Monday, October 16, 2006

Bloggers Curse

Bloggers' Curse. What is that. It is something that we all know about; but yet we still do it. Here is an excerpt from my last blog.

"So, having said that, I will start with poker. Things are moving in the right direction. Alot of should of, could of, would ofs; but that's poker. I just need to avoid that one really bad session that inevitably comes to knock down the previous weeks gains."

Why do we do it? The mere mention of running good... BAM.... What took me 7 days to make $1,200 is gone in a weekend. The sessions all look the same; but the bad ones just have the villains hitting their trips, or two pair or whatever it is to beat you. Man, it just blows you away. I hate to have to start thinking about stop limits again; because the table should dictate (or should I say the players at the table) whether you stay or go.

So obviously, I'm not going to show this depressing chart which is goes totally south; but I will stay on the subject of poker charts. Do you enjoy seeing them? Does it add anything? The return (albeit brief one) of the poll question is below. Please let me know. Thanks.


Create polls and vote for free. dPolls.com


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Now onto something that I've really always wondered about but not been able to quite figure it out. Rakeback vs Bonus. Which is better and when does it change from one to the other. So, I'm going to throw some numbers out there and I would appreciate any help or suggestions for trying to figure it out.

First 3/6 Shorthanded.

Using Poker Tracker and showing hands for the last few months, I have played 19,593 hands (with at least 3 people in the hand) that has generated $17,756 in rake (ain't that depressing) with an average of 5.46 players. Using the simple rakeback formula of Rake / Players dealt cards * Rakeback %, My rb at 27% rb % is around $878.04. Bonus (at least at FTP) is calculated at 6 cents per rake dollar (see below) which turns out to be $1065.36. Is there really that much of a discrepancy. Somehow I think I should be factoring in the number of hands somewhere in the payback/comparison.

I've always hear that somewhere between 3/6 and 5/10 is where the difference is so let's look at 5/10.

I've played 10,612 hands at 5/10 this year with a rake of $14,920.50 with an average of 5.49 players at the table.

Again using the same assumptions as above Rakeback = $733.80 vs Bonus = $895.23 so there isn't much difference.

Here is a cut and paste from FTP pokers website regarding bonus payment.

For each dollar raked from a pot, every player who was dealt cards for that hand will earn one point. You can earn partial points if less than one dollar is raked, and you can earn up to three points per hand.
Each point is worth $.06, so you can earn up to $18 per hundred hands.


So why am I asking? I was trying to figure out if I was going to do the FTP reload bonus as bonus gets subtracted from your rake (UPDATE... I had it backwards and confused by mistake) at FTP (which isn't the case at Absolute). Anyway, per above, I decided to deposit to get the max bonus; but I think I am missing something in my calculations.

Any thoughts?

Have a good week.

6 comments:

jjok said...

huh?

Wait a sec.....I thought the bonus was taken out of your TOTAL rake, not your rakeback payment......you may want to ask your rakeback affiliate on this. I will be asking too......

Also, while playing in the iron man freerolls, did you know they figure out the dollar cost for each participant and yank that out of your total rake? This I did confirm via my affiliate.


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Also, I get hit with the bloggers curse with regularity......but when you are running good, you want to announce to the world.....


Good luck man.

WillWonka said...

Thanks jjok... I had typed it wrong. I did not know, however, about the iron man thing.

So if you go for the 30K freeroll and there are 600 players, they will deduct $50 of rake? or $100 for 300 players... Now it is not much of a freeroll anymore, is it?

That stinks. Risk/Reward I guess.

Semi-Pro Poker Player said...

Keep the charts, Will!

What jjok is saying regarding deductions from rakeback are right on target. No such thing as a "freeroll" at FT. From what I have been told, they make deductions for items purchased from the FT store, also.

jjok said...

what I can justify is being entered into a tourney at only 27% of the cost......

So if the iron gets 300 people, the cost per person is $100.....which is taken away from your gross rake. That means you lose $27 in rakeback.

I'll take that any day......

Unknown said...

Will, one thought. I always play worse after I've lost a couple buy-ins, even if I don't realize it until it's too late. I think it's because I refuse to believe my luck could continue to be that bad, i.e. no way he hit his flush again for the third time that night. Yes, he did. I would definitely set a stop limit. Once I lose two buy-ins, that's it for the night, unless I want to continue to play SnGs, which have a stop limit already built-in.

Blinders said...

The bloggers curse runs both ways. Never blog about how great your running, Becuase that will surely end your streak. Any streak is part variance/part skill. When you blog about how well your running, you are giving yourself more credit for skill than you deserve, so you start beleiving your better than you really are. Thats when your actual play goes south.

On the flip side when you blog about running bad it tends to pull you out of your slump, because mentally you think your worse than you really are.

Never blog about a hot streak, but blog away when the losses get painfull. Always works for me!

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