wut.

to dgiharris: Im not specifically asking to be trained and taught the strategy to become a professional, its more along the lines of what does it take like I guess stories how they handle it mentally and howd they get to where they were and that "aha" moment, so i can connect it together and see exactly what it REALLY takes.

z4reio: thank you for your input, I decided to think of more questions and better questions to ask to get more specific

What limit do you play?
How is the variance like?
what is your exact winrate over the last 100k hands?
why are you not playing higher?

^ how do you put this in the original post?

I know many people sitting tables from 200-1knl across multiple sites. For the most part they get a few hundred hands per day. HU cash is reg and grinder infested, and there is little if any action with few exceptions. That's not to say nobody is making money at HUNL, but it's very saturated and it's (financially) not really a smart game to get into unless you truly have a passion or a gift for it.

That blog entry is rubbish. What is the point of it?

You think buying a poker table will help to make you a pro? seriously? why not just play online? And you think to be a pro you should avoid NLHE because wealthier players can force you out of the pot? no mate, you been watching too many movies. poker doesnt work like that. before you write an article about poker, take the time to learn the game.

I play all sorts of games and limits, mainly online, which is unequivocally the wrong way to do it. It is fine to play multiple games, but dont only learn them halfway or you will never be able to be a professional in any form. If you want a bio of me which is completely lacking anything interesting, you can see the BQ digest from a few months back. (Its a sticky at the top of this forum. The month evades me, but I think late last year mabye.)

There's also a comment saying 'great article' from the same account that wrote the article. It's actually a solid piece of comedy.

Do you click on every piece of spam posted in the forums? That was member's 1st post, and there are 1st posts by "other users" also linking to that blog. Hmmmmmm...

You are wrong, deffo cbf to get into it though.

If I'm really wrong, I'd like to know so I can tell some friends what they're doing wrong/how to get more action

I am just a 2p2 hivemind parrot, obviously.

tom dwan: no, not all of them. this one though was a doozy. "its quite good even if I do say so myself. I put a lot of effort into it" whadafurq? it was stupid. probably the worst poker "article" I ever read.

Honestly, these are the types of questions I get from people that don't play poker at all (all you needed to put in there was what's the biggest pot you won/lost).

If you are a beginning poker player, then playing for a living should be your last concern. Focus on playing correctly, and the rest will take care of itself. If your side income from poker starts to crush your job income and you are losing money by working, then the answer to the question as to whether or not you should play for living becomes exponentially easier to answer.

None of my answers to those questions are relevant to you. How much I make shouldn't influence you to decide to play for a living. If you can make a good case as to why it is important, then I'll be happy to answer those questions.

thanks for all the input everybody and to z4reio its not exactly influencing me to the point like "ohh hes making a ton, so if he could do it I could do it" Its more of a reality check, I want to see what professionals, or people who play it seriously as a hobby and work hard on there game can achieve at specific levels, It'll help me get an idea of how hard the games are as each level progresses. I know duncelanas told me to try it myself, and I will but I want to be able to compare with others and if people can answer these questions for me it would be great.

I like that alot. I think this is the component too many players fail to realize when "deciding" to give poker a shot.

Most times, players thinking about taking a shot with poker are losing players that fantasize about "focusing on poker and becoming a player that crushes"

However, the best way to go about it is to play recreationally and get to the point where you are a winning player. The data and results will just snowball and it will become apparent that yes, you do have what it takes.

Oh, I can give you a shot of reality if you want it. I've seen a lot of things and have been through the tree chipper at least once and came out on the other side whole (save for a few mental issues ).

First of all, I play limit games - mostly mixed games, so my results are not going to be applicable to your NL game. Knowing my winrate in 2-7 TD isn't going to really help you identify with anything. Secondly, since US players got the boot from Stars, I play live exclusively now so that's another difference you need to account for. Previous to this, however, I played limit holdem nearly exclusively online.

The worst I ran was 5 months without making any money from poker. That's a looong time considering online volume. I had ~4 million hands in the bag before that, so that made it easier to deal with, but you can't believe how mind-****ing a run like that is.

So if you're really insistent on all those questions you asked, then here's a graph of my last million hands (also includes that soul-crushing flatline) of limit holdem before getting the online boot: http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5837/limitn.png.

As you can see, a 600k hand killing spree followed by a demoralizing sick, sick run of around -900 big bets. I don't know how much you know about limit holdem, but that's a really huge downswong. One that when I've heard of others clipping close to a thousand big bets in the past, I was emphatic that they were playing poorly or were outmatched but didn't realize it.

To put that in perspective, a typical bad run is around -100+ big bets. 300-500+ is a colossally sick run and nearly always indicates non-winning play; anything over -500+ and you're talking statistical outliers (if you're a winning player).

Using a variance simulator, you can see what's not impossible. This being 1000 trials of a million hands each sample using my wr and stdv. As you can see, 1 out of a thousand, million hand trials could result in -1100+ big bet downswong:



That should put in perspective just how sick my run was. I can assure you that since this is how I earn money to live, there was no monkey tilt or even passive tilt. Refusing to play tilted is a huge edge in poker.

Cut sessions short, take a few weeks off - whatever, but don't leak money away. Nothing like taking two full weeks off from poker and sitting down and flopping 3 sets in an hour and losing all of them (one of them with JJ on J88 losing to 44, and top set losing to bottom set), and a bunch other suckouts. Sick. Okay. Time to take the rest of the day off, maybe another week...

However, if you look closer at that chart, you can see that 60% of those million hand trials can incur a -500+ big bet swing. That's pretty soul-crushing and career ending for many people. This is why bankroll, money management and discipline are of the utmost importance for any professional player.

There's so much more to playing for a living than you realize (or that I could convey in a post), and there's a world of difference between winning play and playing for a living (and I'm not necessarily talking about poker skill).

One thing that hopefully has become apparent to you: if a significant winning player can get destroyed over such a huge sample of hands, then how do you know if you're a winning player going through a sick downswing or if you're just a losing player when you don't have a ton of playing experience (results) to draw from?

That's the basic conundrum for any beginning serious poker student. Also, it's possible for the results to go the other way; that is, a losing player can crush for 100K hands and think he's a winning player when he really isn't. That's also what makes poker so profitable. If this variance didn't exist, the games wouldn't either.

Bottom line: study your ass off and play a lot. Work toward being able to substantiate all of your plays mathematically. For example, "I checkraised all-in because I thought he would fold" is not a mathematically sound play. There are far more variables to it than that.

Now you may say, "Well, I got a read on him, though". Okay, well, that can be taken into your calculations as well, either by increasing the likelihood (%) that he holds the weaker part of his range (that you assessed mathematically for him) and/or that this increases (%) fold equity.

You need to calculate the EV of all of the outcomes (call/lose, call/win, fold/win) of this shove to determine its overall expectation (+/-) and act accordingly. If that doesn't sound easy to do in a few moments, well, there's a reason why most people don't play this game for a living.

However, that's not the challenging part. I would expect a professional doctor to know the specifics of the medicine he practices by mastering it away from the hospital. Ah, see how they call it *practicing* medicine? That's because there's always room for improvement in performance and knowledge. Same for professional poker, except the only life you're saving is your own. Study, study, study.

Most people would be far better served just keeping it as a side income. And if you're not already an established winning player, then having your sights on playing for a living is really putting the cart before the horse (maybe chips before the cards?), so to speak.

I'll reiterate from a previous post: approach the game logically and realistically, and the rest will make its presence known to you when/if it's time.

cliffs: tl;dr

Awesome, thanks for the well thought out and long response im sure it took a lot of your time to post that. Although i don't play limit it did allow me to see what variance is like and how one must over come it and im sure there are a ton more obstacles that you must overcome to become a professional.

When you were undergoing that big tilt session i have a question because I am still dealing with a bit of tilt and i am trying to over come it.

WHAT was the main thing that made you conquer that tilt? I've been reading jared tendlers mental game book, it says that quitting while on tilt is a temporary solution what im trying to say is did you stick with this just quit whenever you feel tilted?


...Or did u find a solution and if so what was that solution?

I understand that having a bankroll is key did you have a yearly amount set aside to continue to pay for the bills and in general what im trying to figure out is how good is your money management and great advice for me to follow if i consider doing this for money management. Because i read alot about players who make a lot but due to having terrible money management end up going broke, or end up getting staked which of course is -ev for them in the long run considering they are a profitable player, but they have no other solution because they dont have money.

Have you ever undergone that following circumstances where you went nearly broke and had to get staked?

Again sorry for asking all these questions im just wondering, I appreciate the time you put in to thoroughly answering my questions and really try to get me to understand what it takes to become a professional and was by far the most useful post for me so far.