I thought taking a small break every 90-120 minutes was mental game 101?

I have to force myself to do it usually but taking 3-5 minutes every few hours can only be +mEV.

Can't speak for others but I am the polar opposite. Aside from a couple select periods of time, it is like pulling teeth to get me to put in anything resembling a respectable volume online. Since I had no desire to be an online poker player until 2013, this wasn't much of an issue, but from 2013 through the beginning of this year it certainly was. There is just absolutely nothing stimulating or enjoyable about sitting behind a screen clicking buttons to me. I did it in the brief periods of time where the game was fresh and exciting to me and I actually really needed money, but I would generally rather be anywhere else.

On the other hand, it has always been very easy for me to sit in a casino for hours on end. This is my 3rd full month back to live poker and I have played 137, 156 and 130 (this month with many days left to play) hours with ease. This is actual hours of being seated in a poker game with who knows how many hours of waiting for a seat, driving to one casino and getting bored of the lack of action and going elsewhere, etc. If I had more desirable action readily available to me, I would happily play more.

Aside from how much live poker discourages me from leading the healthy life I have happily lived since ~2012 (and how easy that life was to maintain with online poker/retirement), it is really the perfect fit for me.

Online poker is way more taxing than live poker for a number of reasons. For one, I'm not a mega multi-tabler, but I'd still like to have 2 games going (call it 200-250 hands an hour). Plus, the bigger tables and extra limping that occurs live probably means I'm going to end up playing a much tighter style (I wouldn't be shocked if I VPIP'd 15 live), while even my nitty self is going to run a 26/19 or so at 6 max online. So if I want to be generous, that's about 9x the postflop action online per hour than live.

Add in that players are normally better online (or at least more aggressive), and I'm making a lot more taxing decisions that can often result in decision deterioration if I don't take a breather. Live, you just have more time to mentally recover after the LAGfish check raises you with his rivered running 9's up on the J64-9-7 in 3 bet pot than you do online. Hence why it's easy for me to wedge out an entire Saturday to do nothing but play live poker, and why I was easily able to grind 40 hour weeks while playing for a little while full time, but why I struggle to put in the kind of mega-volume online.

I would 8-table 3/6-5/10 FR on Full Tilt and couldn't put in more then 3 or 4 hours at a time, almost never more than 6-8 hours in a day.

Agree with Jon_locke on pretty much all points. Very lazy btw.

Chillrob, out of genuine curiosity I have a few Q's: What was your average hrs/week in 2016? What is the most hours you did in a single week? What was the longest you went without playing? BTW, I would accept answers to these questions from anyone.

I've played roughly 30 hours/week in 2016 with 50 probably being the highest in a single week and never taking more than 10 days off.

I only averaged 15 hours a week last year. Twice went 2 weeks without playing, but that was when I was visiting family. Several times went more than a week without playing though. Not sure of the most number of hours per week, but it certainly wasn't 40. I did play maybe 30 hours a week a few years ago before I started feeling burned out.

Interesting thread. Have a bunch of thoughts but for now will just throw some meaningless win rates out there:

Since 2003
4/8 - 0.75BB something like - 1500 hours mostly in 2003-05 while learning to play
6/12 - 0.55BB something like - 2000 hours mostly in 2004-06
8/16 - 0.95BB something like - 9000 hours from 2006-current, main game switched from regular to half kill a couple years ago.
20/40 - 0.15BB something like 1200 hours mostly over the last three years.

I don't back out rake, tips or any "promo" money (e.g., high hands). Occasionally will pay for food, etc. out of my stack as well. Most games are at my home room, but a fair amount of hours in CA and LV as well. Results are much, much better at the home room for obvious reasons.

What Schneids said is true - games have changed so much getting an accurate depiction is pretty impossible. That being said, tracking win rates does help me stay disciplined and a good reminder of the small edges in the game that you have to exploit.

Hf

If you want a more accurate depiction of the game, then you should exclude promotions and food, and focus entirely on your win-rate over the game mechanics. While one can argue that promotions and food are part of the game, it's not part of the game you're trying to get better at, or gauge.

I disagree. People use their winrates to determine whether it is worth their time to play poker. To make this determination, you must (and I do) include ALL expenses associated with poker. The only exception is expenses you would otherwise expend anyway. In other words, if casino food costs the same as outside the casino food, you don't have to count it. (If it costs more, you do.) But if you need to drink get massages, spend gas money, etc., to play poker that you wouldn't otherwise spend, that's part of your winrate.

Fortunately with spreadsheets you can do both. IMHO, people should use win rates to determine how much of a winner they are in a game, and keep the expenses in a separate column, and the promotions in another separate column. Someone can easily crush a game by hitting a jackpot, which is of course ridiculous.

Rough estimates of expenses/promotions should be sufficient. But if you want to know your true win-rate, you'd keep it separate.

Most people I have talked to, and some have asked me this exact question, want to know how many BB/hr they get, which is independent of food, jackpots, and everything in between. Estimates should be sufficient so you're not counting every rake, toke, etc.

Interesting according to the data above the 8/16 appears much softer than the 20/40.

I contest this.

I'll assume we're talking about exempt employees, because obviously nonexempt employees would never average more than 40 hours as an aggregate.

Are average exempt employees in the office or worksite more than 40 hours a week? Yes. Do they justify to their bosses getting paid for 40 hours a week? Sure.

Do they WORK 40 hours a week? No.

They take lunch and go poop and smoke and flirt with the hot receptionist and have their buddies punch in for them and doze off in meetings and write TPS reports and they linger at birthday parties and have pretend lightsaber fights while their code is compiling.

And whatever rules are in place, people game them. Your boss is a psychopath who walks around at 7 in the morning to see who's in already, and at 11 at night to see who's still in (true story)? Bring in an extra jacket to leave on your chair and leave the lights on. Run your errands in the middle of the day when your boss has meetings scheduled. Set your radio alarm to start playing music in the morning.

I'd say that the average (exempt) employee puts in 40-50 hours and gets out 25-35 in actual work.

I'm not complaining. But salaried workers are getting paid to poop and smoke and flirt, poker pros get their salaries docked every time they miss a hand.

I'm just saying if you came into the office at 8 and left at 6 with no lunch every day M-F, you'd be perceived as the hardest worker in 99% of offices. But if you got 40 hours of actual work done, you'd be a superstar at 90% of offices.

And this is already long but whatever. It's not that people are lazy. It's really difficult to play an A game for that long (at the table or away from it). Doing a task well has a finite physical/mental capacity. And when that capacity is exceeded, bad things happen - substandard welds lead to steuctural failure, someone needs to rewrite inefficient code, etc. And again poker is special in that a good player's C game can probably be fine 90% of the time and a B game 99% so if your baby kept you up all night and you phone it in, it's not that bad (or at the least the only person who is affwcted is you).

I would but I run bad.

There's a trick to calculating jackpots and promotions in winrates.

In most states, there is a regulation that whatever goes down the separate jackpot drop has to be paid back in promotions to players, minus an administrative fee.

So instead of counting your jackpots (which I agree is not really correct), you can do the following-- assume a 10 percent administrative fee, and therefore assume that 0.90 of a $1 drop or $1.80 of a $2 drop is going back to the players. Then, credit yourself with 1/9th of that, or $0.10/$0.20 a hand. Multiply by 35 hands an hour. That should capture the effect of the promotions and jackpots on your winrate.

Everything callip says is right. In addition, on the other side of the ledger, a GOOD poker player is probably spending significant additional time away from the tables doing things like session reviews, posting hands on 2+2 or discussing them with poker buddies, reading, playing against simulators, and otherwise getting better at poker. And that's all real work in addition to the hours at the table.

I'd say in a given week, I probably only do about 15 minutes of real, actual, work.

I don't see how spending half your time bsing at work is much different than spending half your time folding J4o and similar hands. In both situations all you really need to do is show up. No mental or physical effort is required.

Interesting point.

I can't swear I always do it, but all advice I have ever read says you're -supposed to- pay full attention to every hand, even after you have folded.

I think in many organizations a handful of people do most the work and are probably 80%+ productive. And the remainder of the group gets you to the 50% average or whatever it is. I think the first group of people is also the group more likely to succeed playing poker (but members of that group are also less likely to pick poker as a career).

It's probably great if you can do it but I don't think many people can.

This is certainly unique to the workplace since no players have ever done this with dealers/other players

It's best to do as much as possible. Don't tire yourself out though.

Just the other day I was sharing a few interesting things I had read on my phone/Twitter/etc with my lady and when I was done all she said was, "Wait, if you spend that much time on the internet while playing, why are you on your laptop at home so much?"