My Earnings from Online Poker Revealed

I have a soft spot for the Queens.

From Skeptic to the Virtual Felt - My 30-Day Online Poker Journey

The traditional notion of gambling always felt like a losing proposition to me. Why pay for entertainment with such a high chance of disappointment? That was until I discovered No Limit Texas Hold'em (NLHE) through some work friends. Unlike casino games where the house always has the edge, NLHE pits you against other players. Suddenly, it wasn't just about luck; skills like reading people and understanding probabilities came into play. For an 18-year-old, the steady income from local home games was an encouraging start. My fascination grew, fueled by watching poker legends on TV. Remember Phil Hellmuth's infamous table rants at the World Series of Poker (WSOP)? Or the laser-like focus of Phil Ivey, seemingly never blinking? Reading strategy bibles like Doyle Brunson's "Super System 2" solidified my understanding of the game. But consistent home games are tough to find. That's when online poker beckoned. The sheer volume of players, from micro-stakes to the high-stakes games of the pros, was incredible. Online games are also lightning-fast, dealing many more hands per hour. Plus, the online competition seemed sharper, offering a chance to learn and grow. A friend and I even briefly considered going pro by taking our savings to Las Vegas and sitting in cheap hotels and casinos all day, a plan that thankfully never materialized. So, online poker, with its low stakes and 24/7 availability, became my chosen arena. Initially, I thought playing poker online wouldn't be much different from playing live. I was wrong. The pace, the massive tournaments, and the caliber of players online are on another level. For the past 30 days, I embarked on a focused journey, documenting my experience on swcpoker.club, with a clear goal: to see what kind of income a digital nomad could realistically generate playing online poker. Let's dive into the numbers and the lessons learned!

Background: Honing My Skills Over Two Decades

My poker journey spans nearly two decades, leaning towards the recreational yet experienced side. I've played in various settings that include the casual comfort of home games, the electric atmosphere of casinos, and the digital dance of the online poker. My experience includes cash games, Omaha, and the thrill of Multi-Table Tournaments (MTTs). While I'd rate my skill around a 6 out of 10, I've tasted victory, even taking first place in tournaments with over 1000 entrants. My understanding of poker fundamentals is solid, thanks to classics books like "Harrington on Hold 'em". Historically, home games have been profitable, casino play a mixed bag, and my past online play unfortunately ended in the red. My motivations for returning to online poker now are clear: the speed and convenience compared to live games, the flexible stakes and rake, and the potential to fund this digital nomad lifestyle I'm pursuing. Plus, let's be honest, I genuinely love the game. For this specific 30-day earning reveal, I focused solely on swcpoker.club.

Online Poker Sites Explored: My Deep Dive into SWC Poker

For this 30-day experiment, my exclusive focus was on swcpoker.club, a unique platform in the online poker landscape. Founded in 2012, SWC Poker proudly claims the title of the original Bitcoin poker site, using cryptocurrency for all transactions, which offers a degree of player anonymity. A key aspect to understand is their chip system: 1 chip on SWC Poker = 0.000001 BTC (also known as 1 bit or 1 microBTC). This means 1,000,000 chips equals 1 Bitcoin, allowing for a wide range of game stakes. Here’s my take on SWC Poker after 30 days of grinding:

SWC Poker Benefits:

• Play Anywhere: The browser-based platform allows for convenient play from any device including mobile.

• Crypto-Friendly: Offers deposit options in various cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum.

• Beginner-Friendly Freerolls: Their freeroll tournaments are notably soft, offering a chance for new players to get their feet wet, though the payouts are minimal (around $0.10 for first place).

• Rake-Free Microstakes: A fantastic feature for beginners and those looking to practice without the added cost of rake.

  
  

SWC Poker Cons:

• Slow Deposit Times: I experienced relatively lengthy deposit processing times, sometimes up to an hour.

• Occasional Glitches: The site can be a bit glitchy, although it never directly impacted my hands.

• Low Player Traffic: This was the most significant drawback, with peak player counts rarely exceeding 250, limiting game selection.

• Basic User Interface: The UI is functional but lacks the polish and features of larger, more established sites.

• Minimal Freeroll Rewards: The very small payouts in freerolls make them less appealing for serious players.

  
  

Overall, SWC Poker offers a unique experience, especially for those comfortable with cryptocurrency, but its limitations in traffic and features are important to consider. Alternatives like CoinPoker (sometimes referred to as coinpoker or coin poker) may offer different advantages.

The lovely Queen of Spades surrounded by other cards.

Financial Performance: The Big Earning Reveal

Meticulously tracking your wins and losses is absolutely crucial in online poker. It's the only way to determine if you're truly profitable over time and to identify patterns that can help you improve your game and maximize your earnings. Over these 30 days, I clocked in approximately 150 hours at the virtual felt on SWC Poker, averaging about 5 hours daily. Now, for the moment of truth – the earning reveal!

My total profit after 30 days was 275.69 SWC chips. Let's break down what that means in real money. With 1 SWC chip equaling 0.000001 BTC, my profit is 0.00027569 BTC. Using a current Bitcoin price of around $84,200 USD per BTC, my 30-day online poker profit translates to approximately:

.00027569 BTC * $84,200 USD/BTC = $23.21 USD.

I guess if I want to make this a sincere blog I have to talk about fees, too. Unfortunnately, I did not track the fees as closely as I did my inflows and outflows. However, I made about 10 deposits with an average fee of around 25 cents per deposit. So, I paid about $2.50 in fees. This leaves me still north of $20 in profit. For those of you who have read this far and are unfamiliar with profitability of poker players, we are rare. I read an estimate that about 5-10% of players can be consistintly profitable.

While this might not seem like a fortune, this profit was earned through strategic play, particularly in heads-up matches against less experienced opponents. I recall one session where I won 80 times my buy-in in a single hour against a weaker player. I am not sure if it more interesting to to get an 8,000% return in an hour, or that everytime I outplayed this opponen they mispelled the word "idiot" in the chat. I also had several other profitable heads-up encounters. Additionally, while the freeroll payouts are small, my consistent success in these soft tournaments, even in unfamiliar game variations like Drawmaha, contributed to the overall profit. I was making the money around 90% of the time in the freerolls.

Of course, poker involves its share of losses. This 30-day period served as a valuable reminder of the importance of emotional control. In the past, a bad beat might have sent me into a tilt, chasing losses and smashing the all-in button until I went broke. Now, I've learned to step away, analyze my decisions objectively, and recognize that as long as my plays were mathematically sound, the outcome of individual hands is just variance. I spent a lot of time analyzing my previous big hands to see what when well and what went wrong. Identifying and learning from my mistakes has become a key part of my post-session analysis.

The Light Shines: Unlocking my Cumulative Equity Theory

Something clicked about a week into this experience. Poker uses theories like pot odds and equity. I am not going into the mechanics of these theories because they deserve their own blogs, or even books, but essentially they are quantitative methods to determine correct actions during a game like NLHE, a game where you are betting on future events with incomplete information. In short, pot odds are the cost for a player to continue to participate in the play of a hand. Pot equity refers to the value of your hand as a percentage of the the pot. The pot is just all the money bet at any point in a hand. These concepts, used correctly can guide a player to profitability. My most key insight from this experience is what I call the Cumulative Equity Theory. Actually this theory already exists, I just formulated my own version and name without knowing it existed. The basis concept is that each hand has a finite value if you consider all the poker hands that have ever been played or will be played, and they also have a finite value at each stage of hand including preflop, flop, turn, and river. The idea of the Cumulative Equity Theory is that a hand with negative equity on the the flop and the turn, may have a positive equity on the river. Or consider this example, preflop you have AA, otherwise known as a pair of Aces. This is the strongest preflop hand and you would have the highest equity of all hands dealt, unless another player was also dealt AA. However, by the river, the board shows 56789 of Spades, a straight flush. Your pair of aces are invalidated. Worse, one of your opponents, sometimes called Villains, has the 10 of Spades. Giving your pair of Aces a negative equity. You only have 9 high straight flush while Villain has a 10 high straight flush. Over the Course of the hand, your AA went from high equity to low equity. The Cumulitive Equity Theory states that If you manage your bets, checks, and folds correctly each betting round, you can optimize your hands equity across all streets, not just the turn or river. You could lose a hand where you have high equity preflop, but low equity at showdown, and you can still be a profitable player if you maximized your equity on each street. This is the Cumulitive Equiy Theory. Each card, action, and street are connected and the most profitable players find the function that optimizes their equity over all cards, actions, and streets. This concept may be the single most important one to master if you want to go pro. My profitablilty skyrocketed after discovering this theory.

More Key Insights and Learnings: Strategies for Success

This 30-day grind provided some valuable insights for anyone looking to make money online playing poker:

• Bankroll Management is King: Proper bankroll management is paramount for long-term survival and success in online poker. The inherent variance means losing streaks are inevitable, and having an adequate number of buy-ins (at least 25 for cash games and 75 for MTTs, with some pros recommending even more) is crucial to weather these storms without going broke. While the low traffic on swcpoker.club sometimes pushed me outside my ideal comfort zone, understanding these principles is vital.

• Adaptability in Game Selection: The limited player pool on he site meant traditional table selection wasn't always an option and I had to play over my bankroll. Instead, I focused on adapting to the available games and players, meticulously taking notes on individual tendencies to exploit weaknesses.

• Cultivating Emotional Resilience: The emotional swings of online poker can be challenging. Staying healthy by eating well and taking breaks from the screen is important for physical well-being. More crucially, developing emotional detachment from short-term results and focusing on making sound, mathematical decisions is key to long-term profitability. Analyzing hands objectively, whether they result in a win or a loss, is far more valuable than reacting emotionally.

  
  

Conclusion: A Small Victory in the Digital Nomad Journey

While the $23.21 profit over 30 days on might not be a life-altering sum, this experience was undeniably valuable. My primary goal was to re-engage with online poker and I did it without losing even a penny. Who knows, maybe you will see me at the final table of the World Series of Poker one day.

Until then, Adventure on!

Do you want to try your poker skill against me? You can use my referral code here to sign up: https://swcpoker.club/a/chplDq7q