you asked for honesty....here it is:

Forget Poker for now. You need to get a job. Start earning money or your wife will be an ex-wife. Grow up. You cannot make it as a poker professional. You have zero bankroll management skills and zero life skills. GET A JOB! Do manual labor if you must, but get a JOB!

Most people, including myself, are not poker professionals. I have a real job. I make real money. I love the game. I play it whenever I can. I am a winning player. But I have a real job that helps me support my family. I have a life bankroll. I have a separate poker bankroll. My family has a roof over their heads. My family has clothes on their back. My family has food on their plates. My rent and other bills are paid.

I too would love to play in the WSOP main event. I have no sponsors or backers. I could plunk down the cash and enter, but I know I need that money to keep my family secure. I know I have to rely on myself (not my parents) to support my family. This is what it means to be a grown up. GROW UP!

Unfortunately it does. This is why I also asked about school performance, education level, and work experience, none of which have much of a direct correlation with IQ. A lot of people are giving advice without knowing the person or his talent level.

Would you tell a random kid that he should go to Harvard or that he should become an Investment Banker? Unfortunately, not everyone can do what they dream of doing but even if they can, their path is likely to be more difficult/easy based on their aptitude/skillset.

Fwiw I just deposited 100 bucks so that I can play PLO online. I am chalking it up to being lost but I figured the opportunity cost of playing/learning PLO online is much less than the cost of playing live. I would almost certainly lose this 100 bucks playing live trying to learn PLO so who cares if I lose it online?

This thread gets better and better...

Anyway, on the subject of OP's post:

Get a ****ing job. You are living in your mom's basement like a bum playing poker. This is no way to get thru life. If you wanna play poker play 2 nights a week, 6 hour sessions each while still working a full time job.

So with all of these posts, there has been NO comment or replies from OP.

[B]Let's hear from King Hubbard!!!![/B]

He is online

just read this entire post and to my amazement no one commented on the lol sample size of what...274 hours played in 60 days. Come on OP!! how in gods name can any of us give you any actual poker advice with this sample size. Its impossible. Obv everyone telling you to get a job, any job, are spot on but that has nothing to do with poker and your ability to make a living at it which was the reason for this thread. At the end of the day you are going to continue doing whatever you feel like so dont pretend like anything said here is going to make a difference.

In order for us to actually give you any meaningful "poker" advice you need an actual sample that can accurately display whether or not poker as a profession is a viable option for you.

I will say this though, the fact that you thought 274 hours worth of live play since the end of January was enough of a sample for us to give you any poker related advice says a lot.

The man needs to learn to study more than he plays, then re-eval after another 100 hours if he wants to do this.

Don't just stick in the occasional 4-6 hours...Grind that ****.

If you are still struggling, time to chalk it up.

Ok first thing's first. It's clear that OP is not a winning player as he has thought. The post that Dgiharris linked to, says that the OP think he's found a game where he can beat the casino for $150/hr (you do realize casino's don't offer games where they can't win right?)

To my main point, I'm sick of tired of online players who come to these live forums and keep saying that sample sizes of over 250 hours are meaningless. Yes online, this is not enough hands, but live, after 250 hours it should be clear whether you are a winning or losing player. For some reason, no one realizes this, but the reason why you need larger sample sizes online is because the edges you are pushing are much, much smaller. When you're playing against people who spent the time to download the software, deposit money, etc. They're naturally going to be better at poker than people who just drunkenly stumble from the blackjack tables. In online poker, you're pushing 55-45 edges, which is why you need larger sample sizes to account for this variance.

In Live poker, you're getting money in at a 80-20 edge. This results in less variance. We're talking about people who play with 50bb stacks, who will call with any 2 soooooted cards OOP for 10% of their stack against us when we have premium hands. Players who will call down with middle pair because they "knew" you had AK, when you really have top set.

We still get sucked out on in live poker. But because the players are making such HUGE mistakes, the variance affects us less. 274 hours of live is a very reasonable amount to determine who is a winning player and who isn't in a live setting. I can tell who's a winning player and who isn't almost within 5 minutes of them being at the table. Are they tipping when they just win the blinds? What cards are they showing down? Etc...

And OP clearly isn't a winning player. OP you can't just say "minus my 4 biggest losing sessions, I'm a winning player". It doesn't work like that. If you played on tilt and lost multiple buy-ins, then this reflects your poker abilities just as much as when you are playing your A game because it shows that you don't realize when you are playing sub-optimally. You are going to have to hope to run good in the near future if you continue (I almost busted my roll, before hitting some positive variance coupled with coaching led me to rebuild it all through poker, and now I'm very comfortably rolled). I suggested studying a ton, stop playing table games, and get a side job.

I like this option but I also think playing with a small roll live is ok too if you are disciplined... which I am not obviously.

WOW, I didn't expect so many responses in such a short period of time! Lots to sort through and I'll try to cover most of what's been said.

For some reason, people seem to think that since I'm married, we have kids. I have no kids, it's just my wife and I. We live in my moms basement, supposed to be saving up for a house. Our savings are in my wifes bank and I don't touch that for poker or anything else. She does work a job but I don't want her money for poker.

In terms of getting a "real" job. I have some side gigs that I can fall back on such as online tutorials. I'm a guest blogger on various web design sites in which they pay me for my services. I can also grab up some freelance work (however underpaid they are) on freelancer.com or something. I know there are other options than playing poker and sadly it will take me a while to rebuild my roll and I can't believe I spent the money I did when I was winning.

Not to mention the table games. I think blackjack is ok sometimes if you can count cards, which I can to a moderate degree, I'm far from advanced in it. Either way, I blew a lot of money at table games as well and I know better but did it anyway.

Someone said something about my IQ. I'm not even going to dignify that with a real response.

I sort of like the idea of taking $200 to put online and using $500 for other stuff. BTW my bills are next to nothing with a monthly nut of around $300 split between my wife and I, so bills are not a problem. Saving up 6 months of my nut is about $1800 + everyday living expenses... so not much really.

I need to set aside the $1800 for my 6 month nut, then save up 4-5k for a new roll and NOT put my life-roll into PokerJournal and count it as my bankroll this time. Then since we are saving for a house, I need to put half of what I win/earn or whatever into savings, so I need 3 separate accounts/envelopes or whatever.

Nut Account = $1800 + $2000 for daily expenses = $3800
Poker Roll Account = 4-5k + half my winnings/earnings from side work.
Savings Account = $3000 already saved + half my winnings/earnings from side work.

What do you think of this? Does this seem reasonable? I think it does but the problem is being disciplined enough to follow it as I lack discipline.

Here's where I'm coming from. I was homeless for 6 years, starting at 16 when my father abandoned my in the middle of a school year, emptied the house and left while I was at a friends birthday party. When I got back to the house, it was empty and I was royally SOL. I did stay with friends for a short time but that ran out, so I built a fort in the woods close to the house, it got torn down somehow, so I went to Michigan, stayed with mom, her husband was an a-hole, I left and traveled the country, fast-forward and I'm in college, met my wife, dropped out, etc, blah blah blah.

Moral of the story is that I have very little LIFE experience, meaning I know little about what it's like to live a normal life, to have money and to have a family. Over the past 5 years of being with my wife (I'm thankful for meeting her as she is THE reason I'm not still a deadbeat on the streets), I've had nice cars only to sell them 2 months later cause I got tired of them, I've had great jobs, one of which paid $1500/week, blew all that money, the company turned out to be a scamming people so I was forced to quit. Had 5k left after that job and bought a 2001 Eclipse Convertible (nicest car I ever owned), got rid of it 6 months later, had 3 cars since then, got rid of them all. I've had plenty of opportunities since my I met my wife and I blew them all and I blame it on myself for living on the streets and not having the LIFE experience I needed to take advantage of those opportunities.

Naturally when I had 8k; I'd never had that much money at one time before, so I took the opportunity to do what I never have, which is live lavishly for a while. Now that it's over, I wish I never did it, so another life lesson learned. Now I feel like I'm back at square one, when I first met my wife. I have very little to my name, no car and nothing else, all of which has very little to do with poker, it has to do with poor life management and I'm well aware of it, which makes it harder to deal with cause I know my shortcomings. It's not like I'm dimwitted and don't know better cause I do, but I must be insane cause I keep doing the same things over and over again.

I have lots of street experience which helps me a lot at the tables when I'm on my A-game, but the lack of life experience is draining me.

The old life moto is that you have to fail to succeed, well I'm tired of failing, when is it my time to succeed!? When I grow up and learn to manage my life and my roll, whether life, poker or whatever. My wife isn't any help in that area cause she blows money fast as I do, if not faster, especially considering she has horses and they cost way more than poker ever has.

I look at that 8k as a life/poker lesson, an expensive one but it's no different than spending 20k+/year on college which is even worse cause you go into massive debt. At least I have no debt and it was just a straight up 8k loss.

I think it will be smart to set a strict one buying stop-loss for when I do start playing again until I have about 50 buyins or am good enough that it doesn't matter as much. You guys are probably right, I'm not a winning player. Not because I'm not good enough but because I lack to discipline, bankroll management and the patience to be a winning player. You can be the best player in the world and still lose cause you lack one of those 3 elements. Although I'm sure it has something to do with my skill level as I by no means think I'm the best player at the tables anymore.

I'm worried about everything at the tables. When I lose a big hand I go on tilt so easy now and start thinking all those players are better than me and they're sharking me out, even though they're all freaking fish and donks. I sit back and play 4 hand per hour while they play almost every hand, yet I'm the one who loses, so what am I doing wrong? OH not playing enough hands, so I start playing every hand too, jeez my K3 won a big pot so I'll keep playing them. Oh crap, those crap hands made me go broke in the long run. Damn it I knew better than to play those, but everyone else was winning with those hands. No they weren't, it seemed that way cause 9 players won once but it was consecutive so it seemed like they win all the time.

These are some of the things that cross my mind and it's some serious tilt crap. Lack of confidence in my game and playing with scared money. I'm obviously not in the frame of mind to play poker right now.

Sorry for the spurt of random paragraphs, I just write down what I'm thinking.

Life coach, poker coach, therapy, mental hospital, prison, McDonalds, insanity, depressed, douche-bag, life-tilt... these are some of the things I expect to see in some of your responses.

Note: Someone wanted to know of my professional experience to know what I could fall back on or my education level. JustinHubbard.me is my website and you can see some of my professional side, although my whining on 2+2 probably discredits that a little bit lol.

Ugh no, I know it's a small sample, it just happened to be where I was at when I turned to 2+2.

get a job still, your response sucks.

When you are 100% tilt free come back, when you can't do that don't even bother. Also quit playing blackjack, letting your ego get ahead of you. You seem more uneducated than you realize.

Any personal coaches you would recommend?

I have a buddy who actually is a pro @ 1/2 and makes a good living. He thinks I'm usually a solid player but tilts way too easily which results in bad plays. He likes to talk poker strategy with me cause I know what I'm talking about but he also thinks I'm better at talking poker than actually playing, meaning it's hard for me to practice what I preach for some reason.

I would rather have someone who I don't know as my coach though, it would be more professional rather than trying to avoid hurting my feelings or something stupid like that.

This is an uneducated response in itself.

I said I was lacking life skills. I said I was homeless for 6 years. I gave many reasons as to why something might be effect my poker, life management, etc. Your response doesn't relate to any of that. Instead you make a short response, then say I'm uneducated with no reasoning behind your statement.

Your response needs more substance than that for it to mean anything, otherwise it's considered trolling.

I told you what is wrong with you, you play blackjack, you tilt. Two things not for poker professionals, I sent a PM. I also offer psychology help if that is the biggest leak in your game.

Dang man I feel for you. I made the same mistake, living like a boss, a few years back and today I'm very grateful for it. I though that it was so easy in the beginning, so I was trying to impress people by flaunting my easily earned poker money. In the end I went bust, but it only took me a month or so to get back in the ring thanks to a few great friends.

Now I'm the nittiest bankroll nit of all. I currently am way over rolled for $2/5 and play $5/10 whenever it run. Fortunately I play where there all the games are uncapped so the $2/5 games sometimes have an average stack of 2k and plays like a $5/10 and sometimes bigger.

In the beginning you must work even harder. If you're trying to grind for a living your goal should be to get to $2/5 as quickly as possible. That means living like a nit, getting a part time job, whatever you need to do.

If you are a crusher and making $20/hour and play 40 hrs/week, that's roughly $3200/month. If your monthly nut is $2000 then it's going to take probably close to a year move up. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you're only adding say $1200 to the roll per month, eventually variance will get you.

Forget the stop-loss thing. You have $700 and want to blow it on poker? Do you have extra money stashed away incase something like this happened?? I hope so, but if not you need to go get a job ASAP. If this is your only money you won't be able to play well when thinking "I really don't want to lose this money".

If you need go wait table or bartend go apply now. If this is all your money forget the thought about playing till you have a few moths of living expenses saved up and a small bankroll that you might be able to run up.

You also need to know exactly what you spend your money on and where. You need to know what your monthly nut is. I use an app to keep track of every dollar spent. Most poker players use cash on most things, so it's hard to keep track unless you're consciously doing it.

Again bankroll nits don't go broke, but a fool and his money are soon parted.

Keep that in mind when you're thinking about spending money and you're living out of your bankroll.

OP, I think it is pretty clear that you have an addictive personality. Until you can get that fixed, you are never going to make a living as a professional gambler. There are too many temptations for you in that environment.

You have some pretty slick design skills, but your portfolio needs more substance. Also, go apply at small web firms. They need designers and can't afford to run background checks. But I am guessing by what you posted that you are going to have a hard time holding a job down.

Also, seek some professional help. You have been dealt a pretty crappy hand and someone needs to fix that head of yours.

Coaching : look left in coaching forum. Pick a live cash game specialist. Study your ass off, review ALL hands with a WINNING player/ coach. You will learn more about leaks from hands you don't/ didn't think were remarkable at the time. Your biggest leaks will most likely be bet sizing, why you bet or don't bet , and determining equity and ranges. Start there. GL man

I swear to Christ you are the typical fish. I can't believe you would mention "blackjack" in your reply. And incidently get this through your head. If you have American living expenses, you can't be a 1/2nl pro. Unless you regularly play in a juicy uncapped 1/2nl game where everyone buys in 200bb there just isn't enough money on the tables. Being a poker pro starts at 2/5nl. The only thing 1/2nl is good for is building up a 2/5nl bankroll and learning the live game.

Anyways look. If you take nothing from this thread but the following it will be worth it.

#1 YOU CAN'T PLAY ANY F---ING TABLE GAMES.PERIOD!!! Not one f---ing penny
#2 Being a pro requires that you CRUSH 1/2nl and build a roll so you can play 2/5nl
#3. You aren't gonna make enough at 1/2nl to be able to pay real world adult expenses and play poker

The advice we are giving you is based on years of experience and cold hard mathematical fact, not opinion. I understand your thought process, it goes something like "well, I made $1000 in 1/2nl a few times therefore I know I can do that and if I just make half of that every session that is $4k a week which is $12k a month but then let's say I lose a few times per month so then it becomes $8k per month which is a good living. Similarly, I won at blackjack and the Texas holdem table games because I'm smart and I have a magical gut that tells me when to hit or stay and so I can beat those games...

No no F---ING NO!!!!!

That is what all fish thinks. Get this thought through your fishy little head. There exist no table game in the universe that you can beat. And I.can prove that statement with math. And Yes, I know you watched the movie 21, but unless you have an MIT level brain sloshing around in your head and know how to count cards and playing a single card deck then no, you can't beat bj.

I.swear, if you post one more f---ing fish comment about beating a table game I'm gonna track you down, shove an M-80 in your anus and light the fuse.

To the OP, I think you've gotten a lot of good advice in this thread. If I were in your current situation, I wouldn't even be playing poker recreationally. I think it's too dangerous for someone with your mindset and gambling tendencies.

Regarding your analogy of losing $8,000 as being no different than spending $20,000 on college tuition? Are you serious? Going to college is a far superior investment than playing poker for a living with no backup plan.

LOL this may in fact be the funniest thing i have read in this forum

The big problem with playing poker full time is that is your only out. You really can't "career change" from being a poker player in your 20's. You are now tagged as a degen for life.

If you are broke, learn a trade like HVAC and try to get a job working 3 12's then you can grind 2x a week and try to become a better player.

Or you can just be a perpetual donator. Personally, I prefer the donators.

not knowing at all how to manage yourself is a leak that you will not be able to overcome, OP.
play blackjack= you are going broke.

Ok, sorry man, I just flat out disagree with your philosofy. I will say that i did quite enjoy the part about how you can pinpoint the fish within 5 minutes of sitting with them...although i thought that line required 30 minutes? guess i havent seen rounders in a while.