After BF, I went back to school to get a CS degree. I recently graduated, and obtained a 105k salary for my first software developer position in san francisco.

It's been a month since I started and things have been amazing. but I'm starting to itch for poker. And I'm curious if my improved analytical abilities from going through a CS curriculum might improve my poker game.

Online seems quite dead, to be honest. Before BF, I was a mediocre 50NL reg. I doubt I'd have a good time grinding it out again for a winrate that is most likely not worth my time.

Live poker looks like the only alternative to get a desirable winrate close to my salary. I would need to dust off the rust and study up again of course. That would be the fun part. I've grown a taste for enjoying walking through, analyzing, and solving problems. What I might not enjoy is sitting at a table for hours without anything happening because the most optimal strategy is to tighten up, for example. That was okay online, but not when the pace is 15 hands an hour.

I guess my question is, to those who played substantial hours in live poker, how often do you feel it's just boring?

It's boring a lot of the time. That's the reality, you have to be the kind of person who doesn't get frustrated by that.

It's up to you...
If you are a boring person, then live poker will be boring for you.
Ig you are a funny guy who loves social contacts you will love the live game!
I am playing live for more than15 years and it's fantastic!

It is boring for some people. Too slow for some folks. A lot of annoying, ridiculous, dumbass **** happens all too often. Despite that , I love the social aspect and don't miss online all that much. Casino tables, underground rooms, and home games are all live versions with individual aspects both positive and negative. I play live as often as I can and afford. Hope it works out well for you.

If you go into it already thinking its boring and are making 105K year now.
You are not mentally ready !

you mention nothing about bankroll and separate money for bills

what will your mental state be when you do everything right and walk out losing 2k for the day?

lack of focus and discipline even for 1 hand can cost hundreds.

I may be the outlier, but I much prefer live to online. Online you get more hands in, but you don't interact as deeply with the players, so you get less information (I don't use a HUD, which may be the problem). I am much less focused and more distracted playing online. Multitabling seems too hectic to me and I end playing very basic and boring strategy. The social interactions of live can be more entertaining. Yes, you get in fewer hands per hour, but the money is greater and the games can be softer.

I doubt that it will be worth it. You're making too much once you factor in the value of your benefits.

Is OP going pro or just playing on a rec basis? I thought the latter. If so, he probably doesn't need a bankroll to play 1/2 or 2/5 recreationally if he makes $100k a year, he just needs to not lose too much money, especially if he's single/no family. OP should definitely not quit his brand new six-figure job for poker.

OP - This seems like a pretty easy issue to deal with. Go play. If you find it dull, stop. If you enjoy it, keep playing. If later you grow bored by it, then stop.

I play live and while it sucks to fold all the time, I wouldn't say it's boring. May be frustrating but you can usually talk to someone, bull**** with others at the table, drink (if that's your thing), etc.

The poker rec life is awesome. Go play a few hours a week. If you get bored, make the rounds - SFBA has a lot of cardrooms (LC AJs Oaks Bay M8trix Palace CG Graton and then a bunch of smallerones like Napa Valley Livermore Casino 101 etc.)

Small NL is spread everywhere and soft everywhere. You can even afford to be a 2/5 NL or 15/30-20/40 LHE loser and still be fine.

After rereading your post, it seems like you are wanting replace your salary with poker. The biggest issue here is going to be bank roll management. Because you are playing at higher stakes live than online, you need a bigger bankroll to survive the variance.

If you are just playing for fun, and don't need poker to generate living money, I can recommend live tournaments. Because of the rising pressure of the blinds, it is usually not boring for long (can get slow during the middle stages of a tournament). It is not the best way to earn a steady return, but it is fun.

Start off with a 1-1-2 game in Oaks Card Club ($200 buy-in). If you do well a first few times, then move on to the 2-3-5 game (initially with $500 buy-in and moving on to $1,000 buy-in if you do well in that potentially).

Do not count on it replacing your salary. However, if you are diligent, you will probably to make it extra $10-15K a year in your spare time. If boredom is an issue, bring headphones.

you're really just going to have to play on the weekends, and see if you like it. You're not going to find out by reading the answers to a post.

TBH SFBA poker is probably stronger on weekdays than weekends.

Not surprising. People with physically easy but mentally demanding jobs might be more inclined to engage in activities like poker to decompress in the evening. Most of them also have better things to do on the weekends than spend time in a casino/card room.

IME/IMO more the latter than the former. The player pool at lower levels is disproportionately blue collar (relative to the area).

Plus, it's a more believable and less verifiable lie when you tell your wife that you have to work late than that you have to work on a weekend.

Two insights into what floor people think about poker players:

1. I wake up at 4 am for a three way conference with Europe and Japan, by noon I decide to treat myself to a poker lunch. I find out the game ran overnight but broke at 11. "Should've woken up earlier," the floor tells me. :/

2. My wife was working from home at night and kicked me out of the house so i wouldn't distract her. Poker time! So I play until about 11 and rack up. I mention to the floor that I only get to play when my wife works at night, and he says, "Ah, gotta get home before she does, huh?" :/

****in degens.

I just calculated that if within a couple years you become good and average $50/hr for 40 hours per week, you're making $104K which is lower than your $105K salary. So keep your day job.

How much playing have you done in your spare time from Black Friday until now?

Just wear headphones and sunglasses and watch videos on your phone all day to pass the time.

Thanks for the replies. Gave me a lot to think about. It sounds like live poker can indeed be a bit boring. I'm for sure not a really social or outgoing person, especially not with blue collared type people. But poker is fun to me, when action is happening.

Too bad to hear that weekdays has better action than weekends in my area. I'd rather not take the long commute after work all the way to emeryville or san jose. It's really such a shame san francisco has no card rooms....

One of my primary motivation is definitely money. Not right away, but once I get up to speed, the plan is to make at least $50 an hour, with the potential to go much higher. Is that realistic and possible for someone who is willing to put in the work? Or is this something only savants and geniuses can achieve?

The alternative for me for a supplementary income is investing in stocks or real estate. I know nothing about those things, and figured it makes sense to go with what I know first. I've put thousands of hours into poker in the past.

Yes, I will need the potential to make much more than $50 an hour to make this worth it. Possible? Realistic?

I absolutely do not plan on ditching my day job, this is supplementary income.

Not much. But I have a suspicion I will understand poker much better now than the last times I tried.

I would not get started in live poker to supplement your income. I'd do it because you enjoy it, and supplementing your income from a hobby is a nice side benefit. $50/hour on average is probably close to the top that you can realistically achieve at 2/5. Obviously once can play higher stakes too, but often those games revolve around one or more whales, and there will be a lot of times when they're filled with pretty good players and not easily beatable. If I had to guess, maybe 0.1% of live players have an expectation of earning meaningfully more than $50/hour, and that may be an overestimate.

If your primary goal is to increase your income, you're probably much better off devoting whatever time you're considering using for poker to improving your strength as a programmer, improving your marketability, networking, etc. The upside will be much higher here.

Just as an FYI, I come at this from the background of someone with a well-paying career (lawyer) who is also a winning recreational poker player. Winning money at poker is a nice side benefit, but frankly I'd still play even if I was a loser overall because I enjoy it (ignoring for a minute the fact that I'd enjoy it less if I was losing). It's a hobby. If my goal was maximizing income I'd spend my poker time billing legal time, meeting clients, learning new areas of the law, etc. People pursue all sorts of hobbies (golf, cars, travel, etc.) knowing that it costs them money and it's worth it anyway.

Does that number account for ~40 vacation+sick days a year, health insurance, 401k and all other benefits a "good" regular job offers?

There are still a couple good potential reasons to become a professional poker player in a first world country, but making more money than in a job that requires a relevant college degree isn't among those anymore for the vast majority of people.

If you have a good job that allows for you to play some poker on the side, I would be happy to be a slight winner, and not try to use it as a second income. As soon as you treat it like another job, you'll eventually lose the enjoyment part of the game that makes it worth going to the casino after a long day in the office.

fwiw, trying to equate professional poker with a job is the first mistake. Equate professional poker with a business, not a job. In business, you can go weeks without showing a profit, or you can even show a loss. Poker isn't a job, it's a business.

IMHO, if your starting salary right after graduation is 105K, the path to maximizing your income is to keep improving as a software developer and then you should be able to get to 150K within 5-6 years. Also, if you have spare time/energy, you can do some startup work and generate more income/equity that way than you will likely ever be able to through poker.

Oaks Card Club is just a 40-minute BART ride away from San Fran, so should be pretty easy to get to on either weeknights or weekends. Another suggestion would be to find a home game near your place with some fellow techies. That would allow you to kill 2 birds with 1 stone: minimize your poker commute and potentially build some professional connections.

At this point, I think we covered all the angles, so might as well endthread\

Good Luck!

If you are planning to keep your job and just play weekends, why do you feel like you need to have a win rate close to your salary for poker to be "worth it"? Are you freelancing on weekends at this rate, and would have to give that up? What else would you be doing with this time that you value at $50/hour?

If you are going to take up recreational live poker, you should do so mostly because you enjoy it. Any positive win rate should be a nice bonus. If there are things you enjoy doing on weekends significantly more such that it would take a $50/hour incentive to prefer poker over those things, I'd suggest just sticking to those things.