If you won 1 BB/hr that's $40 an hour which is 80k a year if you are playing full time. Even after adjusting for Calli's uncertainty equivalent mumbo jumbo that's still going to land you higher than the median US household income.

You can make a living at 20 in Minnesota. The games are great and the cost of living is low, though taxes are ridiculous. I wish I were good enough to do it. Still working on my game 3+ million hands later. Wish I didn't waste so much time as a rakeback grinder....

I wouldn't suggest trying to enter into professional poker at the moment; the industry is shrinking.

If you are serious anyways:
focus on game theory
hire a coach
spend 30% of your time studying, 70% playing
outwork your opponents

Yeah I know. I like my job and I get a pension so no way I'd quit. Part-time fun for me. I respect you guys who are on the grind. I am finally devoting more time to improving as my current skill level hasn't changed in a long time. I was a .75 BB/100 winner over a 800 hour sample last year in the 20 but I know I'm haven't reached my full playing potential. I really enjoy listening to how you think and I've watched every second of your commentary as I am a LATB sub. It's very entertaining. I'm hoping you're scheduled to commentate when I'm there in a few weeks.

I usually do a show once a week~ Lets grab a drink when you're in town

I'm down. It's been like 6 months since I've been to LA so I'm super excited to return.

I went out to commerce last year and played 100-200 the 2nd night. The incessant bitching of a couple of the pros in the game forced me to quit. It just wasn't fun . 1 guy ( Shannon ? ) switched seats to get position on me when I bought in . I posted and. And got AA 1st hand. He would not stfu up about how lucky I was and how his box was praticalll empty. Just miserable people in that game.

I think most of the pros in the mid-hi stakes games there are very pleasant and enjoyable to play with. At least with mix, the regs almost never seat change and it's a nice environment to play in (40-80 can be quite the opposite though)

1. If you can't stand the mumbo jumbo just use CE = WR / 2.

2. I think the key here is "full time." There aren't that many places in the country where 20/40 LHE runs 2,000 hours a year, and for the places that do, many are high COL places where - contrary to popular belief - you can live on $40,000 a year, but with sacrifices (typically time spent commuting from a distant location or desirability of your living situation / neighborhood).

3. The other assumption is that because a salaried 9-to-5 worker gets paid for 2,000 hours, it's easy for a poker player to put in 2,000 hours. As with other self-employment, you only get paid for the time you're actively working. If you're the type of office worker who rolls in at 8:15, grabs a coffee, checks DFS, takes four 5-minute smoke breaks, flirts with the receptionist, stretches your lunch hour to 1:10, take a walk for 15 min while IT fixes your computer, and packs up at 4:45 to be out the door at 5, you may be gone from your house for 10 hours, at the office for 9, paid for 8, and get like 5 hours of work done. A lot of poker pros put in 1,200 hours and it feels full because I think it's pretty damn close to the amount they would have actually worked in an office.

(Let's be frank, most poker pros admit that they aren't Employee of the Month types.)

People like Jon Locke are pretty extreme outliers. It sounds quite reasonable to say you're going to put in 2,000 hours of 20/40 and have a decent living, but it's really hard to do in practice.

It seems pretty easy to do if you put in time on the weekends.
If you put in 12-14 hours in on both Friday and Saturday, that only leaves a handful of hours during the rest of the week to reach/exceed 40.

Can you play your A game for 12-14 hours straight 2 days in a row? I can't.

I might slip into my B game at around hour 10, but everyone else at the table is usually just as far or further into their session and has slipped well into their C game.

If you you really wanted to you could live fairly comfortably playing 20-40 (in certain cities), this is not true if you live in LA. Besides cost of living traffic alone will cost you 20-30k a year. I'm sure there are lots of people that could make 100k a year playing 20 if they wanted to or had some huge prop bet or something. Most of the people that would be able to play bigger so it's s moot point

Grinding mega sessions hasn't been something I've done much of in 2017. Many of my sessions are 8 hours in length or less (to be fair, I've done a lot more game hopping, and I count from chips down to chips up as a "session", not counting moving from must moves). Not sure if I can chug through 10+ hour sessions anymore, though it is easier to keep playing when things are going well as opposed to constantly getting check raised on the turn with one pair.

I do think being able to play well for 12 hours straight is a top skill for pros. It's a huge advantage to be able to play 12 hours on Friday and Saturday, and then 8 on Sunday.

I understand the main takeaway from your statement is the first sentence.

For an intermediate/expert flhe player that was a budding pro in the LA area, wouldn't the most important piece of advice (by far) be "learn additional games"?

There doesn't seem to be any game that caps your pay as a pro worse than flhe. I'd definitely agree that focusing on game theory basics is the fastest way to get better at all games. Many times, I'll run basic sims (all I'm capable of) or consider how to protect a check back range from getting beaten up by a turn probe for one game and a light bulb will go off as I realize how the concept translates to another game.

You can play 40/80 - 1/2 flhe (maybe the occasional bigger game), but those seem to be dwarfed by the mix games, in both stakes and game quality. One PLO player asking me about draw games has started learning mix in the HG 40 that seems to go every day. I'm about as far from the LA scene here in Boston, but in my two LAPC play-cations there were 4-5 mix games running at 1/2 or higher every single day.

Unless there are other motives besides making the most money in the easiest games, why would one try to squeeze out an extra .05 BB/hr against the same shrinking player pool w more flhe study when they could drastically improve their hourly, pay ceiling, and sustainability, by learning mix games, first and foremost? Those guys are winning or losing in one day or week what many flhe pros make in a year. Thanks for any response, I've enjoyed your posts. This is one of the biggest mysteries to me as a poker player lol.

much love dude, totally agree w\ everything you've said.

I've spent the last 2 months in the lab transitioning fully to NLHE, starting work on PLO. The gto fundamentals will transfer to all limit structure + big bet structure games... only have to learn preflop ranges + blocker mechanics in each game to play after that!

I think most people are resistant to change + don't adapt well. Hell, even I was slow to transition, this year I'm full force though

I'm dabbling in the 10mix here in MN our biggest regular game is 40mix as we have the stupid "no bets over $100" rule. I've found it to be challenging and fun, especially stud8. I really enjoy that variant.

Yeah, the flop games carry over well and the draw games, which might surprise some. I'm still a fan of the capped games (ty stars for whenever the next time I travel lol) cuz I'm a wuss for 700bb pots.

Stud8 is hard to me. I'll never forget betting my lock low and 2 pair into two players w high hands, thinking how much fun it is to chop up two guys just hoping to get half. Realizing I had 3 pairs and that I was the sucker in the hand wasn't as much fun.

Are there places that spread 100/200+ on a consistent basis? I often wonder if at those stakes the recreational players have so much money the skill level required to win drops again. No one likes losing, but I would think the recs don't mind playing their B or C game more.

Shannon has always been super nice and fun to play with, in my experience.

Also, one thing I thought was obvious, but never actually hear anyone talk about it: if you win 80k a year, you don't get to have 80k a year. If you are pulling 100% of your winnings out of your bankroll, you will guarantee that you go broke eventually by effectively reducing your WR to 0.

Because if you've taken time to properly grow your bankroll already, you do get to pull out all your winnings unless you intend to move up further.

If your bankroll is 100k and you make 80k playing 20/40 or 40/80, you can take out the 80k and still have a 100k bankroll.

Leader had an amazing post on bankroll management when you withdraw, showing the impact of paying bills out of your win rate. Last time I checked, some of the hosted graphs weren't up any more... it was much harder to follow without the shown graphs. Still, totally agree that living in a place where you can barely pay bills out of your expected winnings is misery.

Also if you play 60/120 and 100/200, you can have a bad couple months and realize you need to move down. You play 40/80 and can still win well above your burn rate. Heck, move down to 20/40 (a game that should seem like wiffleball) and break even on bills while you get your head straight. Play 20/40 and you just can't do this. You can't move down and even make your monthly nut. Being able to move down changes your trajectory. If you're playing 3 levels above your required cost of living, your bankroll can effectively double 3 times before you're playing breakeven stakes.

We see people talking about paying bills playing 4/8, 6/12, or 8/16 and I'm just amazed. It seems like they're one blown transmission or modest hospital trip away from bankruptcy. That's in a cheap place to live.
This is quite wrong. The RoR calc is an infinite series, so it assumes you only accumulate money and checks to see if your path crosses zero. A 1000BB roll is huge, but even there you have some reasonable chance of going to zero playing 40/80 forever if you spend every dime you win above 80K or whatever. Someone tries this with a 300BB roll, and the question becomes "how soon is busto".

It also ignores liferoll effects. Let's say you're a 40/80 player who spends $80K/year and who makes about that at the table. You have a comfortable $80K roll. No problem, right? You take a 6 month breakeven stretch, and your bills eat half your roll. Even not losing, you're now 6 months away from busto.

People never take taxes into account, they hurt

In this, my 12th year of being self employed, seems like I have a good feel for it. Certainly $X working for yourself is different than those same $X as a salary. OTOH, there are some benefits. One strange thing is that a mediocre year isn't as bad as it seems -- once your earnings go down enough, it seems like you pay almost no taxes. It is nowhere near $0. You have an amazing year, and each one of those withholding checks makes you want to puke, though.