I've been pretty consistently logging ~150 hrs a month live post black friday..but I've ran into other grinders who seem to practically live in the casino. I admire their work ethic but personally, I'd much rather not be playing poker, however a part of me feels lazy for not putting in more volume (as I have no job/backup plan for when the poker fad dies aside from early retirement due to frugal living).

How many hours are you full time guys logging, and what reasons did you choose that volume amount.

150 hrs a month is far from lazy.

150 hours is less than the standard american work week but maybe its silly to compare the two, that's why I ask. Also most salaried executive corporate types probably work 60+ hour weeks for the same amount of yearly income as a good but probably "lazier" 5-10 pro. We all play poker for different reasons, but everyone would probably agree the games aren't getting any easier so it's obviously important to consider how much volume is nessicary for you to maximize earnings while staying sane.

the best use of your time would be to grind say 80 hours a month and spend the other 80 or more involved in a new career/project......developing a skillset outside of poker is a major asset if the games start getting tougher(which they will) and hourlies+variance make the game less and less appealing

You answered your own question. I look at it from a back-track perspective, when do I think our 5/10 will die and how much do I earn annually up to that point using your hourly and 3-4 sample volumes.

So if 5/10 dies in 2 years then what $ do I earn playing 120, 150, and 175 hours per month up to that point.

You could get more complex and say the game dies slowly so really your expected hourly dies overtime as well.

All of this is still pretty wide because of the variance in live poker where the long run is quite long, still fun to play around in Excel and see possibilities though.

150-200 hrs a month, for the love of the game brah.

Lazy poker pro here, 150 a month is a good month for me. I average about 130 hours/month

Unless you are playing in butter-soft games, then 150+ hours a month means a lot of those hours you are tired, game sucks, people in the game suck, or a combination of the 3.

I hate to derail... but the amount of effort you spend should be dependent on your level of skill, temperament for grinding, and poker goals. Poker goals and skills are similar and feed into one another.

TL;DRs need not spam/troll/respond

The lower your skill the less hours you should invest playing and more hours you should invest in increasing your winrate through HHs/studying/+LiveEV moves.

Everyone has a certain point where no matter how much they are crushing or stuck they just get burnt out. It could be burnout for a few hours or a lifetime, regardless of the recharge period you should wind back the hours anytime you run into this feeling in a given month.

A lot of poker pros are big winners and their stakes and while improving their game will always up their winrate, their goals or huge ego restrict them from playing higher stakes, thus their returns from studying are marginal. The more keen you are to have the ability to move up stakes the more you should invest time into improving your game and decrease your live-play hours.



The best part of being a poker pro is the freedom to work when you want & have extra $. You're the boss/entrepreneur/manager and ultimately only you can set the pace which will dictate your success/failures, everyone experiences a unique journey and there is no sacred path in the non-standard career path of a cardplayer.

One should leverage your extra time to increase your happiness inside & outside the game while maximizing the potential and number your non-poker options because the game could fizzle out with new legislation or a rapid decline in many Americans wealth (i.e. stock crash).

Everyone says they have an exit plan, but if gambling become illegal today, where would you earn your salary tomorrow (Walmart/Wallstreet/Panhandling/Chippendales)? What are you doing with the extra money that you have laying around the house/in mattress/loaned to stakee is a pandora's box that I won't bother addressing here but is very important regardless.

depends...

Big +1 to planning for the future.....the biggest problem with poker today is kids dont earn enough to offset the lack of career they will have down the road....5-10 years ago people could make 200k/yr and not be an elite player - these days it seems 100k is getting tougher and tougher to do.....whats going to happen to a lot of poker players is they're going to ride the ship till the end and realize outside of poker they're worth 30-40k/yr.....the worst is for these 20 somethings who will soon get married/have kids/mortgage/etc and as their monthly nut increases their income will decrease making this even more depressing....If your a pro poker player and make 100k or less without any exit plan you're really setting yourself up for disaster down the road......find something you're into and start learning another industry from the bottom so when the poker ship goes down you have something to save you

Just gotta add that yes. Too many new young guys who think poker is fun $ and wasy life. WILL regret it with no exit plan when you are 30+ or even sooner.
Even i can see from a few year experience that games are tougher than just 3 years ago. And goes worse and worse all the time. Not hard to do other things besides poker or end poker and make more money with other things if you have the brain.
If you have the brain to even get close to 100k a year with poker you will make more with other stuff for sure.

ill prolly finish 2014 around 1200 hours of live cash, and i dont have another job or anything. along with about 80 hours of home games, maybe 100 hours online, and about 6 live tournaments to kick it up to around 1400-1500 hours of actual work, yeah i consider that somewhat lazy but still seemed like quite a bit of work to me.

i also admire some of the grinders ive seen consistently putting in 200+ hour months, tho im not sure that's optimal in terms of EV for all winning players because sometimes more is less.

and...poker fad? wasnt that like almost 10 years ago now?

Veteran live pro here, and I've always found that playing shorter sessions maximizes my win rate. I try to log 100 hrs/month, playing 5 nights a week, but for whatever reason, this year I only averaged 84 hrs/month. Had my best year ever though, which probably contributed to the low total (lots of hitting and running).

And fwiw, I could care less how many hours people work in the "real world." As far as I'm concerned, Americans tend to work too much as it is. To each his own, but for me, my free time is FAR more valuable than the additional money I could be making by grinding longer hours.

this

always

this also. play long sessions when you are winning and short sessions when you are losing.

haha you really haven't traveled much if you think americans work too much

Well, the US is certainly up there.

http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freee.../working-hours

Well I can't speak for the rest of the world but Americans work more hours then Europeans. Most people I know work more then 40 hrs a week anyways.

Vega posted the right answer and everyone glossed right over it.

I've thought about this quite a bit. Personally I play an average of 28 rs a week. Planning on upping that this year due to reasons stated in previous posts. been at the grind full time for 5 years now and don't feel like I've put in full effort. I do think since the games will get harder and hourlys will decrease it's prolly important to play as much as you can now, cuz who knows what you'll make in 5 years. That said, I hear a lot of people say how all these young kids are just in for a **** storm when poker dies. all I can say is, average household income in the US is 55k. not personal income but household. If you have $4,000 in your bank your richest 1% in the WORLD!!! And 5 years from now if I have a $25 an hour job and $100,000 bank I'm sure I can figure it out. I still enjoy the game, and a part of me feels like I can improve my game faster then my opponents improve theirs, so that can help pospone the decline in hourly. Work hard enough that at the end of the week you feel like you "worked" not "played" but no harder IMO

Yeah, because making $100k a year playing a game is terrible. I made less when I used my college degrees, and my job was infinitely more stressful.

That said, I agree with most of his post. But lets not pretend like $100k a year is peanuts, when most people make far less and actually work hard for a living.

80 hrs/month