How much did I make in 2008?

The million dollar question for every professional gambler: How much has he made this year? Professional gambling means nothing if we don't talk about wins and losses, profit and damage. On the other hand, professional gambling is more than making money, more than making a living. It's about dealing with decisions every day, handling the pressure and discovering yourself.

2008 was a good year for me. I mainly played online poker while I kept trying my luck trading the Betfair markets. While I didn't have any significant success in the latter, online poker made me more than enough to justify my decision to focus on that. I played over 500,000 hands during 2008, and although my target was to reach 1 million hands, I am satisfied by my will and concentration on the game. The stakes I played were between 100NL and 2000NL.

A good month playing online poker

I scored the biggest winrate regarding BB/100 playing heads-up matches in 1000NL (16.10BB/100) but most of my winnings came from playing 6-max 1000NL, followed by 400NL and 200NL. The stakes that cost me the most was 6-max 600NL, while in terms of BB/100 I didn't do well in... 100NL! There is still plenty of room for improvement and I'll try playing a lot better in 2009. Before 2008 I played a lot of Sit and Goes and Multitable Poker Tournaments but in 2008 I was a lot more interested in cash games.

Official Poker Rankings

Trading the horse racing markets in Betfair has been constantly getting more difficult for me. Maybe I need to blame my broadband internet connection which is stuck at 2 Mbits. I know most of people trade using 24 Mbits lines, but I don't think that is the reason for my poor performance. When I started Betfair trading back in 2004, I traded on a dial-up connection, that is 56kbits and I was doing quite ok. When I moved to a broadband connection, my profits skyrocketed and my 2005 Betfair trading stats were quite promising. However since then my trading profits are getting lower and lower and that is why I turned to online poker and other fields of interest to make additional income, one of which is web developing.

Because of my everlasting love for computers since my childhood, I find working with them a joy. In comparison with professional gambling, creating something and being productive is something that can win me over gambling in time. That is why I found designing web pages and sites fascinating and honestly quite easy to do. During 2008 I designed a rather big website with a friend of mine and I improved a couple of other sites all owned by me. Yet, the biggest impact was made here, in Jimmakos.com. I must have changed my blog more than 10 times the last 5 years, but this year I studied and learnt how to blog efficiently and still (hopefully) not lose the personal touch. The result of this was to increase my blog's revenue and attract more advertisers and link exchangers. At this time of year I make a few hundred dollars per month which I would never have thought my sites/blogs would earn for me. It's always nice to see one's study and work paying off.

Finally, 2008 was the year that I started blogging in the Greek official Betfair blog and continue to do so since September, adding about 2 articles per week. I guess some of you would think at this point the cliché: "Those who can't win, teach". I totally agree with you but the truth is that I don't try to teach anyone. I am just trying to help anyone who wants to deal with gambling a bit more seriously, to become a little better bettor/trader/poker player and quite frankly to make them see gambling outside the big picture. I don't know if I have that much success in that, but receiving emails, keeping in touch with fellow gamblers and making new friends online is the biggest win for me. Professional gambling can be a lot lonely sometimes.

So, my best wishes to all of you for a prosperous 2009 and thank you for reading my blog.

Happy New Year!

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