joesxm has arrived

[joesxm3]

Happy to be on board. Have been reading for a month or so and loving every minute of it. Thanks to all the previous posters.

I am 50 and work in the software business. Trying to get my affairs in order and get going on the calculations to see if I can - I mean when I can - pull the trigger on FIRE.

fyi - sxm is the airport designation for Princess Juliana Airport in Sint Maarten, where I like to go for vacation (that is used to like to before I became a born-again LBYM :-)

Thanks for letting me in and I apologize in advance for any stupid remarks or questions.

[samclem]

Welcome aboard. As you've likely noticed, we've got quite a few programmers and IT professionals here.

Bring on the "stupid" questions. After you've pawed through the previous threads you'll surely find some ground we haven't been over.

[chinaco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by joesxm fyi - sxm is the airport designation for Princess Juliana Airport in Sint Maarten, where I like to go for vacation (that is used to like to before I became a born-again LBYM :-)

St Martin/Maarten is a great place. We went few years ago. Found a great package deal. $550 pp (included air and transfer, hotel). fees and tax jacked the price about $100pp. It was for 5 days in the spring of 2000. The deal also included full breakfast and all alcohol at the Sonesta Maho Beach Resort. I have not been able to find a deal like that since. But I continue to look!

You are correct, it is expensive.... All of those french restaurants. Great beaches. It is very nice. Two thumbs way up!

[Under FIRE]

Welcome aboard and enjoy the ride ........... 8)

[joesxm3]

I had my master plan - learn how to play poker - play on the internet - make 30-50kpy - quit the day job and use the poker winnings to preserve the nest egg.

After three years of hard work learning poker I seemed to be on track. Then the government stepped in and cut off all the ways of moving the winnings into the bank account. This was last november. Now it is so uncertain that I cannot depend on this for income.

Any of you ER's play poker or live off poker winnings?

I would imagine that the typical gambler mentality would not fit with this board. I used to play chess and do not gamble (unless you want to aregue that poker is gambling) so I am a dedicated LBYM guy.

[DangerMouse]

I don't know much about the laws that the US government enacted, but would it not be possible to relocate yourself to somewhere close to the US that would allow you to do the poker thingo?

[joesxm3]

A lot of young poker players talk about moving outside U.S., but while that might work for me if I pull the trigger and ER, I currently make much more at my j*b and suffering through that and adding to the nestegg will make a more traditional FIRE possible someday.

The law was passed at 2am on the last day of the session and attached to the Defense of Ports Bill. The left out the part that said convicted felons could not be hired to inspect incoming cargo (aka hidden nukes) but managed to say that Joe sixpack cannot put $50 on his Visa card to play a little Friday night poker. To make it even worse, they included excemptions for games of skill such as lottery, horse betting and fantasy football. Helps that Bill Frist's former lawyer is a lobbyist for the NFL.

Don't get me wrong, this poker law is just annoying and samll potatoes compared to all of the other stuff they are doing or not doing to screw up the country for the next 100 years.

[MooreBonds]

While I'm unfamiliar with international financial regulations and banking laws....would it be possible to transfer the money from your gambling account to a checking account at a foreign bank? Then simply transfer the money from your foreign bank to your US bank (Or, use on-line bill pay to have your foreign checking account pay off your credit cards?) I don't believe that would violate any US laws...

There is that one thing on Schedule B that says if you have a foreign account valued at over $400, which you are supposed to check and describe....I don't know if the IRS would ever be notified if it's a non-interest bearing checking account.

[NinjaPigeon]

Hey, the more of us IT types the better! In between discussions on finance we can make vague references to the merits of various languages and constructs - how cool would that be?!

But I suppose we'd scare off all the other folks on here And then I'd be stuck trying to figure out lots of this finance stuff on my own again. We'll just have to work in our IT humor subtly, in a Nords submarine kinda way...

[kumquat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NinjaPigeon Hey, the more of us IT types the better! In between discussions on finance we can make vague references to the merits of various languages !

As an old IBM systems programmer you mean languages like ASM, FORTRAN, COBOL? I like this board because everyone speaks BASIC. Translated to layman's terms that translates to LBYM and LANO (look after number one, not a computer language that I know of). When I have more free time, I'll make up new acronymns for old programming languages.

[joesxm3]

I did IBM MVS system programming 1982-84. I now do Microsoft .NET on Windows servers.

You won't get me into debates about the merits of various computer languages.

IMHO there is only one merit to any of them. They give me money to add to the nest egg every "payday glorious payday".

[Alan]

I, my wife and both kids are all in IT and our daughter both us each a T-Shirt at Christmas. Mine says simply "Insufficient Memory".

My wife's says "There are only 10 people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't"

Welcome to the forum.

[Sue J]

My son has this one -

"There's no place like 127.0.0.1"

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/coder/5d6a/zoom/

[Hamlet]

I play poker recreationally. My advice is to play live if you have a place where you live.

I've started playing live again, since online is so much harder to beat nowadays. The games at my local card road (Canterbury in Minnesota) are incredibly loose. The big drawback is how slow it is compared to online. However, I think that anyone who can beat a 2-4 online game can probably beat the 15-30 at Canterbury. I play the 6-12

[Alan]

Great website Sue - thanks.

[joesxm3]

Hamlet

Good advice. I live about 1 hour from Foxwoods in CT and like to play there. I play at the $1/$2 no-limit hold'em games.

I also play on FullTilt and took a beating early in the year as the competition seemed to get stiiffer. However, I have been doing pretty well lately. I think that the weaker players are finally figuring how to get their money back onto the sites.

However given that the banking regulations are almost due to take effect from the UIGEA, I am keeping the online bankroll pretty small. I had $700 trapped in Neteller when they shut down.

[Hamlet]

Yeah, I lost about $375 at Neteller.

I play a little at microlimits at Absolute now. I had .97 left at the site (can't transfer odd dollar amounts), so I've been playing 0.02-0.04 I've worked it up to about $9. It was $13, but I took a shot at 0.1-0.2.

I guess I need to learn to play within my bankroll

[joesxm3]

Chris Furgusson is playing on Full Tilt with the goal of starting with $0 and building it up to $10,000.

He had to play only freerolls at first to get started but claims to have gone from $1 to $20,000 before.

The key is proper bankroll management - so there is hope for you.

http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/tip-ema....php?utm_id=89