stevesbets

I care about my readers and I wish I could respond to every email I get, but for a couple of reasons I can’t so what I’m going to try to do is respond to general questions I get here from time to time. If a question is particularly insightful, interesting, funny or weird I may post it and respond.

Alot of emails I get ask for backing, I don’t really ever back anyone besides close friends so it’s probably better to just not bother asking unless I know your name, your face, and what your college friends called you. One person asked me what a “standard” backing deal is. The answer is that there is no standard, it all depends on the skill of the player, the comfort of the backer, and the closeness of the relationship. I will say this, almost any reasonable deal includes makeup which means that if the backer puts the player into 10 tournaments for 10k apiece, he gets the first 100k in cashes off the top before the profit is divided up as the parties see fit. So if the player loses 9 and cashes for 97k in the 10th tourney, the backer just gets all 97k back. After this I would say “standard” is the player getting between 25% and 50% of the profit.

Another common question I get is whether I think pokerstars may be rigged for all sorts of reasons. We all question the integrity of the sites at some point or another, especially during downswings. When Lars Magne was on his tear at high stakes HU sngs, I remember everyone told me he was so great, and one time he called q9 all in first hand and beat my aq, then called a7 all in first hand of the next one and beat my AA. Everyone said he was the best, but this was how he beat me that day. I fired off an accusatory email to pokerstars but later just felt stupid, I wish I had a copy of it that I could post. The fact of the matter is that the sites make WAY too much money for them to rig it for any reason so if you are going to be sure of anything, be sure of greed, and know that they would never want to hurt themselves by rigging it and risk getting caught in a scandal ending their insane gravy train.

Finally, I got the following email:

“hi sorry fo my bad english
i look you every night in italy in stg tournaments…i want to make compliments for your game very exciting and aggressive..i am new in poker and i lost 4000 dollars in heads up….How did you start in poker?
You have to give me some advice?
I admire you very
my nick is ce_vedems and i hope One day I might have a bankroll suitable to be able to challenge with you
bye

In response, I started playing low stakes sngs on party, as low as 5 dollars. I did it in college and worked my way up. The only way to learn is to be willing to lose and practice practice practice. Just like everything else in life it comes down to two things, how bad you want it, and how lucky you are…ok maybe just one thing:) Thanks for the complements, and where are you from in Italy?