My best investment

Well, I have been thinking about buying some stocks in some companies that actually are really good companies with 2009 projections well beyond their current stock price, but I am conflicted about this. My other option is to take the money I was going to buy stocks with and instead invest it in my poker bankroll. Yes, my bankroll, specifically my online poker bankroll.

To some of you this may seem like a bad choice. For many, most people I would agree. The reason I can intelligently consider this is due to the fact that historically my best investment of money has been my poker playing. Yes, it is true. I have been playing with other people's money for quite some time now. I withdrew out my own money long, long ago.

Looking at my stats for the entire time I have played poker spanning about 3 years now with one year off, most of 2007, I have had a return on my investment playing 1 table sit and go tournamnets of 4.82% percent, which is not bad at all considering this is over my entire career of playing SNGs, some of which I played poorly early in my career. If you factor in every single tournament I have ever played it drops down to 0.79% percent, which is not great, but that includes Multi-Table tournaments where the variance is quite high. For instance, I have only played 4 $100 buy-in tournaments but my return on investment ROI is a whopping 62.24%. Of course, my bankroll(BR) does not support playing at that level at the moment.

If we focus on the period from 8/1/08 which is when I really started back to playing SNGs again, then you find that I have a ROI of 14.6% playing the level I am currently playing. Most people would take that type of ROI any time.

If I invested in myself I could play 2 levels higher than I currently play, and I could win significantly more when I do win. Coincidentally, this would be playing at the level I was playing at when I took a break from playing for a year. The stocks would be purchased for the long-term, so I would be planning on holding them until I retire which hopefully will be in about 16 years or so, so the gains could be nice given the fact these companies' stock is in the dumper right now. And I could continue to grow my BR and just play until it is the higher level without putting any more money in, which has been what I have usually done.