If you're playing 2/5 with a 7k bankroll, it's just a matter of time before you're broke.

Good god, no! Donkaments are ridiculously high variance, and the small ones you can afford to play are so over-raked that they are unbeatable long term.

Drop down from 1/3? I lost this in 1/3 not 2/5.

Id start with not playing 22 hours straight. If you think you are making good decisions 20+ hours into a session with no sleep, you are a fool.

Just toughen the **** up.

Losses happen, you just have to play as well as you can and wait for it to turn. Be aware of how you’re playing at all times and stand up/go for a walk/quit if you find yourself tilting or playing bad poker

Along the same vein as what was mentioned before about not playing 22 hours, I'd recommend setting a stop loss and only bringing 2-3 BI to the casino with you. Whether you lose those buyins through coolers or through bad play, your mental state is very likely to be in a non-ideal spot which can lead to compounding mistakes. Also, short-buying to something like 200 in 1/3 can not only help you stay within the confines of your stop loss while still getting a good amount of volume in, but also simplify decisions to start your sessions, forcing you to feel out the table before opening up. It may not be max +EV in terms of poker being one big session and all that, but we're not robots and retaining some peace of mind that allows you to play better longer is infinitely valuable.

That's not that bad a loss. Just keep playing and analyze your game looking for leaks.

I agree with Mike on session length. Don't play 22h. Everyone has a point of diminishing returns where after playing x hours they start winning less and less per hour. This is due both to fatigue and depending on when you play, changing game conditions. If you normally start at 7 PM you would have diminishing returns by 7 AM for sure as the morning games tend to be much tougher.

For me x = 8 roughly. After 8 hours I start to lose some focus. I can go 12 hours but by then I'm definitely on my B game. More than 12 and I'm massively fatigued. Everyone is different...maybe 12 is nothing to you but it's doubtful you're on your A game for 22 hours. And even if you are, such long sessions necessitate you playing a lot of off hours where your winrate will be lower.

My advice...don't be alarmed by the loss but switch to playing shorter sessions and during premium days/hours. This would be weekends, days with special promos, and hourly roughly 6PM to 4AM.

It’s funny because Saturday has been my worst day/night out of them all. My best days are Monday through Wednesday. Seem to be plenty of fish these days.

I’ve done my best when I’ve stuck to 3-6 hour sessions. I strayed from this plan which was a mistake. This session I started on a bad variance downswing (QQ ran into AA and KK pre, then second nut flush got outdrawn on river by nut flush). I think these losses may have affected my play. Next time I lose two BI to variance I’ll call it a night.

It's been my experience that in most non-Vegas locations the games are best on weekday evenings and worst on the weekend when all the weekend warrior grinder types come out.

Hmm...definitely not like that in Tampa. Weekdays are grinderfests. Weekends have about twice as much traffic and maybe half as many grinders per table. My weekend winrate is ridiculous. And the big games only get going during weekends.

I'm not really counting Sunday. That's the beginning of the week and for reasons I can't figure out Sundays seem to be one of the worst days to play.

Sunday is by far my best day. That kinda sucks because I dont play on Sunday during football season. Some things are more important than poker.

Maybe its not the good thread for this question, but are you guys in a relationship or have a family? I would want to try poker full time but we are not sure how it will affect our couple...

We thought the best would be if I work night time (8pm - 4 am) so we can still eat dinner together.

What are your toughts/opinions?

We are 24 yo. And I'm really sick of my 9 to 5 corporate job... I cant do it anymore... i asked to do 4 days a week ! Maybe as a transition if I go poker full time. I feel like if I dont try it, I will regret it when I'm older... my girlfriend supports me so that's good but I would love to hear how you handle your family time/poker schedule?

Redirect me to another thread if its not the place

For the love of god, don't quit a stable job to do poker, even if your gf supports you.

I'm not a relationship guru, but women just don't grasp the variance and swings that come with poker and I've personally seen at least 1 marriage ruined by it (also young ones like you)

If the job lets you, keep doing 4 days/week and play poker on friday/weekends. If you can do that for a year without your relationship suffering, you may have a chance.

We are together for 4 years now, and she understands concept of poker (variance, ev, etc...) she has a bacchelor in maths and master in computer science (AI).

But yeah, I guess I cannot know until we try it...

It wouldnt be so hard finding another job in my domain if it clearly fails after some months and my couple would be in problems, I would quit poker for sure...

I can totally understand you - I am married, no kids yet, cooperate job. I treat poker as my hobby and side job, my wife understands me, so i normally would play two weekday nights and Saturdays. I can put in roughly 60 hours monthly.

When you already have a good job, I don't think playing poker full time especially grinding 5-T or lower game is a good idea. You don't get paid much more but with way higher risk of you and your family (Assumed full time 5/T pro, annually income for $120K? with no benefits). I told my wife - I wouldn't consider to play poker full time unless I have a roll and approved to be a winning player for at least 25/50 game. (My conservative assumption - this game would give me roughly $250K annual income if I am good, but I don't see myself could make $250K from a regular job)

If your wife totally understands the variance/degen life and can support you then you could try it out for a while. My wife has a similar background and knows how to read a graph so I don't get any grief but she would be concerned about long term career prospects following a several month poker bender. Assuming you're good at poker the main concern is being out of the workforce for a long time, having a gap in your resume or CV that would require an explanation. Going sideways career-wise in your early to mid twenties can cost you long term.

If your job sucks and you do quit I highly recommend finding a well paying career you don't hate and have some interest in while you grind. Have multiple options.

RE: DT's playing time.

Here's my PokerJournal stats on my 1/3 NL session lengths. I've ignored all session lengths < 5 hours because I have < 10 sessions per time period at those.

session length in hours (number of sessions) $/hr

5-6 (71) $20.38
6-7 (172) $23.06
7-8 (30) $7.81
8-9 (24) $18.56
9-10 (77) $17.66
10-11 (68) $18.40
11-12 (40) $25.24
12+ (18) $32.21

Overall winrate $20.98/hr.

I'm pretty sure it's all just meaningless noise, noting that I almost always simply play to a set time (it's not as if I stick around in good games / leave bad games). And I certainly think I suck at deepstack (which one will typically be later in a session). And yet interestingly enough my winrates on my longest session lengths are the best. Still, I do notice I start getting a headache as my session length increases to the longest ones and I'm not feeling my best (and yet for some reason this isn't reflected in the winrate).

My longest session length is like 14 hours and I really felt it. Can't imagine how anyone can be doing anything remotely competently at 22 hours.

GcluelesssessionlengthnoobG

There's a lot of noise in those numbers. For a horribly formatted table (because I just want to copy/paste):

Session Table Hours Win/Loss Table Hours BB / hr $ / hr stdv
0 - 0.9 hrs $ 1,074.00 14.8 49.4 $ 72.81 ±414.18
1 - 1.9 hrs $ -5,046.00 202.3 -12.3 $ -24.94 ±148.31
2 - 2.9 hrs $ -579.00 605.2 0.4 $ -0.96 ±115.10
3 - 3.9 hrs $ 9,975.37 893.6 6.0 $ 11.16 ±93.33
4 - 4.9 hrs $ 19,429.09 942.2 9.8 $ 20.62 ±75.64
5 - 5.9 hrs $ 8,250.00 949.8 4.3 $ 8.69 ±71.52
6 - 6.9 hrs $ 4,415.50 823.6 2.8 $ 5.36 ±56.94
7 - 7.9 hrs $ 5,733.00 645.9 4.5 $ 8.88 ±51.80
8 - 8.9 hrs $ -3,328.00 363.4 -4.7 $ -9.16 ±45.43
9 - 9.9 hrs $ 1,582.00 130.3 6.1 $ 12.14 ±30.16
10 - 10.9 hrs $ 1,282.00 112.3 5.7 $ 11.42 ±29.17
11 - 11.9 hrs $ -184.00 11.2 -8.2 $ -16.48
12 - 12.9 hrs $ -665.00 48.8 -6.8 $ -13.64 ±18.72
13 - 13.9 hrs $ -740.00 38.1 -5.0 $ -19.41 ±22.80
14 - 14.9 hrs $ 300.00 14.5 10.3 $ 20.69
16 - 16.9 hrs $ -285.00 16.0 -8.9 $ -17.81
17 - 17.9 hrs $ 410.00 34.0 6.0 $ 12.06 ±3.74
18 - 18.9 hrs $ -40.00 18.6 -1.1 $ -2.15


Not too many sessions above 11 hours, but they go negative there. Interestingly, really short sessions are negative, bad game and I leave maybe? While mid-length sessions have no determinable pattern. Really weird gap at 8-9 hours that's negative.

I usually jut play to a set time (give or take an orbit) and don't stick around super late chasing.

Most people have an extremely hard time concentrating for more than a couple of hours at a time, and even with breaks it's hard to push past 8 or so.

I find my 7-8 hour results really weird too as they are so out of sorts with everything else, but still only 30 sample sizes so whatever I guess.

Gnewpokerstrat:neverplayexactly8hours,ldoG

DT - seriously screw your game the PHUC down. As I have stated in your hh threads your hands all have serious issues. Do not try and be a hero and play marginal hands oop. Tighten up. Say to your self in close decisions pre "what would gg do here? would he fold"?

Good point. When I'm on my A game, I often think of 2p2ers before each hand and how they'd react if I played a hand. That normally means I fold, of course.

If you read the PG&C post about the session, you'll see it was runbad combined with play bad. I'd say about 50/50. I lost a couple flips for stacks (e.g., AK/QQ, nfd+pair versus overpair), which hurt too.

I put in a short session last night to get back into the right mindset and true to form folded all but one hand in 3 hours. Ended losing $65 being blinded out but at least I got back to my routine.

Stlows, the bolded would be of huge concern coming off a stable job to play poker. Say you try for a year or two and decide to go back to work. Depending on your field your skills may have depreciated in value (e.g. computer science). Corporations are also going to be wondering about that gap. Whether you tell them or not about poker you're kind of screwed. If you don't tell them, you look like a flake who randomly quit his last job for no reason and they're going to think you'll do that too. And if you do tell them, there is a very high chance they think you have a gambling problem and are irresponsible. Even if they're impressed (say you managed to win 10BB/hr over the period but just decided full time poker wasn't for you) by your results, they're still going to be wondering "when is this kid going to get bored with this job and go back to poker?"

I had a "resume gap" of over a year playing online poker. I suspect this was a primary factor in my hundreds of rejections for corporate jobs, despite otherwise having a fantastic CV and letters of recommendation.

I'm not saying don't do it but think long and hard about the potential negative consequences if poker doesn't work out. And you need to be sure you're good enough to win sufficient money before quitting. I wouldn't quit without 1k+ hrs of 8BB/hr+ wins at whatever stake is your financial equivalent.

And as far as financial equivalency, because of the complete lack of benefits playing poker, higher taxes, and general uncertainty, you're going to need about 50% more income from poker to be equivalent to what you make at your job.

Good luck and hope you make the right decision for you and your wife's happiness.

And BTW I'm single. It's easier to play poker from 6PM to 4 AM when you don't have a family. If your wife works during the day you could end up having to play during the day which depending where you live could be mildly bad to very bad. Some places the games don't really get going until the evening.

I'm getting surgery in a week that is going to make it real hard to play poker for the next three months, so I guess my year is over. Enjoy a real early 2018 results graph of rungood:


Mostly 2/5 with some 2/5/10 and 5/10. 2/5 accounts for 138 of the hours and $15,150 of the winnings

Nice job! Not bad for only 32 sessions/hope your surgery goes well...
Where do you play?

I play at Sugarhouse