So you may be wondering how my staking has been going.  I have two stakes - a part time NL50 player (staking 100%, let's call him "Ace") and a full time NL100 player (staking 50%, let's call him "Big slick").  The "good" news is that ev-wise, they are a combined +6.13 over 54K hands in November.  Sadly, that is dollars and not win rate.  Thank god for rakeback!  The BAD news is that they are a combined -$1,504.16 in actual dollars.  Playing NL50 and NL100?!?  LOL?  Is anyone running good out there ?!?

As I was going over their big hands on the replayer, I actually found some of the bad beats pretty funny.  I think I would have been agonized and annoyed if it happened to me while I was playing, but something about it not happening to you (even tho it's still your money) kind of makes it more entertaining.  LOL!  Runner-runner flush.  Masochistic, I know (as does Mrs. Fly, eh hem).

But I figure this is only month 1, and their PTR graphs were mostly flat when I met them.  I feel good about the value I'm adding to their games.  I'll go over their DB and send them a few things a week to think about and go over their big hands to see where they could improve.  Assuming they are taking my suggestions seriously (and my emails aren't going straight into their recycle bins), I think we'll start seeing better results in the coming months.  Quads was looking for a stake, but where's the fun and challenge in staking a 4ptbb winner?  Stay tuned to the next monthly report.

So here's a tip I recently shared with Ace.  Ace is a laggish player who hadn't played in 6 months.  The thing that's different now than a year ago is that players are now defending much more aggressively vs cbets - whether it's floating (sometimes multiple streets) or bluff raising.  So you can't open wide, cbet and expect to take the pot down.  Ace's EP flop cbet success rate was 35%!  Assuming your flop cbet sizing is 2/3 pot, you need that to work like 40% of the time (very simplified - the actual calculation is a lot more complex).  So "raise-cbet flop-take the pot down" is not a good formula for today's games.  You need to start adding more creativity to your game.

Anyway, I might be looking for 1 more stake - I can't be saturating the tables with my stakes, lest I incur the wrath of Vini (possible later post, if I ever get caught up with my post backlog).  So if you are a higher volume break-even-ish grinder, preferably someone who with a (soon-to-be?) family situation, send me an email.  I did say I was a masochist, didn't I?