zedveron
My Poker Blog
A New Deal?
I haven’t played poker at all this week because I’ve been doing some casual work for my father-in-law. It’s worked out well because the work is mostly available in the school holidays, which coincides with my decision last week to find a new backer after going it alone and having Full Tilt close down a week later with half my bankroll on board. So all week during the times I’m not at work I’ve been negotiating with potential new backers trying to secure myself the best deal possible. It hasn’t been easy, precisely because I’ve been working so many hours (a pretty standard week for most people) and it reinforces for me how much the standard 9-5 lifestyle just isn’t for me. It’s as if one’s life is just consumed by work and there is no time for anything else. I’m more one of those people who wants to work in order to have a way of life, not as a way of life, which I guess probably sounds a bit spoilt or naive, considering how many people in the world would give their right arm to be able to do a good day’s work for a good day’s pay, and wish they had the luxury of working in order to have a way of life whilst here I am turning my nose up at it. I just feel like once one is on that treadmill it’s very hard to get back off, and I’m at a point in my life now where poker represents an opportunity to bypass that altogether, albeit by being on a different kind of treadmill, but one that’s a lot more stimulating and moving a lot faster.
Anyway, leaving home at 7am and getting home at 5-6pm hasn’t made it easy to get in touch with the people I’ve been discussing backing with, who are all in North America and Europe and operate on a different enough schedule to me without the work complicating things further. However the money is very good and it’s coming at a time when it’s needed most, and also I guess it’s been good to have some time off poker, step back and think things through and freshen up. It’s now Saturday and I am really keen to play a session. I have been listening to lots of poker podcasts during the week while driving around for work, and watching the odd video or two – something I haven’t been doing nearly enough of lately.
The backing discussions have been stressful, convoluted and exciting all at the same time, so I’ll try to give a brief summary of how things have panned out over the last week or so. I should mention at the outset that my goal was to be able to play up to $55fo and $11r across around 3-4 sites, preferably with some kind of coaching included. Within a day of posting my advertisement on two plus two I got a message from someone saying they are “very” interested, are in the process of relocating from the US and are about to resume their very large backing operation, they pointed me towards a thread where they advertise which had hundreds of applications in it. I replied to them and gave my skype details. Basically I have spent all week trying to catch them online, it took about two days and three emails for them to even add me on skype, then there were a few back and forths where they basically said it sounds like I want to multi-site but they are only looking at one or possibly two sites, and is it possible that would work for me. I replied a couple of days ago that in order for that to work for me I would need to be playing fairly high or else a 70-30 split. That message has not yet been read. I was being fairly patient despite my eagerness to lock something in place, but as my wife pointed out, if this is how they communicate with prospective horses then it might be a nightmare trying to get anything from them once a deal is in place. In their defence, the WSOP is in full swing and a week probably doesn’t seem like a long time for anyone but me in this situation right now.
Two other guys contacted me a little later, but one stated up front that he doesn’t have the resources for what I’m hoping for, and the other spent a few days trying to catch me online before eventually asking what my “ideal” arrangement would be. I already had a few other irons in the fire so I thought screw it I will just go all out, and I said up to 109fo and 20r on at least 3 sites, 60-40 split my way with coaching. He actually said “ok, awesome” after my spiel and that he needed to get in touch with his partner and would let me know within a day or so, and then I’m pretty sure he blocked me on Skype, a sequence of events I find mildly hilarious.
Another party who also has a fairly big operation contacted me too and had a ton of questions: why had my last two backers only put me in at $55 maximum if my overall average buy in was $56 (I explained I had had a few months off and wanted to start at the bottom, and hadn’t shopped around for a deal because I wanted to play with a couple of friends). What were my references, why had those deals ended, how many games a week could I play, could I send some hand histories of recent tournaments? I had already answered these questions in my original advertisement, and I would have thought that a solid win-rate over 10,000 tournaments, more than a million hands of poker at a tougher level than I’m seeking now and in a far tougher climate than exists now, would negate the need for him to review random hand histories. Anyway at the end of all this, without looking at the HHs he offered a start at $33fo and $8r, which would be a big step backwards from my last deal, where I had consistently won at higher limits and had never been in makeup. I pointed this out, and he said he’d review the HHs and get back to me. This was a couple of days ago and I haven’t heard back, despite chasing him up a few times. This whole exchange was quite frustrating, remember he approached me, after I had laid out all the pertinent information in a transparent way. And it was as if I had no prior history or was asking for some big shot way above my head. Once again, it made me wonder if I’d actually want to enter a business relationship with someone who did business this way.
The final two parties to approach me were people with whom I had an existing relationship. One was a guy I used to play with who has since moved up to high stakes and live tournaments. He said he was keen to back me but that he’d want to split the investment with a mutual friend as he didn’t have quite enough funds online for a $15k+ investment. The stakes I was looking for wouldn’t be a problem as long as the friend came on board, and I could draw upon both their knowledge at any time regarding strategy (the mutual friend is now a very successful live pro). He was quite concerned about what time my sessions would be though, as ideally I would play at times to take advantage of the soft new euro schedule, but that’s mainly on weekends and late at night for me so I explained that wasn’t going to work. He was still moderately keen with the schedule I laid out but had to talk to our mutual friend, with whom he had done some backing before. The latest news this morning is that the friend isn’t interested at this point (I’m trying to find out why) but he still wants to go ahead with the support of a mid-stakes cash player he knows.
Meanwhile I was contacted by a friend who I know in real life, who read my last blog entry and saw the advertisement, and said he would be willing to back me as he’d hate to see me have to go and get a real job 
. This guy lives in the same city as me and mainly plays online high stakes HU SNGs, as well as some tournaments. We met at a live tournament a couple of years ago and have been friends since then, chatting online from time to time. Anyway he said he would be willing to go up to $55fo and $33r, which seems like a weird balance, but he believes that rebuys up to around $33 are pretty soft at the moment, which I wouldn’t really know as I haven’t played anything above $11r in almost a year. He seemed quite casual about the whole thing, which was good in a way but also a little worrying as I wondered if he was serious and if he knew what he was letting himself in for – backing someone at those stakes could easily become a $20k investment fairly quickly – but he was aware of the swings and still okay with it. So at this stage I have a good feeling about this arrangement and am 90% sure this is what I will go with, unless one of the other guys pulls out a spectacular offer. It allows me to play higher than any of the others, and I’m confident I can do well at that level, so it will allow me to achieve the most in the shortest time possible. Also the fact we know each other and live in the same city helps (we might also work some live stuff in, possibly including cash games, down the track or something). The one drawback is the lack of a team chat kind of environment where one is able to bounce ideas off other people playing at the same level. But I guess if that’s important to me I should be pro-active and try to get my own chat group happening. At the time of writing I am pretty sure this is the arrangement for me so barring anything out of the ordinary happening in the next day or so, I will be kicking off next week with a new deal. My father-in-law has also expressed interest, although I would feel a bit weird using a family member’s money and I’m not sure how it might affect my play psychologically, but it’s good to know there’s that to fall back on if everything else goes pear-shaped.
One thing I have learned from this is that I should have spelled out exactly what I was looking for in the original advertisement; that way I wouldn’t have wasted anyone’s time and vice versa. I suppose I just assumed people would realise what level I was looking to play at, but I think people just see what they want to see a lot of the time, and it was silly of me to expect people to just work out what I was looking for without me actually expressing it. The other thing to come out of this experience is an even stronger desire to stake other people, an idea I have toyed with in previous posts, and had dabbled in a little when I was winning more money than I knew what to do with, but at the time I didn’t take it very seriously. If I were a backer I’m pretty sure I would snap me up in an instant! But who wouldn’t back themselves I suppose. Anyway, that’s something to add to my list of poker goals: build enough of a bankroll to be able to begin staking others, starting with a handful of micro-stakes guys and moving up from there.
So right now I am itching to play a big Sunday night session, I will be spending this weekend relaxing and watching some training videos to prepare. I created a spreadsheet to chart daily buy-ins under this likely new arrangement, and over a 4.5 hour registration period it added up to a hefty $1700/day in 42 tournaments across 3 sites. I’m not sure how many tables I will potentially have going at one time, but if it’s too many I will have to tweak things, maybe taking out some of the highest or lowest buy ins. There are also a lot of rebuys in that schedule, which will have variable buy ins on any given day, depending on how many times I need to rebuy, so it may vary between $1500 and $1900 on any given day I suppose. I had hoped to talk about some non-poker stuff in this blog, like the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm which has just begun, but I've rambled on enough for now so hopefully there will be more room for that (and hopefully to post some hands) next time!
N.B I wrote this a day or two before publishing it because I didn’t want to influence the outcome of anything for one reason or another. As suspected, the deal with my friend has gone through, and I’ve also started a skype chat group with some guys from the midstakes MTT forum on twoplustwo.
