Wow id go crazy if i had to play this many days in a row, but well done!

Thanks. I don't have to play at all, just do it for fun to keep the mind sharp and add to the toys-for-my-car fund and retirement accounts. I do have a "real job" that I work during the day/weekdays.

Wow, you just made me feel extremely lazy. You have a full time job and still play everyday? Damn, I'm impressed and motivated for Feb! How many hours was this?

I work from home so my "full time job" is more like half doing actual work and half reading reddit and 2+2. Average session is probably about 6 hours/day, so about ~160-180 hours for the month. Usually get up around 8 AM, work until about 5, take a nap for an hour or two at some point, head out to play poker, go home between 12-3am, repeat. Sounds boring but I enjoy it.

Wow that's an intense schedule. You must really enjoy your job and poker. I know if I tried that schedule I would be totally burned out in a month.

I love my job and love playing poker so neither of them are really "work" for me. Both pay pretty well though.

People who have a healthy (20 bi or more) bankroll for the nlhe that you play: how differently would you play if you only had 3 bi total? I know that really you wouldn't play at all, but could you give an estimate as to how much worse your expected roi per hour would be? How would it affect you mentally? I know the book response, I'm looking for a personal response based on experience if possible.

from personal experience, i felt very impatient and very tilted when i didnt get hands or lost pots. i didnt want to end up down and i made spewy plays chasing losses.

Being impatient and easily tilted with 3 BIs is practically giving away money...

I had some tilt problems a while ago, and to counter that problem, I would only bring a set amount of money. There were several instances where I would lose most of my BIs rather quickly and I had to either extend my last BI or go home after a very short session. So I do understand how it feels to play with a very limited BR.

Essentially I have to be very very selective with my position, starting hand, and avoid aggression from villains. I can't bluff, can't call with speculative hands, and can't really set mine anymore.

I also lose a lot of profit by overbetting strong hands, because it became far more important to win pots than to get max value.

In the end, it was often matter of time before I go busto anyway.

well i was impatient and tilted because i only had 3 BI and it was important for me to end up with a winning session. i dont think id have played the same way if i had 20.

You're doing it very wrong then. If you knew you only have 3 BIs to work with, you can't afford to be impatient or tilted.

there's no reason to play different with 3 BI than with 20 BI. In fact, if you play too different because you are scared to lose the money, that may jeopardize your ability to beat the game, or beat it by as much as you should.

One thing that a lot of people aren't clear on -- purely recreational players at low stakes who have a decent day job don't really need a bankroll, you just need enough buy ins to have a decent session. You bust your whole roll, ok that sucks, but you just wait until you've saved another few buyins. That assumes that you are playing stakes where losing a few buyins can be chalked up as your entertainment budget, and it won't take you months to save them up again. There's no point in waiting until you've saved up 20 buyins to take a crack at a low stake game, might as well play. If you run good/average to start and are a winning player, you'll build your bankroll with poker instead of waiting.

Bankrolls come in when you want to play stakes higher than you can just fade as expenses. For me, if I drop a couple hundred dollars, that sucks, and I can't afford to do it every night, but I don't want to play poker every night anyway. As long as it's only 2-3 times a month I could sustain that if I were a losing player but was having fun with it.

Bankroll is for playing stakes where you can't just save up a buyin from your income easily in a week or two. Or for trying to play every day as a source of side income/savings. Or, for trying to go pro. But the bankroll you need as a recreational or side job player is much smaller than the one you need as as a real pro.

If you are getting your living expenses from playing, you have to subtract that from your win-rate to determine your risk of ruin. So while 20BI is plenty for any rec player that is crushing, it is nowhere near enough for someone looking to live on their winnings.

If you win 10bb/hr in a game that has an SD of 100bb/hr, then 20BI gives you about a 2% Risk of Ruin (ROR). But if you say "Cool, that means I can make $20/hr at 1/2! That's more than I make doing (whatever random job). Here's the problem, if you take out $16/hr to live on, as far as your bankroll ROR is concerned, you don't win 10bb/hr anymore, you win 2bb/hr. It's only the amount you win that you *don't* need, that you can consider as your winrate for bankroll ROR purposes. and that means you really do need at *least* 50BI, probably more like 100BI if you need 80% of your winrate to live.

50BI probably assumes you are living on about half of your win-rate, and crushing the game. you need much more if either of those things is not true. This is something people who have 20-30k hands in at some awesome rate who want to go pro full time often don't understand.

Also, having a ROR of only 2% doesn't mean you have only a 2% chance of ever experiencing a 20BI downswing. It just means your chance of experiencing a downswing that high, before you have built a bankroll enough to handle it is 2%. If you take shots at games you're not even sure you can beat everytime your bankroll grows, your ROR will be significantly higher, because 25-50BI downswings happen to many more than 2% of crushing players, it's just that most of them happen to guys who've already built up their bankroll, or moved up such that they can drop stakes and still be rolled. The 2% that break you are the ones that happen before you've been winning for a while.

wtf? its not like i do it on purpose

Sounds awesome ... if you ever need a break let me know and I'll assume your life.

After reading some of the posts in this thread, I get the feeling most of the posters don't truly understand the sample size involved in live poker.

I've had a ~100 hour stretch where I was at -3bb/hr. For this stretch, my results say I was a losing player, no different than any other fish at the table. My true winrate over my "career" is closer to +6-7bb/hr.

Why is this? Because live sample size is lolsmall. Assuming a player were to treat poker like a job and work ~200 hours a month, that's only <6000 hands/month. For the majortiy of the community, who play much less than that, naked variance is unavoidably going to be a large part of your winrate.

This is a concept that is really hard to teach and much easier to see if you played online poker. I think one of the biggest strengths of online-based players is the ability to really comprehend this and apply it to bankroll management while having a clearer view of their results.

I understand that intellectually, TAO. It's hard to remember it live.

So. I would put this in goals, but I think it's better to put it here. A dose of reality.

Winrates. Over the last two months, I am break even. I could chalk it up to variance, but I made a couple horrible, horrible plays. My biggest leak, what loses the most money for me, is overcompensating when playing against what I perceive to be wild players. I finally end up getting in a huge pot, and lo and behold, they have the nuts or close to it.

Bankrolls. I don't have one. I have a minimum wage part time job that nets me ~135 a week. I live at home. I pay $200 rent, and most of my food is free. I have a girlfriend, and I probably spend ~30 a month on activities. Plus an extra ~30 a month for food ingredients for cooking and other consumables, that leaves me with 280 a month to spare. Gas probably runs me 40 a month, so 240. Other car and random expenses probably bring it to more like 200 spendable dollars a month.

I have $1300 on Bovada, $300 in the bank, and $600 coming in tax money. So just over 2k.

Job prospects. The market is absolutely horrible, especially where I live. Entry level jobs are asking for people with 6 months experience, or more. Everywhere I look, people say that having a degree doesn't get you a job, even necessarily an interview. So if I were to go back to college and get a cheap associate's in some field, there's absolutely no guarantee that it wouldn't be a wonderful waste of 6k. Especially when I don't have a desired field to begin with.

I should add that I have a bit of hand-arm vibration syndrome which means that I can't take a job where I am handling a vibrating tool or machine for much of the time. This rules out a LOT of factory jobs which are the majority of what I might have been able to get.

I like playing classical guitar. If I really worked at it, I might be worth booking at some weddings.

I hate the inherent dishonesty in much of the work world, where you are expected to lie, and do other dishonest things in order to get/stay ahead. I view poker, ironically, as the most "honest" option for money, because at least everyone at the table *knows* we're all trying to get one-up on each other.

I understand that basically any time I sit down at a poker table, I'm "taking a shot" due to my lack of a bankroll. I'm confident that with discipline and applied focus, I really would have a good shot at the game. But I don't know if I can maintain that focus, when I have such a results-oriented emotional response to the game. Poker takes a lot out of me when it's not going well. And I have ADD, so it is hard to focus at the table and keep my mind on the players' actions. When I do focus, when I'm playing my A game, I'm quite observant and don't feel as much fear taking advantage of my observations, even when it means putting money at risk. I tend to make very good decisions.

Right now poker seems like my best opportunity for making more money. I believe that with a very disciplined approach, I could be making more than at my current job (which after government withdrawals would really be just 3bb/hr). But maybe I'm kidding myself.

I have 20k in total online winnings btw, I know that probably doesn't make a huge difference because it was during 06 and 07, when online players were horrible.

Not completely sure what you're getting at corlath, but you're situation doesn't sound too bad.
Just keep you're ****ty Job while improving your game.
The thing about live is it's way harder to plug leaks. The main reasons being: we see a lot less hands so we make a mistake that costs us 10bb we might not see that spot again for months, whereas online we might see it the next day. And the no brainier, there is no tracking software so it makes reviewing whole sessions almost impossible.
Imo live leak fixing is just based on experience and focus. The more you play while you're focused the more your game will improve.

I figured if I posted my general life situation, it might reap a variety of responses, ranging from "stop playing, go get an education, get a real job noobdonk" to "you can do play poker professionally! Just work really hard", but probably weighted strongly toward the former. Maybe even some sharings of personal experiences, similar or different.

lol @ having more $ on bovada than in the bank...something wrong with that picture. My advice is get a job and play on the side so that losses don't totally crush you. When you're worried about losing the money, you will play less than optimal poker and it will affect you mentally. Just about anyone can get a job as a server in a restaurant and pull in $100-200/night working hard, even at a relatively inexpensive place.

most places require experience first, definitely not just anyone can get that job

Just to give you guys some perspective on variance, I had a $2500 downswing in 1/2 NL in December and I am winning at 16.5bb/hour over like 1000 hours at 1/2 in total. I have since recovered from it but **** $2500 at 1/2 is crazy.

did you spew and tilt too or it was all just downswing?

There was spew and tilt ofc...but I dont think I have ever really had a downswing and not spewed/tilted.

ok that makes mores sense then

if youre playing your a-game the entire time, its hard to lose 12.5 BI at 1/2 live

Game is $500 max and plays bigger than 1/2 tho. Still $2500 is ridiculous.