An Open Invitation to the Haters: Put Your $ Where your Mouth Is

Date: Fri, Feb 5, 2010 Professional Internet Tournament

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=jared2896

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

Over the past year I've seen a lot of comments from ignorant haters. There are two common themes. The 1st is that Everyone has caught up to me & I can't compete in the current state of SNGs. The 2nd is that I only can make money off of staking & rakeback (which if you look at my #s over the YEARS makes no sense). The standard is to just laugh it off as I take their money. Sometimes they'll catch me in a frustrated state & I'll attempt to set the record straight, which they're always too stupid to understand anyway. However, I was thinking, why not try to make some money off of these idiots? To those haters I offer this prop bet:

total 2010 profit NL hold em 6-10 seated normal format

stipulations:
-excludes non US siutes...these sites are clearly much softer
-excludes rakeback....this is bad for me as I make more rakeback than most SNG players...also, there's certain games like super turbos that I clearly wouldn't play if it weren't for the rakeback
-only includes games on sharkscope...again this is a disadvantage of me as sharkscope doesn't track probably 10-20% of my games
-max of 35,000 games.....this will help prevent people from account sharing...looking at players # of games on LBs, this shouldn't be an issue

Haters: this is your chance to cash in on your beliefs. If I get more action than I'd like to take I will look for investors so that I don't have to turn down any haters.

If you want to take this bet make an offer in the comments section. I leave for the Dominican Republic tomorrow morning but will try to sort through comments around the 15th.

GL at the tables,
Hub

Year 2009:
Hours: 1,577.65
SNG Profit: $(22,746.37)
Rakeback/Bonuses: $213,977.09
Total SNG Profit: $191,230.72
Staking: $42,219.80
Total Yearly Profit: $233,450.52

Year 2008 Online:
Hours: 1510.88
SNG Profit: $277,395.86
Rakeback/Bonuses: $178,589.61
Total SNG Profit: $455,985.47
Staking: $121,573.29
Total Yearly Profit: $577,558.76

Year 2007 Online:
Total Online Poker Profit: $251,388.84 (no staking in 2007)

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Comparison of Games Over the Years & January Review

Date: Fri, Jan 29, 2010 Professional Internet Tournament

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=jared2896

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

Everyone talks about how much tougher SNGs (& poker in general) have become over the years, so I wanted to look into it & actually analyze some #s to get more of a true picture of how the games have been over the years. How I did this is I took players from leaderboards over the years & created global aliases on sharkscope, combining their stats into 1 name. I did a lot of comparisons but all were pretty similar results so I'm just going to go over the more important #s:

Username Games Played Av. Profit Av. Stake Av. ROI Total Profit Form Ability /100 Network Filter

6mantop102008 68,833 $11 $133 8% $763,730 N/A N/A Global Alias Year2008 E6-6 G=H NoLim Spd=T NormalFormat SNG Only

6mantop102009 32,905 $15 $246 6% $507,696 N/A N/A Global Alias Year2009 E6-6 G=H NoLim Spd=T NormalFormat SNG Only

It should be noted that I excluded players from European sites as I think those are generally softer. The 1st #s are from the top 10 of the any game 5-6 seated leaderboard in 2008 & the 2nd #s are from the same lb in 2009. Looking at these #s it doesn't appear that the games have gotten any tougher. In fact, the average profit of the players in 2009 was even better than that of 2008. One interesting thing to note is that the top 10 in 2008 was composed of more hardcore grinders, as the total # of games is more than double the top 10 in 2009. I think part of that is that many good players (myself included) tried to play too many tables in 2009 & their profits suffered because of that. In my opinion, another reason for the huge gap in # of games played between the 2 years is that the top 10 in 2009 simply ran much better at the highest stakes. I was very surprised that the #s hadn't dropped from 2008 to 2009 so I had to look further.

On to the next #s:
Username Games Played Av. Profit Av. Stake Av. ROI Total Profit Form Ability /100 Network Filter

6mft&starslbplayers 57,274 $7 $112 8% $392,258 N/A N/A Global Alias Year2007 E5-6 G=H NoLim Spd=T NormalFormat SNG Only

6mft&starslbplayers 129,245 $8 $130 8% $1,067,341 N/A N/A Global Alias Year2008 E5-6 G=H NoLim Spd=T NormalFormat SNG Only

6mft&starslbplayers 163,134 $5 $135 5% $805,489 N/A N/A Global Alias Year2009 E5-6 G=H NoLim Spd=T NormalFormat SNG Only

You'll notice that all 3 groups of stats are from the same alias. They're just in different years. What I did this time was take all the players from the any game 5-6 seated turbo & any game 5-6 seated turbo $101-300 LBs (I might have even taken top 10 from $36-100, I forget) from either 2008 or 2009 & combined them into 1 alias. This time I only used pokerstars & ftp players, as I think those games are similar in toughness compared to the other sites.

From 2007 to 2008 the # of games makes a big jump. Again, this is probably partially because players started to play more tables. I also think it's because I didn't include the 07 lb players in the alias, so many of the 08 & 09 guys may not have broken out yet in 2007 & were probably starting out or trying to move up the ranks. The average ROi is the same from 2007 to 2008, & although the average stake is slightly higher in 2008, I don't think there's really a significant difference in the toughness of games there.

The big difference you see is the stats from 2008 to 2009. There's even more games in 2009 as I think people had broken out by then & were playing more tables. However, the average ROI of these players in 2009 is only 62.5% of what it was in 2008. I think that's the most reliable stat in all of this. If you're making around 60-70% of what you did from SNGs in 2008, it's probably not because your game has fallen off, but rather that the games are just that much harder. Hopefully sites are allowed back in the US in the next few years & the games will be softer than they were in 2008.

I found a bunch of hand histories from 2007 & 2008 & imported them into my hold em manager database. For those that think I run good, I give you the overall stats from all games in my HEM database:

29,757 games
$189.60 average stake
$50,839.44 actual profit
$109,865.44 adjusted profit (factoring in all in EV)

That means that over 29,757 games I ran $59,026 below expectation on my all ins. I tried to upload the graph but Lj said the format isn't supported.

I have decided not to play any $300+ on ftp anymore. I was only on pace for about 1,300 of them in a year. Again, my overall results would depend too heavily on a small sample of games at my highest stakes. After last year I just can't handle another losing year pre rakeback. The variance is just too stressful. I've decided to take a long run hourly rate hit for less stress in that department. I'm also rarely playing more than 9 tables now. I basically only add a 10th table if it's a $119 or higher where I expect my ROI to be 11% or higher, which isn't very often. So far it's going great. I started all of this on January 21st & here's how it's going so far:

Games avg. profit avg. stake ROI total profit
675 $18 $101 16% $12,343

398 $30 $118 23% $11,943

These are my sharkscope #s from the period. The 1st #s are my total games. the 2nd #s are my regular turbo stats, excluding super turbos & normal speeds. I'm averaging $292.67 during this period. Obviously these #s aren't sustainable. After analyzing my all in EV, it looks like my adjusted hourly rate for the period would be about $185. Interestingly enough, that's 61.67% of the $300 hourly rate I had in 2008 ($300) which is very close to 62.5%. Now obviously game conditions & my hourly rate will likely change a lot throughout the year. I expect most months to be better than January from here on out because of this, as I ran God awful at $300+ this month.

I ended up resetting my stats on ftp back to when I started 10 tabling. I might reset them again to when i started 9 tabling w/ no $300+ once I get a bigger sample. I'll take any edge I can get in this day and age. If 1 good reg per week doesn't signup for a game w/ me because of my stats, then it's worth it. It certainly isn't going to hurt anything.

I'm not even going to talk about the Vikings. There's not many things more frustrating than being a Vikings fan. You guys saw the game. We should have won by 2 to 3 TDs but instead just beat ourselves over & over & over w/ stupid mistakes.

We're going to the Dominican Republic for a week in February for a destination wedding so my hours will be down for the month.

It's my wife's birthday today & mine tomorrow so I'm done playing for the month.

http://sparta45.livejournal.com/2010/01/27/

Check out the comments by this spindersox guy. I haven't seen such a humble, intelligent, "superstar" since the legendary chillshot http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/5996-spadeclub-poker-39-s-2008-player-of-the-year

If you want more it gets better at http://spindersox.livejournal.com

I'm going to leave you w/ something that thevosh (Jeremy Voshage) sent me in an email. There's just so many classic parts in all of this: 90 tabling mostly folding, 2,000+ games in a day, sick grinder, etc...

Somebody sent an email to Pokerstars about this guy being a bot. Here is their response:

The Ultimate Micro Grinder - Supernova playing 1$ DoN

Click the image at least twice to see a bigger picture.

Pokerstars respones to this guy:

He does indeed play about 14 hours a day on average, non-stop, keeping
around 90 tables open, mostly folding.
Yeah, he's a sick grinder, but we've thrown all of our best bot detection tools against
him, and he doesn't show any signs of being a bot. We've analyzed his
session times, the computers he plays from, and more. He doesn't appear to
be account sharing, either.

Everything we see tells us "sick grinder", rather than bot.

I hope this has answered your question completely. Please do not hesitate
to let us know any time you need anything.

Best Regards,

Jeff
PokerStars Game Security

Results:
January 2010
143.79 hrs
SNG Profit: $10,354.21
Rakeback/Bonuses: $10,518.65
Total Profit: $20,872.86

Year 2009:
Hours: 1,577.65
SNG Profit: $(22,746.37)
Rakeback/Bonuses: $213,977.09
Total SNG Profit: $191,230.72
Staking: $42,219.80
Total Yearly Profit: $233,450.52

Year 2008 Online:
Hours: 1510.88
SNG Profit: $277,395.86
Rakeback/Bonuses: $178,589.61
Total SNG Profit: $455,985.47
Staking: $121,573.29
Total Yearly Profit: $577,558.76

Year 2007 Online:
Total Online Poker Profit: $251,388.84 (no staking in 2007)

Career Sharkscope:
90,009 $5 $143 5% $435,279 total
10,334 $8 $107 12% $85,825 normal speed 5-6 seated
68,773 $5 $155 4% $365,683 turbo 5-6 seated
8,809 -$3 $103 0% -$22,175 super turbo 5-6 seated
135 $20 $23 101% $2,650 MTT SNGs

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Analysis of 2009 & Looking Forward to 2010

Date: Wed, Dec 30, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=jared2896

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

Congrats to Spacegravy for making Team Pokerstars Pro Online. He's the only player I really know (or at least talk to on aim) that made the team. They went in a much different direction than I think anyone expected w/ most of them. They said they wanted to make sure people could play w/ a "pro" regardless of what games they played, so they picked people from variious games at all stakes. You have to play 100% on Pokerstars so the deal would have been no good for me.

Cake has added new rewards to their VIP program called gold stacks. You can read about it here: http://cakepoker.com/en/Rewards/GoldStacks/GoldStacksRewards.aspx & here: http://cakepoker.com/en/Rewards/GoldStacks/GoldStacksFacts.aspx
I still need to look into it further but it looks pretty good from what I've seen. I'll probably do a more detailed post on it sometime in the future.

Now let's move onto looking back at 2009. It obviously wasn't my best year. To give you a good idea of how bad it was here are my sharkscope stats from each year as a full time pro:

Year Games Avg. Profit ROI Total Profit
2007: 28,787 $5 $133 5% $147,011
2008: 24,120 $11 $152 7% $272,226
2009: 27,408 -$2 $173 0% -$45,345

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM..Yummy Now sharkscope does make it look slightly worse than it actually was because they were having coverage problems on FTP & other sites throughout the year, but I still lost almost $23K pre rakeback in 2009.

Why did this happen? Well, it was a combination of things. Some of it was variance related, but I actually think more was non variance related. Let's 1st analyze the variance portion of things. According to hold em manager all in EV calculator here are some #s from games in my 2009 database:

Actual numbers:
13,265 games, -0.5% ROI, -$13,512.51 "profit", $217.38 avg. stake
Adjusted numbers based on all in EV:
13,265 games, 0.7% ROI, $19,999.38 profit, $217.38 avg. stake

These #s don't include Cake. I'll get to that later. They also don't include 100% of my games from other sites, but that's all I have to go off of. What this says is that I ran 1.2% below expectation & should have made almost $20K in these games instead of losing about $13.5K. Now all in EV isn't perfect. It actually only accounts for about 20-40% of total luck, but it's all we have to go off of & it's better than nothing. I wish I still had my HHs from 2008 & 2007 so I could see what my all in EV & adjusted ROIs were in those years.

Here's my #s from Cake:
overall: 10,396 -$2 $98 0% -$23,300
turbo: 4,266 $1 $94 3% $6,369
super turbo: 5,996 -$5 $101 -2% -$30,720

I played some very tough games earlier in the year but I probably still should have been breakeven in the super turbos. So if I ran at neutral EV throughout the year I probably would have made around $40 to $45K pre rakeback. I played way more super turbos than in previous years but that's still less than $2/game, which is obviously nowhere near the $11/game from 2008 or the $5/game from 2007. What else went wrong?

For one, the average games were much harder in 2009. The sharkscope leaderboards reflect that. Players just didn't have as much of an edge as in years' past. I probably got overconfident & didn't give people enough credit when table selecting. For example, I would characterize certain players as 2.8% ROI droppers when they probably should have been closer to a 4.5% dropper. After all, I had made more than anyone in SNGs the last 2 years by far so there can't be too many people that drop my ROI 4.5% right? That's a bad way of thinking. The reality is that SNGs are a game of small edges & no matter how good you are, you probably don't have much of an edge over another good reg. I've talked about this in my recent table selection post but another big mistake I made was writing certain people off as just "running good" after seeing them make some bad or unorthadox plays. I know many players are guilty of this, particularly if the player plays a different style than them. The reality is that many of these players do other things very well to make up for their leaks. When I moved to FTP I probably didn't put as much time into figuring out who the good regs were right away, & that hurt my results for a while. On Cake I was playing a lot of super turbos earlier in the year w/ players like HappyLucky & Kenny05 in them where I knew I was slightly losing pre rakeback, but my rakeback deal is sick there so I played them anyway. After how that went I decided that the variance just isn't worth playing those games, even with a sick rakeback deal.

I played much different hours in 2009 than in years past. In past years I basically only played between non & 4 am, which were the hours I found most ideal. However, late last year I moved in w/ my fiancee (now wife) Paula. To make my overall life better with the new switch I decided to just basically play when she works, which is often far from optimal hours. Yes we'll make less money doing this but I can still make $200K+ per year playing a game for a living following her schedule so who really cares? I think people who disagree with that assessment are those who fail in their own marriages & finding an overall balance in life.

Lastly, as I've stated before, I think I was playing too many tables. After getting my deal w/ Cake & cake adding super turbos, I really thought I could maximize hourly rate by playing 12+ tables. In reality, the added tables drop your ROI so much that you lose more money pre rakeback than you gain from the added rakeback. There's probably very few people, if any, that maximize their hourly rate playing 12 or more 6 man SNGs. I've recently dropped down to 8-10 tables and have been doing well ever since.

Enough with the bad stuff, let's look forward to 2010.

I've recently started playing more super turbos on cake again. For a while I was playing no super turbos. Then I started only playing $65s. Now I've started playing them at all stakes, except I try to watch the lobbies when I can, whereas in the past I didn't bother w/ my rakeback deal. I think that combines w/ 2-4 less tables on average & hopefully some positive variance should make for some decent results in them, although I'm not sure much more than 1-2% is sustainable long run. I figure w/ my deal & the added VIP benefits on Cake it's time to try them again. I also feel like I owe it to Cake to play more on the site.

Since dropping to 8-10 tables my hold em manager #s are as follows:
actual:
2,131 games
3.1% ROI
$10,174.45 profit
$153 avg. stake

adjusted based on all in EV:
2,131 games
5.2% ROI
$16,947.23 profit
$153 avg. stake

Cake #s:
overall: 1,088 $0 $66 1% -$395
super turbo: 567 $0 $65 2% $120
turbo: 515 -$1 $67 -1% -$572

on the year my cake super turbos in that avg. stake range is 2% & 1% over all years....my cake turbos in that avg. stake range are 6% on the year & 10% over all years so my adjusted #s would probably look something like 3.92% ROI & $2,814.87

That would leave my overall adjusted #s since dropping to 8-10 tables looking something like this:
3,219 games
4.76% ROI
$19,762.10
$123.42 avg. stake

During this period I played 200.83 hours & earned $18,244.41 in rakeback, which would be good for an hourly rate of $189.24. I'll probably play about 45 35 hour weeks in 2010 so that would make for a $298K+ year ($148,322.34 pre rakeback). It's nowhere near the $570K or so I made in 2008 but I don't expect to have another year like that unless sites are allowed to operate in the US again. In reality though, many things will likely change over the next year. My game will change, my opponents will change, my makeup of games will change. That's why I'm not going to set any poker related goals for 2010. It's just too hard to predict. It's likely that my total profit will be somewhere between $200K & $300K (I don't stake anymore), however, likely is far from a sure thing.

Next year I might get back to being more organized & posting monthly results, hourly, etc... With the year I had in 2009 it was tough to get ambition to do that. You could see enough from the yearly results I posted.

I've been keeping chat off on FTP (& all sites) to help me focus unless I'm starting or ending a session, so if I don't respond to your chat it's not because I'm ignoring you, it's because I can't see it. Speaking of FTP chat, I've seen a lot of idiots commenting on my FTP sharkscope, saying ignorant things like how people have figured out my game, I can't compete w/ the current mix of players, I'm a jhub3000 wannabe (because my name is jhub30), etc... I've thought about resetting my stats so these idiots respect me more when table selecting. However, I probably won't. People who think I CRUSHED SNGs for 50,000 to 60,000 & then people sudenly "figured me out" (like they wouldn't have figured me out in the 1st 60K games)are usually too ignorant to table select anyway.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, and have a happy new year!

Results:
Year 2009:
Hours: 1,577.65
SNG Profit: $(22,746.37)
Rakeback/Bonuses: $213,977.09
Total SNG Profit: $191,230.72
Staking: $42,219.80
Total Yearly Profit: $233,450.52

Year 2008 Online:
Hours: 1510.88
SNG Profit: $277,395.86
Rakeback/Bonuses: $178,589.61
Total SNG Profit: $455,985.47
Staking: $121,573.29
Total Yearly Profit: $577,558.76

Year 2007 Online:
Total Online Poker Profit: $251,388.84 (no staking in 2007)

Career sharkscope:
86,141 $5 $146 5% $419,859

If you haven't yet do youself a favor & read this entry on table selection, as well as the variance & table selection linked inside of it:
http://jhub3000.livejournal.com/2009/12/04/

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Table Selection Part 2

Date: Fri, Dec 4, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=jared2896

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

For those that haven't read my 1st post on table selection, it is a must read for any SNG player and can be found here: http://jhub3000.livejournal.com/84368.html

I've been meaning to expand on this for a while but just haven't felt like typing up a long entry. I was also skeptical about sharing how much fish can increase your ROI because I feel like people will abuse this info & chalk up a lot of losing players as "fish" when they really aren't. However, if people realize how much a breakeven player can hurt their ROI this should balance out.

First off, let's summarize the main stats of the 1st table selection article. Each type of player drops your ROI x % for 6 mans:

good player: 4.5%
decent player: 2.8%
barely above breakeven player: 2%

for 9 mans:
good player: 2.8%
decent player: 1.8%
barely above breakeven player: 1.2%

Now I'll go into more detail not only on how the #s change if there's 2 or more of each player, but also add more player types like breakeven, -5%, -10%, etc...

The following #s will be 6 max only. However, if you play 9 mans you can kind of get an idea based on the #s above. Again, each player(s) drops your BASE ROI x %:

Cost of 1 good player: 4.5%
Cost of 2 good players: 8.7%
Cost of 3 good players: 12.57%
Cost of 4 good players: 16.16%
Cost of 5 good players: 19.5%

Obviously if you want to win money you should rarely be playing a 6 max game w/ even 2 good players but those are the #s anyhow.

Cost of 1 decent player: 2.8%
2: 5.45%
3: 8.11%
4: 10.56%
5: 12.9%

Cost of 1 barely above breakeven player: 2%
2: 3.9%
3: 5.87%
4: 7.7%
5: 9.46%

Cost of 1 breakeven player: 1.45%
2: 2.86%
3: 4.24%
4: 5.58%
5: 6.89%

Cost of 1 -5% player: 0.29%
2: 0.58%
3: 0.86%
4: 1.15%
5: 1.43%
THIS IS NOT A MISPRINT. A -5% PLAYER WILL ACTUALLY LOWER YOUR BASE ROI BY 0.29%.

Cost of 1 -10% player: +0.87%
2: +1.75%
3: +2.64%
4: +3.55%
5: +4.48%

Cost of 1 -15% player: +2.02%
2: +4.12%
3: +6.3%
4: +8.56%
5: +10.9%

Cost of 1 -20% (definition of a fish): +3.18%
2: +6.54%
3: +10.11%
4: +13.89%
5: +17.91%

Cost of 1 -30% player: +5.49%

Cost of 1 -40% player: +7.79%

In my 1st table selection post I recommended that good players use a base ROI (starting ROI of which to add & subtract these #s from) of 8.56. However, now that there's more #s to consider here, I'd say somewhere around 10 to 11% sounds about right.

It is very clear that since my 1st table selection post the games have gotten much tougher. Therefore, I think the ROIs we use to characterize players need to be updated.

If a player has the following ROI or higher at each level you should chracterize them as a good player when table selecting:

$6s: 11%
$16s: 8%
$27s: 6%
$38s: 5%
$60s: 4%
$114s: 3%
$225s: 2%
$335s: 1%

However, more needs to be considered. First off, when I list these ROIs I'm talking about their ROI in 5-10 seated NL hold em turbo SNGs. An advanced search would need to be done to obtain this info. For regular speed SNGs you can probably bump the ROIs up a bit & for super turbos you can lower them.

I recommend doing year 09 advanced searches on players which you are unsure of. If 1 player has played 3,000 games w/ an ROI of 4% at the $60s spread over the years & 1 player has played 3,000 games w/ an ROI of 4% at the $60s in 2009, I will give much more credit to the latter since the games have gotten progressively tougher over the years.

Then you need to factor in variance. If you read my 1st table selection post then you should have a pretty good idea of just how crazy variance can be. To summarize some stats:

After 500 games there is a 50% chance that you are within 5% of your true ROI
After 1,000 games there is a 67% chance that you are within 5% of your true ROI
After 3,000 games there is a 90% chance that you are within 5% of your true ROI

That means that if a player has an ROI of 4% over 3,000 games, all that really tells you is there is a 90% chance that his true ROI is between 9% & -1%. With sustainable ROIs becoming much smaller (especially at the high stakes) this can make it very tough to characterize players into the right ROI categories. My advice would be to usually just give them the benefit of the doubt. This is 1 thing I've been doing more lately & I think it has helped tremendously. There's plenty of players who have glaring leaks but do other things well enough to make up for these leaks. Downgrading a player too much just because you notice some leaks in their game can be a very costly mistake.

You always need to figure out how ROIs translate at different levels. If you're playing a $119 & a player has played 500 games w/ an average stake of $25 w/ a -10% ROI, you can be pretty confident that he is -20% or more in a $119. Use your head in spots like this.

Now I'll go through some real life examples using sharkscope tournament selector:
Game 1: $119 on FTP:
Username Games Played Av. Profit Av. Stake Av. ROI Total Profit Form Ability /100
Player 1 30 $78 $64 44% $2,337 - 92 x
Player 2 899 -$1 $87 7% -$459 - 73 x
Player 3 6,209 $2 $66 7% $10,531 Tilt 85 x
Player 4 3,573 $2 $52 5% $7,615 - 85

Player 1 has only played 30 games. That doesn't really tell me anything so I'd just go with the default & mark him as a breakeven player. With player 2 you want to pay more attention to his avg. ROi than his total profit. The fact that he is losing overall w/ that ROI just means that he probably lost over a small sample of high stakes games. I advanced search player 2 & see that he's 2% over 771 6-10 seated Nl holdem & -1% over 583 6-10 n 2009. Given these stats combined I would probably characterize him as a barely above breakeven player. Player 3 has not played any 6-10 seated games before 2009. In 6-10 seated he is 4% over 3,855 games. Given that knowledge I would characterize him as a decent player at the very minimum, and probably give him the benefit of the doubt & chalk him up as a good player until he shows me otherwise. With this particular player I know that he is living with & being coached by a top SNG player so I will definitely characterize him as a good player. Player 4 is 7% over 3,237 6-10 seated & 2% over 1,889 in 2009 where his avg. stake has been a tad higher at $70. Again, at minimum I would characterize this guy as a decent player & probably give him the nod as a good player until he proves otherwise.

Now let's calculate our ROI. We have 2 good players so they drop our ROI 8.7%. We have 1 barely above breakeven player so he drops our ROI 2%. We have 1 breakeven player so he drops our ROI 1.45%. If our base ROI is 11% then our ROI in this game is -1.15%. If we wanted the game to be +EV pre rakeback we would want to watch the lobby & see if the 5th player who registers is -12% or worse. If there's better options out there for games or we don't need many more tables we would probably want to be more selective than settling for a breakeven pre rakeback game.

As is with the 4 players currently in the game we could calculate our profit in that game as follows: -0.0115 x $119 = -$1.37. Rake is $9. If the game is on FTP & we have 27% rakeback then rakeback = $2.43. $2.43 - $1.37 = $1.06 profit. That's not exactly the type of profit you should be looking for in a $119. You could almost always drop down & play a lower buy-in game for more profit w/ less variance & stress.

We wait 3 minutes & the following $119 is registering:

Username Games Played Av. Profit Av. Stake Av. ROI Total Profit Form Ability /100
Player 1 1,642 -$4 $53 1% -$6,872 - 69 x
Player 2 2,245 -$2 $47 -4% -$5,204 - 68 x
Player 3 2,772 -$37 $194 -18% -$102,084

Player 1 hasn't played any 6-10 seated pre 2009 & has played 1,158 at 2% in 2009. We will characterize him as a decent player. Player 2 hasn't played any 6-10 seated pre 2009 & is -3% over 1,235 in 2009. I would usually give him the benefit of the doubt & characterize him as a breakeven player until I get reads on him. Player 3 has played 1,467 6-10 seated at -18% & 1,163 in 2009 at -15%. We'll characterize him as a -15% player.

So far our estimated ROI in this game starting w/ a base ROI of 11% is 8.77%. Odds are the last 2 players will be breakeven players, in which case our ROI would be 5.98%. Our total profit for that game would be $9.55, much higher than the 1st game. Even if the last 2 players to register were good players, which is pretty unlikely given the odds, this game would still be more profitable than the 1st game.

Obviously you won't be able to do all of theese calculations in game when multi tabling. Get to know the #s so you have them memorized. Then get to know the players. 1 thing I have found very useful is to look up players in a bunch of games once per day while I'm not playing. I'll then take notes on these players. It shouldn't take long. This is especially useful if you play on full tilt where you can color code the players. Use your head & check your ego at the door.

Since dropping my tables from 10-12 to 8-10 & changing a few things up I am still crushing.

Overall stats:
Games Played Av. Profit Av. Stake Av. ROI Total Profit Form Ability /100 Network Filter
1,787 $9 $116 8% $16,186 N/A N/A Global Alias 11/11/2009 12/4/2009 E6-6 SNG Only

Turbos stats (excluding super turbos):
1,236 $11 $138 10% $14,172 N/A N/A Global Alias 11/11/2009 12/4/2009 E6-6 Spd=T SNG Only

Hourly rate: $244.14

I'm very confident in my game right now.

Results:
Year 2009:
SNG Profit: $(13,090.29)
Rakeback/Bonuses: $205,973.63
Total SNG Profit: $192,883.34
Staking: $42,219.80
Total Profit: $235,103.14

Career Sharkscope Stats:
Normal speed 5-6 seated:
Games Played Av. Profit Av. Stake Av. ROI Total Profit Form Ability /100 Network Filter
10,124 $9 $107 12% $89,072 N/A N/A Global Alias E5-6 Spd=N SNG Only
Turbo 5-6 seated:

Turbo 5-6 seated:
66,450 $5 $156 5% $362,188 N/A N/A Global Alias E5-6 Spd=T SNG Only

Super turbo 5-6 seated:
7,768 -$3 $107 -1% -$22,044 N/A N/A Global Alias E5-6 Spd=ST SNG Only

9-10 seated:
1,534 $1 $91 0% $2,246 N/A N/A Global Alias E9-10 SNG Only

12 or more players:
135 $20 $23 101% $2,650 N/A N/A Global Alias E>=12 SNG Only

All games:
86,432 $5 $144 5% $435,648 N/A 89 Global Alias SNG Only

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I Feel Like I'm Back

Date: Tue, Nov 17, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=jared2896

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

To quote Fabolous: "I feel like I'm back." I'm been working on my game a little & switched some things up. I'm being more selective on FTP $500s & only playing the softest ones that go off. My FTP table selection in general is much better as I have a much better feel for who is who by now. I've also started playing super turbos under $100 again. While the $100+ super turbos are flooded w/ ignorant non table selecting regs, I think there's profit to be made pre rakeback at the $50-$70 level. I still have to babysit the lobby & get out of games when too many ignorant regs hop in sometimes, but I think 2%+ ROI is sustainable at this level with a little table selection. With my high rakeback that can obviously equal out to be pretty profitable. I've started playing more cake again in general. I think the $52 to $78 levels are still more profitable than I thought & 6-10% might be sustainable w/ almost 0 table selection. Again, with my high rakeback on cake this makes the games very profitable, often more profitable than a $200+ on FTP. I have also recently lowered my tables to 8-10 at a time. I had been thinking about it for a while & an aim conversation I had with faarcyde was basically the clincher. Thanks faarcyde! I think most people try to play too many tables & "maximize" hourly rate. In the process, their ROI usually falls more than they thought it would & they just chalk it up to variance. Often variance is part of it (especially considering their ROI is lower, they will have more variance than before), but it's usually not the whole story. I have been guilty of this as well. Sometimes we just get too greedy. I think I've learned from it & I'm pretty sure you won't see my pre rakeback profits in the red for 2010. Hopefully I'll be back at the top of leaderboards again but we'll see because there's a lot of good players these days & the games are very competitive. Anyways, since the 11th I've been playing 8-10 tables & here has been the result so far:

528 $17 $115 15% $8,951 N/A N/A Global Alias 11/11/2009 11/17/2009 SNG Only

That's # of games, avg. profit, avg. stake, ROI, & total profit. Now I certainly don't think 15% is sustainable at this avg. stake. What it does tell you is that there's a greater than 50% chance that my true ROI is between 10% & 20%. Again, I think this is an outlier here as I doubt my true ROI is as high as 10% in this day and age with an average stake of $115. However, I do think there's a very good chance that my true ROI is quite high w/ my current playing style & # of tables. Even if my true ROI is just 5% that's still an excellent ROI for that average stake with the current state of SNGs, especially when you factor in that over 25% of my games are super turbos.

Gunnar sits in the office with me while I play. It can be distracting but I don't want to put him in his kennel for that long & he's not trained enough yet to be roaming the rest of the house on his own yet. Overall he's been very good though. There's a door stopper in my office & that's his favorite toy so he plays with that a lot & his other toys & sleeps a lot. I did catch him eating the drywall once but I don't think he's gonna do it again. Sometimes he wants to come up on my lap. I usually try it for a little bit & then have to put him down when he starts pushing buttons on my keyboard. He's seen me play a lot of games but I don't trust his SNG skills enough YET to let him control my keyboard while I'm playing.

My personal trainer has some new personalized training programs. Just $11.95 will get you 6-7 weeks of personalized programs. I highly recommend giving it a shot.

That's all I've got for now.

Results:

Year of 2009:
SNG Profit: $(20,607.34)
Rakeback/Bonuses: $198,727.69
Staking: $42,219.80
Total Yearly Profit: $220,340.15

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I'm a Father!

Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=jared2896

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

Here's some pictures of my new son Gunnar & his parents & a leaf:

In case you didn't notice, he's adopted. We got him last Saturday. He's a yellow lab. While he's peed in the house a lot I think he's been very good for a puppy. He hasn't pooped in the house yet & he's pretty good when in his kennel compared to most dogs. Best of all, I haven't had a losing day since I got him. Perhaps I should mention that I've only played 6 1/2 hours over the course of 2 days since getting him.

Overall poker hasn't been very good. Since I play such a wide range of buy-ins my overall profits rely heavily on a small sample of games at my highest stakes. This can be really frustrating at times since I don't have too much control over my short term results. Here's some sick #s for 2009: Between $500+ on Pokerstars, $500+ on Full Tilt, and super turbos on Cake I'm down a combined $82,890 pre rakeback, & this # peaked around $90K.

jhub30 1,194 -$23 $531 -4% -$27,150 - N/A FullTilt Year2009 S>=500
jhub3000 4,804 -$6 $110 -2% -$29,280 - N/A Cake Year2009 Spd=ST
jhub3000 820 -$32 $543 -5% -$26,460 - N/A PokerStars Year2009 S>=500

If you've read my past posts on variance & table selection you should know that these #s tell us very little about my long run #s at these games. While I'm down overall in super turbos pre rakeback, the good thing is that I'm still up in $500+ over the course of my online career (about $24K over 4,000 or so games across all sites...this # jumps to over $50K if you explude the minuscule >200 games I've played at $1K+). It will probably take me 5+ years to get in a reasonable sample of games at $500+, and the game conditions will obviously change many times during that stretch. The ridiculous swings & lack of control over short term success are just some things you have to deal with if you want to play high stakes & maximize long run hourly rate. Thankfully for me I happen to make a ton of money in rakeback to keep me sane during the rough stretches. For the record I'm looking forward to the ignorant jealous hater comments about how I can't beat the high stakes anymore that this post will inevitably bring. They should be funny as hell like usual.

I'd like to thank everyone who donated to the cancer benefit my brother was raising money for. He reached his goal & I know readers of this blog played a part in that.

The Twins have Vikings have been a blast to watch lately. The run that twins made at the end of the season to win the central was ridiculous, even if they're a big dog to beat the yankees. As for the Vikes, as long as Favre's arm is fine the whole year (a big if) I think they can play w/ anyone in the league.

Results:

Year of 2009:
SNG Profit: $(23,259.28)
Rakeback/Bonuses: $181,972.53
Total SNG Profit: $158,713.25
Staking: $42,219.80
Total Yearly Profit: $200,933.05

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A Couple of Recent Interviews I Did

Date: Tue, Sep 29, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

http://daleroxxu.blogspot.com/2009/09/interview-with-jared-jhub3000-hubbard.html

http://www.donkeyfishpoker.com/articles.php?art_id=140

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Jhub3000 For Team Pokerstars?

Date: Thu, Sep 24, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

Pokerstars is currently accepting applications from online players for Team Pokerstars Pro. They didn't specify how many people would be chosen. If you would like to see me on Team Pokerstars please email support at support@pokerstars.com & let them know this.

Thanks,
Hub

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I'm Married!....and: Cancer, The Worst Beat Imagineable

Date: Thu, Aug 20, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=jared2896

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

I got married on August 8th. Everything went very well. We went to Aruba for our honeymoon and it was great. It was 90 & sunny every day. The water was a perfect temp & color. The food was great. The shows were good, etc... We also purchased a timeshare package while we were there. For my bachelor party we rented a boat & about 18 of us went on Lake Minnetonka for 8 hrs. I was blackout drunk about 4 hrs into it (3 pm). Then we came back to my house. During that time some of us decided it would be a great idea to play a cash game. I was dealing backwards & arguing w/ Jeremy (thevosh, voss1313's bro) before finally realizing I was wrong. Later he decided to fire up the weed whacker past midnight & weed whack a penis into my lawn. I was asleep by then. Thankfully he didn't do the greatest job in the dark & you couldn't really tell what it was.

Here's 1 pic from the wedding:

This is my wife Paula & I doing a nice ninja turtle pose. I was obsessed with the ninja turtles when I was young so my brothers gave me a ninja turtle shirt during their best man speech. Maybe I'll post some other pics another time. Some people have requested that I post more pics on my blog but it can be time consuming.

As for poker, I haven't played a whole lot. There was 1 week when I was really sick & didn't play at all. Then I had the wedding & honeymoon & obv didn't play during that. July 16th I decided to stop playing pokerstars, at least for now. There's so many ignorant regs who don't table select that you have to constantly babysit them by keeping an eye on the lobbies. This takes away a ton of focus from your tables, a bit too much w/ 4 sites going imo. Whether this helps my hourly remains to be seen and will be tough to tell due to the high variance of the games I play. However, if nothing else the games have been less stressful & more enjoyable w/o Stars. I'm pretty confident in my game. I've reviewed poker tracker stats of a bunch of top players & my #s are very similar to all of them. I love when people tell me I can't play post-flop. Of all the players my went to showdown/won at showdown #s were the best.

I don't have the time to post all my stats but my total profit for the year is at $208,188.33

Cake has been pretty quiet lately so FTP has easily been my #1 site volume-wise lately. I've done ok there. Their sharkscope was very screwy during a bunch of updates. It missed a nice upswing of mine but that's ok because it will just help feed the ignorant donks' opinion of my play recently.

As far as Brett Favre goes, I think he's kind of a d-bag but I'm glad the Vikings got him because he should be an upgrade over what we had. I think the Vikes are 1 of the favorites to win the NFC this year. The Eagles are gonna be really tough though.

Now on to a more serious subject:

My brother is running a race in support of 1 of his best friends, who has colon cancer. All donations are greatly appreciated. I'll just leave you with the story my brother wrote on the race homepage:

Hello,

I recently joined a team for the 18th Annual Rivertown Shuffle here in Winona that will be held on Friday, September 18th. This event is a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society and is highlighted by luminaries placed on the bike path around Lake Winona. One of my very best friends, Joe Vogel, has been chosen to be one of this years Person's of Hope for this event.

In May of 2006 Joe was diagnosed with colon cancer. At age 28, the thought of cancer shouldn't even enter one's mind. But Joe faced the battle head on like a true champion. Joe did the chemo and all the treatments and side effects that came along with it and eventually was back to life before the cancer. Unfortunately, a few months back his colon cancer came back and was in his brain. Once again Joe's positive attitude got him through the radiation treatments and a Gamma Knife procedure.

During the 2 months that Joe was receiving his treatments for the brain tumors, the cancer spread significantly to his spine, lungs, and possibly liver. At this moment Joe is on Round 2 of chemo out of 6 for these areas. Joe is 31 years old and has had to deal with more than anybody should ever have to deal with in their entire life. His attitude is unbelievable and the way he's fought is heroic to say the least.

Joe is the reason I've decided to raise money for this event. In honor of Joe Vogel. I set our initial goal at $1000 and to be honest I think we can reach that no problem. So I hope we can raise that goal in the coming weeks.

You can visit Joe's personal CaringBridge page at:

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/joevogel

Thank you for your support!

Jeff Hubbard

To make a donation please click the link below:

http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLFY09National?px=12596436&pg=personal&fr_id=15892

Here's a picture of Joe (left) & Jeff (right) recently after Jeff shaved his head in support of Joe:

Thanks,
Hub

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Lark On My Go-Kart

Date: Fri, Jul 3, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=jared2896

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

On June 11th I stopped playing Cake super turbos all together. It was a tough decision to make with my high rakeback deal on cake but I think it was the right thing to do. The other week I did some calculations & figured out that over 5,220 cake super turbos I was making less than $1 game after rakeback! Obviously I was running bad during this time but I was also running bad on FTP & Pokerstars during this time. Over the same # of games (although less on FTP cause I haven’t played that many) I was averaging over $4/game after rakeback on Stars & almost $6/game after rakeback on FTP. In 2009 when the games have been tougher I’m not even profitable in super turbos after rakeback. What started off as what seemed to be a dream scenario (Cake adding super turbos) w/ my rakeback deal turned into a nightmare due to the amount of ignorant regs who can’t put their ego aside & table select. Aside from that, super turbos also take away more focus from my other tables. You get about 2-3 super turbos in for every turbo, so if you take 40 minutes of turbos & 40 min of super turbos you’re involved in a much larger % of hands in the 40 min of super turbos. Also, with my multi tabling table selection routine it takes way too much focus away from my other tables while I’m registering & unregistering from all of the super turbos as more games pop up & I bust out of other games. Perhaps Cake will fix the registration process to make it easier when they come out with their new version of software. I’m pretty sure I recommended it to them. The variance of super turbos is also obviously very annoying. I think I can find plenty of games w/ similar profitability & less variance. Lastly, super turbos are very bad for my long run marketability. In super turbos you’re basically just hoping to break-even & make your money from rakeback. This is really bad for my stats when about half of my games were on Cake & probably half to 2/3 of my cake games were super turbos. I currently have a very good deal w/ Cake. However, I don’t want to close out future opportunities. Like most things, there’s also a business side to poker & that should always be a consideration.

Since I stopped playing super turbos I've been crushing so far ($377 hourly over about 100 hours). Obviously it's highly unlikely I will maintain that but it's still nice to see. Once I get in a good sample size I'll probably start posting hourly rate again. I keep calculating new hourlys since I've been experimenting w/ different games so I haven't posted my hourly in a while. Since we finally have nice weather in MN I've been taking advantage of that. I know there was 1 week where I only played 10 hours.

Since no longer playing super turbos I’m super confident in my game. I’m just allowed to focus so much more. I’m only getting in about 15 games per hr now but that’s about what I was getting in when my hourly rate was at its peak. The games have certainly gotten tougher since last year but w/ another site to choose from (FTP) I think I might be able to get close to my 08 hourly (although admittedly I probably ran about $30-$50K above expectation in 08). I might eventually try to play 1 more table at a time on avg. We’ll see how things go.

It’s amazing how ignorant even successful players can be. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people saying I fell off or that my “luck streak” has ended. Yes I was just that successful over 60,000 SNGs & then suddenly fell off. Yes I was LUCKY over 60,000 SNGs & it’s finally ending. I must be the luckiest guy in the world. When playing multiple buy-ins it’s not tough to lose for extended periods of time. All it takes is losing at your highest buy-ins over a smallish sample. If you exclude super turbos all of my avg. ROIs are still positive on the year other than a -1% on Pokerstars. I can assure you that I'm a better SNG player than I was in 08, despite what my yearly stats are. People just dismiss it as me falling off because they've never gone through a streak like this. Go play 70,000 high stakes SNGs & then get back to me.

I've talked a lot about table selection. I usually center on 6 max SNGs since that's what I play. I've posted some 9 man table selection stats in the comments section of my blog but clearly not everyone reads that since I keep getting asked about this. I highly advise everyone to read the comments on each entry but here is how each player effects your ROI in 9 man SNGs:

Cost of a good regular -2,80%
Cost of an decent regular -1,80%
Cost of a barely winning player 1,20%

Remember, this is how each player effects your BASE ROI. I might as well post the link again to the original table selection entry since most people seem clueless in this area:

http://jhub3000.livejournal.com/2009/03/03/

Maybe I'll just sticky it at the top of my blog.

I'm sure most of you have heard by now that Minnesota gave up in their Nazi efforts to block online gambling ISPs. That's obviously a good thing for myself and other online poker players in MN.

http://www.pokerpages.com/poker-news/news/minnesota-drops-attempt-to-ban-online-poker-internet-gambling-sites-31702.htm

Cake has signed Lee Jones:

http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/lee-jones-signs-with-cake-poker-2431/

http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/lee-jones-discusses-the-future-of-cake-poker-2456/

I was very excited when I heard this. Lee was a big reason for the success Pokerstars has had & I think he'll do a great job helping make Cake 1 of the top sites in terms of volume.

I'm sure most of you also heard about the Nazi seizures by the FED:

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=7808131

A PPA spokesperson does a great job talking about the situation here:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=5885742&referralPlaylistId=undefined

Send letters to congress in an effort to bring regulated online poker to the US:

http://capwiz.com/pokerplayersalliance/home/

I was very disappointed in the T-Wolves on NBA draft night. Ricky Rubio fell into our laps & I was stoked. I really didn't think we had a chance of drafting him without trading up. Not only were we getting him but we were going to draft Stephen Curry at 6. That young core of Rubio, Curry, Kevin Love, & Al Jefferson was sounding pretty good. Then the commisioner announced the pick. Jonny Flynn. WTF! This pick made absolutely no sense. They just drafted Rubio, about as pure as a PG as there is, then they draft another 5'11" PG when Curry is still on the board. Later they said they believe the 2 can play together. I'll believe it when I see it. It's also believed that Flynn was somewhat of an insurance policy for Ricky Rubio. Stephen Curry can play both the 1 & the 2 so he would have not only served at our starting SG (& a damn good one at that) but could also slide over to PG if Rubio were to continue with his nonsense & not play for us. Sure Curry may not be the pure PG that Flynn is but he serves as more than just an insurance policy & is a better player than Flynn. Flynn was a reach at 6, while Curry probably would have been a steal at 6. Another thing I heard is that Curry didn't workout for us. Guess what? He didn't workout for Golden State either & they happily snagged him at 7. I hope I'm wrong but I think we'll be paying for this for years to come. There was even a rumor before the draft that we were in talks to trade Al Jefferson and the #6 pick for Amare Stoudemire. I wouldn't even trade Jefferson for Stoudemire straight up. It was later reported that the rumor was false but you never know what to believe. For a second I thought Kevin McHale was back in office. I thought the same thing after the #6 pick. Sometimes I think I could run an NBA franchise better than these dopes. Hopefully when Rubio goes through puberty & stops being a whiny little bitch he will actually come and play for the Wolves. If it happens I'm sure he'll spend a couple more years in Spain first. If it doesn't, I guess we'll have to settle for trading him. I'd hope we could get decent value for him. It's ridiculous how players like Rubio, Eli Manning, & John Elway try to choose where they want to play when they come into the league. Be grateful you're able to play professional sports for a living & suck it up. If you don't like where you got drafted you can certainly leave in free agency when your rookie contract is up.

I was happy to see the Cavs added Shaq. He's still 1 of the top centers in the league & will be of huge help against Orlando in the playoffs. They still have work to do though. Both Artest & Ariza decided to sign elsewhere. Now their best bet is to sign Rasheed Wallace & hope he doesn't go to eastern conference rival Boston instead. I think Orlando upgraded its roster w/ the addition of Vince Carter & exit of Turkoglu. Jameer Nelson should also be healthy for the playoffs next year, so they could be even better than this year. I also think the Lakers have upgraded with Artest over Ariza as long as he isn't a distraction. Boston should be healthy again this year so they'll be tough, especially if Sheed signs with them. Either way I think Cleveland will make some more moves this offseason & make another strong push this year. Lebron isn't going anywhere. He's staying in Cleveland beyond next season. Andrew (Voss1313) said he'd bet me $1K on that. At first I said I wanted to wait until after free agency & trades to make the bet official (this was before the Shaq trade) but then I changed my mind. I figured they were almost certainly going to be big players this offseason & after they made those moved Voss might back out. I then offered him the deal again before the Shaq trade was made. I never heard back from him. I then offered it again. I still haven't heard back. It sounds like someone is getting cold feet. Andrew, what do ya think buddy?

The new Asher Roth CD is phenomenal. If you like Eminem you'll like Asher & I'd recommend picking it up.

Results:

Month of June:
147.26 hrs played
SNG Profit: $2,587.87
Rakeback/Bonuses: $27,278.46
Staking: $16,506.00
Total Monthly Profit: $46,372.33

Year of 2009:
889.48 hrs played
SNG Profit: $5,005.05
Rakeback/Bonuses: $152,001.75
Staking: $40,956.65
Total Yearly Profit: $197,963.45

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=jared2896

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Go Find a White Crayon & Color a Zebra

Date: Tue, Jun 2, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

I’m back in the red pre rakeback on the year. It’s been very swingy. I’m down over $20K at the $300+ level for the year. That’s the crappy thing about playing multiple buy-ins. Your overall #s rely heavily on a small sample of games at your highest stakes. I can’t complain with the rakeback I get though. I’m not alone in the red for 09. Spagravy, Bigjoe2003, bballwiz, & messier111 are all in the red pre rakeback in SNGs this year, & even the almighty durrr is in the red in cash games for the year. Hopefully seeing players have bad runs for such extended periods of time is educating people on variance more, because most people are clueless in that department.

My hours have been down lately. Even when I play a full week it’s usually not 40 hours.

Now that Cake has had super turbos for a while I decided to do a little research into attainable ROIs. I always assumed 1-2% was probably the highest attainable ROIs in the long run. I took a collection of players I considered good to figure out my #s. I think the results will surprise some people. Among these good players, they had played a total of 23,081 super turbos. Their average stake was $96.83 & their average ROI was just 0.274%! This should be an eye opener to those of you running at 2% or above over thousands of games. It’s extremely unlikely that your true ROI is actually that high. Super turbos can still be very profitable because of their length of time & rakeback, as long as you can handle the sick variance that comes with them. You will have negative ROI stretches over huge lengths of time. Hopefully people will start to realize the importance of table selection in super turbos. Games can become unprofitable much quicker than in regular turbos. Unless you have a rakeback deal like me on Cake (you don’t) there’s really no excuse for not using good table selection in super turbos. Too often I see games w/ the likes of 2 or more players like HappyLucky, buttabiscuit, JuneTLBKilla, odinnnn, avkalang608, etc… & it’s just ridiculous. I’m sure most of you have read my entry on table selection and variance. If not, you should do so now:

http://jhub3000.livejournal.com/2009/03/03/

The thing with super turbos is that your base ROI is much less. While I said a top player at $100+ probably has a base ROI around 8.5 in turbos, that number should AT LEAST be cut in half for super turbos. I doubt you can profit pre rakeback w/ 1 top player & even 1 other winning player in the game. Most players have 33% rakeback. The rakeback you receive is roughly equivalent to 2.31 ROI points. Therefore, if your ROI in a super turbo is lower than 2.31 you are losing money even with rakeback! If you’ve read my table selection article & understand how to calculate your ROI in a particular game you should realize that’s it’s not tough to get to -2.31% in a super turbo. In fact, I see these games all the time. Fortunately for me I get way more than 33% rakeback so I have a lot more wiggle room than everyone else. The point is: use your head, put your ego aside, & table select. I’ve noticed many players starting to table select since my blog entry on it, but there’s still plenty of work to be done in that department. For most who don’t, they haven’t truly experienced the brutal side of variance. Others just never will. Hopefully this helps people understand the difference between table selection in regular turbos & super turbos. Clearly your edge is much less with 2 minute blinds as opposed to 5 minute blinds.

I made a mistake in my last blog entry. I listed my personal trainer’s website incorrectly. It’s fixed now but the address is actually http://goperformance1.com/ Again, I recommend him to anyone. He does a great job for a very good price. I’ve now lost 38 lbs. I’ll be posting a banner for his website on my blog soon.

I was very disappointed in the Cavs. Anyone putting the blame on Lebron is an idiot. He easily has the worst supporting cast of any superstar & seriously, what more could the guy have done? He made Mo Williams look like an all star during the regular season, but Mo & the rest of the team didn’t show up for the eastern conference finals. You can’t win a championship by yourself. It’s a team game. Jordan needed Pippen, Kobe needed Shaq/the good supporting cast he has now, Wade needed Shaq, Duncan needed Parker & Ginobli, Magic needed Kareem, etc… MJ didn’t win a title until his 7th season. Guess what season Lebron is going into? You got it. Hopefully they can put a better team around him & get it done next year. Fortunately it looks like they’re going to have plenty of cap room to work with. No championship is going to be easy in the next several years though. The Lakers are still pretty young & should have their core together for a few more championship runs. The Magic get Jameer Nelson back next year and as long as they resign Turkoglu their young core should be together for several more championship runs. The Nuggets will be back & The Celtics should have 1 more run in them.

The new Eminem CD is phenomenal as usual. If you haven’t gotten it yet go get it. Maybe I’ll do some CD reviews one of these blog entries.

I didn’t receive my May rakeback yet so that is not included in the yearly profits.

MJCACE’s staking agreement is up at the end of the month so starting July 1st my mix of games will likely look a little different. I’ll probably start up a new excel tab at that time. Since April 5th I’m making $219.42/hr playing (not including staking).

Results:

May 2009:
121.65 hrs played
SNG profit: $ (9,228.11)
Rakeback/Bonuses: $ 22,270.59
Staking: $ 1,080.00
Total monthly profit: $ 14,122.48
Year 2009:
732.98 hrs played
SNG Profit: $ (1,224.82)
Rakeback/Bonuses: $ 121,491.54
Total SNG Profit: $ 120,266.72
Staking: $ 26,127.65
Total Yearly Profit: $ 146,394.37

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Back on Track

Date: Tue, May 12, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

I’m in the car on my way home from Delaware & have been really lazy w/ blog entries so I figure it’s a good time to type one up. I haven’t played much this past week. My Dad, my brothers, & I drove to Delaware for my cousin’s wedding. We drove because we wanted to go to New York for a day as well. The drive on the way there was 21 hours, which wasn’t that bad because I probably spent 10-12 hours studying poker related material. Most of it was cash game stuff. I really doubt I’ll move to cash anytime soon but studying it still helps for SNGs some. On Friday we went to the rehearsal dinner & then drank in the hotel room with some other people that were at the dinner for a while. On Saturday I worked out, then we went golfing, ate lunch, & had the wedding after a little rest. Everything was a really good time. It’s nice to see cousins, aunts, & uncles that I don’t see very often. We went out for pizza & drinks after the wedding. On Sunday we went to NY. We didn’t have much time to spend there but it was still cool to see. I also came down to Winona a day early because 1 of my friends that is currently living in Mississippi was in town.

Obviously I haven’t gotten much playing time in the past week but I’m really feeling good about my game and have been on a roll. I started out the month on a solid $27K downswing. Then on April 5th I finally decided to cut down on my # of tables. Considering that probably about half of my games are super turbos & I’m table selecting 4 sites, which takes away a lot of focus, I think I was playing too many tables. It’s easy to do w/ my rakeback deal on Cake but the way things were going I had to try something new. I’ve mostly been in the 8-12 table range. I also have been really taking advantage of Full Tilt’s color coded notes, which I think are extremely helpful. It’s getting a lot easier the longer I’ve been on the site as I get better reads on the players, especially when playing less tables. I’ve also stopped having the TV on while I play. I love a lot of the shows on ESPN/ESPN2 like Mike & Mike, 1st & 10, NFL Live, Jim Rome, Around the Horn, & PTI so I used to just have those shows on all day. Now I only have them on if I’m just starting up & loading tables or if I’m winding down to break or end the session, with less tables going. Otherwise I have just had music going, which keeps me a lot more focused. I think the combination of all of these things has had a very big positive effect on my results. Since April 5th when I made these changes I’ve been averaging over $440/hr. Obviously that’s a heater & not my true win rate, but I have been feeling way more comfortable at the tables & think I’m making the optimal play a lot more. I don’t time out much anymore & have more time to think through decisions, & also have much better reads on different players. I think it’s helped the most in post-flop play, as I have more time to reconstruct the hand in my head & have better reads so that I can adjust to different players better. Anyways, obviously a big difference in the results has been variance, but time will time just how big of a factor it was. During my big downswing DDBeast had told me that he thought I was playing very well. Even though I respect his opinion on SNGs more than anyone, he still only sees a small percentage of my hands while playing a lot of tables, & I do think that playing too many tables & other factors had a significant negative effect on my results, even if variance was the #1 factor. Either way I’ll be fine w/ all the rakeback I make. I was looking on sharkscope, & it’s pretty crazy that despite how awful my 09 has gone I think I’ve probably still made more money overall (including rakeback, bonuses, etc…) than anyone else in SNGs. Now that I have the color coded notes system down pretty good on FTP, & my table selection is much better, & my confidence is up I can’t deny that the $1Ks & $2Ks on FTP are pretty tempting. However, I don’t want that stress & variance right now, so I’m going to continue to stay away from those. I’m sure I’ll be tempted back into them sometime in the future though, no matter how sick they are.

I’ve lost a little over 30 lbs as I’m trying to get in shape for my wedding in August (& just for the sake that it’s a lot healthier). It’s pretty easy to get out of shape as a professional poker player, especially if you go on a decent amount of trips. I’m going to stick with it now though. I have a personal trainer who designs my workouts (tailored to my goals) & tells me how many calories, carbs, protein, & fat to shoot for in a day. He’s been very helpful & recently launched his website at performancetraining.com I would highly recommend him. If you have the money it’s well worth the cost. Everybody should workout at least a few times a week. You’ll feel much better if you do.

As time goes by with this Minnesota bill I really doubt much is going to happen with it. They tried the same crap in Kentucky & it got overturned in appeals court. Every lawyer I see comment on it thinks that we’ll be ok because it won’t hold up in court. If anything does happen with it, I’m hoping there will be a way around it so that I don’t have to move. One thing that really bugs me is how they report online gambling as being illegal in the US. While it’s true that it’s illegal for an online gambling site to run its’ operations in the US, it is not illegal to play online poker in the US. If it was illegal I’d be in prison. Star Tribune did an article on me playing online poker for a living. If it was illegal that would be like them interviewing some drug dealer in MN about his “career” & the cops doing nothing about it. Everybody knows that site pros like Greg Raymer & Phil Ivey play online poker. If it were truly illegal you can’t tell me that there would be nothing done about it. The thing is, it is a bit of a grey area & there’s people who do believe it’s illegal to play, but anybody with any knowledge of the situation knows that they would have no shot of convicting a player. It just wouldn’t hold up in court because it isn’t illegal, & that’s why we continue to play. It’s truly baffling the kind of trash that passes for news these days. Some of it just has no credibility. Somebody mentioned it in the comments section of my blog, but when commenting on the issue one player made up a good point in my opinion. He talked about how many people look down on poker players because we’re basically taking other people’s money. In reality, almost everybody who works does this. When you work for a business you’re taking business away from other businesses, & are therefore taking money away from other people. It’s just not the direct route like it is in the poker world, so people don’t see it for what it really is. Therefore, poker players take slack for it, but there’s certainly nobody criticizes Joe Blow who sits in his cubicle selling electronics over the phone. He’s just a hard working citizen while we’re a disgrace. While the opinion on poker players has softened a lot in recent years, there’s still a long ways to go as there’s many uninformed and/or dillusional people out there when it comes to the subject.

For a while the Cake games were getting pretty tough, & I was even considering table selecting a little on there despite my high rakeback. One of the newer sites on the network, Lock Poker, was giving out under the table rakeback deals at up to 60%, despite the fact that it’s against network rules for them to offer rakeback at all. Basically they were stealing some of Cake’s biggest players by offering them 60% rakeback, when they weren’t even allowed to offer rakeback period. Some of these players thought 60% rakeback made it ok to register for games where they were the 4th best player & it got a little ugly for a while. Then Cake found out about everything & shut the lock rakeback program down. They’re lucky they didn’t get booted from the network. Needless to say, there’s going to be some unhappy players on lock who aren’t going to be receiving their rakeback.

People always ask me why I don’t play MTTs. There’s various reasons. They lock your schedule down. The good ones are mostly on weekends. Despite the weekends being the softest time to play, I rarely play weekends because there’s often way more other stuff to do since most people have work off. I can make plenty of money without playing weekends & don’t need to sacrifice social life to do it. Just because a certain time is the most profitable to play doesn’t mean it’s the best life decision to play at that time. Too many players just get in the habit of having their lives revolve around poker. I mostly just play around my fiancee’s schedule now that we live together, w/ differences usually being less than a couple hours. Another big reason I don’t like MTTs is that since I don’t play them as my main game, I’ll never really get to the long run in them in terms of sample size, so I’m basically gambling. Even if you play them for a living the variance can be very high & it can take a while to get a good sample size. I believe it was DJC311 that made a very good point about MTT variance. Most of the biggest money jumps in MTTs are at the final table, so performing well at the final table is probably the most important part of MTTs (obv you need to get there 1st but you get the point). Well, the final table of an MTT is basically a SNG, just with a different payout structure. Look at the variance of SNGs. Top players can run breakeven or losing over several thousand SNGs. Now how many final tables are you going to make in a year? I don’t care who you are, it’s going to be nowhere near several thousand, or even one thousand for that matter. The point is that luck probably plays a much bigger role in the difference of results between the top MTT winners & the marginal winners than most people realize. That’s just another reason I’m not a big MTT fan. While the thrill of winning them is like no other, the wins are way outnumbered by deep runs where you play extremely well & then continue to get screwed over & over until you bust, in which the disappointment matches the joy when you win.

Normally I try to play 5 days (Mon-Fri) a week at around 40 hours. Obviously there’s a lot of days/weeks where I have other stuff going on & don’t work at all or take time off for some days where I don’t reach that 40 hour mark. Contrary to what people seem to think, I “work” a lot less than most Americans, & probably less than most professional SNG players. Last year I ended up “working” the equivalent of 39 40 hour weeks. People just see how many SNGs I play in a year & assume I play all the time, without factoring in that I get in way more SNGs/hr than most people. I’ll probably play more than that this year but we’ll see. I’m not going to worry about it too much. Being able to make my own schedule is one of the things I like most about being a professional poker player. That’s right up there with the money & be able to actually do something that I truly enjoy for a living. One thing I have done this year is started to keep track of net vacation hours. For every day of the week other than the 1st week of the year (which started on a Thursday), the normal work week would be 40 hours. So at the end of each week I calculate how many hours I was over or under 40. If I was over they go into an overtime column & if I was under they go into a vacation column. I then have a forumula to subtract the difference. Anyways, so far this year I have taken 13.82 vacation days. I’ll probably have 2-3 more this week. I just thought it was another thing that’s nice to follow.

Injuries are really hurting the NBA playoffs this year. I thought it was going to be a great year for the playoffs until Kevin Garnett got hurt. Now the Cavs are pretty much going to walk right into the NBA finals, possibly without losing a game in the east. Since KG got his title last year I do want to Cavs to win it all, but I would have rather it been playing against the best & actually having some good games along the way. Now Yao Ming is out for the playoffs & the Lakers are going to get a walk into the Western Conference finals. At least the Nuggets-Lakers series should be good, & then the NBA finals should be good no matter who represents the West. Even though I can’t stand the Lakers, part of me wants them to win the west just so we can see a Lebron vs Kobe NBA finals matchup. That said, LeBron used to play against Melo in high school & that rivalry could be interesting as well, although there’s no debate of who is better like there is w/ Kobe vs Lebron.

It’s been way overdue but I’ve finally started watching The Sopranos & TheWire w/ Paula. Both are supposed to be very good. I’m not far enough in to comment though & it will be a long time before we’re through both of them. I’m a big fan of watching TV series on DVD. My favorites, in no particular order, are Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Weeds, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Office, Californication, & Everybody Loves Raymond. I also tried watching Dexter & Mad Men after hearing very good things about both. Dexter was ok but nothing special. Mad Men was just flat out awful & boring. It’s so slow moving & nothing happens. I have no idea how that show has won awards or what anyone could see in it.

As long as we’re kind of on the topic & I’m bored sitting in a vehicle, my favorite kind of movies are comedies. My favorite comedies of all time, in no particular order, are Dumb & Dumber, Office Space, Old School, Anchorman, & Wedding Crashers. I might be leaving some out but Superbad & Borat would probably receive honorable mentions.
Results:
Month of April 2009:
150.77
SNG Profit: $ (863.25)
Rakeback/Bonuses: $ 24,077.82
Staking: $ 9,100.00
Total Profit: $ 32,314.57
Year of 2009:
Hours: 631.89
SNG Profit: $14,910.79
Rakeback/Bonuses: $ 113,373.20
Total SNG Profit: $128,283.99
Staking: $24,450.65
Total Yearly Profit: $152,734.64

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A Better Article on The MN Attempt to Ban ISPs from Online Gambling Sites

Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

Here's a better article:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/04/29/ap6357166.html

It's all just wait & see now.

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GG MN: Minnesota to Block ISPs of Online Gambling Sites

Date: Wed, Apr 29, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

Make sure to use signup code jhub for 33% rakeback when signing up for Cake Poker. Make sure you type it in as the SIGNUP CODE, not the promotional code or any other code. There's also a 100% deposit bonus up to $500. Transfers do not count as deposits. However, if you get money transferred into your account you will still be eligible for a deposit bonus once you actually make a deposit. If you need help getting money into Cake I usually have excess money in there & can swap money for money on another site where I have an account. Just post a comment on my blog or email me.

http://www.startribune.com/local/43985257.html?elr=KArks7PYDiaK7DU2EkP7K_V_GD7EaPc:iLP8iUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aU7DYaGEP7vDEh7P:DiUs

It looks like I'll likely be moving to Wisconsin soon. This is supposed to be implemented within a few weeks. I'll wait it out & if everything goes as plan I'll put my house on the market & start looking for places in Wisconsin, most likely in LaCrosse, which is about 30 minutes away from my honetown of Winona. I'm so sick of bullshit like this.

Please take the time to send a letter to your congressmen. The PPA letters can be found here:

http://capwiz.com/pokerplayersalliance/home/

The email is already typed out for you so it only takes a couple minutes. Don't be lazy.

Other than that poker has been going good. I'll do a blog update with results after the month is over.

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Blog of Professional Poker Player Jared Hubbard (jhub3000) Friends

An Open Invitation to the Haters: Put Your $ Where your Mouth Is

Date: Fri, Feb 5, 2010 Professional Internet Tournament

Comparison of Games Over the Years & January Review

Date: Fri, Jan 29, 2010 Professional Internet Tournament

Analysis of 2009 & Looking Forward to 2010

Date: Wed, Dec 30, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

Table Selection Part 2

Date: Fri, Dec 4, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

I Feel Like I'm Back

Date: Tue, Nov 17, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

I'm a Father!

Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

A Couple of Recent Interviews I Did

Date: Tue, Sep 29, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

Jhub3000 For Team Pokerstars?

Date: Thu, Sep 24, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

I'm Married!....and: Cancer, The Worst Beat Imagineable

Date: Thu, Aug 20, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

Lark On My Go-Kart

Date: Fri, Jul 3, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

Go Find a White Crayon & Color a Zebra

Date: Tue, Jun 2, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

Back on Track

Date: Tue, May 12, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

A Better Article on The MN Attempt to Ban ISPs from Online Gambling Sites

Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

GG MN: Minnesota to Block ISPs of Online Gambling Sites

Date: Wed, Apr 29, 2009 Professional Internet Tournament

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