If 1750 of 3000 hours is described as running horribad, do you think maybe it isn't runbad?

Yah I feel pretty confident about it. I also feel that 3000 hours is an incredibly small sample size in the grand scheme of things, especially for someone who plays fairly tight preflop.

Curious why you added that caveat?

Because playing tight preflop is typically going to lower your stdev.

How is playing tight going to lower stdev? Are you saying that tight players have smaller swings?

I thought we debunked that non-sense ages ago...

Because live poker is incredibly slow and playing less than 20% of hands means I've only VPIP'd around 21,000 hands which is a fairly trivial sample size (as I'm sure most online players would attest). The difference between playing 20% and 30% of hands over my sample size is about 10,500 hands or a 50% increase.

If I was guilty of being too naive wrt variance in 2015, 2016 was the year of growing up and learning how difficult poker really is to consistently win day in and day out without losing months and prolonged dry spells. 2016 taught me how to manage a BR and swallow my ego and drop down in stakes to minimize the damage, continue to earn and most importantly protect my BR.

I truly feel the year I had would be enough to break most aspiring pros either due to tilt, not managing their BR, not dropping down in stakes or not having a sufficient life roll to weather the storm. While I was too naive and jumped the gun in deciding to go pro, I also made sure I was financially secure to ride out a 2-3 year break even stretch while minimizing my expenses to barebones levels to give myself the longest runway possible.

And I still wake up every day ready to play another 8-12 hour session putting the past behind me and simply trying to make the best decisions possible to improve my situation going forward. Poker owes me nothing. This bad run has tested every ounce of my fiber and resolve but I routinely see my edge in the game and thus I continue to play.

Realistically - in the next year I may consider returning to full-time employment that is less arduous than my previous job because 80-100k salary / 30-40k poker is >>>>>>>>>>>>> 30-80k poker grind while losing all touch with reality/life/meaning/etc.

Makes sense.

I would do one better and find a job that doesn't require full-time commitment.

40k salary + 40k poker would probably feel better than either of the two options.

Yo Johnny. Sorry to hear bout the downswing and agree on your analysis of variance being effected by looseness (though IMHO not sure that it is 1 for 1 as you can VPIP more with lower raise frequency... if you stylistically chose to do so).

You say you play tight, and I'm guessing TAGGy? How weighted is your range/style to ABC value?


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How do I calculate my stdev? I use excel to keep track of sessions with hours played and net won/loss. Would I use stdev function on each sessions hourly? and then how would that convert to bb/hr? Thanks!

Right now I'm using the stdev function for all my sessions hourly rates and it gives me 98.11, i play 1/2 btw

+1,000,000

tho I would fyp to $40- $60k salary and $15-$30k poker to be an average expectation

FWIW, playing poker professionally is pretty tough, but you can definitely make 200k+ USD/year consistently once you get the hang of it. The vast majority of people never get the hang of it though.

Unless you are playing 5/10 uncapped or 10/20+ on a regular basis making 200k year in year out sounds extremely difficult. If getting the hang of it = being one of the best players in the room at a high level I agree. Saying "get the hang of it" just sounds too casual.

I can attest from playing at the same tables with him/being consistently sent tons of hand histories from him that Johnny is on a pretty horrific stretch of negative variance.

While I will be the first to say we can never completely blame negative results on variance alone and that Johnny has obviously made lots of mistakes along the way (who hasn't, I spew my face off on a regular basis) and that there is plenty he can improve on in his game (this goes for me as well and literally everyone), he has been consistently getting money in good and losing, playing hands totally fine and running into coolers, etc and should be winning at a much higher rate than he has been this year.

I also think that getting consistently crushed by variance makes it extremely difficult to play optimally/stay positive/get in quality volume and I respect Johnny for grinding through it despite obviously taking a tough hit mentally wrt playing poker full time.

I'm going to end this year with about 25k in profit and 1100hrs. The largest pot I lost when ahead was $5k.

If I would've won the pot my profit would shoot up to 30k and make my hourly go from $22hr to $27.

And that's just one hand. Your all in hands really determine your winrates over the course of a year or 1k hours

arent your monthly expenses like 2k/month?

lol you gatta put in more hours bruh, gatta build dat roll

NOPE, not in 2017. And I'm not afraid of responding this way even though the way you phrase your posts is basically saying "anyone that disagrees doesn't get it".

It's just not true. There are less than 10 people in South Florida that could make >$150k a year consistently. And I'd truthfully put it at 5 who regularly do.

What if you lose a big pot where you got the money in good against his hand but bad against his range? What if you don't know?

What if you get a third of the money in good and two thirds in bad on the river?

What if you get a lot of money in good against a player's perceived range, but it turns out he's actually just been running really hot and making all his hands and you're drawing dead against his real range?

There's so much more to "variance" than just aiev that's often ignored and makes as much difference.

Completely agree with this.

AIEV is such a small aspect of what variance encompasses as a whole, though it is really the only part we can realistically quantify hence why the stat is used at all -- though it is a highly overrated stat

+1

Having an ok-to-well paying job (so long as that job ain't requiring an ungodly amount of hours or is super stressful or sucks the soul out of us) that puts us in good financial shape while keeping poker as a hobby (that hopefully makes us a little cash on the side) is the stone cold nuts.

GimoG

Couple sessions ago I played with a well known maniac. He's going to burn thru 4 BIs like he usually does in about an hour or so by blind raising, playing blind to the turn, shipping huge preflop blind, chasing 2 outers, etc. Anyhoo, he's doing his thing and is down about 2 BIs when he decides to take a smoke break and miss a couple hands. My neighbour wakes up with AA during his smoke break.

GjustanotherformofvarianceG

I spend about 7k a month. My bills are at least 4K but lol vacations

My hours this year suck, I didn't save money and I basically took three full months off. I learned good BRM though. New strategy is to buy in for 80bbs until I have 40buyins. It's making a huge difference. Buying in for $400 vs $500 or $1k really matters when your entire poker roll is $10k

yeah +1 to this.

As much as I would love to go the professional poker route for the lifestyle, the work full time/play poker on the side strategy has been working out pretty well for me.

Albeit I would probably consider myself closer to 'semi-pro' than a hobbyist based on the amount of hours I play and the % of my income I earn from poker, but it is really nice to not have the stress of needing consistent poker results as my only source of income.

The only downside is the lack of free time/sleep that comes from working full time and putting in 800 hours of poker on top of that, but I do enjoy playing and do a decent job at life balance/trying to get sleep.

Really? This is a bit surprising to me, of course I don't play in those games. I just assumed when I see 10-25 running at the isle or hollywood on bravo that the game probably had 6+ crushers in it.

Probably not going to play any more this year, so here is my giraffe:


Mostly 2/5, with some 5/10 and 10/25 mixed in, 23,900 is from 2/5 at $91/hour so I don't think the higher stakes are distorting the graph any. Obviously ran like Rah, won my biggest pot @ $4600 in a 3 way all in with top set at 2/5, lost my biggest pots with AK vs AQ (3800 ai preflop at 10/25) and AA vs 66 on A636 at 5/10 ($4000 ai on the turn).