Glad to see that you are back and doing well.

Regarding the job market and jobs in general - I think that having a marketable skill is very important if not crucial. Riverdog (see above) is a physician, your dad is an accountant (me too), etc. Having a marketable skill allows you the most flexibility when considering part-time options, and I think that the jobs themselves are less draining/boring. I can't recall if you mentioned what you got your degree in, so it might involve some topping off on your college degree with a few more courses, but that by itself can be a positive experience.

All good points, though a job in sales sounds awful to me personally. Its possible that I'd like it if I tried it but I'm skeptical. Corporate sales as you are looking into seems better, but dealing with retail customers seems like torture. Way too often I see a customer treating an employee in a way that would make me do/say something that would certainly get me fired if I was being treated that way.

I'm also one of those weirdo poker players who properly pays taxes so that's not a consideration for me.

Totally agree regarding having a marketable skill. If you can do something few others can you have a lot more leverage. A couple years ago I was part of an unpaid intern program with a poker writing website. We were all given an assignment and apparently I was the only one of the group that understood the directions and could complete it to their specifications. So they asked me to do all of them. I said sure, but this time I would like to be paid for my work. Just like that I was a paid contributor 2 weeks into what was supposed to be a 6 week unpaid internship. I didn't even think I did anything spectacular, I guess my marketable skill in this case was "following directions".

That aside, my degree was in finance. Though I like finance, I made a fairly conscious decision not to work in the field and as of right now am happy with that decision. I frequently read finance related books and articles so if I wanted to brush up on some things a bit more formally it wouldn't be much of a stretch.

Ya Cush my dad was a salesmen selling office furniture and supplies to administration offices and school supplies/classroom furniture to schools. It wasn't like a glory job but he made six figures and had a home office and generally enjoyed the life it provided and he was really good at it he broke like all the sales records for his company and the bonuses for that were generous.

I like the fact that you think things through and don't close the door on anything without giving it some thought. There is no doubt in my mind that you are going to have a happy and successful life.

Yea that sounds like a great setup, the non public-facing gigs seem reasonable to me.

ty sir, I hope you are right.

Been trucking right along lately at the poker table. Went back home for a wedding and a couple football games so this has been a short month, though I did play 2 days while I was in Wisconsin. Being in a non-Vegas casino was a bit strange at first. The feel is way different and the level of degeneracy seemed much higher. Its possible they just are better at hiding that stuff in Vegas but when you take away the vacation factor and nearly everyone is local its so much easier to see how degenerate of a place casinos are.

Due to those couple sessions I was able to up my next hours goal a bit. Thanks to a few 9 hour sessions recently I am well ahead of pace to hit that which is nice. Results are lagging unfortunately but it should come around. I've been in some good games recently and that has kept things interesting and made me want to play. Besides obviously being profitable, figuring out how a whale is playing is pretty fun so it keeps me engaged. I still get pretty bored when the games are average/bad though.

A few days ago I also spewed about as hard as I've ever spewed. Last time I did something so atrocious that I can remember is last November. I make mistakes all the time, but this was just awful. Lucky for me games were terrible that day and I'd put in a bunch of long sessions that week so I just left after less than 2 hours and didn't feel too guilty about the early exit.

I've put a couple better sessions in since but its still annoying to punt like that. To me that's the worst feeling in poker. I can get 2-outed all day and not give a single ****, but punting off a big chunk when its 100% my error just eats at me. Luckily its rare, but it needs to be rarer still.

As I mentioned before, I had a few non-poker opportunities come up. The first was a phone interview with a NY-based hedge fund. I applied during one of my many quarter-life identity crises and honestly was surprised to have gotten an interview. Besides not doing well on the brain-teaser part of the interview I feel like I did fairly well. I didn't make it to the next round but it was a good experience nonetheless. It was pretty humbling since I consider myself to be pretty good at probability and brain teaser type stuff and I failed pretty hard at his question. I don't think getting it wrong put me out of the running but it certainly didn't help. Time to revisit some math stuff I guess haha.

The other opportunity had to do with medicare sales. I got in contact with the guy through a conversation I had randomly at the table. After talking with him for about 40 minutes I concluded that most likely its not for me, though I wasn't opposed to learning more about it. Their busy season has just started so its not really the best time to jump in. Currently thats on the back burner and I'm going to be in contact with him early next year to see if thats a route I want to go down.

That's about all I've got to report. Hope all is well with you guys, thanks for reading.

Cush, I can hardly believe you're still playing poker for a living!

Some of the words you type and comments you make are such a vast contrast. Obviously you know and understand that you're at a dead-end job.

Fear can be healthy, and fear is normal for everyone doing their own gig. Being scared of failure and scared to let yourself down is normal and common. This fear can be a motivating factor that keeps you hungry to succeed in a competitive world we live in.

You don't have to "give up" anything in life, however giving up on poker as a full-time year-around job, that you've finally learned to hate, would be a good start to making a positive life choice for yourself.

I played full time year-around for 3 years. The first year was kinda neat, the second year I became more focused, and the third year was a new form of pain in my life. The best choice I ever made was stop *trying* to fool myself. In the 3 years since I quit playing cards full time I have made more money, more friends, have more stability in my life, and generally have more balance and a sincere feeling of 'everything is cool' in my life. Why continue this death-trap emotional roller coaster of barley scraping by as a low stakes grinder? There is way more to life!


Best wishes.............

Hey man, yea I definitely see where you're coming from, poker can be a dead end job if there's no diversification. A few thoughts on your comments regarding fear: I took a fairly big risk moving out to Vegas with no job, no friends or family, and no tangible reason to believe I could make it as a pro poker player. Thus I traditionally haven't thought of myself as having much fear of failure. However, as it relates to leaving poker, I find myself much less apt to take risks that are probably smaller than the ones I've already taken, which has led me to ask myself in the more recent past whether fear of failure or self-doubt is playing a factor.

Its something I've wrestled with mentally before and try my best to keep out of my decision making process. I have my reasons for still playing poker full-time, which I have discussed in here plenty. I believe they are sound despite knowing that poker isn't my end game.

I'm glad to hear you've found something better since getting out of poker. I think nearly everyone sees similar life improvements when they get out in terms of money/friends/stability as you talk about. Most low stakes grinders would be much better off if they followed suit.

If you don't mind me asking, what are you up to now? I'm always interested to hear what people do post-poker and whether they prefer it to the grind, which it seems you do.

Pretty soon after my last post I started going on an absolute tear at the table. I had a streak of something like 10 for 11 with most of the wins being 4 figures. Capped it off with what I'm fairly certain was my biggest 2/5 win to date. I don't remember going on a run like that ever in my poker career so that was kinda nice, particularly since I'd been mostly treading water results-wise the couple months prior.

I've been able to maintain a fairly steady motivation lately. No 9 hour sessions recently, but I've been consistent with being at the table when I need to be. I took a short trip to Mexico with my girlfriend in the beginning of this month. She used to live there, we stayed with her dad in Mexico City. For a couple days she showed me around the city a bit and we went to the pyramids and then for the rest of the weekend we mostly relaxed at her house. It was a lot of fun and a nice time for a little break. I don't post up a lot of personal stuff so I don't think I've mentioned having a girlfriend on here yet but yea, been seeing her almost a year now, she's awesome!

My main struggle right now at the table is just staying engaged. Last month I was able to get into some fun/interesting games and it made it super easy to stay focused. Lately I haven't had much of that at 2/5, but I've been playing 5/10 a little more and have noticed that it has a similar effect. I'm more focused up there, probably because the game is tougher and plays a little different so I feel the need to pay attention to everything. There's more for me to figure out so I'm less likely to zone out and autopilot.

I'm not so sure its a great move from an ROI standpoint. I used to only go up there if the game was very good but lately my threshold is a bit lower. I've been trying to play up there as long as its decent and there's nothing special going on at 2/5. Since I still avoid the bottom maybe 20-30% of games I'm sure my hourly up there is higher than at 2/5, but the swings/variance/risk is probably more than double 2/5 while the increased hourly is likely 50% at best. Right now I'm ok with taking on the extra variance for a potentially slightly higher hourly, something I have largely been against thus far. If it helps me to stay focused and I am properly rolled then it seems like a win to me.

While playing up there I've noticed that a lot of the guys that are doing very well don't seem to be all that far ahead of me from a technical standpoint. I suspect the main difference between them and myself is that they were more ready to take risks and less afraid of the bigger game. I've admittedly been much too cautious with playing in certain games and it really comes down to fear. Fear of failure, fear of losing, fear of not being good enough. In the end being too careful could potentially be just as costly as being recklessly aggressive. Most of the latter crash and burn fairly quickly and move on (some get lucky too obv), whereas the overly cautious can easily scrape along below their potential for comparably much longer before either reaching that potential or finally quitting. I suspect I've been on the cautious side and am thus trying to take more calculated risks so as to reach my potential, being more aggressive without crossing the line into reckless.

I've also decided to finally pull the trigger and start up a podcast. I'd like to record a few episodes to start and then do something regularly, at least monthly, if it goes well. I'd like to have it focused on talking about the ins and outs of playing poker for a living from a mental and lifestyle standpoint, along with having guests on. I've met tons of interesting pros since moving to Vegas, people that most people don't ever really hear from since they aren't part of the tournament scene or mainstream poker media channels. I think it'd be fun and valuable to hear from some of those guys.

The first episode will likely just be me, so if you guys have any questions you'd like answered or topics that you'd like me to cover feel free to PM me or post them up here. I have no timeline yet but I'd like to have the first 3-5 episodes done by the end of the year, release them all at once and go from there.

Happy Halloween!

Hey guys, haven't posted on here because I've been working on doing a podcast lately. What I've been doing is basically an audio version of this blog after every 1-2 sessions and talking about whatever happened to come up over those sessions.

I put everything on SoundCloud, link to my profile here. There are 7 episodes so far, ranging from 5 to 20 minutes. It has been approved on iTunes and the next thing I'll be working on is getting it on other podcast apps.

Hope you guys enjoy it and if you have any feedback feel free to post here, PM me or comment on SoundCloud.

Just downloaded all episodes for PocketCasts on android. Can't wait to listen to them! Thanks again!

Looking forward to listening to them all and getting more content from you.

Thanks guys, glad people are interested. Just put up another episode, everything can be found in the link above!

Just a bunch of random topics I'm interested in hearing you talk about in your podcasts.

1) Table Selection. What do you look for in a good table and when to transfer. What's the ratio of regular vs rec players in a typical 2/5 and 5/10 NLHE game in Vegas? Casino selection and why you like each one?

2) What's your take on long term win rates in Las Vegas at each level?

3) Best time of the year to come to Las Vegas to play other than WSOP, march madness or Superbowl?

4) Would you recommend someone move to Las Vegas to become a poker pro? Safe and affordable places to live in Vegas?

5) Recommended bankrolls for 2/5 and 5/10 NLHE? Your biggest downswing in terms of buy ins in Vegas?

6) Do you travel to play poker in LA, Florida or Maryland etc...?

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

You're last podcast was the best. Really enjoyed the analogies of poker to piecing together widgets and also enjoyed the discussion you had with your friends on the pros and cons of poker playing as a career. Also really liked your point that boredom as a form of tilt is a big reason why the majority of people are incapable of becoming live pros. Live pros get bashed a lot, but then again there was never the influx of online pros going live after Black Friday.

I definitely prefer the longer form podcasts that range from 20 minutes to an hour. Perhaps also think about putting out solid long form podcasts once a week as opposed to shorter ones every day.

What I'd like to see interspersed with your regular podcasts is long interviews with other live players (squid face, Andrew Neeme, etc.)

Yea live pros definitely don't get enough credit for the "soft skills".

Just put up a new episode, the last one before the holidays. I answer some questions I've gotten from this thread and otherwise. Its also a bit longer which people have requested so killed two birds with one stone. Hope you guys enjoy!

I'll try to up my working out and add your pod to my schedule

I've just heard your last two podcasts last night. Great job man! Very well done. I'm subbed.

Your name is Kush lash? Always thought it was something else

Missed this the first time I read. Yea my original plan was to have interviews be a bit part of the project. Decided to do the solo thing for now since figuring out multiple audio sources was just another thing to figure out and if it was too complicated I was afraid I might quit.

Now that I have a little traction, working out the details with potential interviews is top on my priority list once I return, along with putting up an actual site of my own.

Sweet! Let me know what you think!

Thanks man, really appreciate the feedback, glad you're enjoying them.

Well Cushlash but yea, what did you think it was?

I've logged around 700hrs in that game and I can attest to how easy it is to lose big pots. When you're playing 300bbs deep and so is everybody else, a few losses really adds up. Losing 7k is only 4.66 buyins assuming one buys in full. Cush is a great player yet even a 7k swing is nornal and expected. This shows me that a 10k swing is just around the corner 300bbs deep at 2/5 and calls for a poker bankroll of $35k ($15k to lose and $20k to rebuild)

The only thing that doesn't add up is your ability to comprehend ideas of someone else without twisting the meaning in your head to make it mean something completely different. Hmm, reminds me of a recent troll who stopped posting in here recently.

I believe that I said the very best players make 60/hr, not that I make that. I also said that I'm NOT one of the very best players in the Wynn 2/5 pool. I doubt I accidentally claimed to win 60/hr since that would not only violate my rule of not publicly discussing significant results but it would also be inaccurate.

When you twist my words and exaggerate then yea, it doesn't add up.

Pretty much this.

This is an accurate and reasonable assessment imo.

Cushlash,

Can you do a year in review on 2plus2 and on your podcast? I would love to hear if you met your goals personally and professionally with poker. Any goals you have this year etc....

Ask and ye shall receive. Just got back to town after my vacation and wanted to record an episode even though I haven't played in a while and thus didn't have much to talk about. Thanks for the suggestion! Link