't want it to turn into numerous backers getting involved.

What is even a roll for 1/1, 1/2 these days?

In terms of part time work, I could sort something out regarding poker for around $15/hour that you could do when watching countdown o r having your breakfast.

Going into a part time job usually involves weekends, fuck working 8 hours in Morrisons on a Saturday afternoon or till 4am in the local bar. You need to be fresh for Sundays.

Also makes morale significantly lower. Getting a part time job when you could very easily be a rb pro and make more than $10/hour just doesnt make sense to me.

20 bis would be a semi high variance invested on your side. As in its enough for him to comfortably play but you still have a chance of gg'ing it. You could also give him 5bis initially and give yourself 4 reloads, it helps you get out quicker and also decide to keep punting after the initial 20bis you assumed.

But live cash is fkn dodgy for staking. I once sat next to a "friend" who was staked for 200nl.

We were playing 1,2,4,8,16,32 and he was putting the 32 on and trying to advocate the 64 lol he was buying meals from his stack and paying for taxis home with the stake. These are things you just wouldnt really see much.

If I staked somebody for live cash they would have to play at DTD and have a thread on here where they documented their winnings each and every session.

But this is another rant for another thread, but I would just stay away from staking. May blog about it tomorrow or something.

Thanks for that Patrick

The games are generally not that swingy in Sheffield, I personally don't think he would do his nuts in with Xbuyibs, but anything can happen. Is it not possible to get in touch with X casino and ask for help monitoring? It seems unlikely, but this must be definitely the highest risk staking around.

Also with regards to banking, possibly looking for him to use an 'empty' account of mine with regards to balance of stake and him do whatever with his winnings. I'm not sure if this is possible at all or in actual fact a really bad idea.

I'm just perhaps stuck in a ruck with seeing how he crushes the local scene, although no idea how he went busto!

well its hard to make that much money right?

lets say he wins at 10bb/100 at 100nl live.

thats $10/100 hands.

You play 33 hands/hour..

So he makes $3/hour.

He pays for a cab there and a cab back.  He now starts 3 hours in the minus. Oh he wants a drink and a sandwich, our suvey says

• crushing in winrate  [ ] crushing in $

Now lets say theres a $500nl game on, a special game and he somehow still has a 10bb/100 winrate.

$50/100 hands

< $20 an hour.

Its just hard to make THAT much money being a "live pro" playing small stakes.

GL Tom.

Fairly sure I played you on Sky cash a while back and you were def one of the toughest in the games.

Hope you find a way out and pretty sure you will.

How about just finding a new site for cash and doing some sign up bonus spin up? Month solid grinding of relatively small stakes can easily result in a decent RB payment.

agree with the above.

This can't be true. You yourself produce videos/streams shown to 10000(?) people? And how big is pokerstrategy.ru? Games only getting harder. People bumhunt 100nl ffs.

 IMO THigh has to be better off with poker vs a job if he wants to play poker ultimately, or at least for 5-10 years, but if you want to quit and settle down in a few years its probably best to go now purely from a $$$ POV. Surely your backer could arrange a loan that got attached to makeup?

Aaron as an aside I was at the table while a few Sheffield regs discussed what I'm presuming is the same character. How come he legitimately doesn't have cash himself? From what I gathered it was "drinking" but its v.hard to blow 2-10k on alcohol alone surely. Everyone there seemed to rate him though, unfortunately I didn't really rate anyone doing the talking and discussing it at a live table was extremely tilting.

Life isn't just about where you can make most money.

Karl M, Keys, Rupert, Alex are just a few people I can think of who could have made big bucks working in other areas but I guess they are just having more fun doing this.

You are hugely underestimating winrates in live poker.

This makes harsh reading, lot of technical terms.

I'm just down to simply assuming he is winning £3-400/week live. Obv points are valid about expenses though, he doesn't have a car either :(

again misconceptions.

theres been training site for years and years.

people bumhunted 100nl for years too. Sites are putting measures into stoping it atm but didnt care previously.

give them tiple, fuck it give them 50bb/100 lol, it would be 15$ an hour.

thats assuming 33 hands/hour, which is v ambitious.

Mitch told me his average for last year in live poker was 22 hands an hour

@ Adam - yeah I'm also very unsure what he has done with the money, the reason I don't like sitting next to him is because he is very repetitive guy and everything be talks about is "omg you know how many flips I have lost" or stories about beer pong or drinken stories in a loop! He is a really nice guy though, but its tedious to sit near him with stories of poker and drunkness constant.

I don't believe into the drinking thing, as he never drinks whilst pokering and I think it's just generally one of those things where he brags about drinking, but actively not that big of a drinker in the grand scheme of things.

However I have remembered  a few remarks he has said about house games and gambling which is scary. He also had a bad time in Vegas I think too, playing PLO.

He is such a good player though, but I never go this deep into backing, but think its just buying money IMO. He was backed previously too, need to get more info on that.

Lets give him 30bb/100 at 200nl.

That would work out at 20$/hour

Lets say he plays 5 hours on a Friday, 5 on a Saturday and 10 in the week.

So thats 80/hours a month which works out at £1600

He now has to pay

£500/rent
£200 bills
£200 other outgoings
£100 cigarettes/booze

That leaves him £600/month.

If he saved the whole year and keeps up the volume and winrate then he would save around £7k/year. He goes on a couple of holidays and he saves around 2-3k/year without adding ANYTHING to his bankroll.

A new car, fixing an old car, something bad happening to his house, its lots of ways for him to be able to become "busto" as hes not adding to his trading capital (his bankroll) and allowing his hourly rate to improve.

Its likely that he has to spend 3k+ a year on the other outgoings and just think it shows its quite hard for him to be a live cash game pro.


Now.......

He is going to be staked by Aaron and giving up 35% of those winnings! Meaning his earnings are less than 35% but his outgoings basically stay the same whilst Aaron will make 35% of £1600/month on average, thus intending to invest 20x200 (£4k) looking to make almost 10% profit each and every month on average.

ca ching!

not sure if this is some v delicate mitch eating/food joke lol but if so then it shows the numbers are even less impressive.

It also shows why Alex gets really excited when the bigger games are on as it massively increases their win rates.

in before keys (viewing) comes and kills my maths/reasoning :(

We don't play in dollars in England!

From experience I'd estimate that maximum achievable hourly in a £1 blinds game is around £15 for the best player in the games. In the DTD games it is almost certainly much less than this due to the rake structure.

i posted the numbers in £ below cuwwywuvve.

Your example confuses me Patrick?

You are saying that this should be 65/35 in favour of backer.

Lets say stake at end of week or month ends up at +£1k, £650 for player and £350 for backer, whilst I'm looking at complete opposite...

Sorry I got it wrong, that's how many 3bets Mitch makes in an hour.

Haha wiii

Pleno-

on another thread you say there are 'tons of live players'  (playing poker as a living)

Now you are saying how difficult it is!!!

What games are these 'tons of live players' playiing in??

Because its difficult doesn't mean it doesn't happen.


I'm sure it's hard being a hairdresser, a cleaner a barman and lots of other trades and I'm sure many of them will be 'broke' intact I read about it a lot on fb etc.

The fact that poker is tax free makes it a little bit more comfortable.

All I'm saying is its nOt a great surprise that a small stakes live 'crusher' goes broke.

You really gotta grind online Tom, I'm not saying live poker you cant make a living through but only when you have a comfortable roll for it, for times of hardship the best way out is through online cash games.

Lock yourself in a room for 2 weeks grind 9 hours a day and get a v good rakeback day = live
Poker roll

Earning $20 an hour. There's no way I could be motivated enough to even get out of bed. Serious.

As far as I know, you've had some big scores in the past few months. If you're still in mu after scoring big money like that, then, you surely have to question whether getting into a deeper hole is a good idea.

Guess it depends on your motivation, your desire. What drives you? Is it getting a poker trophy and earning the respect of some poker people? Or is it earning large sums of money?

I mean whenever I've met you and the times you've given advice to me, you have come across as very intelligent. If you began to apply yourself and your skills now in an industry with a lucrative future, you'd be an awful lot better off. But this requires effort. An awful lot of effort. Far more effort than becoming a poker winner would ever take.

Yes, there is a lot of money out there still to be won, rightly said. But if you've not got a massive chunk of money behind you to yield your expected value, your never going to achieve the 'dream'. You could continue to be backed, but you'll then only ever hold onto half that dream once won, or none at all due to covering off makeup.

Look at PeteL. Scores a dream amount of cash. (I assume unbacked)

But, in reality, that amount could easily disappear chasing a bigger dream within a year or two. Even just playing and living the same current lifestyle, it'll only get you so far until the next big bink. (How many big binks can one player really expect to achieve? Really?)

Get yourself into a decent position in life, and you'll be able to earn the amount of a 'big bink' within a few years, and continue to do so, for the rest of your life.

Just trying to help. Hate seeing someone so utterly skilled and devoted to their passion failing at it because he's not catching the correct side of luck whilst lesser inferior players around go wii wiiii wiiiiii all the way to the bank because their 80%er actually did hold.

I fully believe this will go in one ear and out the other, and I know it isn't the end of the world or of life, but I still feel for you. (it also reminded me hugely of a decision I had to take in a much earlier part of my life, and felt compelled to try and offer some words of advice.)

P.s. I really sincerely hope this OP is a huge moan it in and you bink the milli tonight! Ta Nathan

That is roughly the average salary in the uk.

Building a roll at 180mans would probs be a reasonable plan?

I stopped reading after that.

Yeh not sure if serious.

Online cash is a lot harder than it was8 years ago

Although the sentiment of that statement come across a bit wrong - I think I get what Nathan means. Whilst the average salary is about £26k, that is an average - and whilst I don't know OP well, if he has the intelligence and education of other young pros like stato, Dave, Alex etc their earnings potential in a career would ultimately mean you wouldn't get out if bed for $20 an hour. We then get into the whole life +ev debate which is a great one but very individual.

It sounds like you are a capable poker player.

At this stage with a sort roll, get online grind the hell out of it for a few months is really your best out here. Very few overheads, much smaller rake %, can play pretty small and have enough volume to outride the variance.

Yup.


A lot of things are harder than they were 8 years ago, except stacking shelves at the Co-Op, working in subway and working at shuh - those things are about the same.

20 dollars is tax free remember....

if anybody wants to get out of bed for 15-20 dollars a day feel free to get in touch with me and I can set it up.

That's an extra 400 quid a month, what do I need to do?  :D

Don't you mean an hour?

an hour sorry yeh.

in

where do you get the info of this from? people said this 5 years ago, 4 years ago, 3 years ago etc etc. Since I was 18 (I'm now 25) all I've heard is poker was so easy back then.

Its true, even I used to win back then  :'(

While I hear what you are saying and staying ahead of the curve, working on your game, more resources available now. The games were massively easier if you go back ore uigea.

A current 1/2 reg would crush 10/20 if he had a time machine to get back to 2005.

people make a huge deal of how much harder poker's gotten, yes it's gotten harder, but EVERYTHING like this gets harder as time goes on.

Whats this Pads? Obv interested if so, let me know please.

Yeh I agree playing online cash woud be a good way to move forward. I used to make really decent profit from a certain site playing 100nl and 200nl, but I simply can't afford to be playing these limits (or any for that matter right now). I'd probably have to play backed for a short while until I grind out a 2/3k roll to play from. I simply neglected my cash game roll for way too long and had to xfer it out to pay bills etc. Wont be doing that again!

Maybe, maybe not, my job is no harder than it was back then. One thing for sure is poker is disproportionally harder than most things 7 or 8 years ago because of the sheer amount of money that could be made back then so everyone was chasing it.

ping me on skype pat.leonard.ps and chat about it there.

Precisely Shaun. How could it be taken any other way?

 ;indestructable;

Think that I would almost sell my soul to the devil to be earn that amount means I could get away from this crappy job and spend time doing what I want to do, which is to spend more time with my family.  Tell us more please Patrick.

Steve

Hi Tom, could you get in touch please. Cheers

In.

Wil add you on skype if that's okay?

Sure

@all I did an interview with neverscaredb yesterday and spoke specifically about the case in the thread.

He speaks about planning for exit strategies in poker, depression when in a bad state f mind and lots of other great stuff.

I'll link here tomorrow.

Sounds very interesting, look forward to it.

Ps. skype request sent.

My hourly at tesco was $11 per hour.

U earn $11 an hour or £11 an hour ? Anyway with that amount , how do u manage to play 1/2 NL n didn't go broke ? U played like 4/5 per week . .Are u been nicking all  the expensive Foods & Alcohols and sold to Mitch ? 

Hope you like this, its pretty long, but guy is a legend.

We speak about the case here and some other v similar topics.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZXG98I3nag)

Its abit later into the podcast where we speak about it.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZXG98I3nag

What he meant to post.

Really enjoyed that - especially from around 38 mins in when he starts talking about an opportunity ceasing to be as good as it once was and having the ability to recognise that.

Good interview/listening skills. I like that you're not dead set on getting your opinions across and let the interviewee speak instead

Good work pleno

I mean I just really enjoyed listening to him, I had been awake for over 30 hours I think and was really gripped still by him. I find him fun and interesting.

Enjoyed the interview Pleno, cheers for putting it up. I think it's sad that he says he gets no enjoyment from anything really but playing poker is the least stressful thing he does in his day. With that hanging over him and still being a success is probably so much tougher than for those less afflicted with depression. Pretty monumental effort if you ask me.

Gd stuff and I do enjoy your interviewing technique also. Will be looking out for future podcasts.