GG I consider myself a pretty regular player with more hours than most 'recs', and my yearly volume has been:

2008 - partial year not included in average 175.2 from July/August on
2009 460.2
2010 617.3
2011 647.4
2012 561.9
2013 401.6
2014 594.9
2015 547.6
2016 707.6
2017 610.9

For a 572 hour/year average.

So independent of the winrate discussion, yes it can be a scary thought how long it takes to accrue significant samples in different rooms or on different days.

Angrist, would be interesting to know your yearly winrates for example of differences during these ~600 hour sample sizes; my guess would be they are all over the map?

My yearly hourly totals aren't quite as much as Angrists, but similar, with my worst year hourly being less than 1/4 my best year hourly (and coming just 2 years later).

Gseeyouatthefinishline,imoG

Yea, they're all over the map. These numbers include a variety of games and tournaments, including me sucking at PLO when I started playing that too.

2008 - (partial) 175.2 $17.78/hr
2009 460.2 $7.20/hr
2010 617.3 $1.11/hr
2011 647.4 $12.21/hr
2012 561.9 -$4.47/hr
2013 401.6 -$2.61/hr
2014 594.9 $18.74/hr
2015 547.6 $2.00/hr
2016 707.6 $9.51/hr
2017 610.9 $11.57/hr

I ran well to start, which helped. But I had some serious leaks which showed up mostly in 2010 and even 2011, as IIRC there were a couple of big wins that skewed 2011 up. 2012 I ran into a really nasty downswing. 2013 actually started well and got worse and worse in terms of both winrate and volume near the end as I was finishing a PhD and nearly killed myself from lack of sleep while doing it. No sooner did I defend than my game improved immediately.

I don't have the full breakdown here but my $1/2 NLHE numbers have actually become more consistent and steeper after defending. The PLO has really messed with my overall results/stats.

Nice job, Squid! Awesome to see such volume in one graph! And obviously the results are frickin awesome. It will be sick to see the 10k sample just because it will be the largest live sample I've ever seen. Thanks for posting!

Yeah, too bad it's not all 1/2 NL, but still shows the huge lol differences between fairly "large live" (lol) segments. Are you the meh 2.5 bb/hr loser you were in 2011, or the big 9 bb/r winner you were in 2014 (over ~600 hour samples each)? You're both (ok, fair enough, I realize including PLO in this has probably really driven this outta wack, but still). Good luck figuring out which one you are randomly looking at one segment. My guess is if we ever played enough lifetime hours we'd have similar lol differences between even bigger sample sizes (like 1000 hour segments).

Gquitwhileyou'reahead,ldoG

Very sick #sabrbeat being that this is probably better than 90% of players ITT

@squid What is the 2/5BI cap?

Meals it’s 2/5 200-1000
Rake-10% capped @5 with a bbj of 2. They rake pre and round up. So if someone raises to 20 and I 3! And every one folds they take 5+2

That's cool. Thanks.

That sucks

thanks mang...Ima do my best to get that sht outta storage and get that giraffe up


agree the rake pre is brutal. It is really really expensive

house policy for a raise pre and the blinds folding is 1+1. They take the second bbj buck at 20

so if there is a limper and i iso the policy is 2+2 (math is sb2 + bb5 +limper 5 +my 5 --- they count that in the math that when I raise and all fold makes 17 round up to 20 and u get 2+2)

Still infinitely better than 10% $15 cap with shorter effective stacks and no BBJ. :')

This gives me the sads

Trying hard without looking like a try-hard!

Pulled my day by day stats and the results were interesting. Still small sample sizes but I seem to run hot on Friday's.

Monday 277.50 $18.08/hr
Tuesday 146.42 $35.95/hr
Wednesday 318.80 $18.93/hr
Thursday 222.40 $6.49/hr
Friday 216.75 $89.70/hr
Saturday 150.42 $43.20/hr
Sunday 208.22 -$27.28/hr

I think these winrate-by-day samples show just how meaningless these small samples are. I attached my report for the last six months (since I've been playing full time), and my highest winrate has been on Monday when games are usually terrible. Tuesday is my second worst day besides Sunday despite the games in my room being particularly good on Tuesdays, and Friday and Saturday being in the middle of the pack despite obviously having the best games. For reference, my primary game is 1/3 500 max, and I'm in the process of taking shots at 2/5 1000 max.

Overall, I'm quite happy at how the year has played out overall. I ran like a god in August, losing only a single session all month. My foray into 2/5 hasn't gone quite like I hoped, but I think the numbers are a bit misleading. I put in about 25 hours last weekend in a couple sessions and lost 5.5k. They were juicy games and I'm pretty happy with how I played overall, things just didn't go my way; I feel I just ran poorly, not that I was overmatched. Besides that weekend, my shots at 2/5 have gone well. I'm confident I am/can be better than the population in that game, and it's refreshing to play "real" poker again, but I've been playing braindead poker for so long there's certainly a little bit of rust to dust off.

Anyhow, I'm more of a lurker and not much of a poster, but I wanted to share my results with you lot. May next year be even better!

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Well done mate.

That's a solid 6 months! Why did you put in so little volume (comparatively) in August when you ran hot? Run good makes me want to play more.

270 hours in July? That would make me want to gouge my own eyes out

nice volume/results - starting out strong your first 6 months full-time is a good feeling i'm sure.

how many hours did you have before you went full-time? thoughts on first 6 months playing professionally?

I put in 270 hours in July, so I needed a little break after that. I actually did play more than that report shows, because that's cash only and I played probably 25 hours of tournaments over the month. I've been playing a long time: Moneymaker era or perhaps slightly before. I was an online guy who transitioned to live when things started to get complicated. However, I never really had the bankroll for the live game, so I was in and out of action periodically over the years while working a deadend job. As for an actual number of hours or stats, I don't really know that information.

It's definitely a great feeling to get this kind of start. I'm smart enough to know there's no guarantee I will make it, but if I fail, I look at this almost like a freeroll. All I have to lose is money, and it's all money that came from the game. Worst case scenario is I go busto, I'll be in a slightly better spot than I started, and this will turn out to just have just been a long vacation. We are trying to avoid that, of course. I am always trying to inprove my game and avoiding that "I'm a winning player, so let me just go on autopilot and let the money roll in" mentality.

Yea, it wasn't the most fun, but the casino had an unbeatable promotion that month so I put in the work. Guaranteed money is hard to pass up.

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awesome - sounds like you have a good mindset; best of luck.

is the reason you are still just shot taking 2/5 because of bankroll considerations or just lack of experience/confidence at those stakes?

The reason I am still shot taking 2/5 is because of bankroll considerations and my current results. Hard for me to say "I'm a 2/5 player now" while being a loser in the game thus far, right? That being said, I do believe those losses are due mostly to short term variance. I believe my game in it's current form is good enough to beat that game for a solid clip, and I think I have plenty of room for improvement after fully adjusting to the game. I'm just limiting my shots because I want to keep my risk of ruin to a minimum. The last thing I want to do is go busto and no longer be able to play the 1/3 that I'm crushing because I took too aggressive shots at 2/5. I'm certainly looking to transition sooner rather than later, though.

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Nice graph I’m in the same boat as you. When I finally got a great paying job I finally realized that working wasn’t for me. I have about 250 hours so far. I’ll be posting my graph at 500. I jumped right into 2/5 with a 30k roll.

Looks like you have a 6k downswing at the end there. Pretty rough. I had a similar swing lately. I had one really sick hand I had 66 on Q6Q7 rainbow. We got allin on the turn for a 3200 pot and he binked his 7 outer on the river. I don’t even know how I managed to convince him to put 300bb in the middle on the turn.

Wow. This is/was me to a T. I used to play on Party on the side to make money for eating out and stuff so I could live better until I finally got a good job. The good job never came. I've been gambling full time for about 5 years now.

Congrats on the great start. Your willingness to grind the crap out of a good promo is as good a sign as the win rate.

My number 1 piece of advice is to diversify. There are lots of ways to do this, the best of which might be to find an SO with a decent real job. There are other ways to make money gambling, though most are not as widely discussed as poker. A fairly easy one is to open some sports accounts and get the bonuses as you arbitrage. Unless you think that's a potential leak for you.

Some sort of freelance type side job is also desirable. Even if you barely touch it some months, a little stream of no variance income is very stabilizing. Even if the job kind of sucks, doing real work a few times a month will keep you from getting complacent.

It's not just stability though. With rare exceptions, poker will eventually become boring for most intelligent people. When you are bored and have forgotten how much the dead end job sucked, it becomes very, very tedious to think about stuff like, "does this random guy care about position in Texas hold em?" And as soon as you figure it out, he leaves and some other random guy, who doesn't care that much sits down,and now you start thinking about his poker game more than he ever has. And the reason he hasn't is because it's not very interesting.

While there have been times I've been obsessed with it, at the end of the day, poker is just people throwing betting discs around based on their guesses about playing cards.

I think this is the main reason the grinder turnover is so high. I started off poker only and did it for a couple years, and I was definitely a worse, more OMC type player near the end of that.

Now, I might go a month without playing, and when I'm do I'm engaged and playing more like I did at the start. In fact, a promo came up lately and played around around 270-300 hours in a month myself and I kind of enjoyed it. You don't have to go to those extremes, but I think playing 40 hours of poker a week for the next 30 years or whatever is a tough plan to follow.

You're doing really well at poker, so make that your platform for never having to dead end it full time again.