I wanted to make my 1k post a little special so I've decided to talk a little bit
about my decision to put my notice in at my full-time job as of July 1st. I may or may not bring up some winrate/br info further, or in replies at some point. For the sake of my, and everyone's privacy let's consider those numbers as hypotheticals and not necessarily a complete and full indication of truth. I considered this board to have been enormously helpful in the development of my game and philosophy so I thought I would post it here, hopefully that's OK. Let's hop in.

Reasons why?
I have been dreaming of being a full-time poker player for over a decade. I've worked extensively on my game and enjoy the developmental aspect/prospect nearly as much as I do actually playing. I think that's important, both of them add to each other's enjoyment imo.

I don't really like my current full-time job. Simply, I'm salaried, it takes up more of my time than I'd like it to, doesn't pay as much as I would necessarily like, is commonly more stressful than I'd like and doesn't grant me a peer network to be able to socialize like I'd like to. (I'm a GM at a fast food place for those who are wondering.) I don't have any intention of burning bridges if things don't go well, so I think it is possible at some point that I might return to management; however after 8 years I'm ready for a change.

I've been disciplined and have constructed around 800 hrs of stats over the past 3 years. I know a lot of my weaknesses and my strengths.

This evidence leads me to belive that I am a seasoned and winning enough player to be able to completely replace my current income with fewer hours per weak of poker.

As of the time of my departure, I will have constructed what I consider a reasonable BR of 50 BIs + 6 months living expenses.

Even if it doesn't work completely as I'd like, I'm willing to get a part-time job at some point if necessary. More importantly, I'm turning 30 later this year and feel like I'll never forgive myself if I don't at least give this a shot. I honestly feel like the gamble from doing this now is a no-brainer compared to the risk of someday soon just drawing dead to ever having the opportunity for this experience again.

That's my spiel on why. I definitely welcome all criticism.

In addition to that, I'd like to spew some of the knowledge that I've picked up in the 13 years it's been since I was dealt my first hand of NLHE. I'll divide it into two parts Preparation and Play. I think both are important.

Preparation
-Meditate
Google it, Youtube it if you don't know how. Even 15 minutes every couple days will blow your mind. You have no idea what your brain power potential is until you start to hack into it.

-Exercise
Once again, even 15 minutes four times a week or so will blow your mind. If you're not doing this you have an incredible amount of untapped energy and brainpower at your disposal. That's before we even start to talk about how much better you'll look if you aren't exercising.

-Read/watch/think/interact
First off, under read, THE STICKIES, ****ING READ THEM!! NOW. Come back later, there's people way smarter and more organized than me on there, if you made it this far and haven't read them yet go back and do it, I'm wasting your time and distracting you.
2+2 has one of the best, if not the best communities in terms of poker on the internet. Don't just stick to one board, and don't just reply mindlessly. Absorb everything you can, process it the way that you want to, say what's on your mind, and then reflect on the feedback. Also, venture out, there are a ton of great boards on 2+2, not just one.
I'll throw this on there too, even tho the mods might frown- if you're not subscribed to a paid poker training site, do it. Back again to Google, there's discussion about which of the top 10 sites might be the best; but they'll all be able to eventually get you to making 100k a year playing poker given time and discipline. I guarantee it to you right now. You owe yourself the $30 or so a month before buying into your next poker game for anything above that.

- Just remember that your preparation time is essentially unlimited. The games aren't going anywhere, poker is alive and well, and you have time to improve provided that you focus.

-Work on both your mental game and your fundamental game

Play
I'm just going to plop down the notes that I read before every session
1. Play like a professional today (somebody I like a lot said that)

2. Find a good game, find the best seat. (the player who can do this will ALWAYS have an edge of the person who ignores it; be shameless the scorecard is kept in $, not pride)

3.Leave your rebuys somewhere else. Taking a walk to reload pays for itself

4. Stay ahead of opponents preflop ranges. (unless you see a very tight player, then exploit the **** out of them) This prints money. I also constructed a top 20% chart on Pokerstove for myself, I would highly recommend doing this at some point if you haven't. Very eye opening in terms of what will be included and not included, also gives you an idea of what a 10%-30% opening range might look like... and can also be applied to a lot of your opponents to really give you insight into wtf is actually going on when they're limping 50% of hands, or folding for 4 hours straight.

5.There are two kinds of tilt. Losing tilt and winning tilt. Both **** you up. Acknowledge your streak, plan for your mood, adjust back to normal.

6.Pay lots of attention. If there is one stat that you could influence in a poker game MAKE SURE your attention level is a 10/10 when you're playing. Pay attention to your attention level. Pay attention to everything!

7.Pay some more attention. Now remind yourself in 3 hands to pay attention again. Who's on tilt? Who's playing good/bad? How are you playing? what are your reads? Should you go back to rule #2? You get the picture... Attention is important.

8.Avoid late street payoffs at low limit poker. A big fold is almost never that bad of a mistake. Also, the bet/fold is your best friend and a lot of your opponent's worst enemey.

9. Phil Laak has a thought about what happens to someone after they lose/win a big pot. Normally it's pretty face up that they either go tilted or start to God mode until something extraordinary stops it. This should be applied two fold, both to you and to your opponents. If you lose a big pot take a breather, maybe even switch tables and start fresh. Don't let it define you. If you see someone lose a big pot and they still have a lot of money in front of them consider switching tables to engage in the feeding frenzy. Same but opposite for big pots. You win one, play your heart out, they win one, find excuses to stay out of their way.

10. (another person I'm pretty fond of says this) Allow people to make mistakes. Most commonly, if you see someone about to bluff off a huge barrel and you feel like your hand is good, let them. Second most commonly if you feel like someone just fired a pretty big barrel with a second best hand that might find a fold, click them back. JUST LET PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES, HELP THEM TO IF YOU CAN. It's important.

11. BONUS..... If you're a cash game player a good time to be playing is about 1 hour after a tournament starts, right around that first break. Think about it. Poker is time sensitive sometimes, sometimes you get paid more than other times, find those times. Think about it. Now find other things like this to make you lots of money.\\

If you made it this far, good luck at the table. I'm hoping some of you have found this useful, and before I go, thank you so much to all the great posters who have helped me even have a shot at any of this ****. Alright, go crush.

GL OP. Your job should be easy to replace if you find you have to, but I hope you find that you love pro poker and do well at it.

Yeah GL man. Life isn't easy at times it feels like you have to pick the lesser of the 2 evils or 3 evils etc...

Do something you love and are passionate about and then make sure u can make bank doing that then do it forever (not talking about poker but in general). Ik im only 19, but hey.

I really enjoyed this post. Great reminders about game selection and the mentality u need to have before sitting down at a poker table.

Also like the idea of leaving additional buy ins somewhere other than ur pocket. Forces u to get up and think if u should continue the session, seat change, table change keep playing.

Thanks for the post

Pretty good suggestions. Just to add to 20% of the hands comment... Make sure you adjust that based on the position. Some players may play only 10% of hands in early positions and open up in later positions (myself included). Of course some are completely positionally unaware.

Good luck with your decisions. Keep us updated.


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Nice post and good luck OP. As a fellow rec player to another, I always thought your posts were pretty solid.

But I'm also the resident "don't-go-pro" rec player and so I feel I have to say the same here.

I'm assuming you're not married and don't have any dependents? If that's not the case, pretty meh decision, imo; otherwise, not nearly as much danger in giving it a shot and having no regrets.

800 hours of stats is kinda nothing; it will probably only make up 1/2 of your first pro year. Duke recently posted in the stats thread how he went on a 600 hour streak after some major life expenses where he made less than $10/hr. Gotta be prepared for that, but it looks like you've done a decent job regarding having lottsa BIs / savings at your disposal.

Regarding "the games aren't going anywhere", this is a real fallacy, imo. History has actually showed otherwise, especially in my local market. I'm not sure what your market is like, but does it have a 7 card stud game? Doubt hardly any do now, and yet it used to be the game of choice everywhere; pretty sure no old timers playing it in the mid 90s would ever think it would go away. Never thought I'd see the day where a casino poker room didn't have a Limit version of Texas Hold'em, but that is now the case in my room. 2 of 7 rooms in my market have closed, and every single one of them have downsized tables. And the NL game that has been left behind is much harder than the one it was just a few years ago. I don't believe the future is necessarily as bright as you think it is, and I believe history proves that. I guess it depends on your market, the size of your market, and the stage it is in.

Anyways, at least it sounds like you have a plan, and you're not opposed to getting back into the work market if things go south.

GgoodluckG

Can you go from a mundane salary job to becoming a great poker player by following that list, and doing so 30hrs/week?

Good luck OP. If I had known about poker when I was younger, I would have done the same thing. Of course, I'd probably be a cocktail waitress in Vegas now, but it would have been fun!

OP,

Good luck.

A few suggestions:

1) Keep another job, at least 15 hrs a week. For a few reasons:
....A) Benefits
....B) Distraction for when you run like death and are in the abyss
....C) So you can have something to put on a resume other then "professional gambler"
....D) So that you have some $$$ going to the tax man on a regular basis. (You may have to pay quarterly estimates regardless.)
....E) Make it something you have to move around to do (helps you get exercise)

2) Take classes at your local VoTech or Community college. You'll need something to fall back on if this doesn't work out. Should only cost you 10-12 hrs a week per class.

3) Write up a strict budget. Be relentless with it.
.....A) Include in your budget a savings regiment. Always save something.

4) Write up a strict food budget, and cut your daily calories to 1500 per day (less?). Cook for yourself 95% of the time.

5) Read DGAF's well... http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/11...r-obv-1167630/

Start a LLC to cover the resume gap .

Don't sell yourself short, you're a tremendous slouch.

Solid post with lots of good points and food for thought: best of luck in your journey OP.

good luck mang. just be prepared - there is a massive difference between playing poker 270 hours per year and cranking out 1500 to 2000 hours in a year

Nice post, OP. Congrats on 1k posts!

I liked a lot of your points, some of which I should be doing more often such as finding better games instead of getting comfortable and lazy.

800 hours is really not a very big sample size and I'm only saying this because I would never advise someone to quit their job based only on that small of a sample size. Everyone want to make more money, and jobs do seem like a waste of our time but if this is what you are doing, I wish you the best of luck (and happy variance!)

This is so true, and in my experience of taking 6-9mo off work to play poker I found this to be the biggest change.

Best advice I can give is to set a schedule like a normal job, and simply log hours, say "I'll play 8hrs today of my best game possible, don't care if I lose or win, just 8hrs of perfect poker....k, go!"

This helped me enormously to stay non-result oriented and objective, and to keep accountable for getting my 30-40hrs in a week.

Best of luck dude!

Thanks, Lapidator

I seriously love my life, but Vegas before 30 really would have been fun -- or trying poker for a living in general.

I really wish you luck, sungar78. Stick to your plan!

I think it will be an interesting and exciting venture. Richard Dawkins (at the risk of throwing a variably sized rock into a variably sized pond) had a recent AMA where he was asked simply, among other things, about his take on what happens when we leave this world. His response was something to the effect of, we already got chosen from an impossible lottery to have existence, so simply to experience it is an incredible privilege within itself. Without several further paragraphs I find myself happier for just that nowadays and even with our limited interactions certainly hope and see the same for you.

Great sentiment. Thanks man. For what it's worth I'm almost 30 and couldn't pick these words by far for a 19 year old. It sounds like you're far beyond your years.

Gg, ditto on the solid posts my man.

Currently it's just my girlfriend and I. We rent a condo currently, no kids for either of us. It'll get long if I keep going into my situation further, but pm me, or I'll hit ya up man. Putting off buying a house for the moment, but hopefully things go well in the next year. Even a breakeven past expenses year could hopefully leave me w a down payment.

I couldn't agree more about the limited sample size. I still have some relatively serious questions about some noticeable spikes in my standard deviation; however (and I very seriously don't mean that as a retraction of my previous sentence) I feel like even my largest poker and emotional swings should be overcomeable by and large.

Id considered not passing by your great point about the slowly but definitely ever surely declining NL market. I do agree. 8 or so years ago, at 20 I was playing 2/4 4 table 7 stud on Party Poker for a rocky living. I imagine at some point in the next 5 or so years even if my current pipe dream comes true I will need to start making plans for the future. All I was really trying to point out was that, as of now, there should be ample time and reward for anyone to invest in improving in NL. I'd love to talk further at some point.

GI'llstillmakesuretokeepmymindandhandssharptocomba tewithfutureroboticsandlegislations/ficklehumannatureG

Richard...

To piggyback off of DGAF, yes,

I do think strongly that a meditating, exercising, listening, watching, interacting, critically thinking, good game seeking, rebuy stashing, preflop nut-peddling/nit attacking, attention paying, +extra, extra attention paying, non-late street in LLSNL big bet without the nuts paying, momentum noticing, bravely/casually letting opponents making mistakes letting, good time of the day playing, aspiring, low limit poker player can go from mundane to <.

I do also think, despite saying otherwise occasionally, that the possibility of realizing your dreams are worth far more than 30 hrs/wk. I'll be honest that this last 6 week transitioning period is freaking me out more than a little bit, and between this Thurs and Fri and work/poker I clocked more than 30 hrs in two days. We'll see how it goes; but it's been a long time for me being hungry for something beyond the mundane.

Lappy, I luv ya. You're next on my list, but I'm too tired and drunk for the moment to give ya a worthy reply

I'll just say for now that I've read this reply at least five times already, have regarded your advise extremely highly for quite a while, and will most certainly incorporate it.

I'll be back for you further a little later.

Hope you're crushing, coolering, and collecting on everyone man.