Bill Ricardi - Brave Little Toaster

So, I'm pondering writing a series of books having to do with gambling reality. The things that they don't cover in any of the other books out there. The early years of being a pro. Bankrolls in the real world. The truth and fiction about making money and paying taxes. How to keep money for retirement when you have this sort of lifestyle.

I'm honestly baffled by the 'poker craze' generation's lack of understanding on these topics. Yeah you can learn from the school of hard knocks, but god, why would you want to? Those are some damned expensive mistakes to make.

So I'm gathering all of my old articles and materials together, and putting them in a much more book friendly format. If I like what I see, we'll see how it goes!

I get a lot of positive feedback for my poker and other gambling articles. I love it of course. But what remains missing is some idea of what topics YOU want to see me cover.

So I'm throwing it open to our reading public. I'm an expert in:

- Every mainstream poker game (HORSE player), limit, pot limit, and no limit.

- Bankrolling short term projects and long term poker careers.

- Poker businesses, including authoring, affiliate activities, and event coverage.

- Professional poker profiles and interviews.

So what sort of thing do you all want to see? E-mail my boss! gary@wisehandpoker.com

Please make the subject of the E-mail: Poker Topics for Bill

You can request topics from Gary for any of our authors, just be clear in the subject. Thanks for your feedback!

The rumors of Tribeca letting go of 30 percent of their staff were
denied by a company spokesman yesterday, who claimed it was a handful
of layoffs due to project cancellation.

The Tribeca spokesman said: "We certainly have not released anyone from
the UK. I believe we have released a couple of development engineers
who were working on future projects. These were some light-weight
functionality projects that were terminated by us. It is certainly
nothing like 30 percent of our staff. All the customer support staff
are still in place for a smooth transition of the European facing
accounts to the Playtech platform."

For those not following this: A couple weeks ago, Tribeca announced
that they would transfer all assets available to them over to the
Playtech network (which excludes U.S. players). A whole lot of
regional poker rooms are going to become Playtech rooms at the end of
May / early June.

I say 'available to them' because Doyle's Room and Golden Palace have
both chosen to continue to deal with U.S. players, and won't be part of
the deal. Their software license status is being worked out.

Keep an eye out for more on this. It's one of those things that's more
important than it sounds, because so many players have no idea what the
software companies behind poker rooms are even named, forget about
their goings-on. Playtech is about to become one of the biggest poker
software provider / online poker room builder in the world.

It happened to me, it can happen to you too. There's one thing that will utterly destroy your professional game:

I got a job.

It's a somewhat bittersweet thing for me. I'll be making just about as much per hour at this job as I would playing poker online. I'll need to dress up and walk to and from the job (It's pretty close to the house, thank goodness). So why do it?

The answer is both funny and sad. When I apply for permanent citizenship in the U.K., they're going to ask about my work record, and how employable I am. I've been told that working for someone else, at least some amount of the time, is the best route to go. Self employment is great in their eyes... part time that is.

So I've agreed to be a technical guru for about 25 or 30 hours a week. I've agreed to write for Wise Hand on various gigs for about 10 hours a week, maybe more. That leaves about 10 hours a week of 'real' poker playing. Not enough to make a real impact.

So my professional playing is going to be cut waaaaaay down. Most of my funds are already back in the bank. I have a couple of big freerolls coming up, for being a platinum VIP. But for the most part, I'm going to play 2 tournaments a week. If I do well, I won't play more, I'll play bigger, according to bankroll rules. But to play bigger, I'll need to abandon Titan for somewhere with big GP tournaments, or weekly 500K or 1 million's. We'll see how it goes.

In the mean time, I'm still pumping out material for WiseHandPoker.com and our clients. People seem to love my stuff, and I'm flattered. My hope is that we get some major European contracts, and I can do live coverage at events. Again, we'll see.

A quick update of my Wise Hand related activities.

I've made the commitment to Gary, saying that I would write a Wise Hand feature piece once a week, come hell or high water. My first regular piece is in, and it reflects something that happened to me recently. I was running real good and took a major hit to my bankroll. It was all free money, and I'm qualified in a large tournament to possibly win even more money, but it still hurt. So the piece is about recovering when you've done something stupid, and that should be up some time soon.

I find myself, oddly, writing blackjack pieces. I don't know when and if they'll see the light of day, or if my name or Wise Hand's will be attached to them. But if I'm allowed, I'll point them out to you kind folks.

I've taken to signing certain pieces that I produce: "Bill Ricardi – Online Gaming Guru"

Now, in my life I've made some money in online gaming, as a player and an insider. I'm up tens of thousands of dollars, spread over a long time. But the reason I've called myself an Online Gaming Guru is because I know HOW online gaming works, not because I'm the best gambler in the world or something. What I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that I understand the technical, business, and gaming portions of the industry in equal measure. So I don't feel so bad about the tag line.

It's bed time.

So I took 70-something in the Titan 500K, which paid out 1500 US dollars. It was a freeroll-to-freeroll win, which gave me a free bankroll, far earlier than I expected to have one.

As per agreement with my mate, 1000 dollars had to go towards debts, household things, and the like. That left 500 dollars to build on.

Three days later, I'm up to 950 ish, at about 10 hours a day. Now I'm playing a bunch of games, but the average game is in the 2/4 range. I started with 1/2, went to 2/4 at 700, and soft 3/6 games recently. I do NOT suggest this sort of fast of a progression for novice players, 450 dollars / 30 hours / 4 dollar BB = 3.75 BB / hr.

Now I know, it's a small sampling, but still. I used to do 2 BB/hr. This was 3.5 and... effortless. I think my high level analysis over the last couple of years must have really helped my game. Or something. I feel that I'm preping for 5/10 and 30 to 50 dollar tournaments.

I don't particularly like Titan these days, post ban and all, but I'm not moving the cash just yet. When I hit 1500 or so, I'll consider my next move. Either Stars or Full Tilt, I imagine. Wish me luck!

It takes... a lot to anger me. First of all, if it's poker related, nothing at the table angers me. I don't tilt. My frustrations last for a few seconds, and it's back to business. The things AWAY from the table are the ones that make me see red. Things like unreliable people, screwed up events, misinformation, and the like.

The thing that angered me recently involved a major poker room, an Irish headhunter, moving 11 thousand miles, and an utter lack of communication.

Three months ago, I started talks with a major poker room to fill a role that I was not only highly qualified for, but perfectly suited for. The headhunter kept saying 'you have the job, you just have to be patient'. The contact at the major poker room said 'We need to talk, I like what I see, it's just so busy here'. I was moving to the U.K either way, but not knowing when I started this 'sure thing' job was throwing wrenches into the works left and right.

This went on for three months. one prior to the move, one during the move, and one after. Then, the HR department makes their move over to Green Isle, and suddenly... the position doesn't exist. The backup position doesn't exist. No position for me exists. Three months of negotiation, phone interviews, resumes, and effort flushed down the drain.

Now I have friends at this major poker room, so I'm not going to bad mouth them. I'm not going to be unprofessional. I'm simply going to express that right now, I feel a measure of seething anger hotter than a dozen suns. Luckily, this is anger at my situation, not at any individual. Nobody is to blame, it was a group-effort failure. I'll even take a little blame... but not much. I bent over backwards for this supposedly life changing opportunity, make no mistake.

Life handed me a bad beat on the grand scale. I'll recover, I'll find something else to do that is grand and meaningful. Maybe I'll start another company. But this has been a reminder that the poker world can be dark, misleading, and frightening, even in the era of ESPN and Bravo.

Brief update, then my experiment of the day.

The major poker company still hasn't interviewed me. But the HR manager for said room is flying out here as we speak, so I'm hoping I get word tomorrow.

Experiment: I took 50 bucks from my affiliate account and transferred it to myself on J Random Major Poker Site. Doubled it up with my bread and butter (Omaha h/l S&G's), and cashed out the stake.

So I'm working on my online ring game skills, in an attempt to move up into the 5/10 range on a regular basis. I took my 'free money' and tried something... strange.

On preset indicators (any 2 cards under 6 for example), I swiched into a different archetype. I used the archetypes from a certain name brand poker tracking program (eagle, shark, brick, etc). I had the 50 up to about 85 at one point, but then the randomizers stuck me with... the real bad ones. For far too long.

But the theory seems to work. I'm going to try it again later, but only using the 4 best archetypes, discarding the weak ones. Should be interesting.

So I'm getting settled in Northern Ireland. We move into the new place this weekend, and then I need to figure out which poker house I'm going to be working for, if they want me at all.

The one I really, really want seemed to be almost a sure thing. The software developers and poker pros from the site know me and like me. I've done articles with a couple of the pros, and interviewed a couple more. They seemed to like my web content and my activity in the community.

But then I got a mysterious message. They may want me for 'another position', one other than web content. And then they went as quiet as a sub sitting under a destroyer, not telling me another thing. Interviews start in a few days, and I'm on pins and needles. Do they want an affiliate program manager? Virtual cardroom manager? Business and marketing lead? I can do it all, but with no prep and no research to do, I'm eating myself alive here.

In other news, I zeroed out my bankroll for the move, and I'm getting ready to get back into the swing of things. I haven't decided how much I'll be setting aside for this bankroll. I'll be sticking to my normal bankroll formula: No more than 4% to 5% on a single tournament, have more than 250-400 big bets for limit, have more than 1500 to 2000 big blinds for no limit.

But this time, I'm going to have a real job, so rather than grind it out at limit, I'm going to do what I'm best at: Huge multi table tournaments. To get geared up, I won a few freerolls, which bodes well for my donk-detection powers and endurance. But it was only a few bucks, so I tried and failed a couple of rampages.

The only time I'll play limit is to clear bonuses. The only time I'll play no limit is if there's a tempting fishbowl that I can't keep my paws out of. For the most part, we're talking about 4 to 5 hour MTT's, at least 3 times a week.

I think I'll restict myself to one poker site with my main bankroll, only playing on others if I win a freeroll or get free money there. I'll research the sites after I get my job and first paycheck.

Anyway, that's it for now. What's coming up after the WSOP is over: I think I have an interview with Erik S. to arrange. I think I want to nab Rafe for an interview, but only if he accepts an invitation I extended to him recently! I'm working on an interesting article on Swiss Bank accounts and their use in poker, but I'm going to hold off on it, there may be interest by a company that hires me, and then it will become their I.P. Peace out!

I was 'participating' in a discussion on Rec.Gambling.Poker. It was about big tournament players that don't do so well in ring games. As I tried to respond in some strange and crazy hope of bringing scope to the discussion, it was crashed by two trolls. And the first poster also ended up being a troll. Thus is life in the rank and file of RGP.

But the topic of 'Am I good enough to sit with the big professionals?' is one that every serious player has to address at some point. So I thought I would briefly get into it right here.

Just to give you some perspective, in order to sit at a 4000 / 8000 ring game, you need in excess of 2 million dollars in your bankroll. So clearly, cash-wise, not everyone is ready.

What we're talking about is having the whole package needed in order to sit with the pros. So do you have what it takes? Here are some quick guidelines:

* If you aren't willing to research the game, sweat a professional's cards, ask a lot of questions, and dedicate a huge chunk of your life to poker, the answer is 'no'. You're going to need to dedicate at least 50 hours a week to nothing but poker, to get in the proper mind set and receive your poker education.

* If you haven't been building your bankroll and moving up the ladder, the answer is 'no'. You are going to have to understand the difference between play at various levels before you participate in the game at it's highest level.

* If you aren't willing to be a student for a while, and learn the profiles of the players at the very exclusive high stakes games, then the answer is 'no'. Your studies become very specialized at the ultra high stakes levels, because the number of real players (rather than the idle rich) who can afford to play at those levels dwindles. So studying the traits of specific opponents becomes not only viable, but vital.

I know these things because I've talked to those players who have done it before, and heard about their pitfalls. I regularly played 2/4 and 3/6 as a professional, because that money was pretty much money in my pocket with very little long term risk. When I was staked, I played at higher limits both before and after, and found comfort there eventually. It took time and study, but it was profitable for me and my backer.

But I would NEVER play 500/1000, even fully staked for 500K, without a year of preparation. I would quit my day job, research the area, start out down at 50/100 and work my way up. This has nothing to do with a lack of confidence. It's a lack of experience. And a healthy respect for anyone who would back me at that level.

At any rate, those who underestimate the level of dedication that the high end professionals have are doomed to bust out. There's raw skill, and then there's experience and comfort level. Anyway, that's all that my brain can squeeze out just now.