Brick & Mortar would be the place I'd think.

personally, I would count tipping as a rake element and therefore part of your P&L (we don't tip in Australian casinos) but food and drink as separate.

you may want to take a note of your tips though to see how being a good/bad tipper contributes to your P&L over the long run

tip the dealer $2 when they sit down and say, "welcome to the table, dealer"

they won't forget you... if they rotate every 30 minutes that's just $4/hour in tips which feels about right for 1/2

Trust me, nothing good with come from such data.

I keep track of my tokes/tips with poker tracker on my Ipod, it has a nice button to hit when u tip that keeps a tally for a live session. I also bring my own water and fill it when I take breaks, has saved me $100's this year as I used to tip the waitress to bring me bottles every hour or so.

Once we've logged a meaningful number of hours (2000+), then the hourly win rate becomes the most tell-tale sign of how we measure up. Any fish on a heater can have a great month, and even the best players will have downswings that can last over 100 hrs. But the long term hourly rate does not lie, and the best players are the ones with the highest rates.

does anyone count wait times for a table into their hourly?

Thats an interesting way to go about things

i thought about doing this as well. however i feel that i dont win 4 hands per hr. Yes this eliminates me from tipping in spots where pot is only 15-20$ and i dont feel a tip is warrented but dont wanna feel cheap. I should keep track for a while n see how much i tip on pots.

I think back to my 8 hr session i had the other night n theres no way i dragged 32 pots. If you said i won 20 pots i'd say you're about right. I will prob continue to tip for each pot.

I think you should try to simulate a real job as much as possible. Like if you're working for an hourly wage you don't subtract food or bus driver tips or anything like that from your hourly. Dealer tips I would consider an expense of the job.

Where I work I get paid for my breaks. Just to be conservative and cut down on record keeping I would include breaks as part of the time spent "working." Basically from the time I get my chips to the time I cash out for the last time that session. That's like clocking in and clocking out

One of my essays on the topic since you asked.



THE EXPENSES OF PLAYING POKER AS A BUSINESS

Every player who plays poker seriously should think of poker as his personal business. And if so, then expenses are a drain on the business and must be at least known and considered whether worthwhile expenses or expenses that need being cut back. Saving money from expenses is the same as earning money. Don’t be fooled. If you are making an average over time of $20 to $24 per hour playing poker, then quitting an $18/hour job might seem to be the thing to do. I’ve seen this play out a thousand times. Most poker players think their average hourly win is larger than what it really is. They come to the casino every day, park valet, purchase a reasonably expensive lunch ($14, remember we are speaking in relative terms here for a ham sandwich, fries and coke), tip cocktail waitresses during the day, tip dealers during the day and contend with the every constant rake. Then these same players tend to drift to the bar and have a few fairly expensive drinks after their hard days play, and tip the bartender as well as few bucks. Expenses easy to acquire in a casino atmosphere (some of them) are...

Rake
Valet tip
Cocktail tips
Dealer tokes
Lunch
Bar tab

The player quite possibly could have to win $15 to $40 per day just to pay those bills (not including the huge bill called rake that you must pay) and break even still for the day. This is what I see the average player do on a daily basis. All you have to do is add a tiny bit of drug use, massages or prostitution acceptance to the bill and even a decent midstake pro goes broke.

I bring this issue to light not to sway anyone to do anything different than they personally desire, but more to merely shed light on the expenses so that when and if you decide they are worthwhile, and then by all means accept paying them. But if you were playing along sort of “in the dark” to what a drain these expenses are, then decide how valuable each expense is to you, and curtail most of them if need be. Some players for example tip valet guys $3. Five days a week for a month is ~$60 per month. So maybe parking in the lot and getting some exercise walking in might be good for us as a player in more than one way (receive a little exercise along with save some dough). Some players simply think to ask for a bottle of water extra when ordering a drink or coffee and save having to tip twice. Playing 8 hours a day, a player could put maybe $3 (roughest average) a day back in his pocket or (again, $60 a month).

The main point I want to extend to you is that when you play poker a fair amount of hours and spend money attempting to rise in skill and take the game seriously, then be aware of every nuance that playing often has within it. It is super easy to think of yourself as on vacation while in a casino. The atmosphere is conducive to a free spirit and spending money fits right into the program well if not thought about.

Expenses that players rarely think of as adding up to anything significant are just as much a part of the program as any other. (Especially when say playing 1-2 or being only a slight winner at 2-5 blind). Low limit 1-2 grinders I would think could use the several hundred bucks per month they could save if they just put their mind to it a little. I only want players to be aware, and then make up their own minds as to how they operate daily.

I know a boatload of players who played 6 days a week and incurred over $1000 in expenses per month (not including rake) while making a net of anywhere from some at $1500 a month to $3500 a month. They had no idea. How they decide to cut expenses is now a business decision of theirs once they now "know" what they payout for the lavishness of a casino atmosphere.

Focus on playing great, know your expenses and do everything possible that will make poker be a successful business venture for you. I want everyone to have the life success that I have had from poker, therefore I offer every tiny factor that I am able to which will make a difference at the end of the month to your net.

Bill / ANL

I play in a Swiss casino where a bottle of water costs $7, coffee 5 (same for soft drinks), food ranges from 15-50. IMO that is extremely high after playing in north America. But that's just the cost of playing. I record all my sessions in Poker Journal on my phone and probably 60% of the time I will record food under the "expenses".

ANL, very little money in 1/2 even if you never tip/buy food.

I didnt understand this line, however im pretty tired.

Its only the cost of playing if you want it to be.
You could eat before you go and then eat after you get home or if your playing long sessions then bring something to eat with you(especially if food is $15-$20 and there is no comps). You could just bring a couple bottles of water with you and not pay those high prices.

Those are some good tips for the low stakes grinder, but I am sure he doesn't want to look nitty when he is playing 10/20.

My guess is that it depends on how you want to look at your winrate.

If you're perhaps doing / considering doing this for a living, then it's probably best to figure out pretty much what your hourly earn is, so you'd probably have to go so far as including in your travel time, table wait time, plus factor in all expenses (gas, food, lodging, etc.). Only then would you have a true idea of what you are actually making per hour so as to be able to compare it to other jobs.

If you're simply concerned with how you are relatively stacking up to beating the game (which most recreational players like myself are), then I would only include the time at the table and wouldn't factor in any other costs.

GcluelessNLnoobG

This thread makes me long for the days pre-poker boom when me and a table of octogenarians were fighting over ten dollar pots playing 2/4 limit at Sam's Town in LV. Man I heard ALOT of stories from WW2! But I digress

Moving to Las Vegas in a year to play 2/5 and up...and to mix a little golf in occasionally. I'll be 48 with no debt and a generous pension and medical benefits. INTJ, single, grown daughter...really no financial responsibilities.

Since my pension will more than cover my basics, I am hoping my attitude will be positive (no pressure to win) and I plan to do exactly what one poster said....treat poker as my own personal business. Hopefully, it will not be the soul-sucking grind that some have described. More time at the tables equals more discretionary income for me. That is my motivation.

My (highly adjustable) plan is to play four 10 hour days on Thurs thru Sun and take Mon thru Wed off for fun/rec/study. Of course, during the first few months I am sure I will be like any other chip spewing monkey playing all day/all night till I get burned out

Thanks to all those posting in the thread out there on the front lines! This could be the best thread on 2+2 and I will be rereading it many times before I make my move. You guys motivate the hell out of me!!

When calculating my hourly I include tips for the cocktail waitress, and food (but only if I use actual chips to tip the waitress, if I use my credit card, then that doesn't count in my opinion.)

I have logged about 700 hrs of live play at 2/5 and am I trying to figure out if my win rate is even close to accurate.

I know online that you need to log about 50,000 hands to even begin to get an idea of what your win rate could be. However since live play is so much softer, how many hours of live play is needed to get the same information.

You will likely never have any "win rate confidence" worth keeping track of. Furthermore poker isn't like a job where you are paid without performing you must always perform at a high level so I'd suggest focusing on that and not what your winrate may or may not be.

I don't believe you'll ever have an accurate win rate. If you've gotten better during those 700 hrs, it's not correct. If you opponents have gotten better (or worse), during those 700hrs, it's not correct.

Even something as minute as a casino hiring faster,or slower dealers will have some effect.

There are some good things about living in Vegas, housing is cheap and readily available -pick a nicer area of town, there is ALWAYS something to do, and some of the finest dinning expericnes in the world, great golf, and you can play poker part time. There is a dark side also, obviously its not called sin city for no reason. However everyone has a choice as to how they live thier life...many locals choose to live a quality, responsible and fullfilling life and stay away from the pitfalls offered from a city built on gambling, booze and sex & drugs.
Every room you go to has some locals playing, some more than others. Retiree's, kids w/ a dream, local pro's grinding to make a meager income, plus of course tourists & vacationers, drunks, old ladys & ego-driven rich people.

It sounds like you'll find a nice fit playing for fun and extra income. And you may very well be pleasantly surpised at just how much extra income you can make w/ some solid play and patients. Best wishes....

Maybe I didn't ask the right question as that I know there are many factors that will affect your win rate.

A better is

It possible that I am a winning player who is running badly enough to be down $327 (basically break even) over 700 hours?

Or if I am a winning player, is there no possible way that I could have broken even over such a long stretch?

You will never know anything for sure, but 500 hours is a good start and you should have a decent idea if you are a winning or losing player and whether you crush the game or are a small winner. Obviously can run hot or cold for that stretch which is only ~21,000-28,000 hands ( i think)

So, the way confidence intervals work is that you can assign a percent chance that your true winrate lies within +/- Xbb/Hr. from your observed winrate.

I went to evplusplus.com and input your stats. They use BB/100 (2 * bb), so keep that in mind when converting back and forth.

You observed a winrate of -0.15 BB/100 over 20,000 hands. According to their model, you are 50% likely to have a true winrate between +/- 2BB/100, and 95% likely to have a true winrate between +/- 6BB/Hr. You are 99.99% likely to be between +/- 12BB/100.

Phrased another way: there is only a 50% chance that your winrate is outside +/- 2BB/100, and a 5% chance that your winrate is outside +/- 6BB/100. There is a .01% chance taht your winrate is outside +/- 12BB/100

Translating that into hourly rates: 2BB/100 is about $7/Hr live.

This means that you are VERY LIKELY to be a modest winner or a modest loser, and unlikely to be a large winner. Given some priors about the distribution of player skill, I would say that it is most likely that you are breakeven to a small loser in your game, but that is assuming I know nothing about you as a player.

Keep in mind that if you're playing in a game with brutal rake, being a breakeven player puts you way ahead of the curve.

Also keep in mind that most players overestimate their relative skill and underestimate the degree to which their mistakes are setting them back.

This is just not true, especially for a strong professional player in a full-ring environment. (I agree with the rest of what you said though!)