The Plan

You are reading the words of a scarily poor man. I mean a "barely can afford enough to eat" man. In my position you often tend to ask yourself "What resources are available to me?" The answer: precious little. I have next to nothing worth selling and my options for generating additional income are limited to say the least. But there are two things I do have:

1. The ability to play poker. I certainly don't claim to be a great poker player, but I'd say I was above average. Better than competent. I've studied the game closely and played at all sorts of levels and in all sorts of places. In fact, for nearly two years in the mid-2000s I earned enough from the game to live off. That was during the WSOP boom when internet poker was awash with idiots queuing up to hand over their money. But booms don't last forever; those guys either went broke or wised-up. And since then we've had the credit crunch and law changes in the US which chased Americans away from all but a handful of sites. It's a lot tougher now. All the same, I'm arrogant enough to believe I could still hold my own and maybe even come out ahead if I could scratch together a decent bankroll. That, of course, is a big "if".

2. A Poker Stars account. I've been on Stars since they beta-tested the site in 2001. For most of that time it wasn't my main account. I used to play on Planet Poker, Paradise Poker and even Full Tilt Poker for a while. But a couple of years back I threw $20 at Stars, worked it up to $200, cashed out $100 (by necessity, not choice - an unexpected bill needed paying) and then got sloppy with the rest and busted out. I was left with three cents and about 2,400 Frequent Player points (FPPs). And since I didn't really want to buy a Poker Stars key ring, those points were pretty much useless.

Except that's not really true. Aside from buying crap at the Stars online store, they have the potential to be turned into real money via freeroll tourneys. These cost either 10 or 20 FPPs to enter and Stars stumps up $500 or $1,000 prize money which is spread over the top 10% of finishers. Normally about 3000 players enter, so if you finish in the top 300 you get get paid. They're no-limit turbo tourneys, with the blinds whizzing up faster than a London taxi's meter, so it's always a bit of a luck-fest - no time for subtleties, just shove in your chips and hope for the best. All the same, with a bit of care and a moderate amount of good fortune it's not too hard to creep into the money (we're not talking huge amounts, by the way - first prize is roughly 15% of the pool and the lowest paid places earn about 40 cents). And the important thing is: all it costs to enter is 10 or 20 FPPs.

So let's do the maths: 2,400 FPPs gets me into 160 tourneys (assuming I enter the 10 and 20 FPPs in equal numbers). If I place in around 25% of those, that's 40 payouts. And even assuming I never do better than the bottom of the prize pool, that's still $16. A pitifully small amount, but it's a workable bankroll for playing micro-stakes cash games (ie, 2c-4c limit Holdem). In other words, it gets me onto the bottom rung of the ladder. From there it's a matter of grinding it out and working my way up.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the plan.