As Flynn is often want to say, poker is a racket. Don’t get us wrong, Flynn & Ollie love poker. From the ambiance of big card rooms, to one or two table casinos, to home games it’s all good. Poker is a great equalizer among gender, race, age and any orientation. You don’t have to have muscles or special equipment to play.
REMINDER: Poker is not the same as “Cozen”, the name we have given to on-line poker, which is not real poker.
To have fun at poker, rely on luck. To win at poker, rely a little on knowledge and a lot on luck. A winning session requires actually hitting one of your outs when you flop the world. A winning session relies on your image at the table in the first 30 minutes, the order of the cards when they leave the dealer’s hands, position, a good read on your opponents and some basic math.
Poker is one of the most egotistical games we can think of. Unless a player is brand new to the game, every person thinks they are good at poker. Losses are bad luck or bad opponents (PH, we love you). Study poker, and you improve your edge from 0 to maybe 10% over the average poker player, amateur or professional. Maybe.
Flynn has been playing poker for +/-16 years. Nope, the bird is not better than any other poker player. He plays low stakes, not because he can’t or doesn’t win, but because his allotted bankroll can’t take several nasty hits in a row ~ it’s a choice. He is not staked or backed. He has made some great hero calls, and some dumbass folds. He has learned to control tilt, watch, and make a plan.
If Flynn had only kept track of every dollar in and out, we would have a great long-term example of true earnings. To be brutally honest with one’s flamingo, the results would probably be in the negative. Not bankruptcy negative, but negative overall. He doesn’t bother to keep track except when he goes to Vegas on extended poker trips, and that is deception to one’s self of the highest degree.
Would that ANY poker player make public their true balance sheet? Continual, not for just a WSOP run, of course. If you check out Daniel’s WSOP entries vs payouts, it’s enlightening. Imagine seeing that for every player who wants to make a run for the top money, but for ALL their games? Include cash and tournament, throughout their poker-playing career (amateur or pro). Live games only, of course. It would be devastating for the individual, and fodder for the trollers. Swapping a piece? Disclose it. Backed? Disclose it. Rebought? Disclose it? What was your NET take that session or tournament? Flynn KNOWS the pros do this religiously ~ they just don’t share it with the world.
We enjoyed the short op-ed posted on Cardplayerlifestyle.com by Paul Seaton, which questioned the All-Time-Money-List, and what it really accomplishes. You can read it here: https://cardplayerlifestyle.com/does-pokers-all-time-money-list-matter-or-not/ We agree with this author that it is pretty much the best we have for now, but clearly not any kind of scientific accurate representation of the ‘best’. Jamie Gold is the perfect example of this (sorry but true). He got lucky and to his credit, he admits it.
How many bracelets and rings have you seen on Ebay? Poker memorabilia posted on Craigslist? Articles, mostly on Twitter, outing a broke pro? The intent of this post is not to embarrass anyone, but instead to point out the realities of poker, and how any entry on an all-time money list is just not reality. The cash game players are certainly NOT going to publicize their net profits or losses – if their competitors or the IRS got a hold of it, it would definitely be -EV.
IF Flynn had the know-how, he would create a database for this exact information that anyone could participate in, anonymously. A screen name, password and enter every single dollar you as the actual player spent and dollar earned/lost for each cash session and tournament. No fibbing. Side data fields for backing/staking/swapped pieces, tournaments or cash for your own records only. No names or locations. Only the net totals would scraped monthly and be posted with a double-converted screen name. A name/number and a total, period.
Flynn could only guess what a glorious document that would turn out to be. The influx of numbers in the first year, how the cream rises to the top, then falls again (maybe) as the years go by. There would be talk of how Player ABC123 has been in the top 500 for 6 years running, and ‘whatever happened to” BDR234? Flynn could brag about how he is 236,712 on the list…. in red only by 1.2 grand.
Seems to me that if The Hendon Mob can do what they do, this can be done as well. But not by Flynn, cause he is just a dumb poker player. And, since this would rely on honest & consistent entries from the participants… bummer dudes. Sigh.
Fin
Flynn
Some people are downright religious about keeping track, but I never was. I’d forget to write in a session, then another one, then … why bother. I tried keeping track in 2021, but I started running so bad that I stopped. I am pretty sure that this year will be my worst ever. ☹