I looked into this a little more over a conversation at the casino, this is going to be long and I'm going to spoon feed the conversation, but trust me it's worth thinking about.

I had a long discussion with a PLO8 pro about this, one of the reasons he concentrates on PLO8 instead of NL TH'EM is that the requirements for PLO8 bank rolls are a fraction of NL TH'EM bank rolls, so he can keep more cash in the bank to earn interest and prevent himself from tilting with a 20 buy in bank roll at any time. The games and the number of buy ins in the bank roll aside, it makes a lot more sense to me now, because as long as you have the $ to operate at the limits and the # of tables you want/need to, why leave any money sitting around to do something stupid and/or nothing with as opposed to making it work for you? If you're going to bed, taking a day, a weekend or even a week off, why are you leaving your money on the skin or the E-Wallet?

My friend is an accounting lawyer by day, and she was showing me the legal accounting software from Thompson Elite called Pro Law. Pro Law has an automated feature, where at the end of the business day or on the weekend, the software would move all of the $ in the operating account into a short term interest account, earn interest, and then return the $ and the interest - rake on the interest into the operating account for the next business day or week. This is called sweeping, and the short term interest account is called a sweep account.

The important thing here is that the short term interest account isn't just a bank account, but an agreement between the business' operating account and the bank. When you're keeping your money in the bank, you have your money on hand at all times. Why do you need your money on hand when you "sleep?" The answer is that you don't need to. So instead of making the bank keep the money on hand, you tell the bank to put the money into a short term interest account, the bank gets a higher return on the $ since it doesn't have to keep the $ on hand, and then the bank takes it's rake off of the interest and then returns the $ plus the raked interest into your operating account in the morning or the next business week, when you "wake up."

There's no rake on the $ between the skin, the bank and the short term interest account, so as long as you aren't being raked by the E-Wallet every time you transfer funds, and even then it's a question of whether or not interest on $ > rake on $, you're losing money by not investing your money while you "sleep."

If you're keeping your money on your skin or E-Wallet, you're keeping it in an operating account that doesn't accrue any interest, and if you're just moving you're money from your skin or E-Wallet to your bank while you "sleep," you aren't earning as much interest as you could be.

I don't know how far you should take this, because for some of us its a diminimus return, but it's an important consideration as your bank roll gets bigger. She told me that a law firm that sweeps a million dollars a month makes an additional 10k more/less at the end of the month, and if you think of that money as accruing and compounding itself over time, that's a lot of additional income. The thing is, the firm can't even sweep all of its operating account into the sweep account, by law, but you can because you have no liability to your distributers, employees, customers etc.

So depending on the time between transferring funds and on the rake, you have to re-evaluate how you're using your bank roll. For me, there's no time in between depositing $ from my bank account into my skin, so it's senseless for me to have more $ on then the skin than I need for operating at the limit and the # tables I want. The rest of the bank roll is a "safety net" for variance, but it's also a second source of income we aren't earning if it's not on a table or in a bank. It's a third source of income we aren't earning if we aren't sweeping it at the end of the day.

As an example, if I'm operating at .10/.25 NL, I need 25 $ for the buy in on each table, and if I'm 9 tabling, then I'm going to need 225$ total. This is the "Operating Bank Roll," which is 9/10 of the total bank roll. It isn't perfect tho', because we need to "fill up" on a real time basis, so lets assign 100$ to the "Secondary Operating Bank Roll" and combine it with the "Operating Bank Roll" so we don't have to pull out our debit card every second of the day. I don't know how big you're "Secondary Operating Bank Roll" should actually be, you need to determine that for yourself. So, that means in order to operate all I need is 13/20 of my bank roll at any given time. The rest of my bank roll, the "Interest Accruing Bank Roll" should be in the bank account when I'm playing to accrue interest and be on hand in case the impossible happens. When I go to bed, I should transfer the portion of the bank roll that's in the bank account into a sweep account, "The Secondary Interest Accruing Bank Roll." If I don't plan on playing for more than a day, or for however long it takes for you to withdraw money from the skin, then the bank roll in the bank account should be swept for the entire duration. If I don't plan on playing for an amount of time longer than the amount of time it takes to withdraw my bank roll from the skin, then I need to withdraw the bankroll on the skin, combine it with the bank roll in the bank, and then take the combined bank roll in the bank and sweep it until I come back, "The Super Interest Accruing Bank Roll."

Basically, you should be making your bank roll work for you at all times. Since a lot of your bank roll is just there for variance, it's essentially "dead money" if that's all it's there for. Never keep more $ on a skin than you need to operate at the limit # tables you want + an additional amount to refill if you're playing ring games or no additional amount if you're playing tournaments and SNGs. Keep the rest of the bank roll in a bank account in order to accrue interest and cover for variance, and when you're not using it to cover variance, put it in a sweep account. You may not even need to keep all of your non-operating account money in your bank either, you could probably keep half in your bank and the other half in a sweep account at all times depending on the real time demand for cash.

Breaking it down, $ for Limits and # of Tables + some margin for refills, and then some margin of you're non operating bank roll in your bank followed by some margin of your non-operating bank roll in your sweep account while you play. All non-operating bank rolls in your sweep account when you aren't playing, and all bank roll in your sweep account when you take an amount of time off greater than the amount of time it takes to withdraw the operating account from the skin.

You're seriously going to have to judge for yourself how diminimus this is by accounting for E-Wallet rake, interest on the bank account, setting up a sweep account, the interest on the sweep account, the man hours/opportunity costs and the paper work, but it's a possible avenue for generating additional revenue for any one. If you don't earn interest off your bank roll, some one else will, and that's the bottom line.

I don't have enough $ to be concerned about this at the moment, so this is going to the back of my mind for now, but when I do have enough $, I'm going to incorporate myself and open a sweep account. (Speaking of which, incorporating yourself is also another potential source of revenue and a tax shelter that I haven't heard poker players discussing at all. Even prostitutes in Nevada incorporate themselves before they sub-contract to a brothel in order to write off travel, room, board and accessories, so I think they're definitely onto something we aren't. Considering the two professions are similar, at least in the sense of being "speak easy" cash businesses and part time jobs, it's worth looking into. You could possibly prevent your poker earnings from pushing you into a higher tax bracket if you're incorporated and have a real job, because the corporation files a separate tax return and gets even more tax advantages than some one with a real job. )

If you managed to suffer thru' that, LMK what you think. I'm no expert on liquid money management or incorporating, but considering both of them seem like relevant points of discussion, I think some one with more time than me (yeah, I know) or interested in compiling useful information should give these things some consideration and look into them in detail. If I get any pointers from any one who knows what they're talking about from the business end, I'll be sure to pass them along.