You should continue to work full time, make money, and build experience both to help fill your resume AND to aid you once you do embark on a career. Save what you can of what you make while you are young and fortunate to be able to live at home. Enjoy being 22, having fun, dating, socializing, having few responsibilites, spending time with your family, etc. Sometime in the next few years you'll be moving out, and in a couple months after that it'll be hitting you just how expensive everything is. Prepare for that time by making intelligent decisions.

After you've made sure that you can do all of the above, then work out a plan where you can play part time or close to full time hours (a few sessions a week, 25, 30 hours) with your already exsting bankroll, for supplemental income. Don't let it get in the way of the rest.

Droping EVERYTHING to make poker your sole source of income is ridiculous and silly, and not something you should pursue. 95% of people on this site who mention dropping out of school or quitting their job or moving to Vegas/AC for it, bomb. Period. They either post a handful of times and then vanish, go broke, or claim that they are full time pros but are only able to do so because they are living a kid's life and have no monthly nut. You don't want to be one of these people, and you don't want to count on poker as a career, particularly since the boom might cease to exist X# of years from now and your local casino might have a grand total of 6 tables running.

Bottom line, you can and should play to boost income as long as there is a healthy balance between that and "regular" life, but don't put all your eggs in one basket.

As someone on this site once brilliantly stated, EV is wonderful, but it doesn't pay your electric bill.

WWizardG's post is one of the best things I've ever read on this site. Kudos.

Either due do it being summer time / nice weather, or a new poker room in the area, my poker room on a typical week night currently usually has a single 2/4 limit table going and maybe two 1/3 NL tables going. When I played a couple of nights ago, I had to play an hour+ of 2/4 limit because I couldn't get on the single 1/3 NL table they had going, until they finally opened a second 1/3 NL table, with both tables playing shorthanded (8- players) most of the night, until they were finally combined into a single table at 9:30pm when I went home.

Cliffs: 6 NL tables running at one time in my poker room would be, like, a wet dream. This is already the best case scenario in many rooms. Something to consider for the wannabe pros where table selection is key, and yet already non-existent.

GcluelessNLnoobG

That's a very good post and a good point. In the future after the boom, hell, who knows, your room may cease to exist or have 1 or 2 tables going during certain hours only. I'm from the NY/NJ area so I was referring to AC, Parx, etc, spots that now have tons of action but might fall off in the future to the point where there are only a handful of tables and no way for someone to make a living.

I see a lot of people giving you advice to stay in school, keep your job, etc. I'm not going to say any of that is bad advice, because it's not. But to give you another perspective, I went to college, got my degree, and worked as a history teacher for six years. Then someone taught me how to play poker...I was 30 at the time. Within a year of being introduced to the game, I was beating the 1/2 games in AC pretty regularly. Within two years I quit my job and began playing 2/5. I made $26/hr my first year playing for a living. That was five years ago, and my win rate has increased every year. 2012 is no exception...I'm at $61/hr over 900 hrs so far this year, and that doesn't include the tournament that I binked at Borgata. I'm still playing mostly 2/5, and 5/10 (10/10 at parx) when the game looks soft. If your skill is high and your expenses are low, I have to admit, it's a pretty good gig. I would say that all of my friends with regular jobs have far more stress than me. That wasn't always the case, however...I did have some rough patches. But that was mostly because of poor BR management and making -EV bets, such as sports betting. The best advice I could give a promising young poker pro would be to never bet on sports and stay away from all gambling outside of poker. Just stay focused on building your roll and getting better at the game, and if you find yourself crushing 2/5 for a good stretch, start taking shots at the bigger game. Move down when you take a hit, and don't have an ego about it. if the 2/5 games are considerably softer than the 5/10, then play 2/5 and crush it. you can make a very comfortable living playing no higher than 2/5, provided that you're in the right location (New Jersey/PA, California, Florida, and Vegas come to mind).

I couldn't be happier with my decision to quit my job and pursue poker full time. It gives me a ton of freedom and I never get sick of it, because you just never know what's going to happen next. You get to meet lots of interesting characters, and depending on where you play, sometimes you meet celebrities. I've met and played with Manny Pacquiao, Michael Phelps, Paul Pierce, Cliff Lee, Tim Duncan, and a number of other athletes and celebrities. Not just met them, but sat at a table a chatted with them about all kinds of stuff.

I'm not trying to persuade you, but I thought you might want to hear from someone who quit their job, took a shot at playing full time, and is now "living the dream," as they like to say. Good luck in whatever you decide.

I'm just curious, 2Outs...how many tables are necessary for a live pro to make a living? I'm deeply worried about all these poker rooms going under and no one wanting to play the game anymore.

In the UK, poker players don't have to pay tax. This is pretty huge. Let's take the bottom range of my hourly, 100/hour let's say. Even if I play very few hours (not to mention because hours are flexible, I can choose to put in more hours when I want to, and not forced into routine, so I probably have way more hours than this) That's 150k+ year that's 235k USD/ year, and I assure you if FTP comes back I am going back to playing 10/20 and taking shots at 25/50 or 1k sngs.

I guess I should add that I'm slightly bipolar and have intense insomnia that makes working in a normal job not entirely practical or enjoyable. I don't enjoy working to schedule at all, so this is more a personal issue than anything too.

I started playing sngs, I learnt playing cash games, then moved to HU, then moved back to live cash, then went from .5/1 PLO to taking 10/20 shots, and I'm becoming more proficient at mixed games. Games will change, and I will change with it. Surely this is true for any industry? If I cannot change... well then I get left behind.

Again, even if I get "left behind" as long as I make 1/10th of my current hourly I'll probably do alright. I'll probably enjoy poker a bit less but, well I have my girlfriend, I have my books and video games, I enjoy my music. I'm sure I'll survive.

As for poker being interesting, yeah live maybe, but I do play online, and I play very laggy and try to find as many +EV creative lines as possible. I feel like this is something many do not do.

As for balanced lifestyle. Dude there are people with bad lifestyles in all walks of life, and fortunately for me mine is different from most gambling degens. I don't smoke drink play house games (anymore) and have no interest in hookers and blow, that's me, but the fact is that this is not a problem only poker players have so it's not entirely relevant.

I wish the system was that waiters are paid more, and tipping is less obligatory, but meant more. I generally tip in the 10-15% range, but sometimes the service is just so awful.

this won't stress you out if you have a backup plan.

there's one quote from Rounders that actually isn't a ****ing joke:

"always leave yourself outs"

more important than anything else in professional poker is ensuring it doesn't end up ruining your life or ****ing you over. smart players have plan B ways of earning a living. period.

Save up as much money as possible, start reading up on Security Analysis and if the games ever go down you can just go to a community college, learn a trade and work a day job

Basically read up on Warren Buffett and his investing strategy and if you get enough $$$ in the market you can just about freeroll the rest of your life

My comments aren't UK specific. I don't know anything about your job market, education system, tax system, etc.

$100/hr is not a realistic win rate for almost all US pros. That's 10 BB an hour at 5/10, a game which only runs regularly in a few places and would be almost impossible to beat for that rate unless you are one of the absolute best players in the world, in which case you should be in Vegas playing the nosebleeds.

For most of the pros here in the US outside of LV it would be extremely hard to be clearing even $50/hr working 40 hours a week. Regularly making $100k a year US at live poker requires either truly incredible skill, super human hours, or you live in one of the very few places where high stakes poker (5/10+) is dealt regularly.

There are three reasons that come to mind:

A) Poker is much softer in the UK and other areas in the world compared to the US

B) I've been running hot and my winrate is unsustainable.

C) Most players are bad and the general consensus of achievable winrates is dulled by this.

A possibly contributes. B... possible, but I've played a LOT of hours of poker outside of live and I trust my judgement in terms of edge, and I also keep a wide margin (my actual winrate is 180/hour so I used 100 as a safe estimate) and C... well even in the UK, which removes variable from A, looking at the winrates of lots of the regs who play a lot... they are only something like 10-30pounds/hour winrates, due in large part to the fact that they are nitty and bad.

So while I think all 3 are contributing factors

I remember when I played HU Cash online, everyone talked like 10bb/100 is a decent winrate blah blah blah (obv the best players also had very high winrates, but lots of "regs" had lower), but my EV winrate over 300k+ hand samples was consistently at the 20-40bb/100 range even while 4+ tabling. If you ask me, most people just suck. They keep saying things like oh the games are tough, not beatable anymore, blah blah blah. Even live pros who've played for 20+ years, I go down to the palms play some 5/10 10/25, and I still see atrocious leaks from them, even though they've played poker for longer than I've been alive. How does this happen? Clearly all players are bad, and all you need to do is be less bad than them. Obviously there is a limit to how much you can win, how big of an edge you can have, but your own skill and leaks are a far bigger limiting factor, iyam.

My friend played in Chicago a lot post blackfriday. He reckons 100+ hourlies are pretty reasonable at 5/10.

I obviously don't think 180/hour is accurate or sustainable except in the softest of games.

And 40bb/100 is for 1/2PLO HU Cash, which is on the high end but fairly common for the best players playing against weaker players. 10bb/100 is very good for 5/10 or higher online even HU of course.

citation required

I'm talking about euro sites before and around blackfriday. Haven't played much since. I doubt it's possible for FTP/PS either.

40bb/100 is high, but not unheard of at all for HU at low stakes. I'm guessing you guys aren't heads up players.

All I have on my PTR are 50NL and 100NL stats, but my 50NL was 32bb/100 on PTR, but this was like 3 years ago when I sucked (relative to now) and I 6 tabled. You can look it up, sn is same as here. My stats on Party/PKR/other sites is even higher at 1/2, but I don't get much action any more these days.

Oh yeah to clarify I don't do most of my cash play on FTP, and the 10k hand sample at 1/2 was a 4 table match vs another reg, not vs fish. I grinded 50NL exclusively on FTP until I switched to husngs, which you can sharkscope and see my swings.

But seriously I'm not very good at poker at all, I know tonnes of players who are better than I am, I'm not trying to brag, I'm just saying the consensual winrates aren't accurate representations in most poker formats. I know of lots of people who win at higher rates than I do, and yet common consensus at HU is that 10bb/100 is pretty good, even had someone brag about that winrate at 100NL < ?!?!?! (lol purediesel) when what I learnt was that basically all big winners keep their mouths shut about strat and things like this, or alternatively they have lower winrates because they play so many grudge matches. Like if someone has a 200k hand sample, something like 150k of it are 4 tabling matches with other regs so their winrates get skewed towards the 10bb range, whereas if they remove all 4 tabling grudge matches vs strongish players they'd have a much higher winrate.

For me I basically played regs and husngs on ftp because of the software and did my bumhunting/grind on anonymous screennames or softer sites elsewhere, and I can tell you that very high winrates are achievable easily without denying action often or going for extreme measures, but the public data is all skewed and weaker players think their 5bb/100 or whatever is normal. No, if you play 50NL or 1/2 and your winrate is <10bb/100 you have a LOT of leaks to work on.

This is all HU, btw. 6max/fr is another issue altogether.

Sol Reader, How many hour sample is your Live 5/10nl winrate of $180/hr based on?

yeah no offense but sample sizing is a huge issue with your PTR, I'm not saying you aren't a winning player but I'm saying you have a very low confidence interval that your winrate is accurate

Awesome response. Try and at least make the sarcasm somewhat amusing next time.

I would think that you, such a big successful winner, would understand table selection dynamics as well as the fact that a small percentage of the players (god awful fully recreational ones who gamble it up and have no interest in improving) are the ones providing a big percentage of your earnings. If XYZ casino has X# of tables now, but 1/10 X# of tables down the line when the boom is done, it's going to be awfully hard to find good juicy games and terri-bad fish to sustain that $61 hourly, bucko.

It's hard to get a big sample with HU, but I have 300k+ hands iirc. A lot of my hands are on different accounts on euro sites, it's on my HEM. I played a lot of husngs, and personally I believe the best judge of edge is best done from analyzing your own play vs your opponents not results anyway.

180 is definitely not accurate, that's way too high, I'm just saying that's what my tracker shows. I think my expected hourly at 5/10 is probably 90-130 range, but in pounds. I have about 300 hours. I've definitely played games where my hourly would be 200+ but as I've said before you're looking at having a game like that maybe 1/5 times at most, though there'd be pretty soft games now and then.

Oh also note that the games we play in are often straddled and play 5k to 20k+ deep.

btw I would like to add, iirc, the higher your winrate, the lower your sample is required for your sample winrate to be close to your true winrate (% wise). I'm not a math buff, but I'm fairly certain.

As such, someone who has 8-12bb/100 might want like a 500k+ hand sample to know what his winrate is, but someone with 30+bb/100 can probably be sure his winrate is around that range with a much smaller sample.

you read their Sols, amirite? Thats how ur winrate has always been so high

<3

300 hours is nothing live, I have had 100-200 hour break even stretches over the course of years playing live. You need a large sample (at least 1000 hours) with some run bad and/or long break even stretch mixed in to ball park long term winrate and even that isn't enough.

I know it's nothing, and I've said many times I know it's too small a sample, jeez.

What I do have is more than 1.5 million hands lifetime of experience that lets me begin to analyse and make educated guesses at my winrate.

Also I'm pretty sure even 1000 hours is not enough. Furthermore, what makes you think I haven't had run bad and break evens? I had a -12k day, lol.

because it's that simple.

f me

not quite Sol.

the higher your win rate, the more certain you can be that you are a winning player overall if your sample size is small. eg if you've played 200 hours and are at 20bb hr, it's more likely you're a winning player than if your win rate is 5bb hr.

it's no more likely that your win rate is properly representative, but for obvious reasons, the 20bb an hr person is less likely to drop right down below negative over the long run.