As cool as it was to win the $50K at the World Poker Finals, in the grand scheme of the poker world I have achieved very little. I have only play 3 live MTTs lifetime, I have one WPT prelim FT, and my biggest online score is $1500. What the $50K really does is allow me to play in some bigger stakes games. I now have a proper BR to handle the swings of everyday life as a small stakes poker pro. Now with this start up money the question becomes, how do I put it to use?
I just spoke with a good friend of mine who just so happens to be a CPA. She walked me through my tax situation and showed me that I owe a grand total of about $12K in taxes by year's end. That is assuming my gross earnings on the year hit $60K (currently at about $55K). So I'm going to have about $44-48K left over to play with and plan out my next few moves. Right away my instinct is to squirrel away as much of this cash as possible, saving the 6+ months of living expenses as well as starting up some savings and investments for later on in life (in case for whatever reason I decide I'd rather not play poker for the rest of my life). This is still far more money than I have ever had so saving a big chunk won't be too hard, the question is how much to I keep out for poker BR.
My online roll right now sits at about $4.5K. What I've done is simply keep the money I had on FTP, around $2.7K, and just started played more $26 buy in events in my nightly MTT schedule. Over on UB I decided to reload $700 more so I could bump up my BR and play the $50NL cash games over there. I could jump more than that, but I feel like that would be a mistake. I was playing $25NL and was winning, but not at a terrific rate (about 2.5BB/100 for those with poker tracker). I'd rather not totally skip the $50NL games for the $100NL just because I have the money, I'd rather do things the harder way, take some bumps and bruises at the $50NL level, then grind my way up from there. Just because I have the money to burn doesn't mean I should just jump to bigger games. There are skills that you learn at each level of buy in and as you move up in limits and put in more hours, you become more adept at the game. Regardless of the money I have, I still need to put the hours in to get better.
Live poker now is really the fun topic of discussion. My plans for the near future in the poker world had nothing to do with live poker. The $18K in 8 months challenge I laid out for myself was to build up a $9K poker BR onling and a $9K "life roll" for the 6months of bills. I never had any real intentions of playing live poker on a regular basis, but now I can not only afford the luxury of playing in these softer NL games at Foxwoods and Mohegan, I have a proper BR for them as well. I have not totally settled on the number for my BR but whatever stakes I plan on playing at I need to have at least 20 buy ins to handle some of the swings. I figure I'll play some 1/2NL ($300 max buy in) but I'd also like to take a few swings at 10/20 and 20/40 FLHE (10/20 for a regular game and 20/40 for taking some shots). The number I have in my head is somewhere between $5K-$7.5K, more likely leaning towards the lower end. I'm not totally certain about what to do there but I have a week or so before I'll be able to return to foxwoods anyway so it's not a huge issue right now.
All in all things are definately looking up for me. I'm excited to get started with my new found roll and to grind my way into bigger and better games. I don't really have a target number I'd like to hit just yet before graduation to replace the $18K in 8 months challenge that I put on myself. I'd like to just get myself situated at my new stakes before I try to set a goal for myself. Right now though, I have my eyes on playing in some smaller buy in live MTTs over the next few months and all throughout 2010. Maybe, if things go well, I can donk my way out to vegas this summer for the WSOP. I'm a long way away from that being a viable option, but there's pleanty of time to book my ticket.