Hey guys, I need a sanity check before going forward with my plan.
Recently, I got laid off from my job. Meh, happens. My wife's got a reasonable income, and we have insurance, and could probably live solely off her income, although it would take some lifestyle adjustments (her annual income is around $60k).
However, given that I don't plan to leech off her income for the rest of our lives, I'm thinking about playing poker full-time. However, having a wife and living expenses that would cover everything is a nice safety
net.
I've been playing $1/$2 for a while (about 500 hours) and my win rate is around 8bb/hr. Due to being busy with my previous job, I have been unable to play on any Friday or Saturday nights; all of this is weekday play.
However, when I've taken shots at $2/$5, I've found that:
1 - The worst players are still just as bad.
2 - The worst players are willing to buy in for full and have no problem losing their money; I've found that there's a lot less scared money by the fish. The scared money is usually at the $1/$2 tables.
3 - The best players are much, much better at $2/$5.
4 - The rake is the same at $2/$5.
I've been thinking of moving up to $2/$5 full-time, given the following assumptions:
$15k bankroll (30 buyins) is sufficient.
I can beat the $2/$5 for 5bb/hr, especially if I can play Friday/Saturdays, which I had not previously been able to do.
500 hours, while not a huge sample size, gives me a rough idea if I'm a winning or losing player, and adjusting downwards of 3bb/hr is a realistic adjustment.
I will not improve my win rate over time.
I've read every post in this thread and I've tried to get a sense of what people are making, it's hard to know how many hours people are playing per week and if I'm looking at the top 3% of winners. Few people are coming in and saying, "Well, I'm breaking even after two years of play," even though I'm pretty sure there are tons of those people out there, too.
Is this a pie-in-the-sky dream? I'm basically projecting my financial situation based on these assumptions. Right now, I'm playing poker while I look for another job so at the moment I'm not losing out on income while I look, but playing full-time is certainly very appealing to me. I'm trying to be conservative, while also being realistic (the last assumption that my win rate will not improve reflects that; hopefully I do improve, but I'm not even factoring that in. Any higher win rate would be a freeroll if I look at it this way).
If you think I'm being crazy/unrealistic about any of this, please let me know. I'm mostly worried about my sample size, honestly. 500 hours seems a bit low, but good god it's hard to beat that rake and I'd like to move out of the stakes where that's less of a factor
if I'm rolled for it (which I think I am).