Not going to discuss off topic stuff like that in this winrate thread.

Well, it *is* the LLSNL forum, so I'd say anything above 5/10 stops being "Low" stakes and would be "mid-stakes", which also agrees with the guiding sticky in the main level of the forum.

I play recreationally for fun and extra money to pay for my vices, while having a normal full time job (albeit with a somewhat flexible schedule) and the most I've been able to get in a year was 2016 at 707.6 hours. I'm not sure how I'd be able to fit many more hours into my life without hurting my job situation. So I'd be really impressed with someone getting 2.5x that while having a job and some kind of life (and what to know how they pulled it off).

I'm around 1800 for the year. I think somewhere in the 800 range would be the ideal number for me in the future, with another 600-700 hours working towards supplemental income streams. Haven't cracked that nut yet however.

I've done some volatility trading this year to supplement poker income but that is incredibly risky and capital intensive and leaves you at the whims of the market which is akin to poker variance.

VIX or the futures ETFs?

Yeah, last 14 months I logged 1850 hours.

The year before that I logged like 1100 in a 9 month period.

And this past year I honestly felt like I'd barely been playing. Entire summer I played a handful of sessions, then took 2 months off when I got back. I play 3 times a week usually, but when I do play I put in 12+ hour sessions

1831 this yr despite 3 weeks out of the country (didn't play during)

I typically have no problem entering the casino but too often start searching for excuses to leave about 4 hours in. So, mildly surprised that 1800 hrs is considered a lot...

I consider it a lot and I wanted to see if it is a small percentage of players or pros who exceed that number in 12 months.


1800 hours in one year is 34.6 hours a week, all year long

I'm at 943 hours and 26 minutes over the past 12 months. Also have a career that is fairly generous with paid time off (5 weeks a year).

If poker was my sole income, I'd hit 1,800 hours per year easy.

9.37 BB/hr across mix of 1/2, 1/3 and 2/5.

I'd have to absolutely crush at higher than 5/10 to make poker a better choice for me right now. Though I'm not a young fella (late 40's). Early retirement supllimented with poker is an option at some point in my future.

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I just hit 1000 hours this year.

I also have a very generous work schedule that basically allows me to set my own hours.

I would never go back to full time poker again...

I keep seeing this being said over and over, but I dont know if thats true.

I mean to say that its absolutely achievable, but I don't know if I'd classify it as "easier". My life is fairly easy right now because of poker. If I wanted to start making 100k-200k/year via "real" job it'd require taking ~4-6 years of my life and 50-100k worth of debt (on top of ~200k+ of opportunity cost -- I'm putting it on the lower scale because I'm assuming I'd still play part time through school) to even get to that point. And even after that, life would be a very big grind.

It's probably something worth exploring as I currently don't have any "real" exit plan other than saving up enough money to eventually start investing. But I suppose worst case scenario of the poker economy suddenly collapsing, I start that horrific "life grind" a little later in life with some more money saved up.

lol +1 - I worked about 2,200 hours this year (and my hours are not bad) and still played 813 hours of poker so far in 2016. I get that putting hours in at the casino is nothing like putting hours in at the office, but 1,800 hours/year being considered "a lot" to work at your full time job is absurd to me.

as someone who has a 6 figure job, i can assure you it's not that hard and all the bad #s in your post can be minimized if you have some common sense + a little bit of planning

I'm ending the year for 2016 at 791 hours as a part-timer who works 40+ per week at my real job.

I've thought about giving just poker a try often (Ms. Nicname makes good money) and tossed around schedules for myself.

I really think about 1600 hours is ideal for someone wanting the "freedom" aspect of poker.

I rarely get tired of playing or feel burnt out, but I think a lot of that is that poker is still the "side hustle" which makes it more fun.

Obviously, I'll never know until I try. I do feel like my life situation is pretty much the ideal for someone wanting to "go pro." Ms. Nicname's income is more than enough to pay the bills. I'm confident a full time poker schedule would earn me more than just my full time job up until the top tier of advancement. Benefits would also be taken care of.

It's an odd situation. I don't love my current job or my work schedule, but I like my company and the industry I'm in. I took the job hoping to get my foot in the door for another position, but that hasn't materialized.

I'm up about $26,500 for the year from poker and usually play Sunday afternoons, some weekday morning games, wednesday evenings, and rarer late night thursday or saturday sessions (these when I'm) very tired.

I'd really like to have more time to do things like coach my son's sports teams.

Ms. Nicname has said that if we ever have another kid, she wants me to quit working, play poker and be poker dad.

Yeah ditto, I only barely crack 6 figures but I work 4 days a week, no more than 8 hours a day, and get full health coverage + equity.

Poker can't compete with programming as a career.

Mostly XIV/SVXY. There are some good option strategies on Seeking Alpha regarding UVXY but I have a feeling you can get burned very quickly.

1800 hours are a ton if we are talking about pure hours of playing poker. This means there's another 150 hours or so on break in the casino which in another job would have been considered as work time.

Then there's commuting. In my case commuting back and forth is on average one and half to two hours, so if you re doing 200 sessions per year that's another 300 to 400 hours of your life in a car.

Then you have to study. That's also a few dozens of hours at least. Then -and I know some people may sneer at this- there's spending time on forums such as this which is very much akin to professional gossip and networking. So that's another 100 hours on top of that.

All in all, 1800 hours of poker may mean 2500 hours of actually dealing with stuff related to poker. That's a ton of hours in my book.

I know that on my days off I am a broken man and I just want to space out. On the other hand, being my own employer means that I cut some slack on myself and I am not as disciplined as I could be. OTOH, being your own employer means that it's tough to have a lot of true free time, as you re constantly thinking about stuff you want to do, so it's tough to feel you have rested. I know that's true of me, even though I am not as productive as I would want to.

Last but not least, I can't imagine many people who would want to have poker as a long term career that they will retire from when they are 65-70. The goal for most I think is to build a financial cushion that will let you transition to something else. This however also may mean additional working hours as you re trying to figure options and work on side-projects.

I think this is an excellent post

When counting hours of work, we need to count 'billable hours' or equivalent and not 'time spent at the office' or even worse 'time spent away from home in the direction of work'.

I run a small professional services business and honestly believe that while I am probably at my desk or going to and from meetings for 50-55 hours per week, my billable hours are under 30.

Playing your A and B game poker is hard work and actually doing that for 1800 'billable hours' per year would be very tiring

ATsai I really don't like to quarrel with you bc I think you're a good guy / good player buts it's just this one thing that sort of puts sand in my vag.

I think you are perhaps blinded by the sheer volume/wealth that there is in the cali market.

I've made several contacts from cali that have all said the same thing "so where in the f*** are these mystical Florida games I hear about?" Because there aren't any. I truthfully showed you there is a max of four 5/10+ games that run in this entire region.

No matter how good you are. No matter how much of a crusher you are. That's 4 total games. And while they aren't exactly filled with crushers (a few are) they aren't filled with huge losers either. Not anymore.

In the year I played as a live pro, I did not play in a single game that came anywhere close to the worst game I've ever seen on LATB. It's just not here.

Florida was quite a bright candle when poker first blossomed. But it burnt itself out, rather quickly. At high stakes anyway.

The wealth/discretionary spending of a market is severely underestimated when it comes to poker. And LA has it.

The reason why I put my foot down so firmly on this is bc you have people making real life decisions based on this sort of information. And people need to realize that it is literally, LITERALLY, easier to make six figures on youtube than it is in live poker. (If we define easy as % of population currently doing it)

Honestly. There are more brain surgeons in South Florida than there are pros making $200K. When you think about it that way that college degree doesn't look like such a bad idea.

Yeah, pretty much where I'm at. About 2 years in and not even the slightest clue what that "something else" might be.

Here's to hoping I make it to 25/50 plo in the next 2 years and won't need a something else

Out of curiosity when did Florida legalize live poker?

1800 hours at the table doesn't seem unreasonable for a full time player, even after accounting for the other time commuting and studying and networking (which is a great observation BTW) bumping it up to 2500/yr. I probably spend at least that on work related things for my real job. But playing a bit less also makes sense.

My original comment was more about how many table hours one could get while still holding a full time salaried job and maintaining other life balance (I play about 5 hours of hockey a week, etc). After a long frustrating (some may say tilting) week at work, it's hard to put up another 15+ hours of solid A game poker on the weekend.

I've always joked that if I had enough money to be comfortable playing poker for my sole income, I would have enough money to not play poker at all.

I think poker is a great income-producing hobby for those who work at it. I think it would be horrible as a job though.

Forget those losing months, even breakeven months felt miserable.

Freedom, what freedom?

Setting your own hours is great if you have a stable income, not so much if you have to be there to earn it.

A lot goes into making $100k+ a year in poker, even more in $200k+.

Lots of volume, lots of good decisions and a lot of study.

Good luck making all these profits while not increasing your spending habits and maintaining physical health decisions.

In order to crush live for $200k+ you need to be a sicko skill wise, put in volume and make good table selecting decisions.

You can't play in a $5/$10 game non stop when that $5/$10 line up is super gross and the $2/$5 is filled with 40% more fish than your $5/$10 game. Same with game selection, are you skilled enough to switch to other game formats? You'll run into often if you play enough at the higher stakes games that mixed games can run sometimes, play super soft with a higher hourly than your NLhe game.

My highest hourly game is actually 7 card stud and 2-7 triple draw. However, finding those games at higher stakes is near impossible, but when they run I almost always play in them over NLHE.

You want to play in super soft games, in America, California has them, but the cost of living might not make up for it unless you're playing the highest of stakes of $5/$10+.

Meaning you need to be skilled enough to be crushing the $25/$50 games.

However, you could possibly make more long term playing in Vegas because the cost of living is so much lower playing smaller stakes than in California. Same can be said of places like Florida.

There is even poker in foreign countries rarely talked about where the cost of living is even cheaper than Vegas but the highest stakes games are usually $2/$5 but the money you win can go so much further there.

If you are young and not interested in pursuing schooling, poker can bring many adventures in life, but it does not come without sacrifice and hard work.

1800 hours aren't unreasonable, but aren't lol easy either.

I don't think you can put many more hours if you want work balance.

There's a bit of a macho culture among many people in corporate america bragging about putting 80-100 hours a week, but I sincerely doubt that a. you re being that much more productive than those putting 40 hours a week. Your brain turns into mush after a while and b. that this sort of schedule sustainable over many years.

So, IMO not only in poker, but in most jobs, especially those demanding focus and attention, it's tough to sustain 2,000 hours for years on end. You will burn out. Your brain needs to relax and replenish its batteries.