Very impressive graph. Both the poker skill and the ability to hit high hand skill are top notch.

Awesome giraffe Browni!

Curious as to what the rake is in your game?

And how does a rakeback promotion work?

GcluelessrakenoobG

Those games have to be super juicy too, curious what kind of hilarious nonsense you see over 2k hours of 1/2 when you're winning consistent 10bb/hr raked.

Browni should write up a 1/2 crusher digest.

Nobody is claiming Browni is “lazy” for sticking to 1/2 and thriving there. That speaks volumes.

i think the "confidential reasons" curveball proactively killed it

I did move up at about 900 hours. I played 2k hours of 2/5 also but had to move back down due to circumstances unrelated to poker.

I almost never table change for game selection. This would probably be the lowest hanging fruit for me to improve my winrate. The reasons I haven’t been doing it are because it takes me a little while to build reads on players so when I table change I’m throwing that away. It’s also hard for me to tell how good a table is at a glance. Another reason is that turnover is high, so if I’m seated at a bad table there’s a good chance it will get better in an hour.

In my old room (first 900 hours) I believe rake was quite low at $4+$1 BBJ. My current room is $5+$2.

You get cash for every 50 hours you accumulate in a month. They change it pretty frequently but it generally works out to $2-$3.50 an hour cash. This is separate from the $1/h comps you also earn, although those aren’t redeemable for cash directly.

I happened to speak with 2 people who play 1/2 1/3 for a living..before taxes it’s about 28k to 36k a year

so gross, never understood the ramen noodle grinders older than 25

FWIW Seminole Coconut Creek does something similar:

$50 cash earned upon completion of every 50 hours of limit poker played.

$100 cash earned upon completion of every 50 hours of $1/2 or $1/3 NL poker played.

$300 cash earned upon completion of every 50 hours of $2/5 NL poker played.

This sounds like hell. You can work at In n Out and make more than this. Plus get free food. And still play poker on the side.

It depends on where you live imo. 25-£30 is definitely attainable in London 1/2 for the better regs. The best regs probably make more. Playing only 30 hours per week is £39000 which, after factoring in zero taxes is probably ~£60k. That's over double the average wage for London. Add in a few months in the US each year and it's starting to become a much more appealing prospect. Wages in the US seem much more inflated than in the UK which would be a negative for playing FT in the US.

We also have the NHS which would be a huge factor you'd have to consider if you want to go pro in the US.

Not saying it's something I want to do but it definitely is more appealing in some markets than others.

Wow why more for NL rakeback? I thought low stakes limit games took in much more rake than low stakes NL. Maybe NL table has higher hands per hour so more rake even though per pot rake is lower or because it's a more popular game they want to incentivize the regs to keep lots of NL tables going?

UK doesn't tax gambling income?

Nope. God save the Queen.

Neither does USA#1's top hat. There are a handful of grinders attempting to make a go of 1/3 NL poker full time in my room (not to mention a bunch of partimers / retirees / etc. attempting to supplement their income). I imagine it's a pretty tough go for that type of ceiling, but each to their own.

GcluelesstaxlessnoobG

And that's some good chow!

I know a guy that plays "for a living". A mix of $2/5, $1/2, PLO, whatever. Haven't talked yearly winning numbers with him though. Definitely a solid player and I would not be surprised to see him easily clear $4k/mo on average

But I *can* say that there are more reasons he does it than just the income. His wife works a lot and makes pretty decent money. So he stays home with the kids in the mornings and during the day. Saves them a ton of money on childcare, and he gets to raise them the way they want.

Yes one of them mentioned it is basically minimum wage..but would rather play cards than a job which would pay about the same

US federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour, or $14,500/year working full time. Many US states have higher minimum wages (in California it is $12/hour) and many locales have higher minimums still -- in Oakland, where I live, it is $13.80/hour, $15.60/hour in Berkeley, and $16.30 in Emeryville, where I play cards.

So $28K to $36K per year works out to minimum wage in some areas but in most parts of the country a minimum that high is still aspirational.

i grind 1-2. i make significantly more than minimum wage.


a good months is like 4grand. a bad month is like 1500 (though i have won less). i can take as much time off as i want, work whatever hours i want, take as many breaks as i want.


working with jobs i could easily get (jr college drop out, with bad work history, because a lot of breaks) i would make less. 10-12 dollars an hour, working 35 hours a week. maybe like 1500 a month.

the thing is if your like a girl you can like waitress or something and make 25+ and hour.

but for a guy with like limited like life skills its not bad job. once you get a bit of a bankroll you can live a lot of different places

And the $7.25/hr or $14,500/yr minimum wage figure is based on 2,000 inflexible entry level hours. How many pros are really putting in 2k hours per year? I don't know for sure but I'd guess most aren't. So if you can make more, with a flexible schedule, freedom to move around from market to market, and you can improve / move up. It doesn't sound terrible if your options are limited. If a better opportunity does come along you could always take it and play poker part time...

Props to you.

Although I will say that taking time off, taking breaks, and "work" whenever are not really a choice as professional poker player.

Because just like a real hourly job, if you aren't working, you aren't making money.

There is far less freedom than one might think.

I just want to be fair to those who might consider jumping in.

There's a huge amount of freedom. You can play three 13 hour sessions and be off for the rest of the week or play one short 5-6 hour session each day depending on your preference. If your friends hit you up and want to go out Friday you can just play extra hours on Thursday. You have to maintain enough volume but you can distribute it however you want, which basically gives you an open schedule. You're not forced to always play peak hours like evenings on the weekend. If you have the desire and the discipline you can even work a lot of extra hours, which I would recommend to someone starting out to help them take off.

I played full time for 18 months and my social life took a significant hit. Sure, if you have no social life to begin with then maybe you won’t notice, but there’s no way around putting volume in Thursday thru Sunday.

it definitely sucks girls have corned the market in waiting tables.