Well I thought giving a sample was better than not giving one. What if I was -$50 ph for 200 hours? Would anyone give actually advocate playing full time and/or think the games beatable?

Yea 21 lol...

What lolsample size means is that you could very well be -50/hr for 200 hours.

There are probably hundreds of you with similar skill level around the world, and you may be one of the small minority lucky players who ran way above EV to be posting the question in the first place.

And only someone with the same profile as you would be posting the question, so it seems as if small minority is the norm.

FWIW, 10% to $10 + $5/hour is an insanely bad rake (perhaps worst rake ever posted in this thread?).

How did you fare before at this venue and other venues over how many hours?

200 hours is basically meaningless (as others and yourself have suggested), so basing any decisions (such as leaving an existing paying job to try this) on this alone wouldn't be a good idea.

GgoodluckG

For what it's worth, nobody in your age bracket could afford to lose significant amount of money in short time span, so natural selection of poker would weed them out rather quickly.

Consider this scenario:

1000 players with similar profile as Pipedreamer101 walks into a poker room.

Those who failed to catch a good run of cards will simply fade away and never be seen again.

10% or 100 of them make decent run and survive the first 100 hours. If I were 21 and won $50/hr for 100 hours, I would also think that I have what it takes and that money is easy in poker.

So now I am thinking about moving up and find my way to 2+2, the biggest poker forum in the world, and start reading new materials in hopes of moving up.

However, it is very difficult to want to move away from principles that got you here in the first place, and yet most don't realize that those principles are also what will handicap you from moving forward.

Some of these players try new ideas, fail, and go back to old ways.

Next 100 hours are not so kind, and they fade back to oblivion.

Or you're one of the luckiest of lucky players and continue on for another 100 hours, and you find yourself thinking: "maybe the first 100 hours was luck, but the next 100 hours can't be luck, I have to be good." So you post the question asking whether you are good enough to go full-time.

Good luck with the next 100 hours.

Qft.

I ran 50/hr for 200 hrs aug sept. Oct is avg -120/hr. Just fyi.

well color me insanely lucky again. Somehow I have pulled off another miracle and gone to a new place and managed to win at a very good clip. Hopefully they do not have meetings and decide how to "deal with me"

You are significantly better than even most players in this forum.

You are an anomaly.

When I dug through all my results, 3000+ hours of $1/2, there were 100 hour windows with easily +- $150/hr. There were more winning stretches than losing ones, but the noise in those sized samples is insane.

Your winrate will almost never be a reflection of your poker abilities, it is important to understand how to asses your own game.

To just go over some of the rough math:

$31,500 - Pretax amount to max out my Roth 401k / Roth IRA

$19,200 - Annual pretax amount to cover fixed monthly expenses (rent, student loans, car insurance, phone)

That's $50k right there accounted for that doesn't even touch a checking account, leaving $50k discretionary. Now some of that $50k is a guaranteed end-of-year bonus, but I'll ignore that for the time being.

$27,000 - Pretax amount required to save $20,000 in a taxable brokerage account

$23,000 - Remaining pretax amount that can effectively be used for discretionary spending (food, gas/transportation, entertainment, etc.), which amounts to roughly $1500/month after taxes.

So yah - I save a lot. If I were to quit to go pro, the first thing I would cut would be the $31,500 going towards Roth retirement accounts that I can't touch until I'm 59.5. Those are my "if everything else goes wrong in life, I have these to fall back on" rainy day investments. But they are a luxury that gets cut if I'm not working full time.

I don't know how people with kids make ends meet. My childhood friend just had his second kid (with a girl that has three previous kids already) and they don't make much money. I have no idea how the hell they are going to get through the next 18 years. Scares the hell out of me to ever have kids.

To me the timeline looks like: Achieve financial freedom --> consider settling down/having kids

Not the other way around.

Why is this "highly unlikely?" I don't work in corporate finance bruh.

Figured I would introduce myself on here. This thread is obviously a great resource for guys like me who are just getting back into playing.

Been playing poker for a little over 10 years (I'm 26), with most of my play coming online pre-Black Friday. My current job has made it somewhat difficult to play regularly, however, I've recently moved to where I have time to make weekend trips and play 2/5. My sample size is very small (150 hours), but my results thus far have been "unsustainably good". It is a fairly large poker room, nestled between two major cities, so 5/10 and 10/25 games run regularly -- and (imo) this leaves 2/5 wide open.

Being a "weekend" player gives me an enormous advantage over the 2/5 grinder nits putting in 60hrs/wk who just nut peddle/nit it up. It seems as though anyone with any sort of creativity plays in the bigger games.

I am obviously a bit worried that eventually my run good is going to fade and I'll be brought back to reality. I've input my winrate, etc. into the poker dope variance calculator, and over a million hand sample my largest downswing was 600bb. I even cut my winrate in half and still only came up with at most a 750bb downswing. For some of you guys with 2000+ hours of play, is this reasonable? Were your largest downswings close to this or should I expect it to hurt a bit more?

You are using too small of a STD if the largest downswing you got was 750bb over a million hand simulation.

Ohhhhhhh lol. Now this is more what I was expecting. Thanks for the help

2 incomes

Ha, it's very rare ITT to see someone post a problem with the correct solution showing up in the very next post.

Maybe we're on a roll?

I've got this rash....

I won $5600 over last 20 hours at $1/2. I'm going pro. Gonna make $500K easy.

Your game plays more like a $2/5 with a $500 BI though... still impressive nonetheless. Maybe it's time to be on poker night in America and show the world your skills.

Go go go

Yes, and they aren't saving much money. johnnyBuz is saving a ****load of money. Most Americans don't have any savings to their name at all (most poker players included).

Play 40 hours per week and make a cool million

Then write a book, become a coach and quit poker

Question for buzz, slim or whoever?

You mentioned that you have a Roth 401k and a Roth IRA, I'm familiar with the latter but am ignorant of the first...should I be converting my rollover Ira (formerly 401k) to Roth 401k/ is that even possible? What consideration(s) should I be making.

Thanks in advance

how?

max 401k contribution is like 18k, max roth ira is like 5.5k

You can convert the IRA to a Roth IRA, but you have to pay taxes on the amount you convert.

Roth IRA is after-tax, so the delta must be taxes.