Link to Previous Tales From 2+2: Poker player steals $1m+ chips and tries to sell it on 2+2 poker forums
More Tales From 2+2: A Very Controversial $70k prop bet
Tales from 2+2: Homelessness, Grinding and the Biggest Shot of a Grinder’s Life: The Jared Huggins Story

The Blossoming of TV Poker

The Year is 2006. Online poker is thriving. Partypoker has the highest traffic of any poker site but Pokerstars are gaining new players quickly with aggressive marketing strategies. Lots of poker sites are investing heavily into marketing and one key place to channel their advertising budget is TV. New innovations, improved graphics and increasing funding meant that poker TV is at an all-time peak of popularity.
40% of the the 2006 WSOP Main Event’s attendance is from online sites and poker sites are offering large amounts of cash for players on TV to wear an advertising patch. According to Dan Goldman’s blog, Pokerstars spent over $730,000 on WSOP players’ gift bags. The WSOP is seeing more TV time and this year the $50k HORSE event is added to the TV schedule alongside the WSOP main event. This year’s $50k WSOP HORSE final table saw some huge names including Chip Reese, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius and Doyle Brunson.

The Path of a New Player

In Finland, Mikael Paisting is watching the 2006 WSOP on TV. He enjoys watching poker broadcasts and is fascinated by the game. It’s a very common story for players to catch an interest by watching poker TV and sign up with to one of the many poker sites available. He chooses to deposit on Partypoker. Mikael is a committed learner and player. He reads several poker books from well-known authors such as Dan Harrington and David Sklansky. He also watches many training videos. Like many players starting in online poker he begins at the microstakes cash tables.
Microstakes are a rite of passage for many online poker players. The limits range from 2nl to 10nl, so the standard buy in is $2-10. Some will play microstakes for weeks, months or even years improving their game and increasing their bankroll so they can move up to small stakes, 25nl and above. Some players see the microstakes as a job and play as many tables as they can to eke out a living wage. Some players have never played microstakes and skip it entirely for higher stakes. Mikael starts to play and doesn’t do well, this is normal for many beginners, even those who study. However, over the next few weeks Mikael continues to lose. Months go by and Mikael still hasn’t turned a profit. He discovers problems with tilt and often takes his frustration out in the chat box. An example of his rage:

Paisting:THAT IS NOT NORMAL OMG!! JUST UNBELIEVABLE

Mikael doesn’t play 10nl very often and spends the majority of him time playing 2nl and 5nl. He continues to multitable cash games on Partypoker but he just can’t win. He starts to lose big, thousands of dollars, mostly at 2nl which is known as the softest cash game on the internet.

Getting Noticed

Mikael continues to play long sessions over the next five years, he claims to play 5-7 days a week for 4-8 hours a day. By 2011 he had played 2 and a half million hands while playing 6 to 9 cash tables at one time. Mikael is still mostly playing 2nl and is down a colossal amount: $7000. Mikael has been suffering from major tilt problems and has a very wild and noticeable style of playing microstakes. He starts to get noticed on 2+2, a very popular poker forum. A player posts a link to his PTR graph, a site which tracks online cash games. They are shocked at his losses over so many hands:

yegor: wow such a massive fail
he played 2.5m hands at 2nl and 5nl and he's losing
Donkey111: I remember him from my 2NL days.
often goes on some massive tilt sessions and spews like 20 BI in 500 hands by shoving any 2 cards preflop.

He even gets hate from his PTR account where he is ridiculed on his profile comments, he also replies:

VELAir26: Spend your time with family, friends or other hobbies instead
Paisting: im fine with this you stupid idiot

Mikael continues to play his reckless and tilting style over the years. By 2014, he has been playing for 8 years and is down five figures at microstakes; he starts to look for excuses for how much he has lost. He posts a thread on 2+2 detailing how he feels that he wins at the start of the month and then inevitably starts to lose. He asks how he can take legal action against Partypoker. His fellow posters tease him:

5thStreethog: Did the thought ever cross your mind that it might be possible that the reason you cant beat NL2 in over a million hands might be because you arent very good at poker?

An Attempt at Redemption

2019 comes and Mikael Paisting has been playing microstakes for 13 years, and steadily losing a lot of money. He got a new computer in late 2018 and has been grinding away on it. Mikael is getting mentioned more on 2+2 and he is well known on the tables of Partypoker as he drops stack after stack. Many players on Partypoker furiously try to get on his tables to call his tilt shoves; when Mikael is present other player’s stacks can get as high as $100 at 2nl as he shoves buy in after buy in to button steals. Some were said to be using seating scripts to instantly be placed on a table with Paisting. At this point he is feeling very low. But despite years of losing money and insane tilting he is determined to improve. Mikael is aware of his losses and has a fierce desire to make back the money he has lost since he’s started tracking on his new PC.
He decides get help and he looks to 2+2, the very same forum that had mocked him over the last decade. He logs in as Paisting, his last name. He starts a new thread, types out a post and chooses a title: 'Biggest loser in online poker history wants to grind $16k'. He posts this thread in the sub-forum Poker Goals & Challenges, a place where players post their goals and try to update their thread with their progress. He posts graphs of his losses from his database on his PC. He starts the thread by posting some shocking graphs of $8700 lost at 2nl, $6000 lost at 5nl and $800 lost at 10nl. At 2nl he had an incredible rate of -170BB each 100 hands. The final graph of his microstakes losses posted show $15,000 lost over 365,000 hands. An average loss of $75 a day.
The 2+2 poker community are stunned by the graphs:

HorseofHell: I'm actually shocked it's possible to lose this much at 2nl
Mahsjdj: This can't be real can it?

Mikael posts about the hard work he’s put into poker and mentions that has watched videos, read many instructional books and is honest with his astounding losses:

Paisting: I've lost literally all my money including all my life savings to online poker. I want to try one last time to win those money back and little bit of extra. That's why $16k. What I need is support and guiding.

The community react to his plan to grind all the money back at microstakes:

Fodersneso: This is really disturbing.
Why on earth would you try to grind this all back? Losing at this rate is traumatizing. You're going to grind out 3000 BIs @nl5 now or what's the plan? Really curious how you think you can turn this pile of insanity around...

The community show disbelief and doubt that his story is real but several posters claim that what he says is true. He has been active in Finnish forums for more than 10 years and players starts to share hand histories and stories about his playstyle. He posts about his regret of picking the game up:

Paisting: Never had a winning week in 13 years.
If it were possible to go back ten years I would say to myself "Do not never play single one hand!"

He then goes on to tell 2+2 posters a disturbing source of his funds for his staggering 2nl losses:

Paisting: I've taken huge amount of fast loans.

He sheds a little light into his personal life:

Paisting: My age and relationships has nothing to do with this. But not working, no kids or wife and middle aged. What I have is time to play.
I get a little unemployment benefit that goes straight to the rent. My eating costs are very little because I'm only eating one meal per day. There are times when I must take more fast loans if need of clothes, unexpected bills, sickness etc. That's why getting back those $16k is so important to me.
No disability, never played anything else than poker or lottery when pots are bigger, maybe 5 times in year. Playing poker does not give me any excitement or I'm not cheering won pots.

Posters try to give him strategy advice, they try to persuade him time and time again that shoving 100+ blinds to a minsteal isn’t a good idea. Some others question his sanity and tell him to quit:

FazendeiroBH: Not trolling, I´m actually serious here. You lost an absurd amount of money playing the easiest stake in the world (nl2). You keep losing doing the same faulty strategy. No book ever said you should jam 100 bb preflop rfi. It´s quite obvious there is something wrong with you and your brain, and the more you delay seeking professional care for your mental problems, the worst it´s gonna be for you.

Paitsing updates his thread with highlight hands from his cash sessions. He seems to cherry pick hands to post and will only post hands where he loses all ins as a 70-95% favourite. He delusion leads him to blame the site, his luck and the other micro grinders. He often writes about specific players and gives his opinion on how badly they play. He often quotes their HUD stats and wide calling ranges while ignoring that they are probably adjusting heavily to his own playstyle. Some time passes and he discloses that he has lost almost $500 at 2nl since starting the thread three weeks ago.
He updates his followers with the first monthly graph of the thread from his 2nl play in April 2019. He plays for 90 hours in April and his average daily loss is $50, 25 buy ins each day. 2+2 players start to analyse the graph. They notice that there are several breakeven spots where he may be playing reasonable poker but also huge 150 buy in downswings, some drops in the graph are so steep that he is losing about a buy in every 5 hands for periods of hundreds of hands. He says:

Paitsing: Only trying to get my money back from guys who are playing nl2 forever and never moving up. When I started poker long time ago I tought it's exciting to read watch videos if it gives me more money. After 2 years figured out it's just sitting on computer like in work and if I'm someday +-0 never ever playing this stupid game. This is like war.

The thread goes on like this for almost a year. The thread repeats itself over and over. He will post a few selective bad beats, ignore good advice and berate his microstakes tablemates. A fellow microstakes grinder makes his first appearance in the thread: 6betpot. 6Betpot would play at Paisting's tables and often win many buy ins, 6Betpot would go on to post highly contrasting hand histories to the bad beats that Paisting posts, he would also reveal Paisting’s preflop 3 bet is around 30%. Some players would criticize 6Betpot for predatory behavior but 6Betpot would maintain that he would try to persuade Paisting to stop playing in a spewy manner. Someone asks to see the hands and 6Betpot posts some, here is one:

888 Poker - $0.02 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
BTN: 250.5 BB
SB (Paisting): 425.5 BB
BB: 101.5 BB
UTG: 100 BB
MP: 106.5 BB
CO: 84.5 BB
Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) BTN has AdQs
fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to 2 BB, Paisting raises to 425.5 BB and is all-in, fold, BTN calls 248.5 BB and is all-in
Flop: (502 BB, 2 players) Kh4s4c
Turn: (502 BB, 2 players) 3h
River: (502 BB, 2 players) Jc
BTN shows AdQs (One Pair, Fours)

Paisting shows 5s Js (Two Pair, Jacks and Fours)

Paisting wins 471 BB<
Later in the thread Paisting would reveal his line of thinking during hands like these; a poster asked why he though 3 betting hands like J5 was a good idea. Paisting replies:

Paisting: If you don't want them to run over you, you must do something. Blind play is very important and you can't let them run over you. When 80+ habit stealer gets shoves straight to his face he must learn at some point that I'm not giving blinds.

Many tried to reason with him and show him clearly why this was wrong, he not only refuted their strategy but would argue against them, often citing his opponent’s HUD stats.
Later on in the thread Mikael posts horrifying news. He explains that he didn’t transfer hands from his old computer to his new computer. The graphs he posted at the start of the thread only showed the tip of the iceberg. He reveals that $16k loss from the graphs was from just 7 months of play!:

Paisting: That 16k is in 209 days and in about 1 year as you can see from the first post. Big part of my losings has left to hard drive of my old crashed computer. That's past and I don't wanna think about it anymore. Main goal is this database I have here in my computer. But yes what I have been repeating many times, moving to 888 poker has sky rocketed my losses although I can play only 6 tables compared to party's 9 tables.

Posters speculate that his lifetime microstakes losses probably amount to six figures:

SpinMeRightRound: I mean if he's lost $20k in the last year, and he's been doing this for more than 10 years, he may have lost $200k or more.

In late 2019, Paisting claims that there was a ring of players were colluding against him. He goes on to say that the new site he plays on, 888, were asking for hand histories from certain players. He showed emails of his communications and posted that 8 players had had their account frozen. He also shows screenshots that his account is temporarily frozen during the investigation. Posters speculated:

CrunchyBlack: Pretty sure they think you're chip dumping lmao
.isolated: They think you're chip dumping to him. Funniest. Thing. Ever. The irony here is nearly palpable.

2020: The Struggle Continues

At the end of the year Paisting posts his 2019 graphs. He says that he hasn’t had a winning week yet and he’s still committed to making back 2019’s losses. His graphs show down 12k from 320k hands of 2nl in 2019.
In January 2020 he continues to post regularly and makes comments about him hunting down players worse than him:

Paisting: When you hunt really bad player (yes enzet there are plenty of worst player than me on 888 look those hand histories really carefully) hours and hours and wait good hand just to site let them to suck out it is affecting your game really badly.

He posts about his continuing struggle to win back the $16k:

Paisting: I have years dedicated for this project and anything back from that amount is winning to me. At this point it’s impossible to make any profit because of horrible suckouts.

He also posts about the high interest loans he’s taken out:

Paisting: I have huge amounts of loans that are basically all taken for poker. I don't eat much and all my other costs are very low.
And because of those loans I must get back so much money that is possible and these suck outs must stop.

February 2020 arrives and he posts his January chart, the worst posted yet. He takes a gigantic loss of $1,550 at an eye-watering rate of 210bb/100 hands. Often when he posts monthly graphs he would highlight that he ran a few buy ins below EV when he would be down hundreds of buy ins for the month.
The months pass and the cycle continues. Paisting posts the usual bad beats, posters berate him and try to give him advice and Paisting resists their efforts. Here is one of many similar hands posted in February:

888Poker, Hold'em No Limit - $0.01/$0.02 - 6 players
UTG: $1.46 (73 bb) Paisting (MP): $7.45 (373 bb) CO: $15.44 (772 bb) BU: $2.00 (100 bb) SB: $3.47 (174 bb) BB: $2.00 (100 bb)
Pre-Flop: ($0.03) 1 fold, Paisting(MP) raises to $7.45 (all-in), CO calls $7.45, 3 players fold
Flop: ($14.93) 6c7c4d (2 players, 1 all-in)
Turn: ($14.93) Ts (2 players, 1 all-in)
River: ($14.93) 8h (2 players, 1 all-in)
Total pot: $14.93 (Rake: $0.93)
Showdown: Paisting (MP) shows 7dTc (two pair, Tens and Sevens) (CO) shows JsJc (a pair of Jacks) Paisting (MP) wins $14

March comes and the regular monthly graph is posted. The uploaded graph shows is he down $1900 or 950 buy ins for last month. Mikael refutes that he is a gambling addict:

Paisting: 888 has given many 10 dollar bonuses to me play slots. I have never played them and in fact my account has 20 dollars freeplay bonus to play their slots. I will not use those money now or in future. So that's gambling addict to you.

April and May roll by and the monthly graphs are posted. He played fewer hands than normal, 43,000. But is down $1,250, all at 2nl.
In June he posts the usual monthly graph with -$1900 and it’s the lowest win rate he’s posted before, a colossal -335b/100hands, the graph has some alarmingly steep downswings with one section where he loses $500 in 1000 hands. That’s a loss of one buy in every 4 hands. Getting these monthly updates shows how quickly he loses money at 2nl and collaborates with earlier estimations that he is likely down more than $100k at microstakes over the past 14 years. Approximations indicate that Mikael has paid over $20k in rake to poker sites over the years.

The End, for Now

Mikael is still playing microstakes to this day. His poker story isn’t over yet but so far it is a sad one. My previous two Tales from 2+2 stories had mostly happy endings but not this one. This story is like a car falling down a cliff and it hasn’t hit the bottom yet.
Let this story be a lesson that poker isn’t for everyone. Players with addiction or mental issues should reconsider if the game is best for their lives. Serious poker players should consider bankroll management and how tilt affects their winrate if they do choose to play.
Seek help if you think you or others need it.
Original thread (Still active)

Link to my online poker HobbyDrama posts: Poker player steals $1m+ chips and tries to sell it on 2+2 poker forums
A Very Controversial $70k prop bet
Poker Forum Help Homeless Player Attempt The Shot of a Lifetime

The Blossoming of TV Poker

The Year is 2006. Online poker is thriving. Partypoker has the highest traffic of any poker site but Pokerstars are gaining new players quickly with aggressive marketing strategies. Lots of poker sites are investing heavily into marketing and one key place to channel their advertising budget is TV. New innovations, improved graphics and increasing funding meant that poker TV is at an all-time peak of popularity.
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is the biggest event in the poker calendar, it features many poker tournaments culminating in the prestigious $10k Main Event tournament. The Main Event is a popular televised tournament. 40% of the the 2006 WSOP Main Event’s attendance is from online sites and poker sites are offering large amounts of cash for players on TV to wear an advertising patch. According to Dan Goldman’s blog, Pokerstars spent over $730,000 on WSOP players’ gift bags. The WSOP is seeing more TV time and this year an extra event is added to the TV schedule alongside the WSOP main event.

The Path of a New Player

In Finland, Mikael Paisting is watching the 2006 WSOP on TV. He enjoys watching poker broadcasts and is fascinated by the game. It’s a very common story for players to catch an interest by watching poker TV and sign up with to one of the many poker sites available. He chooses to deposit on Partypoker. Mikael is a committed learner and player. He reads several poker books from well-known authors. He also watches many training videos. Like many players starting in online poker he begins at the microstakes cash tables.
The standard buy in for microstakes online is $2-10, if a player plays microstakes for an hour they would probably win or lose a few dollars. 2nl means the big blind is 2 cents and standard buy in is $2, the standard buy in at 5nl is $5 and 10nl is $10.
Microstakes are a rite of passage for many online poker players. Some will play microstakes for weeks, months or even years improving their game and increasing their bankroll so they can move up to small stakes, 25nl and above. Some players see the microstakes as a job and play as many tables as they can to eke out a living wage. Some players have never played microstakes and skip it entirely for higher stakes. Mikael starts to play and doesn’t do well, this is normal for many beginners, even those who study. However, over the next few weeks Mikael continues to lose. Months go by and Mikael still hasn’t turned a profit. He discovers problems with tilt (when players get angry and it negatively affects their play) and often takes his frustration out in the chat box. An example of his rage:

Paisting:THAT IS NOT NORMAL OMG!! JUST UNBELIEVABLE

Mikael doesn’t play 10nl very often and spends the majority of him time playing 2nl and 5nl, buying in for $2-5 at a time. He continues to multitable cash games on Partypoker but he just can’t win. He starts to lose big, thousands of dollars, mostly at 2nl which is known as the softest cash game on the internet.

Getting Noticed

Mikael continues to play long sessions over the next five years, he claims to play 5-7 days a week for 4-8 hours a day. By 2011 he had played 2 and a half million hands while playing 6 to 9 cash tables at one time. Mikael is still mostly playing 2nl and is down a colossal amount: $7000. Remember that he is mostly playing 2nl, with a buy in of $2, even losing $1000 at 2nl is unheard of. Mikael has been suffering from major tilt problems and has a very wild and noticeable style of playing microstakes. He starts to get noticed on 2+2, a very popular poker forum. A player posts a link to his PTR graph, a site which tracks online cash games. They are shocked at his losses over so many hands:

yegor: wow such a massive fail
he played 2.5m hands at 2nl and 5nl and he's losing
Donkey111: I remember him from my 2NL days.
often goes on some massive tilt sessions and spews like 20 BI [buy ins] in 500 hands by shoving any 2 cards preflop.

He even gets hate from his PTR account where he is ridiculed on his profile comments, he also replies:

VELAir26: Spend your time with family, friends or other hobbies instead
Paisting: im fine with this you stupid idiot

Mikael continues to play his reckless and tilting style over the years. By 2014, he has been playing for 8 years and is down five figures at microstakes; he starts to look for excuses for how much he has lost. He posts a thread on 2+2 detailing how he feels that he wins at the start of the month and then inevitably starts to lose. He asks how he can take legal action against Partypoker. His fellow posters tease him:

5thStreethog: Did the thought ever cross your mind that it might be possible that the reason you cant beat NL2 in over a million hands might be because you arent very good at poker?

An Attempt at Redemption

2019 comes and Mikael Paisting has been playing microstakes for 13 years, and steadily losing a lot of money. He got a new computer in late 2018 and has been grinding away on it. Mikael is getting mentioned more on 2+2 and he is well known on the tables of Partypoker as he drops stack after stack. Many players on Partypoker furiously try to get on his tables to call his tilt shoves; when Mikael is present other player’s stacks can get as high as $100 at 2nl as he shoves buy in after buy in in bad spots. Some were said to be using seating scripts to instantly be placed on a table with Paisting. At this point he is feeling very low. But despite years of losing money and insane tilting he is determined to improve. Mikael is aware of his losses and has a fierce desire to make back the money he has lost since he’s started tracking on his new PC.
He decides get help and he looks to 2+2, the very same forum that had mocked him over the last decade. He logs in as Paisting, his last name. He starts a new thread, types out a post and chooses a title: 'Biggest loser in online poker history wants to grind $16k'. He posts this thread in the sub-forum Poker Goals & Challenges, a place where players post their goals and try to update their thread with their progress. He posts graphs of his losses from his database on his PC. He starts the thread by posting some shocking graphs of $8700 lost at 2nl, $6000 lost at 5nl and $800 lost at 10nl. At 2nl he had an incredible rate of losing an average of $75 a day. The final graph of his microstakes losses posted show $15,000 lost over 365,000 hands.
The 2+2 poker community are stunned by the graphs:

HorseofHell: I'm actually shocked it's possible to lose this much at 2nl
Mahsjdj: This can't be real can it?

Mikael posts about the hard work he’s put into poker and mentions that has watched videos, read many instructional books and is honest with his astounding losses:

Paisting: I've lost literally all my money including all my life savings to online poker. I want to try one last time to win those money back and little bit of extra. That's why $16k. What I need is support and guiding.

The community react to his plan to grind all the money back at microstakes:

Fodersneso: This is really disturbing.
Why on earth would you try to grind this all back? Losing at this rate is traumatizing. You're going to grind out 3000 BIs [buy ins] @nl5 now or what's the plan? Really curious how you think you can turn this pile of insanity around...

The community show disbelief and doubt that his story is real but several posters claim that what he says is true. He has been active in Finnish forums for more than 10 years and players starts to share hand histories and stories about his playstyle. He posts about his regret of picking the game up:

Paisting: Never had a winning week in 13 years.
If it were possible to go back ten years I would say to myself "Do not never play single one hand!"

He then goes on to tell 2+2 posters a disturbing source of his funds for his staggering 2nl losses:

Paisting: I've taken huge amount of fast loans.

He sheds a little light into his personal life:

Paisting: My age and relationships has nothing to do with this. But not working, no kids or wife and middle aged. What I have is time to play.
I get a little unemployment benefit that goes straight to the rent. My eating costs are very little because I'm only eating one meal per day. There are times when I must take more fast loans if need of clothes, unexpected bills, sickness etc. That's why getting back those $16k is so important to me.
No disability, never played anything else than poker or lottery when pots are bigger, maybe 5 times in year. Playing poker does not give me any excitement or I'm not cheering won pots.

Posters try to give him strategy advice, they try to persuade him time and time again that his strategy isn't working. Some others question his sanity and tell him to quit:

FazendeiroBH: Not trolling, I´m actually serious here. You lost an absurd amount of money playing the easiest stake in the world (nl2). You keep losing doing the same faulty strategy. It´s quite obvious there is something wrong with you and your brain, and the more you delay seeking professional care for your mental problems, the worst it´s gonna be for you.

Paitsing updates his thread with highlight hands from his cash sessions. He seems to cherry pick hands to post and will only post hands where he loses all ins as a 70-95% favourite. He delusion leads him to blame the site, his luck and the other micro grinders. He often writes about specific players and gives his opinion on how badly they play. Some time passes and he discloses that he has lost almost $500 at 2nl since starting the thread three weeks ago.
He updates his followers with the first monthly graph of the thread from his 2nl play in April 2019. He plays for 90 hours in April and his average daily loss is $50, 25 buyins each day. 2+2 players start to analyse the graph. They notice that there are several breakeven spots where he may be playing reasonable poker but also huge 150 buy in downswings, some drops in the graph are so steep that he is losing about a buy in every 5 hands for periods of hundreds of hands. He says:

Paitsing: Only trying to get my money back from guys who are playing nl2 forever and never moving up. When I started poker long time ago I tought it's exciting to read watch videos if it gives me more money. After 2 years figured out it's just sitting on computer like in work and if I'm someday +-0 never ever playing this stupid game. This is like war.

The thread goes on like this for almost a year. The thread repeats itself over and over. He will post a few selective bad beats, ignore good advice and berate his microstakes tablemates. A fellow microstakes grinder makes his first appearance in the thread: 6betpot. 6Betpot would play at Paisting's tables and often win many buy ins, 6Betpot would go on to post highly contrasting hand histories to the unlucky hands that Paisting posts which shows the hands Mikael was not posting. Some players would criticize 6Betpot for predatory behavior but 6Betpot would maintain that he would try to persuade Paisting to stop playing in a crazy manner.
Many tried to reason with Mikael and show him clearly why this was wrong, he not only refuted their strategy but would argue against them.
Later on in the thread Mikael posts horrifying news. He explains that he didn’t transfer hands from his old computer to his new computer. The graphs he posted at the start of the thread only showed the tip of the iceberg. He reveals that $16k loss from the graphs was from just 7 months of play!:

Paisting: That 16k is in 209 days and in about 1 year as you can see from the first post. Big part of my losings has left to hard drive of my old crashed computer. That's past and I don't wanna think about it anymore. Main goal is this database I have here in my computer. But yes what I have been repeating many times, moving to 888 poker has sky rocketed my losses although I can play only 6 tables compared to party's 9 tables.

Posters speculate that his lifetime microstakes losses probably amount to six figures:

SpinMeRightRound: I mean if he's lost $20k in the last year, and he's been doing this for more than 10 years, he may have lost $200k or more.

2020: The Struggle Continues

At the end of the year Paisting posts his 2019 graphs. He says that he hasn’t had a winning week yet and he’s still committed to making back 2019’s losses. His graphs show down 12k from 320k hands of 2nl in 2019.
In January 2020 he continues to post regularly and makes comments about him hunting down players worse than him:

Paisting: When you hunt really bad player (yes enzet there are plenty of worst player than me on 888 look those hand histories really carefully) hours and hours and wait good hand just to site let them to suck out it is affecting your game really badly.

He posts about his continuing struggle to win back the $16k:

Paisting: I have years dedicated for this project and anything back from that amount is winning to me. At this point it’s impossible to make any profit because of horrible suckouts.

He also posts about the high interest loans he’s taken out:

Paisting: I have huge amounts of loans that are basically all taken for poker. I don't eat much and all my other costs are very low.
And because of those loans I must get back so much money that is possible and these suck outs must stop.

February 2020 arrives and he posts his January chart, the worst posted yet. He takes a gigantic loss of $1,550 at an eye-watering rate.
The months pass and the cycle continues. Paisting posts the usual unlucky hands, posters berate him and try to give him advice and Paisting resists their efforts. Here is one of many similar hands posted in February, this hand shows him making an awful play and raising huge with a weak hand:

888Poker, Hold'em No Limit - $0.01/$0.02 - 6 players
UTG: $1.46 (73 bb) Paisting (MP): $7.45 (373 bb) CO: $15.44 (772 bb) BU: $2.00 (100 bb) SB: $3.47 (174 bb) BB: $2.00 (100 bb)
Pre-Flop: ($0.03) 1 fold, Paisting(MP) raises to $7.45 (all-in), CO calls $7.45, 3 players fold
Flop: ($14.93) 6c 7c 4d (2 players, 1 all-in)
Turn: ($14.93) Ts (2 players, 1 all-in)
River: ($14.93) 8h (2 players, 1 all-in)
Total pot: $14.93 (Rake: $0.93)
Showdown: Paisting (MP) shows 7d Tc (two pair, Tens and Sevens) (CO) shows Js Jc (a pair of Jacks) Paisting (MP) wins $14

March comes and the regular monthly graph is posted. The uploaded graph shows is he down $1900 or 950 buy ins for last month. Mikael refutes that he is a gambling addict:

Paisting: 888 has given many 10 dollar bonuses to me play slots. I have never played them and in fact my account has 20 dollars freeplay bonus to play their slots. I will not use those money now or in future. So that's gambling addict to you.

April and May roll by and the monthly graphs are posted. He played fewer hands than normal, 43,000. But is down $1,250, all at 2nl.
In June he posts the usual monthly graph with -$1900 and it’s the lowest win rate he’s posted before, the graph has some alarmingly steep downswings with one section where he loses $500 in 1000 hands. That’s a loss of one buy in every 4 hands. Getting these monthly updates shows how quickly he loses money at 2nl and collaborates with earlier estimations that he is likely down more than $100k at microstakes over the past 14 years.

The End, for Now

Mikael is still playing microstakes to this day. His poker story isn’t over yet but so far it is a sad one. My previous two Tales from 2+2 stories had mostly happy endings but not this one. This story is like a car falling down a cliff and it hasn’t hit the bottom yet.
Let this story be a lesson that poker isn’t for everyone. Players with addiction or mental issues should reconsider if the game is best for their lives. Serious poker players should consider bankroll management and how tilt affects their winrate if they do choose to play.
Seek help if you think you or others need it.
Original thread (Still active)

!!!!DISCLAIMER:!!!!
Before you even start watching this for entertainment and see if you get offended by this un-P.C. content. Don't be a pussy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igsb3ejgbL8
If you can't handle it, leave this thread. If you can, then you may proceed to the next level.
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📰📜Story📜📰:
I've been scatter-brained, ire-filled, soul-searching and lost after a 7-day Degen Marathon that brought a shit load of misfortunes. I used to hate social media, but I've learned how to wield the soc. med. sword like a fucking Degen Jedi. I'm going to promote an honest cause where I seek to be victorious in the end. Just you watch you fucking doubters, haters, blockers, scammers. How much grit and intellect would the average fucking person have to endure what I've gone through in the last fucking 48 hours and still come out alive with a sense of greater purpose?
Had about $400 to $500 in righteously earned bonus dollars earned through impossible grinding degen mission that came pretty close to accomplishing (91%).
I would have had some imaginary >$600 BR by now, but instead the roll-over deadline caused the entire deposit to be forfeited and I manage to salvage some $100.
Due to a bonus rollover scheme, 80U of my balance was stuck in bonuses and if I fail to accomplish the roll-over by the deadline, it all gets forfeited.
With a $500-$600 balance, I could have somewhere at $900-1000 by now after a 20-2 W-L record on European football on Wednesday.
How did I get that record yesterday, by sampling a bunch of solid pre-game picks and live betting using my own fucking brain. I consult with the finest in capping. With $10-$20 bet sizes, That would have put me up maybe $15x16 = +$240 at minimum. $1000 was the imaginary bank roll. As of today, betting with $1 units, after Monday-Wednesday's successful run, while Tuesday was a -$50 blip, I converted $100 to about close to $200 (40U).
🤪🤑Psycho Betting🤑🤪:
I learned the art of psycho betting. Taking some well-advised 10U and 30U psycho bets that put my bankroll up a significant amounts, but a big loss does the opposite. Yesterday I manage to hit 4 grand 30U slams in a row, however many on juiced lines, so each $30 bet one returns about $15-20. Thus my bankroll grew nearly +100 units and sits close to $200 from the initial $100 I manage to salvage after that bonus robbery.
If you want to fucking learn the art of Psycho-Betting to the extremest and be successful at it, fucking put in $100 in Bovada (remember to use money that you can afford to lose) and get that fucking bonus for the purpose of looting the bookies in a successful vengeance scheme. This guy is a fucking Artillery: https://twitter.com/GoTimeCappers.
Fucking hit more than 4x30U grand slams yesterday and some 10-20U cherries on top. I tailed his free picks and other through consultation [Haha fucking reddit/sportsbook will probably ban me for promoting another tout, :)].Of course with my $1.5U size on a crippled bank roll, I cannot grow it to as much as I wanted to using GoTime's techniques. I would have been at another +$400 if I had $6 units. It's a high risk and high reward system, but if you are confident with your picks you go big on it. If you lose it, then you grind back with smaller 10U and 20U bets to try to get back to part to be able to do another 30U bet. The goal is to be like 2-1, 3-0 on 30U grand slams a day. There is some level of sustainability and back up plans to execute in case the 30U bet did not work out. It is very improbable for you to lose 10 in a row on well researched picks that the experts in the community have common agreement on. A lot of the times, the lines shift to reward you less for the pick since big money is already on the pick.
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!!!!!DISCLAIMER: DO NOT READ BEYOND HERE IF YOU HATE MATH OR HAVE AN IQ OF < 89!!!!!
Use the chart on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification
Here is a Nice Calculation to do:
📚📑💻Stats 301 Question in Degenalytics💻📑📚**:**
Lastly I asked anyone in the past few days to do a Stats 301 question with Degenalytics Context: To fucking determine the probability that an avg Joe with a $100+100 Bonus Bank-roll or $500 + 250B bank roll can actually pull off the $3000/$7500 grind in some number of N months betting with supposedly 2 full months of real sports (N-2) getting Obliterated by COVID-19. I want you to give me an analytical calculation or a simulation of your work and give me all the possible scenarios.
Then give the final verdict of if that number converges to 0.000% or 100.00% that the average Joe would succeed his false-hope mission for a successful rollover.
In other words think of it like this: If the average joe bets his entire bank roll 12 or more times (roll-over is not x10 because of bookie juice), what is the probability that he will still end up in the green? Also assign a tilt probability factor that the Average Joe would go on some emotional tilt spree to end up bust again? And make it even harder by eliminating 2-3 full months of real sports (N-2.5) and having to bet on Bovada's limited shitty ass lines and shitty live odds.
If you fucking want to eliminate the -2.5 months, then allow the average joe the freedom to bet on N months of e-sports [hahah] and see where that goes.
I had a bad experience betting on e-sports for 2 months and only end up -15-20U. I'm not saying that I lost because I suck at e-sports betting or I tailed the wrong people. The Bovada lines are super shitty and limited. Most of the time, on live esports, all you see are dashed out lines as if they fucking know what the rigged result is and prevent people from doing hedge bets or try to bet opposite spreads when they are winning to guarantee an insurance 1-1 with minimal damage incurred to their bank-roll. The live betting experience on e-sports on the Bovada platform is so bad that you are guaranteed to lose in the long run. Fucking hell Bodog/Bovada even offered me a $250 deposit on 100% bonus after the Rudy Gobert day in Mid March. They advertised the joys and wonders of getting rich betting off esports.
I was so tempted to deposit, however I kind of over-slept and missed out on the dead-line so they closed the bonus offer. Pretty good relief that I did not fuck-up my real credit card and bank account by falling for that scam again. It was an accidental Grace of God moment to fucking avoid that E-sports deposit marketing scam.
BONUS Questions:
A: Calculate the number of months needed and number of successful bets required for the conservative degen 1u bettor to grind out the roll-over playing
$2.00 tug of war with the bookie.
B: Calculate the odds that a professional capper who knows how to adjust unit sizes (1u-5u), do parlays once a while, will succeed the roll-over in some
N-2.5 months or add some e-sports to have fun to keep the N factor.
C.1: Calculate the conditional probabilities for the bettor succeeding in the mission if on the first few days of betting:
i) He loses bet 1 for about $20.
ii) Wins bet 1 for about $20 to earn $17.5.
iii) Goes on a 3 game losing streak
iv) 5 game losing streak
v) Positivity case: The guy got lucky and nearly doubled his bank roll on a decent run from day. Up +100U or $200. [I'm sure that out of bad discipline the average Joe would still go -200U in the long run with a pretty high probability.]
C.2: Determine the mathematical scheme on how the Bookies can use your first few losses to eventually put you in a 60+:40- (Greater than 60% locked in bonus, less than 40% of your deposited money). Bonus:Locked funds ratio.
The Jinx-King answer: It converges to zero [hahaha], but I really am interested in know what other scenarios math and stats people have come up. And your mathematical approaches and formulae used to generate possible scenarios and probabilities. But I think it is safe to say that for the average Joe,the answer is 0.00% success rate. Bodog/Bovada knows this exactly and refuses to put a hiatus on the roll-over deadline. Instead they keep it going so that people can try to wager on e-sports and lose their entire bank roll. They are only interested it getting 100% of your locked funds so that they can buy expensive cruises, yachts, beach mansions, resort packages, etc in Aruba or some other tropical place. Where you got millions of desperate Americans, Canadians in struggling economies with lost jobs and zero positive cash-flow. About 10% or so or perhaps even more deposit money into off-shore gambling websites hoping they can roll-over their bank-roll some ridiculous number of times and make a few bucks to put food on the table.
In fact, it makes matters worst being jobless, having zero cash flow and having locked funds in scamming bookies. If you are not good at casino or sports-betting games, you would have:
A: Lose your entire deposit for failing to grind it out properly.
B: Not grind it out on time on whatever dead-line the roll-over was.
C: Even if you did successfully grind that shit out using conservative 1u betting and play $2 tug of war with the bookie, you will end up just wasting your time grinding it out for hours and hours on end. It would have been better for you to fucking find a job at some farm helping out with harvesting crops or work in meat plants so that food does not go to waste. I bet you I can make more money than your $2 tug of war in one a day picking off cans and bottles off the streets in some exercise walking/running/biking + collection routine then selling it to the recycling center for $0.05-0.25 a unit. Trust me at my university, I spot maybe about 50-200 empty/partially driven cans and bottles left on desks, lecture halls, the floor, libraries, work areas, etc. Supposed that I harvested that shit, I would be making $5-$20 a day collecting it all and going to the recycling center once every week.
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⚖Conclusions⚖:
The fucking company knows this COVID-19 closure shit and want to use it to their advantage to continue to rob millions of their customers. Last week, I tried to call customer service, chat help, email, etc. and management has spoken to plead my case to delay the roll-over dead-line in a pro-rated time frame so that customers with locked balances can resume betting with their full balance when Game 1 of any Major League Sport actually returns. They give me the same bull-shit over and over saying they decline my request. For what reason?

1. The terms and conditions written in fine print for accepting the bonus conversion challenge. "Rules are Rules."
2. They were aware my deadline of June 22 at 19:23 ET was approaching soon. They knew I was on a mission to salvage my bank roll before they yank out the 60-75U trapped in bonus balances (i.e. Ghost money). By the end of it, I realize I made a foolish mistake. Most of my wins were just from bonus money and I was rewarded $0.00 on righteous wins on expired bonuses.

Therefore Bonus money only earns bonus money which put my entire bank-roll in a 80:20 ratio where the bookies control 80U in ghost money. By the end of the roll-over deadline, they get to yank out 80U of my balance at the deadline and left me with about $100 (20U) bank roll to regrind.

1. They knew I was winning consistently making solid picks.

During my 110 hour marathon over the brutal grind of losing more than 70 hours of work, leisure and recreation; 35 hours of sleep; to a fucking impossible grind of trying to roll over some 60% of $7500 on sports I have little knowledge of capping (i.e. E-sports, Table Tennis, European football) after a few days of studying the game, I was picking up my stride to grind it to 91%. They fucking knew that if I had another day to grind, they would be coughing up +$600-800 of withdrawable balance to my account.
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Bio:😎📚🎓👨‍🎓
I am a Fucking PHD Candidate (2-6 months from graduating and not having to pay another round of BS tuition) who does a shitload of mathematics, statistics, simulations, mathematical physics, wrote scientific papers. I've won T.A. Awards, Government/Provincial/Institutional level scholarships, Conference presentations, with even Undergrad honors back in the day. DM me if you need a fucking CV to prove my fucking credentials.
Why am I able to write a lot of shit? Because my fucking brain operates on some max level Intel Xeon chip on overclock mode and I cannot do much to shut it down other than going to sleep. They only way is to write articles that I think might benefit the community.
I have a crazy interest in sports and Degen'ing. I love to fucking put action on sports games, be proud about making the correct calls on the outcome of games before it happens, and then boast to my circle of competitive friends about who's the fucking Boss. As tabboo as society think us degens are, I think this absolute BS. There is a pure enjoyment in watching sports and having action on it. It is nice to get paid beer money to cover a round for your buddies, or earn that rent money over a successful night of betting on shit you actually enjoy watching. Fuck I rather make $300 for one evening of enjoying sports rather than working a 9-5 dull job to try to afford rent/mortgage. If I can fucking pay off all my monthly expenses in 3 fucking successful nights of 3 hr sessions of sports matches, that would be ideal. I would take the lather over a 9-5 rat-race grind.
Overall I am "PRO" in the debate for local single sports betting bookies to be established in Canada. Get these fucking scamming off-shore books like bodog/Bovada who contribute only contribute "Bagel" to the Canadian Economy, but instead make it worst by scamming the masses of hard working or desperate people to leak out some sum of billions of dollars of national GDP. Probably the same applies to all American States, that people should not have to cough up their hard earned $$$$ to off-shore scamming bookies. I shall write an article about this later to justify my arguments later.
Ultimately I my goal is to obliterate or negate the influence of all the cons, scamming bookies, and false touts out there who are just interested in stealing people's $$$. To write out full studies on exposing their schemes in an objective lens.
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Calling me out: (Think I cannot track these pussy downvotes? I know you cowards 😂😜😎)
If you think I'm full of BS, then send me a personal DM to have a 1v1 argument the same way that Stephen A debates sports with Max Kellerman. You can downvote me or flame me with empty hate talk all you want on public threads. But don't be a fucky pussy by avoiding a debate with me. Trust me, I'm going to win and be the last one to state a real point that you will have no comeback for [haha]. Lastly, if you are open to discuss or debate with me about some issues, do some resarch/exploration, betting strategies, etc., I would love your collaboration in some projects I got going on.
Ultimately, I should help every honest worker strive towards Degen success or if not, just to purely enjoy putting action on sports games. If you are too full of yourself, then you are on your own, I bid thee adieu, and wish you all the best. However you will be absolutely declined to all services and counsel I work to provide to friends for free.
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Social Media📺🎬
Some extra Resource to how I got to this point in my mission.
Here it is for starters:
June 23, 2020: The Impossible Pursuit Reddit/sportsbook/Brag and Bitch (Tuesday)
June 24, 2020: Doubling Bank roll and rewarded Bagel: Reddit/sportsbook/Brag and Bitch (Wednesday)
June 24, 2020: How can you win 5 in a row and lose it all simultaneously? Reddit/sportsbook/What is your most impressive win?
Full Twiiter: https://twitter.com/jinxking0p5
All my media: https://twitter.com/jinxking0p5/media
Discord: ????? To be solved.
Challenges: Got a few right in progress now and a couple of drafts I am working on.
The Jinxking Crusade (In progress): https://twitter.com/jinxking0p5/status/1275516258822131714?s=20
Turns out many people cannot withdraw anything out of Bovada/bodog due to some website glitches. Will try to recover a bankroll to attempt a withdrawal, however I am likely to have the same issues too. They will make some lame excuse to not give me a cheque. Definitely no point of pursuing anything in bovada/bodog if they refuse to give you withdrawables. The goal is to get their website off outta here. As well as get them out of advertisements. They definitely pulled off some "Get the fucking money and run scheme" and you will likely not see your money again. GG
The Jinxking Challenge (In progress): https://twitter.com/jinxking0p5/status/1275661929940467713?s=20
Want to expose a bad tout who over prices the service and has a mediocre record? Tail and fade to call their their BS or mediocre non profiting record out. Also good for finding legitimate winners too. This will be a mission to expose shitty touts on Twitter the way Penn & Teller exposes BS in the market.

Catch the full episode: https://www.wealthformula.com/podcast/218-resilience-of-apartment-investments-during-the-pandemic-dante-andrade/
Buck: Welcome back to the show everyone. Today my guest on Wealth Formula Podcast, well he's been on the show before. He is a partner of mine actually. His name is Dante Andrade and Dante is based in Dallas Texas and he is a pretty prolific real estate broker commercial broker dealing with multifamily apartment buildings, larger acquisitions, has done over a billion dollars in transactions, has been in the game over there for some time, he’s also an owner and you know a lot of units, he’s an asset manager and most recently he and I actually have a partnership that we formed called Touro where we had acquired a couple of large apartment buildings in Dallas over the last six months which we'll talk about in a little bit but I invited Dante to come on the show because I think you know a lot of people are still very very curious of what's going on in this world of multifamily and you know we had Ken McElroy on the show last week and he certainly had his vision of what's going on, what's gonna happen. Of course, Kenny's perspective is also probably a little bit different in that he focuses on A class apartment buildings, new construction, things like that. So you know there's different perspectives, there's different views from the ground and for that reason, I would like to reintroduce you to my friend colleague and expert in the apartment building space Dante Andrade. Welcome back.
Dante: Thank you for the opportunity and for the amazing introduction. Glad to be here talking to you again and talking to your audience about multifamily. It’s something that I was so passionate and we as made us a ton of money and we plan to continue that way.
Buck: Yeah you know it's interesting because we live in this is certainly the strangest period of time I've ever lived through and you know you and I have talked about a whole lot of you know crazy, crazy things that are happening you know to people you know not only in finance but in every way possible. And so things are so unpredictable right now and I think people are looking for answers. I think answers are tough to get. The future is very difficult to predict you know and so the best thing that we can do right now is to get a lot of different perspective of what's actually unfolding before our eyes and as a broker in multifamily and as an asset manager general partner in several deals limited partner as well, you have got sort of a first-row view as do I on what's going on, especially in Dallas Texas. So tell me let's start with this. I know you don't have necessarily a national perspective let's focus on Dallas and you know whatever national numbers you may know about. What today has been the net result of this entire Covid assault on multifamily?
Dante: Well it's a great question back and you know even though most of my investments are in Texas and some other states but I do keep up with the national trends and what's happening all around and I gotta be honest. Back in March when all this was starting and I remember us having the discussions and I'm asking about you your medical perspective and I have family that's in you know in really highly affected areas in the medical field there were fitting this information and constant reading of the news I did lose a few nights of sleep back in March thinking okay this is no one's gonna pay rent this is gonna be really bad and I have about 80 percent of my net worth is in multifamily. So you know when I have people investing with me I want to know that we are fully committed so I lose a few nights of sleep and woke up in the middle of the night okay we're gonna start from scratch.
Buck: Yeah because I remember Dante that before this whole started you had a big head of hair.
Dante: And then it all just went away, had nothing to do over the years when that happened. But then it was very surprising when this came. So for Texas the lockdown came second week of March and we had already collected you know a big portion of the ransom people continue paying but April was the big deal right no one is gonna pay in April. Well April came and everybody paid right and then May became the big deal and it happened again in our in June. So I've you know and I've turned down turned off the news completely and I'm focusing on the data and on the day to day and what’s actually wrapped with operations those maybe first or second week of a little bit of news influenced panic. We kind of did not follow the strategy that a lot of operators are following as far as the bad web component and rehabs and how to manage the properties and you know in my goal has been I'm gonna close monitor the numbers and I'm gonna make adjustments at the numbers as the data is telling me to operate right, not on future data and I feel like you know copy here your past career buck but a little bit as a physician. Physician doesn't think what's gonna happen in the future most of the time is reading the data that the patients are providing at the moment right there running labs every single day, they are you know adjusting the medication, adjusting the respirator on a to hourly basis based on the data that they're getting back from the patients. So that's the approach that I've been taking with our property and it has been extremely successful.
Buck: Let’s back up though like in terms of I mean what do you know about say rent collections at the national level what's going on?
Dante: I have I gather some numbers so let's look at 2019. So looking at the national multi-family housing console data this is about eleven and a half million apartment units reporting all over the US and April 2019 we had ninety-seven point seven collections meaning out of the hundred percent possible that could be collected 97.7 was collected. So really really high number this is overall all classes ABCs all over the country right may of two thousand nineteen ninety-six point six. Now if you compare this data now to 2020 a year later we're looking at April we had ninety-four point six. So you're looking at a three points drop in the collections between April last year to this year. And then if you look at me 95.1 comparing to ninety six point six so now we may were looking at one-and-a-half exactly drop in the collections. Now this is across all these spaces all the different multifamily areas.
Buck: All the markets, right? And then we're also talking about ABC and D
Dante: ABC's prelease, you know this is eleven point five million apartment units all over the US reporting. So 95.1% collection collected for the month of May. This is a very very strong year and if you compare this to other industries with where their collections went, we are you know at the forefront I think maybe behind Amazon and Walmart, I would say single is probably the next one in line that is you know just doing really well.
Buck: One of the things that you know Ken and I talked about on the last show wise you know right now you know we chose Texas and Arizona and some of these other red states you know because their landlord-friendly and because the politics make it easier to run a business and that sort of thing but you know I look at those numbers right now and you know even the 3% drop from April 19 to 20 or then a 1.5 to May and 19 to 20 and I'm thinking gosh I bet a lot of that's happening in like California and New York where it's you know these guys are getting hammered. I mean I have investors you know we have investors you and me but you know certainly other people in our group that are based in California that are particularly wondering what's going on because the climate out here is very much well you hear about rent strikes and all that kind of thing. For perspective, what do you know about you know Texas what do you know about what's going on in Texas in particular?
Dante: If you narrow down to Texas you know with the submarket aspect of it. Look at Texas over all those numbers are about a point I have to two points higher than the national level and I got a really good source. So we use a third-party management company Wayne and multi-family they have about 25,000 units that they manage themselves between Texas in a little bit in Oklahoma so and I asked for their numbers and they are mainly on the B and C space and I talked to the CEO this morning just kind of like given the updated data where we are so they've always been operating between 96 and 97 percent collections. This is very normal on the C space you always have skips and evictions you know we didn't look for demographics that not everybody always says so it's to be a 97% it's you know it's a win. And now they are April they had collections of 93 and a half percent. And for May there were ninety two point three in our junior collecting about the same as they did for me so they should be about 93 percent.
Buck: And was last year then?
Dante: Last year did about 96 or 97 percent comparing those numbers.
Buck: Okay so they're above four or five percent down, so that that's actually pretty you know significant and in line not too different from national numbers. That actually surprised me. Although we heard they do have they do have a lot of property in Oklahoma as well which I remember you and I talking and I said we are not going into Oklahoma.
Dante: And that was the right call about five years ago. So those yeah go ahead so those numbers and then looking now if you break down the portfolio here of 25,000 units they're looking with a lot of properties there were sixty seventy percent occupancy right and you're looking at properties that were 100 percent occupied like ours. So they are specifically on the C value ad space turning a lot of C’s to B’c or just improving the C's and those are very, very strong numbers you know as far as collections go across the board. Now if you know and I think the success of I mean we have a lot of properties on oil and we have some progress they are hurting fortunately not in our portfolio and I think it all has to do with asset location and operation operations. In the city of Dallas you know in the Metroplex there are areas they're gonna always outperform in there are areas they're you know maybe the operator can look at all the risk/reward here is excellent and you know which something happens on in the founder or not we're experiencing right now this prop is a software so I do know a properties they are filing for forbearance from the from the for the lenders you know which is not you know it's so we can get into that but it's really a poison pill to get into forbearance right now you gotta you know try to stay away from that as much as you can and at the same time we have assets they are you know that they're struggling but they were already not doing really well before this happened this is just exacerbating the problem.
Buck: Well I think that's the key right because there is a difference between operators there is a difference between how you run a property just like any business right. As you know we have you know a few different groups that we have well at least one we have one other group that I do multifamily with and is a partnership we actually look at the same type of property as I do when I'm with them but we do very different things with them. Both groups are doing extremely well but the business models are completely different. Now, on the other hand, you can have a model that you know is the same or whatever with us but they're not executing and therefore it's not just about the asset it's about the people and the execution and that's what we're starting to see we're trying you know I guess the old saying about you know the water kind of going out and seeing who's swimming naked and then that's kind of what we're seeing right now. If people were struggling and not cash flowing be our you know at least being cashflow positive at the asset level beforehand then they are going to get especially hurt now. But tell me a little bit about those specifically because people are asking all the time are you seeing distressed properties? Is there distress out there that you're seeing, what are you seeing right now, is it starting to unfold, are you just seeing like there's just too many you know too much protection for that to happen for these people, etc right now?
Dante: So in that back in March when this was always starting there was one of the you know the the theme talked about within the groups and a lot of other operators oh we gotta have distress is we're gonna be able to pick this up you know and 50 cents on the dollar anyone that sitting on cash is gonna be great and I felt really good both me and you were sitting in good cash position and ready to take advantage of the opportunities, they are nowhere to be found really. I mean I can count two properties out of everything that I tracked in the Dallas, Fort Worth area they are actually struggling and they're looking for offers and still, the offers don’t make sense. Nothing over huge discount looking at you know a 10% discount even though the proper is not cash flowing. So no the opportunities are not here you know I'm gonna try to not project what's happening in the future because it's a very uncertain time it's about. Deep inside I do not feel they're gonna come yeah and there are different reasons for that. There is a lot of cash in equity looking to be multifamily and even if this is happening in some other asset classes are not performing as well people are all even people that were not awaken to most like family before now they're looking wow I got a movie to that asset so that's causing you know a couple of the deals that were listed during this period of time only two deals I can say was officially listed in the DFW market and I walked closely with the listing brokers on those assets and they had more offers than they expected. The ratio of offers to property tours were huge and they got the asking prices on both assets.
Buck: So I want to try to peel this apart because there's a reason for this isn't this is really important it mean in order to do that, start by so you know you and I obviously we have Touro we have two fairly large transactions in the last six you know six to eight months or whatever now I keep saying six months but that was in March year ago now right so we had to within six months and then we just kind of and then we kind of you know we ran into some of these things so we’ve not bought anything but talk about you know and you and I both aside from our partnership have a lot of units but let's focus on these two. Talk about the performance since March specifically in this because I want to break this down and help people understand you know how this impacts the market as a whole.
Dante: Yeah so I want to start with Sedona Ranch so that's the two hundred fifty-three units 1972 construction that we acquired July 31st of 2019 all right. So the property was very stable and pretty much 97% occupied when we took over. We did have a big value-add plan of upgrading about 200 of the units and increasing performer rents. So that has been successful from day one the proper has been cash flowing, would pay distribution street investors on time and ahead of what was expected percentage-wise and we had record collections, I mean the top number we've had on all three March April in May. And if I look at the main collection comparing to February it was actually a whole two percent higher. So every month even during the lockdown in Covid, we are increased in the income we’re having move-ins, we've been churning the units, we've been upgrading the units and that's one of the aspects that I mentioned to you there are a lot of operators right off the bat say no more upgrades, no more you know I'm gonna stop putting money into the property. Our business plan we already had the money separator for that right so we had that money reserved to make the investors this is not coming out of cashflow not of the investors expense so I decided to continue doing that and monitor what kind of rents are we getting. Are we hitting proforma and in a few units we actually bumped the rents a little bit because there was such a high demand and we ended up getting those record collections for March, April and May at Sedona and right now as of this morning I checked and we are in 98 percent collected comparing to the June to the main number and you spoke with my manager and we still have about another seven thousand that we're gonna collect so we are gonna wrap with another record month here by next week for the month of June.
Buck: And then the other one was you know we were not as far along and turning around but it's also performing extremely well.
Dante: Yes two hundred fifty-nine units in Irving Texas performing really well and I would say that one is day one initially when all the bad news was around you know we acquired in January so February you know we're really pushing to implement our business plan and we're pushing for higher vacancies. So we were caught with about 18 vacant units when the lockdown happened you know it may be that that's the one that caused me to lose a little bit of sleep ove. So we had 18 vacant units is like great no one is gonna tour no one's gonna show up you know these are gonna be empty for a while but just kept monitoring the data and instead of just stopping the rehab plan, what we did we brought an extra person to walk on the rehab. So instead of pulling back it's like no actually gonna put in a little bit more money here, got an extra person we usually operate with three people outside we have four people up to the stay to make sure all those units were turned in time and what happened is traffic still came in it was to tour we type in a brand new website and we had pictures and people looked and we leased so it's a number that really surprised me the month of April we leased 13 units all of them at proforma rates, not a single concession not a single discount. And since March would be able to lease 25 units at that property, all of them a proforma and I mentioned a couple weeks ago one of the units part of our plan was to turn some of the very large two bedrooms into three bedrooms just because there is a high demand on the market we decided to bar the rents from that three-bedroom because they were flying off the shelf if I can say that and we decided to increase another hundred dollars I just thought my manager let's just try to see what happens by the next day in the afternoon she called me and said hey Dante, we already leased that unit full deposit qualified tenants.
Buck: Yeah so the bottom line is I think there's so there's what I was getting at here is okay well I'm sure Dante and I like to brag but there's no question about that but there's something I want there's a tape there's a couple of takeaways here. On top of that we have benefited a little bit and additionally, with some you know PPP money etc things like that to help that that have actually you know potentially even helped drive up or net operating income, that's happened with a lot of businesses much less real estate. So what net end result of this as I'm seeing it and you know from Dante and my perspective is that the strong operators are getting stronger because the need for housing is there. People in at least in markets where you know there's not rent strikes and that kind of thing, they need to pay for food, they need to pay the rent and they understand that, they need a place to live and that demand has not changed. So the demand has not changed and we have therefore continued with our value-add plan it's working and here's the thing, now if you're a bad operator in this space or you're not doing very well you're not performing because the good operators are performing and their assets are really shining and showing a significant hedge against what's happening you know in the economy as a whole. All of a sudden people are looking at these properties that are not performing well and saying well gosh I mean maybe we can you know these things are worth a lot more I mean look at how everybody else is performing here. So in effect the poor operators are not having to sell their properties at distress because the asset class and specifically the sub asset class is showing such durability during this time that people are just interested in it. And so that's one of the big reasons that the people who have not been actually performing well and who've got these properties that they've just not done a good job with might actually come out ahead here because now they have a reason to point to with their investors and then they actually have buyers who are saying well gosh look it, this is like that such a terrible time we can still come in here and make money. We just have to you know buy this from the you know software engineer who thought he was gonna do this with this full-time job and you know brought along a hundred of his friends for the ride you know. But your comments on that?
Dante: Oh hundred percent that's a very valid point people are looking at the performance at their own property and I'm doing that myself for like looking the performance of my own properties in that's with those lenses with those set of eyes I'm looking at possible opportunities which they're not a whole lot of them right now but yeah operators are not you know and I can give you examples and stories or you know operators doing asset management from overseas without visiting the property over here you know those are the kind of are struggling right now but the people are walking and looking at the performance so they actually ignoring how the property is performing at the moment and they're still coming out in bidding. So the expectation that there will be a lot of discounted properties you know it's not happening and that's most likely one of the big reasons just because if everybody else is performing in there one is not I can fix that right and usually especially if you're already you know in this space and you have an operation in a teeny place that you believe that you can deliver those.
Buck: So the moral of the story here and let me simplify this because this is an important point this doesn't this doesn't actually go against the idea that there would potentially be defaults and poor performing properties and distressed properties, but because there's sort of this you know binary landscape where you have some who are doing extremely well and then just a handful that are doing badly the ones that are doing badly are actually not going to probably end up having to sell at a discount they'll end up selling probably as much if not more than they did before.
Dante: Correct 100 percent and you know in the properties are performing well when you touch it on the PPP and I haven't even broken the news story investors yet.
Buck: Well you could say you could save that for the newsletter.
Dante: Yeah they're gonna hear this on the podcast first but yeah we were not counting on PPP and actually it came through and you know and we’re taking it well you know the rules keep changing on how much it's gonna be forgiven I think most of it will be forgiven and we'll keeping that on the balance sheet as of that but this is just an added bonus really because the properties will perform well even without it. Wut then one is just going to be an extra bonus and an extra cushion you know two different things that we could do at the property.
Buck: And it keeps us safe you know because at the end of the day here's the thing is that you know Dante and I talked about distributions etc things like that but I still am not comfortable doing that because even though these properties are making money it's better just to keep it in the account you know wait for this stupid vaccine to get here for this problem to become a thing of the past rather than going and put yourself in a position where you're not capitalized.
Dante: Yeah and I've got this question a lot when people ask me okay why you know especially if they're not in this space why are people still paying rent right and the media was trying to push all the rent strikes gonna be across the country and that does exist in some more of the eastern and western you know areas of the country but it also may be a different demographics right a different asset classes you're looking at the A class you know in people that have been unemployed but a few of the reasons that this purpose of be performing so well not only you know just the market overall was so strong the tenants are working. People are doing a lot of overtime we have a lot of tenants that are working warehouse jobs and cleaning landscaping construction health care and they are working and I've talked to you know the manager always trying to keep opposed what's happening at the ground level of the property and they actually doing overtime working seven days a week at Amazon and Walmart warehouses. And there is a lot of job mobility you know.
Buck: That's right and you know the other thing about when you're in sort of the working class that we're in you know a lot of these people are you know do a lot of cash work too and you know so maybe they're getting unemployment now and then on top of that they're getting cash and hey listen it is what it is right but they're working they’re making money and culturally you know from the standpoint of where they live in the submarket etc it is in cross their mind that they shouldn't actually pay to live.
Dante: Correct and we and we also made that message very clear at the beginning in a nice and gentle way right and I know some operators at the beginning say you must pay rent and end up in the TV news and they ended up on TV. Definitely not the kind of publicity we want.
We did deliver the same message but with a different situation say hey if you've been affected come talk to us we'll walk with you. And we have avoided all late fees we have no charge any late fees over the past three months. We understand it is a challenging situation for many and we want to walk with you. We also put together a whole list of resources a lot of nonprofits and differ entities that would be helping tenants you know in the city of Dallas pass the legislation. They want we register free and we share with all the ten and say hey if you need help here are all the resources will help you fill out the paperwork if you need you know our managers in the office to help you do that and we'll walk with you come and talk to us no one's gonna be out on the street we’re going to void all eight fees and we also offer incentives for people there war paint on time just kind of an added bonus right since we were giving something for those that were struggling with it so I think those big part of it and at the same time people are be able even though they were laid off you know we had some ten and said the hospitality industry like hotels they were able to land something else really quick. There is a lot of job mobility at the working-class way more than there is you know in the mid-upper classes well you know if you lose your job it's gonna be a six-month process of finding something else.
Buck: Let me ask you this do you I mean I know you know some people I don't know if you know many people in the A space over there or not but are there their stare stories any different?
Dante: o not very different I do have some colleagues in the A space and then some developers that I you know get together and brainstorm and people pay you know people paying rents. What we are noticing is just maybe the traffic and the velocity of the lease-up you know when I talk to someone that was halfway through a new build here in the lease-up. The LA City decreased a lot so people it'll be more Cash's you know cautious it's like instead of going to this you know $2,500 a month rent here at the penthouse problem gonna do the 1,800 nice B class. So definitely people there in the units they're still paying rents the collections are really strong also but the velocity on the lease-up that's what has been you know just the traffic and getting those units filled up has been a challenge.
Buck: Ken was talking about that. Ken McElroy but that's again you know one of the differences is we actually have not seen a decrease in velocity you know and again I think it has very much to do with you know the idea that you know all real estate is fundamentally you know it's not all the same right, of course, we know that office and commercial and retail are not the same as residential but we also need to understand that there's a significant difference in demographics, there's a significant difference between you know A class and B class and C class and we also need to understand that from one market to another, the laws the cost of living the living index all of these things come into play significantly and you know we've certainly planned for some of these based on you know larger economic things but sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart.
Dante: Yeah 100%. The big items is also looking how the demographic that your clients are your tenants are how do they make decisions right understanding at a very ground level how are they making the decisions where their money coming from and how are they applying those sources. Believe it or not right after that six hundred government bailout came out there were a lot of large screen TV boxes in the dusters in the property. So that kind of decision-making in you know in feeding off their learning from that and I just seen operations in adjusting your marketing to fit you know your clientele plays a big part.
Buck: Okay so we've talked about and and in the point of this discussion was to look at a point in time right because we have, I have you know in the discussion with Ken last week you said we have we've been constantly talking about all right you know there's this thing that happened and now there's gonna be this you know the tsunami of trouble, The thing that like it's that seems to me is particularly if there's not a huge second wave if there ends up being a vaccine by Christmas which I think is seriously possible we may not have it may not be as severe as everyone thinks it is and that in itself is sort of danger right danger of being overly cautious or whatever but what do you see happening? I mean right now things are looking really good right but that doesn't mean they're gonna be you know it doesn't mean we think that there's nothing that can change what do you worry about?
Dante: Really just on their worries are more just on the acquisition side with the right bazaar all requisitions is based on a lot of amounts from debts from the agencies and they became really conservative right off the bat. So my brokerage business came to a halt you know in March and it's taken a while a knife and that's not just me but everybody that's in the business you know volume transaction is really low. As far as the properties itself in operations and people payment even if we have a ripple effect here down the road, we have already looking at data and like I said I like to monitor the data what's coming out of the data you know day to day week to week month to month basis and really comparing to last year which was a great time in the economy. House sales so looking now coming down to to our market here to Texas and you know and what I'm talking about in Texas applies to Arizona to Florida to Georgia to several of these states where we have a lot of migration from businesses leaving New York to live in California heading to those states in people questioning now now they're walking from home became a reality for a lot of businesses, people are questioning why do I need to stay living in New York if I can come down to Texas or Arizona or Florida you know and have a cost of living that's gonna be a third of what I'm spending out of the same salary. So that's a trained not only corporations are moving our way but also people themselves even if their company's not moving they're having the flexibility and the mobility to just work from anywhere, I think that's gonna be part of a new reality. So in the multi-family space, I do not have a lot of worries about that gifts anything people actually gonna be spending more time at home and also house sales have been dropping right so a lot of the bridge loans a lot of the riskier loans with lower down payments those went away. So a lot of the beginner homebuyers that could be buying houses with a little riskier loans those ones went away so what do they do if you cannot buy a house why are you gonna stay right on your partner right if you have any kind of uncertainty and you don't feel good about the house for the next three to five years what are you gonna do you're gonna continue rest you may stay on your same apartment may move to an apartment but we have Texas existing home sales dropped about 32% year over year and this is on top of a 22 percent slide that we have for the month of April. So this is overall Texas you know and it's a very different story between Houston and Dallas in El Paso in Dallas completely different markets but overall you know we had a big decline on single-family sales which does the only thing that can happens with that is increased demand for apartment complexes which experience you might now and I forgot to mention Sedona is 100% occupied has been like that for the past 45 days.
Buck: That was our first acquisition for people who are wondering
Dante: My other properties are a hundred percent occupied. I have a lander inspection on Thursday and I don't have any single units to show the lander and you know it's a reality of people there war ready to buy a house now their loan went away they're renting longer so I don't see that changing and also it's really going back in the stress that since the property let's say that we do have high unemployment and we do have the repo effects that we've talked about it and things are be affected okay what if we have another five percent decrease what another 10 percent decrease this is one of the interest is performing the best we're still gonna fare much better than having the money in other vehicles and it's gonna be temporary.
Buck: Yeah and to that point too as long as you know we are in a cash flow positive position continuing to do very well I mean it's if we sort of just don't really care what the value of the property necessarily is going to be actually as you mentioned we right now would probably end up you know with a price if we were sellers that was not too different from what we would ordinarily get but even if it did go down you know being in a strong position where you don't have to sell is really key in general to you know because I was thinking about you know one of the things maybe going on out on there and I haven't heard anything about it but you know there are these larger institutional investors that are mandated to sell at a certain time etc and you know it did cross my mind that if it was more challenging to get the debt that that might somehow you know reduce the sale price on those properties but it doesn't seem like that's happened either so.
Dante: No not at all and I think the only the only people that would be caught right now is if you had a loan if you had a bridge loan that it was expiring so all the bridge lenders pretty much went away no one is doing business and many times when you do a bridge loan you do two years plus to renew so you do three years plus two years renews one year at a time it's that time to renew they may go away and they force you to sell the property but going back to a point they may still get at that price just like how much equity and demand still there is and the properties you know are performing well.
Buck: And all of this is not to say that the tsunami is definitely not coming. It may be the case that there again there is a certain market certain asset classes certain sub asset classes and demographic areas that are going to get hit hard and then others may not. We're already seeing that phenomenon in the economy already where is you know ecommerce is doing extremely well whereas other businesses service businesses vacation stuff like that really got hurt I mean if you were you know Dante you were at one point looking at some cruise stocks but you know there's gonna be some of that but there are other areas that are actually getting boosted by the fundamental changes that are occurring in society because of because of what's going on so who knows what's going to happen this is certainly not you know Dante's a very very positive here but it's just another perspective as we talked before the key is to learn from you know people who know what they're doing you heard from Ken last week you're hearing from Dante this week a slightly different perspective. No one is right or wrong until we look at it in the perspective of history right. So Dante went up again thank you for coming back on Wealth Formula Podcast of obviously folks if you're interested in learning more about Dante and what he does well you should probably just join the Investor Club because that's where Dante and I do our magic together right so all right Dante thanks again
Dante: Thank you for the opportunity and I look forward to working together and you know I feel like summer is gonna be still a little slow a lot of uncertainty but I'm excited about the third in the fourth quarter I think things are gonna you know I'm looking bright.
Buck: Yeah and I'll add to that I'm excited for the next you know seven, eight years after that because we have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the economy to slow down. Well it slowed down and I feel like we're finally got some runway and it's exciting to think about you know getting back into it and not feeling like you know the the Grim Reaper of the real estate cycles behind us so we'll be right back.

I know that the Iraqi Dinar is one of the most popular scams on the market out there but don't be too quick to dismiss it simply because of its unpopular opinion.
Let me clarify something, when they call the dinar a scam they are referring to dinar dealers that jack up the price of the dinar they are selling and essentially rip people off. The other scam that I've heard of that isn't quite as popular is that you send your money to a individual that as an Iraqi bank account, i.e. a Warka Account (yes you can get one of these as a U.S. citizen..I have one and I'm just your typical college student), and promises to give you your fair share post revaluation. The fact is with this one is that the individual has no responsibility to give you what you "earned" back. Not gonna go into the legal explanation of this but don't do it.
What I'm here to tell y'all about is that the Iraqi Dinar is a legitimate speculative investment IMO, let me tell you why. Pre Sadam era the dinar was worth about $3 and change. Its now worth $1=1166 dinars so it’s about a tenth of a penny. In the early 2000s the exchange rate was $1=3000 dinars so if you would have bought dinar back then you would have already almost tripled what you put into it, which is pretty good by itself.
Many people make fun of people who hold dinar because we are wait for a supposed revaluation (RV) of the currency that will make them instant millionaires. These naysayers simply scoff at the idea solely because this idea seems so far fetched but this process is happening as I type this. Iraq has 3 options on how they are going to do this: Revaluation (RV), Redenominating (RD) or a LOP. (its probs not gonna LOP based on current articles but anything is possible). I’ll explain what these are later.
Lets lay out the facts! What makes a currency worth anything? Well in a nutshell it’s a conglomeration of a lot of things and I’m no expert on this stuff, like I said just a college student (not even a business or economics major).
When the U.N. sanctioned Iraq in the Sadam-era Iraq had billions of dollars in foreign banks as well as assets that were frozen, as in Sadam couldn’t access them, but still have been gaining interest, essentially there like giant savings accounts. In the US alone they had 60 billion dollars that were frozen. Iraq has accounts like this in multiple countries such as China, Japan, Great Britain, and etc. So they literally have billions of dollars just sitting around the world gaining interest. Besides that they are constantly buying tons of foreign currency (most governments do this) especially U.S. dollars to help back up their currency, plus they have tons of gold bars.. recent article I read said the Kurdistan imported 34 TONS of gold and that’s only one part of the nation! 34 tons of Gold x 48,971,392.00 today’s going rate for a ton of gold and you get a grand total of 1,665,027, 328 dollars.. one “state” of iraq imported that.. I don’t know off hand how much they have as a total for their nation but you can bet that it’s a ton. (couldn’t resist)
Aside from this Iraq has an unbelievable amount of natural resources. The most obvious one is oil. Iraq has a huge supply of sweet crude oil (2nd largest in the world), which is the best type of oil you can find because it’s very easy to refine. Iraqi is currently pumping out about 3 million bpd and the International Energy Agency conservatively predicts this to double by 2020. Iraq’s current PM of Energy predicts that they could reach up to 10-11 million bpd, which would make them equal to the oil production of Russia (which is a hell of a lot bigger). Iraq is currently the 2nd largest oil producing country in OPEC. At the current rate they are pumping the oil they stand to gain a PROFIT of 100 billion dollars annual.. so lets say they merely double that in a century (being extremely pessimistic) that would be 200 billion dollars of profit annually from oil alone.
They also have massive amounts of gold and phosphates deposits that are untouched. In addition to this, the majority of Iraq is has not been surveyed for natural resources. This means aside from the resources that they already have (gold and phosphates in unprecedented amounts) they could have even more on top of that, including more oil. Also lets not forget that is Iraq is in part of the world called Fertile Crescent! I know when we think of Iraq we think of a desert but the potential for agriculture here is also very high. This at the moment would not increase the dinars value but would be calculated in when it comes to alternative drivers of Iraq’s economy. My point here being that Iraq has a ton of potential when it comes to natural resources, even outside of oil. Iraq has tons of potential in tourism as well due to the historical and religious importance of the region. Also the economy in Iraq has the potential to really take off.. I’ll go further into this a bit later.
I’m sure there is other factors the help bolster the value of the dinar as well that I’m omitting. (forgive me I’m writing this all off the top of my head) So in short, Iraq has the natural resources, gold and foreign currency reserves, and the added bonus of massive economic growth to bolster its economy.
This is where it gets GOOD! The CBI (Central Bank of Iraqi) has been pumping out articles about how its been reducing their money supply for years now… don’t quote me on this but I believe it was at 70 trillion and its down somewhere at around 30 trillion last I heard, but here’s the kicker the exchange rate never moved. (yes I know I said earlier that the exchange rate use to be 3000 and now its 1166 but this occurred before they were reducing the money supply) This is how I explained it to my mom.. for the sake of my illustration G = everything I just discussed that backs the dinar and D = Dinar… so lets say you’re the CBI and you have GGGG and DDDD so 1G=1D but lets say you’ve reduced the money supply by half. Now you have GGGG and DD so 2G=D so therefore 1D is worth more! The problem is that over in Iraq they did just that! They decreased the money supply but the exchange rate didn’t move which tells us that something’s up. I believe it’s called a dirty float…
One of the things they did to reduce the money supply was they flooded the streets with the USD, which the people were all for because in order to buy anything substantial you would have to literally have a suitcase full of money, because the dinar is so worthless at this point, toilet paper currency. This process allowed them to take a substantial amount of the big notes (25k and etc.) off the streets while simultaneously stabilizing the economy buy encouraging trade. So people would exchange their dinar for USD and use that for their everyday life. You may ask why didn’t they just use a debt card system. Two reasons, the first being that they are working towards that in the very near future but have difficulty doing it because up until recently (the last month) there would be mass blackouts for a number of reasons, in addition to not all parts of Iraq have electricity. The 2nd reason is that the younger generation (the vast majority of Iraq, average age is about 20) has no experience with such technology and is currently being educated about it and those old enough to live through Sadam and the war are very nervous when it comes to banks. Sadam and sons use to walk into a bank and empty it out taking peoples life savings, thus the old don’t trust banks. But back to the topic at hand… they flooded the streets with the USD to reduce the money supply and for the past couple of years have been working on now reducing the amount of USD in the market and are encouraging people to use the dinar, banks, and Qi Cards. They have already purchased the new ATM machines, installed them, and are only waiting to load them. In addition to this Qi Cards (debit cards) are being in slowly introduced to the general public but its slow going due to education, mistrust of banks, and up until recently a lack of infrastructure.