Some random thoughts based on my experiences:

There is more to it than just going to the poker room & playing. You will have a lot of time away from the tables. Use this time wisely. All of this time is not your down time. Work on your game. I was always reading at least 2 poker books at a time, 1 for my tactical game & 1 for my mental game.

You have to be 100% objective about your play, which is very difficult. You don't always win because you played good & you don't always lose because you just got unlucky. Both at & away from the table you must be able to objectively evaluate your play. There are tons of posts on this site saying "I run so bad" and hardly any that say "yeah I won but I don't think I played very well".

If you're going to try this, you'd better have a good plan for what you'll do if it doesn't work. Waiting until you're dead broke is not a plan. Evaluate your bankroll along with your education & work experience to determine what your backup plan is.

This is a great point.

Being a pro is not just going to the casino X-hours a week and make $X.

Could you guys expand on how you work on your game off table?

Thanks

If someone were to tell you that they were quitting school or their job to pursue a career in poker and they wanted to know your thoughts on it, what advice would you give them and why?

1) Quitting school for poker is always ALWAYS ALWAYS a terrible decision. I had a freaking 40k month as a junior in college, and finished. The guys who were in a similar boat in college and quit are stuck with poker with no back up plan.

2) Always have a back up plan.

3) If anyone asked me if they should. I'd tell them no.

4) If someone was set on doing it, I'd tell them to stay disciplined beyond all else.

1. For me the major problem I had was bankroll control. In 2005-2007 I would cruise around the west coast and play as high as I could. I mainly played 5/10, under rolled a lot of the time. I would fly girls into town to party with. Stupid money spent on suites and substances. Not saving, not investing. I eventually took some time off, moved back east to AC, and started actually doing things the "right" way. It took learning the hard way, though that's part of life. Today I'm light years better than I was back then, but I rarely play higher than 2/5.

As to actual in game problems, it was not making things personal. I was awful at that. I'd play terrible because I'd be po'd or not like someone. I'd verbally get into it with certain people. yeah learning to take the emotion out of it was a big turning point I'd say.

Another point is being comfortable or developing your own style. I always played agro. Then after studying/reading/posting etc. I thought I needed to learn how to be a "tag" whatever that means. Anyway my results feel off a cliff. I was constantly thinking(about the wrong things) instead of trusting myself and playing my game. I definitely think playing in a manner that's yours and your 100% comfortable with and at ease at the table with is mandatory if you want to succeed long term.

2. Hours is ambiguous kind of. Whatever you feel you need to make your money or live. I don't think anyone can answer that. You may find yourself playing 60 hrs one week and 20 the next, it's all relative. I played every day basically, for years, now I play 2-4 sessions a week. (I'm also mandated by the state to work a "real job" as terms of probation, so I have a part time job which I other wise wouldn't be doing and almost assuredly would play more)

3. Not sure, probably the standard. Having the mental toughness to handle prolonged downswings. It's also hard to have a relationship, in my opinion anyway. Weird hours, being bored with everyday, mundane things. A lot of girls don't like it when you consistently stay out all night and don't want to do things with them on Friday and Saturday nights. It can be challenging.

4. I play 95% cash. I hate live tournaments. I've always been better at cash and enjoy it much much more. I used to play some small stakes tournaments online. I was a huge fish online in cash games though. (Which made me a loser overall) Now I only play live, but since NJ passed the law I'll probably play some small online tournaments in the future.

Just me personally, I can't stand the long grind of the live tourney variance train. I'll be sitting at the cash game waiting for others to bust out and are full steam ahead. I chain smoke cigs and like to leave the table regularly, this isn't conducive to tournaments. I will however play in some of the guaranteed tournys around town if I think there will be an overlay.

Not sure if any of this will help you out at all or not. I hope it wasn't to ramblely. good luck

My answer will probably be different then most.

I'd say go for it. And I mean go for it. If you want to play for a living then dive in head first. Put everything you have into it. In my opinion that's the only way to succeed. if your going to do something you should try to be the best at it.

that said, make sure it's truly what you want to do. make sure your committed and are willing to put your all into it. realize that it's not going to be easy but if it's what you want it is certainly obtainable.

Working for yourself, having to only answer to yourself, truly using "you" to live is as good as it gets in my opinion. If your not committed don't try it. Set goals but don't be a slave to independent outcomes and results. There'll be good days and bad. but your worst day working for yourself is better than your best day making money for someone else.

Have enough money to live for awhile before cutting off your money stream. If things don't workout or your not feeling it anymore, you can always go back to work or go back to school or whatever. Know that. I feel like if your willing to dedicate yourself to the game, and it's what you want, take your shot.

It's not for everyone, but you'll never know if it's right for you without giving it a go.

I would say absolutely do not quit school for it. An education is a crucial part of your backup plan. And even if you finish school, I would suggest getting a job first to get a feel for the "real world". See how well you handle that with a job before you make a decision to rely on poker, cause it's a lot tougher to make it playing poker than it is with a steady paying job.

I would recommend that you have a detailed track record of your results that supports your decision. While it's tough to be objective about your play in a hand or a session, your win rate over thousands of hours is good measure of your skill & expected income.

Set routines for your self, both daily & longer term. Again, you get a lot of time away from the table & it's really easy to slack off if you're not disciplined. I set a daily schedule to spend a certain amount of time reading, reviewing hands, watching videos & exercising.

Another point is that poker doesn't have to be full time or no time. You can have a real job & play poker in your spare time. You can treat it like a hobby or a part time job to supplement your income.

That's your opinion and that's fine. I totally disagree. I truly feel that if one feels passionate about something, anything, and wants to pursue it, they should. Your only guaranteed one go round in this thing called life, you owe it to yourself to at least try and follow your "dreams."

Your only as wise as your experiences my friend. If you don't do things for yourself you'll spend your life wondering, what coulda woulda shoulda. If you truly want something, go out and make it happen.

and equating paying rake to working for a casino in the context that I was presenting it is just plain ridiculous. It's fine to have a different opinion than me, but I see no need to nit pick, especially in this thread.

If someone wanted to be a doctor, lawyer, writer, bus driver, scuba instructor what ever, would you tell them not to do it? To be successful in anything it takes a lot of commitment and long hard work, poker is no different.

Has anybody here had to transition from online grinding to live after black friday?

If so, what are the biggest differences between online and live? In terms of win rate, lifestyle, bankroll management, etc. Would you say it's easier to be an online pro because you have the opportunity to play so many more hands and thus up your win rate? There are 2 casinos here and only one has NLHE, and I think the rake is ridiculous like 15% up to 50 dollars and they only spread 5/10 and occasional 10/20 and I'm def not rolled for that, so I haven't even thought about giving that a shot yet.

I'm currently in a country where I can play almost any online site and I've just recently (about 3 months ago) started putting in some volume online in my free time (30k hands per month at the micros on Stars), and have started playing 1/2 home games about once a week as well. I'm also serving in the military (I'm 20), and I have the opportunity to go to university in about 1.5 years. What advice would you give to me if I really want to give playing poker for a living a shot?

Thanks for any help.

I made the transition from online to live. Win rate per hand is a lot higher, win rate per hour is lower, lifestyle sucks more live because you have to go to a casino and sit in smoke for 8 hours instead of chilling for 4 hours in your house.

Why didn't you move out of the country to continue playing live like many of the online pros did? And would you say it's easier to start a pro career playing online?

Because I have a wife and a house in the US with little mobility.

Definitely easier to start online, assuming you have a legal avenue, because you can play for quarters, nickels and dimes instead of 2/5 or 1/2.

Playing poker for a few months while applying for a job, and/or going to school, and/or planning for a better career is totally fine, presuming you have a sustainable win-rate.

But to simply put your whole life on halt to play $2/5 NL or even $5/10 is pretty ridiculous. In other words, don't make poker a lifetime career. If you do, you can surely bet that you'll struggle to have a family, let alone support one. Professional Poker has no savings package, no health insurance, no guarantees whatsoever.

20 years from now, are you sure your edge will be what it once was? What happens if you "burn out?" Will you be able to compete with the youngsters of the year 2033?

If you're willing to accept these facts: you'll struggle to have/support a family, you'll have to pay for healthcare, your 'job' won't provide you with any savings, and roughly 80+% of people won't 'get' your career choice....

then sure, go for it-- play poker professionally.


As for quitting school early... that's just plain dumb. Unless you're Phil Galdfond and you're quitting a relatively useless degree (B.A. in philosophy) to go make millions, you should really finish school. Graduating college simply isn't hard. Playing 40 hours of poker per week while attending college isn't hard, either.

But when you get let go from a 'real' job, you have work experience that can significantly bolster your chances of landing another job.

When you're 45 years old and have NO work experience (20 years of pro poker), and you decide that after 40,000 hours of sitting at a table with a bunch of degenerates, you're ready for a career change, how will you convince an employer that you're more employable than someone who has actual work experience?

Well you've already figured out how much you're going to average. So your only option is to live enough under that to save up money... or run really hot.

I'd never recommend someone quit school to play poker. Never.



I went from live to online back to mostly live. Personally I prefer live despite the excessive smoke. Online, for me at least, it's too easy to lose track of time. I'll sit down for a session then next think I know it's 6am and I've been autopiloting for 5 hours at a crappy winrate. I tilt more online, and I like to do a lot of hobbies on my computer so I end up on my comp for way too many hours of the day. Playing live forces me out of the house which is nice.

on topic of quitting school for poker -

depends how you define quit. quit as in "eff school I'm never going back, poker will always be an ez game" .... life probably won't turn out well for you

however if you're fully committed to playing poker and nothing else for the remote future, perhaps it is logical to delay school atm

make your money while the poker wave exists, then finish school.... as opposed to finishing school now, playing poker full-time, then trying to get a job years after graduation. obviously, job seeking figures to be easier for those that just graduated rather than those that have a gap with explaining to do

In case anyone has not read, or has already forgotten, the rules I am going to bump this. These rules are in place so that this thread does not become an epeen thread. Should be a Q&A type of thread that is real easy going and low stress.

I appreciate all of those who have chimed in thus far. If you accidentally answered one of the questions and are not a pro please PM me and let me know. I only want those who have or are experiencing it to answer the questions.

I think the fundamental problem here is that a lot of people (such as myself) think long term. I try to think in 5 to 10 year horizons. Not so much in the sense that I have a specific plan but I like to have a generalize direction where I want to go.

I love playing poker but I don't know if I'll love it in 5 to 10 years from now so I keep it as a lucrative hobby.

Ike - why don't you play bigger stakes live? When you started live poker, was your plan to ascend to higher games? If so, what changed the plan?

The largest reason is that when I started playing live it was always a stop gap until I started medical school. I always had higher priorities, and I simply wasn't doing the work necessary in volume to build a 30k bankroll and play higher.

The 5/T game near me sucks too. It doesn't run very regularly and is **** other than Fridays.

Thanks - this had me baffled but makes sense now. It definitely wasn't a dig, obviously you have the skill for higher.

Hammond (Chicago) not being able to support a consistently good 5/10NL game is a pretty important data point for this thread. How many venues in the US can allow for a standard NL progression (1/2, 2/5, 5/10+) on a weekly basis? Vegas, LA, Borgata, Foxwoods, and South FL? If there are a lot of decent players in your area and they're all stuck grinding 2/5 all week, then your winrate is going to be mostly capped at a painfully low level.

I've been supporting myself entirely by playing live poker for the last two years. Prior to that, I supplemented my income for about 4/5 years. There is very little I can offer in the way of advice for the average, prospective poker pro. Each person is entirely different. Passion for the game can override a lot of the negatives that this profession can encounter. I think I can, however, offer a few considerations:

• If you find yourself leaning more toward the introverted side of personalities, you will likely be incapable of putting in significant hours at the poker table. The constant forced, parasitic interaction with those around you will be extremely taxing.
• If you hit a real downswing in live poker, there is a very real possibility it will break you. Yes, your average hourly may be high. But in the end, you're only seeing 30 h/hr at most. At this rate, you can run horrendously bad over the short (long, as it pertains to live poker) term. Just ask the limit players.
• In most large poker environments, your soul will be destroyed. I don't mean this in a bad beat sense. You will be angled, threatened, and in general see the worst in people. “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
• The hours that are most profitable will completely conflict with any social/family life you wish to obtain/maintain.
• The freedom is intoxicating. If you ever have to return to normal, productive life, it will be an extremely difficult transition. Some brainless manager reminding you how to format a certain e-mail will inevitably set you off.

I feel like most of the people reading this thread that are looking for advice will be college-aged early 20s types. So I'm going to talk to a 21 year old PoppaTMan in 2013:

Yo dawg, I heard you like poker. So we put poker in your.. oh wait no that'd be entirely illegal. The only way you can play poker is to drive 65 miles to your local casino.

Ok, so now you have a $3k beater that can get to the casino. You've played a couple sessions and not run horribly.

The first step you need to make is to identify your competition and to find your niche. Every room has a niche available. In most rooms, the average player is looking to stack the occasional fish. That means you need to be exploiting the average player in most pots. Quickly identify who the weak regs are, what they're doing, who they're doing it to, then exploit it. How to do this exists in this forum somewhere, good luck.

The second and final step is to balance this image. You want to appear like a maniac to regs and still get paid off by the fish. If you can accomplish both of these, you will reach the winrate cap in your room.

really good stuff in here. I would agree almost completely.

On the balancing your image, this is so true, and so necessary. The first step to accomplishing this is realizing what each individual reg is capable of. What he's trying to do day in and day out. The vast majority of the exploitable regs (starting out 1/2,1/3,2/5) will be older men 50-70, that like to fold to much. Being friendly with these guys while at the same time taking full advantage of them will be your bread and butter, imo.

They will help shape you image for the fish. They'll learn to stay out of your way and basically play abc when in pots together. They'll fold to much and "look for better spots." The fish will see them giving your raises respect and think your running over the "old nits."

Again imo you want to be friendly with these guys. You don't want to be viewed as the young arrogant guy. You want to exchange bad beat stories while smoking. Ask their opinion about a hand that they saw you lose at the table. Act like your actually listening to what they have to say. Agree with them. Come up to them at the bar and chat about the poker room, the hot dealer, the piss poor comp'd food the both of you eat daily, the horse race, the line on the Monday night football game, the stock market. Say hi to them at the grocery store.

Be friendly with and liked by the older guys, your going to see them everyday forever. Their not going anywhere. You want them to enjoy paying your electric bill every month.

Really, being liked by the floor, the regs, the dealers, the cage ladies, it all works to your advantage. The more people on your side, the better image you'll have. Image goes a long way at the poker table. When everyone is smiling and saying hello, throwing out handshakes and making jokes, it creates an environment that is comfortable for the fish. The more comfortable, the longer they sit, the longer they sit the more money they give you.

Something I do is always try to find a common point of interest or some way of relating to the tourists/fish. Bring them into the fold. Everyone wants to be a part of something. If you can ease them into the poker room, make them feel like one of the guys, your doing yourself and them a huge favor, trust me. You can't control the cards but you can heavily influence much of what else is going on at the table. Use this to your advantage.