Liar Dice - Diary of a Bean Counter!

The teachers' strike has been much in the news recently in the UK. Full Tilt went on strike this morning, too, at around 10:20 AM GMT, or "Zero Hour" as it will hereafter be known.

70% of my 7k bankroll was there. There is no way to look at this as anything but a serious setback.

If I had invested less time and effort into getting to the stage where I can earn a living from poker I might consider this as enough of a setback to quit. But that's not who I am.

The last two years, and in particular the eight months since I turned pro, have been all about bettering my mindset and abilities in order to be able to make a living as my own boss, from my own home. That's too precious to give up just because a few silly businessmen can't keep their house in order.

In order to get through this, a mental realignment needs to happen consisting of the following working assumptions:

1. For the purposes of managing my poker business, I'm going to assume that my Full Tilt BR is gone. Since that's the worst case scenario, that's the natural starting point.
2. The best way of dealing with point 1 is just to imagine that I just went through the biggest and longest downswing of my life. There's nothing I can do about it but rebuild.
3. The $5k odd that I hereby resign myself as having lost will not be the deciding factor in whether I can make a decent living at poker.
4. The money is only the tool I use; the skill in knowing how to use it is more valuable by an order of magnitude.

And finally...

5. I need to find a new home, even if only temporarily. Options: Party, Titan or Stars. I will take the rest of the day off (as already planned) and sleep on it.

There is a rather trite saying in common parlance: "what does not kill you only makes you stronger". Rather apt.

Oh, you're such a grownup! I just want to find someone to blame and shout a lot. Where am I going to play rush now??

Originally posted by Tim64
The teachers' strike has been much in the news recently in the UK. Full Tilt went on strike this morning, too, at around 10:20 AM GMT, or "Zero Hour" as it will hereafter be known.

70% of my 7k bankroll was there. There is no way to look at this as anything but a serious setback.

If I had invested less time and effort into getting to the stage where I can earn a living from poker I might consider this as enough of a setback to quit. But that's not who I am.

The last two years, and in particular the eight months since I turned pro, have been all about bettering my mindset and abilities in order to be able to make a living as my own boss, from my own home. That's too precious to give up just because a few silly businessmen can't keep their house in order.

In order to get through this, a mental realignment needs to happen consisting of the following working assumptions:

1. For the purposes of managing my poker business, I'm going to assume that my Full Tilt BR is gone. Since that's the worst case scenario, that's the natural starting point.
2. The best way of dealing with point 1 is just to imagine that I just went through the biggest and longest downswing of my life. There's nothing I can do about it but rebuild.
3. The $5k odd that I hereby resign myself as having lost will not be the deciding factor in whether I can make a decent living at poker.
4. The money is only the tool I use; the skill in knowing how to use it is more valuable by an order of magnitude.

And finally...

5. I need to find a new home, even if only temporarily. Options: Party, Titan or Stars. I will take the rest of the day off (as already planned) and sleep on it.

There is a rather trite saying in common parlance: "what does not kill you only makes you stronger". Rather apt.

I must thank you Tim. i must say that atm I quite tilted given the time invested as well. I find your post very motivating. best of luck

Thazar

Hey Tim. I wanted to thank you for that post you made. It was incredibly inspirational, and I have this portion of my most recent post from my own blog I'd like to share:

Originally posted by Salivanth
Part of me wants to go on tilt about this, but my inspiration right now is Tim64. Tim is a professional poker player who had 70% of his bankroll on Full Tilt: About five thousand dollars. He has a blog here on PokerStrategy.com - Liar Dice. And he's just accepting this and moving on. That inspires me so much, that's the kind of guy I want to be. So...thanks Tim. If you can move on, so can I. I can make it, because so many people hit harder than me are picking up the pieces. I can do that too. So, like Tim, I'm going to sleep on it, take a bit of a break from Poker...and look into my options. He's awesome, and you guys should know that.

Thanks man. Zero Hour isn't gonna break us! Like you said, it's just like going through a massive, massive downswing. No point whining now, just have to move on.

Best of luck.

-Salivanth.

thank you for the inspiring words tim.
i myself am not tilted about it as i dont play for a living, but it breaks my heart to see the other members suffering from this so much.
thank you for helping them through the tough times. you rock!

Hi Tim!
Just glanced through ur blog.Thx for sharing! Gr8 attitude concerning FTP too. What else can 1 do than to go on? If u wanna keep playing I mean. Lost 500 there, but the main thing for me is that i've started playing regularly for over a month now and that was money i'd won. I think i can live on poker too in a near future. I think all players shud dream of winning main event etc. But know it's unlikely:). Me myself, I play rly terrible many, many times but can win somehow anyway, just trying to find my game right now.

About the bank rolls: I'm rly sry for u guys who had some on ftp. Maybe we'll get 'em back. To those of u who r winning, remember that's it's "just" about time to u!

GL to u Tim and other players! Gonna follow this blog.

Those are my thoughts as well sir, even though my downswing was worse, about 80-90% ♦.(maybe bad play as well )

Wish you all the best

Awesome post ♠_cool:

Are you moving to Stars now? If you need any sort of help just let me know

great post..

And because I'm so negative by nature I simply have to point out that this is gonna have bad affect on the recreational players.. and their number is gonna decrease significantly in near future now that the poker sites don't seem legit..

just one more thing for us to worry about...

great mindset,ZeroHour can't do anything about it

Solid mindset. We're in the same boat.

Do you recall how long it took the last time you withdrew? I remember you telling it was via local bank transfer...

Originally posted by Shevtshenko
Solid mindset. We're in the same boat.

Do you recall how long it took the last time you withdrew? I remember you telling it was via local bank transfer...

about 5 days for me, weekend included

2k (recieved 5 days ago) 3.3k still on the site

Thanks to everyone who has contacted me via this blog or on Skype to offer their sympathies and best wishes in this time of trouble.

I got an early night but woke a couple of hours ago. Not really able to sleep; too many things on my mind, I guess.

One thing that occurred to me while I was tossing and turning: a lot of people on this site are feeling pretty sick at lost bankrolls of a few thousand dollars that represent many hours of hard grinding. Nothing could be more natural but I think it's worth sparing a thought for the on the ground employees of various companies who will be affected by this.

There are a whole range of Full Tilt employees, software engineers and support staff, for example, who will have had absolutely nothing to do with this situation but who of course will now be fearing for their jobs. Many of them have mortgages and families and I feel for them.

It's also worth bearing in mind that our beloved Pokerstrategy will be financially affected by this. PS revenue comes from rake generated at sites to which it has referred players. FT represents a big slice of that pie and of course this affects PS's bottom line. In turn that means that office staff at PS will be affected and they too may be feeling nervous. Even those who make their living in part from producing educational content for this site may be affected. If there's less revenue there is less ability to pay for such content.

Again, my sympathies go out to anyone affected by this. I urge those who think that this only affects players who have lost bankrolls to think again. The ripple effect may be surprisingly large.

Realistically what we have to hope is that the recreational players who made Full Tilt their home don't lose confidence in online poker altogether. Furthermore, anyone with influence needs to do what they can to prevent a general loss of confidence in online poker by recreational players.

On a note of optimism, my gut instinct tells me online poker is here to stay. A whole city was created in the Nevada desert out of the legal wagering by people of their own money. It's frankly untenable for anyone to argue that there is a material difference between brick and mortar vs online poker. The sooner the industry is regulated and taxed properly by the US government, the sooner we can all get back to work.

well said tim.

Ok, so I topped up a little on another platform. Feel shattered but played 3 games anyway. Low traffic. Slow loading. Two firsts; 1 bubble.

Since this $39 represents my first pkr winnings since Zero Hour, it's pretty f*****g precious to me. Gonna go back to bed now and see if Kahnawake Gaming Commission gonna hand FTP a get out of jail free card any time soon.

Heaven's Open: This is Zero Hour.

STT Tournaments: 567
Average buyin: $38.24
EV Roi 5.9%
EV Profit: $1277.06
Estimated rake back: $551.4
Total: $1826.46
Hours played: 77.2
EV $/Hr: $23.7/hr

Actual profit: $49 (earned yesterday on another site).

I'm taking this opportunity to change my poker month to a more traditional calendar month. Mrs Tim64 finds it easier for budgeting and it will mean I can post graphs of run bad at the same time as the rest of you.

In the event that the proposed sale of FTP to European investors does not go ahead, any profit for June is of course imaginary. But I'm pretty happy with how the month went, at least from a red line perspective. My volume was much more consistent -- on target for around 1000 games - and by the end I had got to the stage where I was playing the $60s for a small EV profit.

Graph for June:

I've applied for VIP status on another site and transferred some money across. The plan is to grind pretty low limit 6 max SnGs for a few days, moving up as rapidly as BR reasonably allows if things go well.

After discussing the predicament with Mrs Tim64 we've agreed that, if necessary, we will make some of our savings, say $1500, available to boost my bankroll in order to play reasonable limits. I'm rationalising this in my head by saying that, although this is "my money" (which I vowed I would never use for poker), it actually represents poker winnings. To put it another way, if I had not won any money at poker for the last nine months, we would have had to live on those savings, so using some of them to keep me playing puts us in no worse a situation. The sooner I'm up and running playing reasonable limits where we can expect a decent hourly, the sooner I'll be in a position to put that money back in the bank. (I probably won't actually withdraw it, but by making it notionally available I will give myself the BR padding necessary to play without scared money).

It's fair to say that I am probably better placed to cope with recent events than many of the people on PS.com. Because I was older when I found poker (and had already been through one career path) my financial position was, let's say, more secure. I can only be thankful for this. But I do think that the Full Tilt crisis brings it home what a potentially fragile business this is. No one should take the decision to rely on poker income entirely without thinking it through very carefully indeed.

Anyway, let's hope July gets off to a good start. Best of luck to all my fellow grinders!

Originally posted by Tim64

After discussing the predicament with Mrs Tim64 we've agreed that, if necessary, we will make some of our savings, say $1500, available to boost my bankroll in order to play reasonable limits.

this is great rationality sir. you show that you have principles infused with flexibility. WP

Good luck with getting back on track I can't imagine how it feels to lose the majority of your roll through no fault of your own, but I commend you on your mindset

Been grinding $10s and $20s at Party last few days. Lack of TableNinja and game pad compatibility = old aches and pains resurfacing with a vengeance.

Coupled with run bad means I have been pretty low the last few days.

I suspect the so-called "turbos" are in fact thinly veiled super turbos. There is the illusion of poker for a couple of rounds and suddenly, before you know it, you are in push and fold. So I think you get most of the variance of super turbos but they take longer.

Results on the normal speeds have been much more promising. Broken even after 60 games but EV roi is two digits. Slightly disconcerting that some of the very strong FT regs have recently arrived at Party. One in particular who gave me a hard time has turned up (we both have the same usernames so there's no fooling) apparently intent on exploiting me right from the off...

Party's latest update shows the seats available at the different tournaments and who's already sat down -- very much like one of the recent FT cash updates (you just click on the seat to register/sit down). So seems like they are doing everything they can to make us feel "at home"... Not sure if I can really get the hang of the stacking console. Or rather, suspect if I'm playing that many tables to need it, I'm probably missing out on reads etc.

I've also been offered the upgrade to Palladium subject to hitting 1000 PP in two weeks, which I should manage comfortably as long as my shoulders don't give up completely. I'm having a massage on Friday from an old work colleague which I probably should have organised many months ago.

In other news, PS.com kindly arranged for me to receive $250 at Titan and I also deposited to get the reloader bonus. Jumping on the Party bandwagon, they upgraded me to Platinum VIP status almost immediately. Seems like everyone wants a piece of Tim64's "rake back reg" status... However, tables seem pretty reg-infested on nl50 and I feel like I just don't have much edge there so I guess I am still a cash fish. Probably just play for a bit for variety and not worry too much about clearing the $250 or Reloader.

Every day I wake up and logon to Pokerstrategy, in the hope that there will be concrete news of FT's return. I will harbour no grudges, dearest. Just come back to me, my sweet. All will be forgiven if you only say you love me again.

Originally posted by Tim64
Every day I wake up and logon to Pokerstrategy, in the hope that there will be concrete news of FT's return. I will harbour no grudges, dearest. Just come back to me, my sweet. All will be forgiven if you only say you love me again.

This.

We are so sad.