2/5 — 144 hours, -$1688
5/10 — 1221 hours, +$113982
10/25 — 11 hours, +$8659
MTT — 103 hours, -$3548


1st world problem, but kinda disappointing year for me. Only good thing was volume. Otherwise: Mediocre time efficiency, awful studying, nonexistent meditation / brain training, meh mindset, sub par motivation. Hopefully I can fix at least 2 of those things this year.

GL to everyone in 2018!

One of the best - sick results as expected. Gl in 2018

Dope stuff, where abouts you play?

It's all about the Matlab baby.

Site license and plenty of experience with it every day:

What kind of wizardry is this? ickingmyjawoffthefloor

I had a winning, yet losing 2017. I started the year with ~$10K playing 1/2 & 1/3 & ended the year with ~$13K, but I won $22.8K. How does that happen when you don't use the money for the vast majority of living expenses? A couple week long vacations, this, that & the other thing..........

Winning: win rate increased ~13% over the previous 2 years. It's still below 10BBs per hr & I don't see me hitting that in 2018, but it's within reach...yeah, sure it is.
Played about 1500 hrs......which is right at where I want to be.

Losing: Spending way too much money eating at the casino. No shame in bringing your lunch in a cooler. Has to be several $K down the drain there.

Winning: studied the game a lot more than in 2016 & have 2 players to bounce hands off of that I trust.

Losing: Still folding the best hand too often on the turn.

Winning: Living the dream!

In 2013 at my 1/3 NL game I shipped $35.48/hr over 570 hours, and this on the heels of a 2012 where I shipped $31.18/hr over 411 hours. And at that time I thought to myself if I ever lost my job that I could perhaps do this poker thing fulltime (or at the very least until I got back on my feet again).

But in 4 short years the poker landscape in my neck of the woods has changed drastically, and my results since then have certainly reflected that. So so so so glad I wasn't faced with the "opportunity" of going down this route.

IMHO, this is not a career path that has any future upswing coming, and for most markets the opposite will be true (i.e. is anyone's game getting easier over the last 10 years?). I know you've made your choice, and your market perhaps seems to be in a different state than mine, and that's fine (YOLO, imo). But at the same time I do think it's a dangerous thing to suggest (i.e. dropping what I'm assuming is a well paying job to move into a "career" in poker).

Gjustbalancingthethread,that'sallG

You're fightin a lost battle there gg

My market got better when everyone caught the poker STD that is PLO.

Yeeeah, the difference is though that even if things get tougher for Diz, he'll still make plenty of cash. If his hourly drops, he'll prob still be able to clear 100k EZ.

IMO, this is a rather delusional statement, especially the EZ part, especially for low stakes, especially for the future long term.

Gimo,butwhatdoIknow,Imadelessthan3bb/hrlastyear,soobviouslylol@meG

T/T = lowstakes? 2/5 maaaaaybe...but

T/T obviously doesn't qualify as lowstakes (this is a lowstakes forum).

FWIW, are T/T games plentiful where everyone else is?

GhasneverseenaT/TgameG

I played full-time for 18 months while transitioning out of finance. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone unless your earning potential is maxed out around 40k

My new career probably carries a similar risk profile as it is entirely commission based but the floor is higher than poker and the ceiling is orders of magnitude higher in an industry that snowballs and builds on itself.

Playing full-time is fine as a stop gap but it literally makes zero sense if you are capable of earning more elsewhere. Like income + cherry picking hours when you want to play rather than no other income + cranking volume because you have to play is such a night and day difference.

I've said it before ITT, but poker is a great hobby for some side income, or a bridge between jobs. But it's an awful idea for a 30+ y/o adult as full time income.

How about a 45+ y/o child, like trooper97?

I agree and disagree with points on both sides.

Clearing 100k is definitely not easy/not a lock for me even playing full-time hours. I was fortunate to run well this year & I know that will not always be the case. I also currently play all of my sessions during pretty prime hours; on weeknights and (less-so) weekends, and going full-time would certainly require me to add-in hours during non-peak times unless I wanted to give up my social life (which I don't).

However, I would never even consider playing full-time if I wasn't expecting to be able to clear 6-figures, and that is why although it has been something I have been thinking about for 2.5-3 years, I wanted to first accumulate the appropriate sample size, confidence, and bank-roll before I even truly considered it as a legitimate possibility.

@gg - yes playing full time at low-stakes (1/3 and 1/2) is truly a terrible idea which I would never recommend to anyone and pretty sure I would fail at myself if I only had access to those stakes. My area has constant access to multiple 2/5 games and the $10 blind games run multiple times a week consistently.

Full-time employment with poker on the side is 100% the way to go if you can do it. Doing that for the past 2.5-3 years has allowed me to save a ridiculous amount of money compared to my peers and set myself up very well going forward (aka: save and invest your money!!!!!!!). However, it is a tough grind for sure, especially if you want to put in a solid amount of hours and still have a life outside of poker and work.

The only reason I am now considering full-time poker is because my current job is not in a location I want to be in long-term, and I will soon be moving to a new area (regardless if I turn to poker full-time or not) that is going to make my daily commute much worse than I want it to be. So rather than look for a new job right away or deal with the awful commute, I may give poker a try as it has been something I have wanted to do and given myself years of thought and practice to make sure I was serious about it.

There are still a lot of positives and negatives of the lifestyle that need to be weighed, so I am not sure what I will end up deciding, but we shall see.

Sorry for the TL;DR and I'm not trying to make the thread about me - just figured I'd give my thoughts

& Sorry mods if this is a de-rail; go back to posting graphs everyone!

Dont expect this to always be the case. It was only 12-18 months ago that 5/10 ran regularly in many rooms in S. Florida. My room had a main game and a must move almost every day. Now, other than a semi private 5/10 mixed game that only runs from 9am to about noon or a bit later, there is virtually never a 5/10 game in my room anymore.

You're fighting a lost battle mike

Yep, our 5/10 has virtually died as well. I think if anything, playing poker as your sole profession means you have to be willing to go where the games are and can't be too attached to a sole location. Which essentially ties back into what most have been saying, that it's mostly for younger people without many commitments -- not for people with an established life/family.

For those considering going full time, you really have to appreciate this simple fact: things change. Things. Change.

Here's some of the things that have changed in my room since I began playing 1/3 NL in 2010:

- 2 of the 7 local rooms closed
- every one of the local rooms downsided their tables (our room going from 8 to 5); one of the rooms no longer even allows a phone-in list (lol)
- rake was increased $2 - $3 in every room
- since my room was reduced to 5 tables the chip runners have more-or-less been eliminated, thus reducing the number of hands per hour at the table (due to dealers now being forced to do chip/cash exchanges instead of simply just dealing)
- the Limit game, which used to be a constant stable in every room, is all but extinct (I believe only going in one of the local rooms); my room hasn't had a single Limit game run since it became a 5 table room
- my room no longer hosts nightly tournaments since it has become a 5 table room, which of course totally cuts down on the random number of tourney/Limit players sitting in a cash game before/after their game
- before the 1/3 NL game came into existence in my room (when I was more-or-less just playing Limit) our room always featured 1/2 NL games and 2/5 NL games; since 1/3 NL has come in, 2/5 NL almost never runs (I think I saw it run personally twice in 2017 although I do know it had been running ~once a week on a ~semi-basis on a day that I avoided due to lack of tables); I've heard stories that our room actually used to offer a 10/20 NL game (!!!) way back in the day when the room first opened in the mid 2000s (obviously hasn't run since)

Now of course, that's just my experience, and that's just my experience with regards to the rooms / games / stakes / tables / rake / etc. available (i.e. I haven't said a single solitary thing about the harder-to-quantify changing quality of opponents).

Your experience will likely differ in some regards.

But expecting things to stay the same is delusional.

I used to go to Vegas in the 90s about once a year on business. Certainly wasn't an expert on the games being played in town by any stretch of the imagination. But I don't recall seeing any NL at the time, it was all 7 card stud; you see a lotta 7 card stud nowadays?

What you've accomplished up until this point is almost a meaningless metric with regards to moving forward, imo.

Gthings.change.sobeprepared,imoG

I really like stud. Wish it ran in my rooms.

I feel like I really jumped into the pro poker thing a bit too late. Started this summer, just turned 30. Other than winning a jackpot, the year ended dismally for me as I went on a massive downswing, which fortunately seems to be reversing. Also in good fortune, there are viable 5/T games close by, but I need to do some rebuilding and don't see myself taking shots until the Spring, hopefully transitioning to over 50% 5/T by summer. Honestly, what drives me to do it is the freedom of setting my own schedule. The risk/responsibility of managing my own living also brought about a positive change in my outlook and practice of self -discipline. Unlike most who've done well for themselves, I spent my 20's in ****ty sales jobs before getting a teaching credential and spending one year teaching full time. Anyways, that one year left me jaded and without other prospects after an enrollment induced lay-off, I sort of latched on to poker. It's certainly possible (not this year b/c brutal downswing) for me to make more gambling than teaching. It's actually less stressful. I do feel like I'm not contributing to anything though, which is a downer. I'm obviously considering a profession outside cards. Currently trying to help out a local campaign so I can get my foot into politics. Don't think I'll ever run for anything, but I'm drawn to behind the scenes stuff. Anyways, here'r probably the worst results this thread has seen, but whatever. I'll get better.

Lifetime:



1454 total hours. First 475-ish at 2/3. Rest is 5/5 with a 3hr 5/T session somewhere in there (~$400 profit)

Here's just 5/5, which plays 5/5/T UTG straddle ~35% of the time. 977 hrs, with last ~780 being part of my "professional" phase.

Hi guys, so I just started playing poker in August and have generated the following stats:

1/3 NL (+$2316, 54 hours)
1/2/3 NL (+$955, 9 hours)
2/3 NL (-$299, 165 hours)
1/1/2 NL (-$500, 2 hours)
1/2 NL (-$859, 3 hours)

Profit: $1613
$/hr: $6.84
Duration: 235 hours and 42 minutes
Cashed: 47/78 (60%)
BB/hr: 0.93
bb/100: 7.62 (assuming 30 hands per hour)
BB/hr std. dev: 55.56
$/hr std. dev: $141.19

Some takeaways are:

1. I understand this is a small sample size.
2. A positive win rate is good.
3. My sessions have felt very swingy with a lot of variance. (Mostly several sessions of $100-$300 wins, coupled with a few $400-800 wins, and decently frequent $600-900 losses)

Clearly I have a lot of work to do, but are there any suggestions based on my numbers so far? Thanks for any help!

Hard Rock Hollywood runs 20/40 Stud 8 on Monday’s and Thursdays. I know you live somewhere in Florida, but not sure how close you are to here.