I currently have a flexible full time job.
At the moment I work 34 hours / week.
But I can increase / reduce my working hours as I please, probably down to 24 hours / week.

I live in Belgium.

There's a poker club near me, 15 minutes drive, that organizes €20 tournaments 5 days a week.
They also hold €20 SNG's for early busters.
I've seen statistics of the top players there who have between 20-50 tournaments and a ROI between 100-500%.
So I'm assuming these tournaments are very beatable?

There's 2 casino's in driving range, each about 1 hour away.
They hold 2/2 cash games and I think 2/5 cash games and maybe 5/10 cash games on very busy days.

There's not a lot of big tournaments going on around here that I know of.

There's also online play, but I don't really enjoy the online grind.


What would be best for me to focus on?

The local tournaments are a lot thougher than the casino cash games.
I could play for around €500-€1000 monthly so I could probably make some money if I get a decent ROI.
I currently don't know what my ROI is, but I do not expect I'm good enough at this moment to maintain a 100% ROI. (I can and will improve though!)
I hope to achieve and maintain a 50% ROI pretty soon.
Currently I've only tracked 10 tournaments and my ROI is -12%. So I'm currently down one buy-in.

The casino games are probably a lot more profitable.
But they're further away and require a larger bankroll, which I currently do not yet have.
It's also not really viable to go to those games during the week when I have work in the morning.


I'm thinking of either focussing on the local tournaments and try to crush them hard. Aiming for a ROI of 200%+ so I'm making €1000+ a month from them.

Or spread my focus between the casino games and the local tournaments.
Taking shots at the 1/2 games until I have a decent bankroll.

I havn't been to the casino games in a few years, but I've heard they havn't changed much since I've last been there.


I'm also struggling a bit with what and how to study.
I really want to improve, but I'm not really sure how.
I was thinking about joining a training site, but then I probably need to know which type of games I'm going to focus on?

Any advice is welcome!

You'll have to qualify this statement because taken at face value you're basically saying that you won't enjoy the live grind either. The swings are more drastic, the hands come much more slowly which means downswings can last for days/weeks rather than hours, and you'll be forced to play (and not just play but drive an hour each way) on days when you don't really want to.


If you don't have a bankroll to play live then you have to build it somewhere and quite honestly online is the perfect place to hone your skills. Get the practice in, prove that you can win at a decent rate, work your way up the stakes, build a little bit of a bankroll, and then crush live, which is a step downward in terms of difficulty.

I enjoy being around people.
I don't enjoy sitting alone behind my computer for days/weeks/months.

200% ROI is insane. I think you should re-evaluate what is likely. Top players are looking at like 35-40%

I didn't make this up.
I actually saw the statistics on the room managing program they use and people have ROI's of 200%+ over 30+ tournaments.
Tournaments all have a €20 entry fee and the 1st place is usually around €400.

Not really my question either ...

What he's saying is that 500% roi isn't even close to realistic over a large sample size, I have no doubt that players can obtain 100-500% roi over 30+ games (rungood) but check back in when they have over 2,000 games and I am 100% positive you won't see them still at 100-500% roi.

You say it isnt your question but it effects you indirectly since you're asking how to start building your career, and part of that you listed a goal of 50% roi, which is fairly high but depending on your live experience, skills, and the fields overall skill (which you say is pretty awful). 50% roi may be reachable but I feel like you're coming to 50% because you see the top leader board and the big numbers as opposed to really taking a look at yourself and your abilities/capabilities. 200% is out of the picture. I don't know anyone close to 200% roi, and to be honest, if you think it's possible, this will become a serious hurdle for you to overcome when you get hit with any type of negative variance and your roi is either at a realistic number or bad variances turns that roi into the red....

This post was back in 2012 when poker was softer and may be more in line to what the tournaments you described....

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61...layer-1265127/

I quickly scanned it and it looks like players are aiming at 35% roi. Not trying to be a downer but do some research and find a realistic goal so it doesn't deter you

Exactly. Thanks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@AznblackhawkCo & @BBQpoker
I've read that thread and several others.
Most of them are about online play, which is completely different from live.

The threads about live MTT's all agree that it's impossible to establish a ROI.
A good aim is usually around 100% since live tournaments are LOT softer than online.

But feel free to assume it won't be possible for me to reach a ROI of even 50%.
Let's assume I'll be able to reach one of 20% instead.
Same question(s).

It seems like you can't reach the casino regularly. A training site would be optimal, but I've found it rare to find someone that is great at cash and tournaments. Pick the most available game and go from there, I guess.

I still think you're aiming extremely high, even if you're only playing single table tournaments, but only time will tell.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Dude if you are wanting to start talking about poker as a "career" then you will simply need to play some online. You can grow your roll there and more importantly you can use it as a training ground to improve. You will not get much better playing a few sngs each week.

glgl

ROI definitely matters. If a 500% ROI were reasonable, you could make $100/day and that's worth playing. If you are aiming for 20% ROI, that's $4/day which is a waste of time.

Is 2/2 limit or NL? I ask because the only 2/2 games I've ever seen in the US were limit. If that's NL then I'd wait until you have $600 (3 BIs) and start playing that game on the weekends. Don't play the tournaments at all as they're a waste of time.

Nobody thought you made it, it's just that 30 tournaments is a tiny sample size. 300 is even too small to be predictive.

The good news is that since you have a job, you can play tournaments under-rolled and build up experience/bankroll that way if you run good.

Just be aware of how swingy tournaments can be. It can be easy to get discouraged by failing to cash in 10 or 20 in a row.

Another key part of this decision process is the blind structure of these €20 tournaments. I can't imagine for €20 the blinds increases slowly, this adds to variance. Most casinos that offer daily tournaments have the most turbo charged blind structure that it really negates skill and on the prize bubble the chip lead "might" have 6bb.

If this is the case, I wouldn't waste your time playing (I have a sneaky suspicion this is probably the exact tournament structure I am speaking of)

Don't be like this guy


Imagine this dudes RoI!!!!




But if you're looking to play live and get some practice in, these tournaments are probably just the ticket for you...it just may not be practical or a good idea to try to make it a 2nd job, or take off work thinking you will profit substantially/supplement your income.


In terms of studying, which I haven't seen too many people address since we got hung up on the local tourna(donka)ments, live poker is a little different. There's a ton of content on online play, which I am not sure if you're looking at just live studying material since it will be slightly different (no HuD study, more paying attention to detail, etc.) maybe someone else can suggest a good live poker guide, try watching some live vlogs from andrew neeme or alec torreli, they both play live cash games and break down action, I watch them for entertainment so I don't have any experience in actually using their hand analysis tips.

You lack experience in the games you are discussing. On the flip side, you are not talking about quitting your job, which is good. So assuming you can make ends meet on your job, even with reduced hours, just go ahead and play whichever format you like more.

Not really seeing anything that actually helps so far.

The 2/2 games are NL, no idea why they don't just do the normal 1/2 ...

I'm thinking the local tournaments are better for learning, the level of play is much higher than in the casino's from what I remember.
The structures are pretty turbo, but not as bad as you make them sound.
On the money bubble the average stack is usually around 10BB with the chip leaders having 30BB+

But I think the casino cash games will be much more profitable.

I do wonder why people say it's not possible to build a poker career without playing online?
I'm actually stopping myself from playing online, since it's a totally different game. Bet sizing is completely different, there's no insane amount of live tells, ...
I actually think playing online too much could be bad for my live game.
For example, open raising to 3/4BB pre will often win you the pot online. In live games, you will almost always get 5 callers.
They're just two completely different games imo and I don't enjoy the online game.

Unless your skill edge is large and your bankroll is large too, you won't make a sustainable living playing live tournaments. This is because if your ABI is €20, and your realistic (yet very strong) roi is 30%, you'll be netting €6 per tournament you play. And if these tournaments take ~6 hours, that's €1 an hour.

It's really tough to assume our roi can be sustainably larger than that (especially if you're still inexperienced), but what can fluctuate our earnings immensely is if we have a much larger bankroll and therefore larger ABI.

If you play in €300 tournaments with your same 30 %roi and skill edge, you'll be making €90 a tournament, a respectable daily amount. You can see it'd only rise from here.

The part you don't want to hear is that it's simply a different story playing online MTTs, they're much more profitable for players with a smaller bankroll. If you got your multiabling skill up to being able to play 20 a day (not too hard even playing 5-7 tables) with your ABI at €20 and roi at 30%, you'd profit €120 a day.

Yes I came to post this.

Also, a few years ago I wrote a short article for the beginner's forum digest that was basically about some of the pitfalls that await you that I fell into. I hope you enjoy it:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...=august+digest