Exchanging

[peterbirks]

So, off I toddled to Citibank on Oxford Street to pay in a cheque from Party. 2.30 in the afternoon, nice and quiet. Perhaps I'll stroll down Bond Street and ogle the Vacheron Constantin watches, I thought to myself. No rush to catch a train just so that I can do my bollocks, again, on Full Tilt.

I paid in the cheque, got my transaction receipt and was walking out the front door when I glanced at the receipt. "X-Rate 2.03975" it said. Wow, I thought, that's a bit stingy, what with the pound being at $2.09 or thereabouts". Then I said, "but why is that on this transaction receipt anyway?" Then I noticed that I'd been credcited with $2,039, which was a bit odd, since I'd only actually paid in $995.

Yes, the bank teller had credited it as a sterling cheque rather than a dollar cheque.

I'm an honest kind of guy with a vague belief in karma. Also, I'm 99% sure that these things come out in the wash at the end of the day, so my going back was probably positive EV in terms of saving me trouble at a later date. I know that most poker players are moral bankrupts who would take any mistake in their favour without hesitation (hell, I came across enough of this when serving them in betting shops) and perhaps it's my long experience on 'the other side of the counter' in betting shops -- those hours looking for twenty-quid shortages when you know that the counterhand has almost certainly made a mistake for twenty quid and that you are wasting valuable drinking time, just as some scumbag boasts to his mates "yeah, I gave her a fiver and she gave me change for twenty ... still, with the money I've lost there over the years, it's only fair...."

So, I went back to the till and got the deposit corrected to the right amount. Counterhand's sole comment was, "ooh, that would have been nice, especially with Christmas coming up....". I don't think that she was quite out of the top of the barrel.

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Comments

[jaybee66.livejournal.com]

I've always wondered how much you poker types keep online. After all, it's deposited in dollars so if you are none too good at the old cards then you are losing money in so many different ways. Bad play is the obvious way to lose money then the rake and then, of course, the depreciation of your precious dollars day by day.

I knew one player (who will know exactly who he is, if he reads this blog) that kept an enormous amount online. "It's my bankroll," he said.

I tried to point out that he was not earning interest on the portion that was not on the table and that dollar depreciation would eat into his money. He would have none of it. It suited his ego to have so much online that he could plonk the whole lot on the table in a limit game just to show off.

By all means have a bankroll but keep it in a separate bank account if needs be and in a stable currency.

Anyone for e-Gold poker?

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

There's often a cost associated with moving money into, out of and between poker sites. Using a GBP account and playing on a USD site is one obvious source of friction that can wipe out a year's interest in one fell swoop.

Personally I hold about $7K online at various locations, which gives me $1-2K at each site I frequent: ample for my tastes and ability. When there's a large enough surplus above that figure, coupled with a pressing need (most recently the front garden landscaping bill) then I'll extract a chunk, less the frictional costs.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

My general rule of thumb has been to remove half my bankroll to Schwab, which pays an interest rate on a par with the American base rate minus a fraction. However, the Neteller debacle blocked that shift, hence the opening of the Citibank dollar account, which pays an abysmal rate of interest. I haven't yet set up a system to shift from Citibank to Schwab, although keeping some cash in Citibank has the plus of giving me two dollar cashcards rather than one (although I do sometimes wonder about the necessity of all that).

The money is now about 30% left online, 40% shifted to dollar accounts, 10% spent (in Vegas, hotel bills, food etc) and 20% in UK accounts (from playing on Betfair and other UK-currency linked operations). The major intention has been to avoid frictional costs of currency exchange. Since I intend to spend the dollars in the US, any shift of money one way or the other (and the costs involved) was effectively a currency punt. In retrospect, I should have shifted all the money I won into the Euro from the word go!.

The other rule is that once it has left Neteller or the poker sites, then it is money that has left the game. I freely admit that I keep an online effective bankroll too high for the stakes that I play (although $16K represents only 80 buy-ins at $1-$2 NL) but part of this is psychological.

Some people function better on a low bankroll, whereas I start worrying when my bankroll goes down by 5% (er, like in the past three days.....)

PJ

[(Anonymous)]

Pete, is this the "real" dollar account you've talked about previously, or the psuedo-dollar account that Citibank offer Sterling customers? If it's the latter, haven't you found it hard to move money in and out sites?

cheers

Dave

PS. In a similar situation, where BF let me keep a substantial rakeback mistake, I gave half to charity. I couldn't help thinking that I was bribing the gods of karma tho.

bdd

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Hi Dave:

My Schwab account is a "real" dollar account and I could have carried on using that one if I was prepared to post cheques to Arizona.

As far as I am aware, the Citibank dollar account (mine is a savings account, which just means there is no minimum holding, but you don't get a cheque book) is just as "real". It uses a New York Citibank branch clearing code, I think. The only edge that it has for me over Schwab is that I can walk to the bank branch on Oxford Street to deposit the cheques (10-day clearance before funds on cheques are available, though).

As for problems moving money in and out of sites, I can no longer get dollar-denominated cheques from Neteller. Neither can I transfer in dollars to any account. So what I do is shift any profits into Party. I then play on Party for a couple of weeks to keep them happy, and with draw my deposit. Party is happy to send dollar cheques.

Thus I avoid the friction of moving between currencies.

I can't avoid some friction in the case of No IQ, because that thinks in euros. So any transfer to Neteller might suffer FX problems. I haven't built up a big enough bankroll there yet to discover how significant this might be. If it's a serious hassle, I may take the money out in the form of cheques in sterling. If that FX rate is bad, I'll just open a euro-denominated account.

PJ

[(Anonymous)]

Pete,

The problem I had with the Citi account was using it to put money into sites. Have you been able to do this?

cheers

Dave

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Hi Dave:

No, as I wrote above, the money that goes into Citi and Schwab has, as far as I am concerned "left the game". My conservative bankroll strategy has meant that I have never needed to take money from Citi.

I think that I might have deposited some money from Schwab into Neteller once (just to see if I could); I can't remember, but the loss of Neteller as a dollar throughput was a major pain. But I still use Neteller as the means to shift money between accounts. All withdrawals in recent months have been via Party cheques.

Indeed, I used Visa with Party to establish a separate "in and out" source (before the Citibank account). This didn't seem to have too rough an exchange rate friction, and had the added curiousity of hitting me for a cash advance fee (2%?) when the money went in, but then giving me a "cash advance refund" on all the money that came back into the Visa account. Which meant that, despite the small frictional exchange costs, I was in front on the deal, not counting the money that I had won.

I would recommend using Neteller as the "pool fund" for all poker sites that you use.

PJ

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I didn't express that Visa point well. I meant that I paid $600 or whatever in from my Visa credit card. This cost me (say) £306 at a 2:1 exchange rate, of which six quid was a cash advance fee. And I probably lost about five bucks on the deposit through FX friction.

Then I withdrew $1500, losing about $15 on the FX transfer back. But the $1,485 then converted to £742.50, and I got back £15 in 'refunded' cash advance fees, rather than the six quid that I originally paid. So I ended up with a credit of £757.50, or a gain of £451.50 on my dollar win of $900. So the cash advance refund bonus more than compensated for the $20 lost in FX frictional exchange costs. To the grand sum of £1.50.

PJ

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

I know I operate at some substantial remove from the branch network, but I'm pretty sure that "counterhand" as a technical job description has yet to cross over from the betting shop to the retail banking environment. "Cashier" seems more likely, although "Customer Services Representative" must be a runner. I expect that "Clerk", however, is Right Out (disrespectful).

Morality

[(Anonymous)]

Morality is so difficult to argue about because it seems to be basically a matter of opinion. Is there really a moral obligation to point out other people's mistakes? If so, why? Where does it come from?

My own morality, such as it is, involves not doing harm to other people. If they do harm to themselves, it's a nice generous act to save them from the consequences, but I don't see it as a moral obligation.

-- Jonathan