Where are you now? What is your live experience like? How much can you be making in other endeavors? How much have you played FR? Are you going to be like most MTT/SnG players (including me) and be way too aggro when you start out to play live, causing a lot of variance? What is a decent lifestyle to you?

All of those questions need to be answered to answer just your roll question.

As for #2, it gotten a bit harder, but nowhere near as much harder as online has.

3) General rule of thumb is about $35/hour

4) http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...g-pro-1426688/

I disagree with the above. 10k life roll with 25k poker roll is way more than enough for a winning player at even live 2/5 NL uncapped games. The only way that a 25k poker roll would be "iffy" at a live 2/5 NL uncapped game is if that particular live 2/5 NL uncapped game was playing with a mandatory $10 straddle (in which case, it is actually a 2/5/10 NL game).

Cliff Notes: Jump into the live 2/5 NL games immediately as long as you are a winning player.

Missed a couple of posts while typing up the above. If you've been a pro in the tournament game, you understand variance better than most prospective pros.

I'd think about doing the school & poker option. Find a school in a decent poker market and use your poker to pay for it. I doubt that you want to be a cash grinder for life...

Thanks for the advice. I think I am starting to lean this way more and more. A happy life from poker seems more difficult than ever and I doubt online poker is ever going to thrive again. Just so difficult figuring out what to do in life I finished my bachelors degree 5 years ago so guess I should get my masters.

So, where are you now? What is you bachelor's in? What would you want a Master's in?

I have been living in Mexico/Canada since bf . Right now I am visiting parents in Illinois and receiving medical treatment from a bad eye infection. The school i graduated from was called North Central College. My degree was Marketing and minor in business management. I am unsure what I would want to get my Masters in (so confused). The same school offers graduate classes for only 1/10 of the undergrad fee. I have been playing poker since I was 20 or so making great money till the last 2 years now I feel I am immature hardly responsible and probably need a new route to find happiness.

Def sounds like you don't want to do the corporate grind, so not sure I'd continue at same school, unless they have Masters other than MBA.

What are you passionate about? There are a lot of folks who used their poker to finance (for example) med school, small business ventures, etc.

I def don't think that there are many who are happy as life-long cash grinders. It beats delivering pizzas when you're in your 20s, but it's only a life long passion for a very few.

One of the major point that makes me very attracted to poker was it's potiential to be a self-funding, deep, competitive hobby.

Now after many many hands I am still very attracted to it because it might just be an escape to the ****ty 9 to 5(oops I mean 7 to 5 now) work for someone else, fund your gov so they can take care of single moms who don't need no man. Reading post by people who've "made it" as pros for 5-7years is depressing. There is 2 side to a medal indeed.

Focusing 100% on poker can be really soulcrushing I guess, because poker as a 10-15hours a week hobby is incredibly fun. Is the shift from 15 hours to 30+ hours really this bad? Is it the massive changes the mindset has when you now "need" to be a winner? Is every suckout wearing everyone to the point where you just get tired of it?

I was an online pro pre-bf. Played for a living for about 7 years. So I am very much used to bad beats swings etc. In fact towards the end of my career, my standard daily swings were +-8kish. ( super turbos)

I always had an itch to try to see what I could do live after bf, never got around to putting substantial hours though. ( casino is about an hour drive, which may be a big part of my issue below, not sure.

This year I planned to play 1500 live hours starting small stakes 5/5.
After 1week of straight grinding, about 40 hours, even though I was + 3k or so, taking a few bad beats in a row , coupled with having to be around some of the most miserable unhappy people for hours , quickly shined a light on me to just keep it to a hobby for the future, or play online instead (USA). Because instead of being excited to go own some souls and make some $, I was thinking ugh , I wonder what scumbags are gonna be at the table today. It just wore me down very very fast, I was shocked that after only that many hours that it effected me.

This is why I have a lot of respect for the pros with the goal threads. Although live is so much easier than online , it seems so much mentally tougher overall.

Yes.

Can't speak to the pressure of needing to win, but I used to try to push myself to play more and my game suffered a LOT when I did. I was playing 60-80 hours a month, so just a 3-4 hour session every other day or so. Tried to stretch those 3-4 hours into 5-6, tried to squeeze in extra days, and the wheels came right off. Was a modest winner, but when I tried playing more I just spewed. And then I'd feel glum after spewing and take a week off, making it even more of a waste.

It's so, so much easier when you can just play when you feel like it. Lately I'm getting 50-60 hours a month doing that and it's great. I like playing, I don't spew, I make decent money. It's fun, as it should be.

I would guess that adding volume is the least challenging part mentally, and I couldn't even handle that. It takes a really, really strong player to make it as a pro.

You are way overrolled. That's a good thing, IMO. To be honest, most grinders I know are always borderline busto, and that includes crushers.

I think a 10k roll is sufficient for 2/5. I've never gotten close to losing that much at 2/5.

Certainly not to the degree of online. There are always new 2/5 grinders coming up and I want to say the games are tougher but then I'm reminded of the number of good grinders that have left the game to pursue other opportunities and to me that makes it a bit of a wash. The rec players continue to be horrible. The 5/10 where I play has definitely gotten much tougher than it was several years ago but it's not horrible or anything.

I wouldn't even want to speculate. It depends how good you are.

Boredom. Gambling pressures. Being around degenerates. Being a target to get robbed.

You either have a much stronger soul than me, or never played poker for a living. Please try out a 15k poker roll (since 25k is way more than enough) go through a couple bad months at 2/5 500 or 1k max and come back and tell me how you are doing mentally when your only source of income is poker and your "income" is nonexistent. Have fun losing your house.

You may not know this but ATsai is known as one of the best live grinders in the LA area and as far as i know have had poker as a part time/full time income for a long time. He also does coaching.

So the guy for sure know what he is talking about when it comes to bankroll size and bankrollmanagement.

Are you saying you went through 15k in 2 months of 2/5 or $25k? Both seem pretty damn high. Unfortunately I run too good to have 2 bad months in a row so I probably shouldn't even comment.

No I have never went thru 15k at 2/5. I am just saying for an average player trying to play for a living will have a very hard time. It is not easy, and I'm assuming he isn't going to go in and be a crusher of the game from day 1. If he is a seasoned player, he should know 15k roll is not sufficient for a player just starting out live. There are a lot of growing pains when trying to play live for a living. He most likely will have problems and deamons he never knew he had and those can be a very expensive lesson.

Hey guys, I have just started back playing for a large part of my income after taking a 3 year break. I played full time, from 2006-2011, kept excellent records and was a winning player over that stretch. During that time I averaged around 60 hours or so a week live @ 1/2 & 2/5 and played with a bankroll most of the time around 50BI @ 200NL and 20BI @ 500NL, of course the levels fluctuated but I'm just giving this information for the back ground info.

I started playing again around a year ago (seriously) and worked some of the kinks out of my game, and got back to a win rate of around $26/hour over a 300 hour sample size.

I was wondering since i haven't played full time in a few years, what the average downswing most players are experiencing @ 200NL live, full ring? I try to game select rigorously, play a TAG style unless the table dictates otherwise, and generally make wise decisions. I never fire more than 1 bullet unless players and action make it a smart and profitable move to keep playing. Im current playing with 20BI @ 200NL.

The games have changed quite a bit and I want some feedback on what others are experiencing at this level.

I've been stuck $1k in a session at 1/2 multiple times over my last 150 hours. Because I was at a great table obviously.

If you avoid tables where everyone is splashing around 300bb+ deep I think it'd be pretty hard to lose more than 2k without spewing. But why would you do that?

Im down around 4 buy ins over the past week, and i guess I've just forgotten how in feels to loose 5 session in a row without making any huge mistakes. I know, I know, "4BI is not that big" but at the start of my venture it sucks to make that drive home stuck night after night....

I think your thing about only playing 1 BI is kinda silly too. I get tilted when I lose a lot too, trying to avoid that tilt makes sense, but think a 1 BI stoploss is going too far. You actually put more pressure on yourself when you are constantly against the edge of having to quit. If you ever thought "I don't want to pursue this spot because I don't want to lose my buyin" then your stop loss is costing you a lot.

My absolute minimum would be 2.5 BI. That's not a ton of money and having that available just puts me way at ease.

+1 DK

I have a 3 buyin stoploss (3 buyins 100 BB each), and that have been my main bankroll strategy for the last 2 years. Your absolutely correct about taking it too far and have a 1 buyin stoploss is absurdly enough putting _more_ pressure on your shoulders, not less.


It makes me more fearless with 3 buyins in my wallet,especially when i sit in a good and actiony wild game and dont want to leave- knowing that if i lose this flip or get a bad beat against a spewmonkey i can just reload and keep playing.

Thanks for the advice guys!! I am reflecting on what you wrote and I think a 1BI stop loss might be a bit nitty. My reasoning behind it, is that i have a 3BI cash out rate as well. When I get to 800, I cash out, get on the dinner list, go grab a bite to eat, watch the degens, degen then jump back in another game.

I pay myself $12/hr regardless of win or loose, and if I log 160 hours on the month i give myself a 15% commission on everything won after expenses and hourly rate paid.

This way i encourage myself to play a decent amount, and I know I'm getting paid for the time I'm sitting, and this helps with tilt as well.

Thoughts and comments on this? Please no trolls, I am a financial services major and a student trying to make a well balanced game plan for success to float me for the next 2 years.

You can for sure try loosening up on your stoploss, try 2 or even 3 buyins for a while and see how it goes for you. If you sit in a good game and have to quit after losing just 1 buyin its limiting your winning possibilities for sure and put a big handicap on your EV.

To me it have been a great mental training process also. When i started out playing i coudnt handle being stacked early in the game and because of that started playing bad and found myself reaching my 3 buyin stoploss several times.

Today my mental game is alot stronger and i feel like i can maintain my A or at least B game even when i fire my 3 bullet in the game. I know i beat the games i attend on a regular basis, and its all about dont forgetting that.

Thank you again for the feedback. I have spent a lot of time on my mental game and am proud of where I am at. I am able to hand 3-4x BI in a session but I find that with a starting bankroll of 20BI dropping 4BI in one session is a really tough spot to be in. Even if I am missing out on some really close calls, the boost I feel when banking a small cash is better than driving home stuck and in a ****ty mood.

This is not my first time around, but I am basically getting back on my feet after a 3 year hiatus on playing for a large source of my income. My confidence is not where is used to be and I am trying to keep from getting shook from a downswing.

Starting this venture with a 4 BI downswing has sucked, even though I have talk through hands with winning players and its obvious I played them correctly.

Please guys keep the advice rolling in, my brain is a sponge here. So much respect for guys that have been doing this for multiple years and succeeding

No problem, glad someone is getting something helpful out of my experiences.

Developing the mental aspect of the game is extremely important and is worth gold when you get better at it. Countless very skilled pokerplayers have gone busto or quit the game because they coudnt handle the swings and bad beats. Its not so much about trying to stay away from swings or downswings: its about learning to absorb them as smooth as possible when they do happen.

If you try too hard to avoid swings you are also probably not playing your A game and maximazing EV spots: that is a version of playing scared money if you see where i am going.

I mean when you flop a set and get it in with a flushdraw you are destined to lose that big allin pot approximately 3 out of 10 times. When you get your AA allin pre against a fish who cant manage to fold JJ when you 4 bet shove on him, he will suck out on you 2 out of 10 times. Its not possible to avoid it, so your only option is to learn to deal with the swings as smooth as possible.

I've never even heard of a 1 buyin stop loss. That is crazy. You could be out in your first hand. I also like a three 100bb buyin stop loss but 2.4 buyins could work as well. Once you get used to it losing 3 buyins is no big deal. I used to have back to back 3 buyin losing sessions quite often from playing bad. Then I would just take a day or two off to refocus myself and get back to my winning ways.