Introduction
Hi guys,
I’m making this thread to document my progress for the next little while as I attempt to take on poker as a side job in addition to a full-time job. I hope this will keep me on track and motivated, and if anyone happens to read this, I hope they find it an interesting read
.
So a little about me: I’ve been playing semi-recreationally for a few years already (and thankfully ran well enough to have been a winning player). I love traveling and have played in poker rooms all across North America. While I always tried to be good at something that I’m doing, I didn’t start to seriously improve my game in the right direction until I joined 2+2 at the end of 2013. It changed things tremendously for me. I play exclusively live NLHE, started in 1/2, and have moved up to 2/5 early this year. Even though I still have a long way to go, I am confident about my game and thought that it would be worth taking a shot to play for living.
I’m very excited about this decision and I think it will be a great experience. I’m currently in my mid-20s and have no family obligations so this would be the perfect time to do something like this. It would also be great if this helps anyone who is contemplating about taking on poker as a side job and wanted to find out what it’s like.
You can ask me about anything related to poker or the lifestyle in general, but I won’t answer anything that may reveal something personal and identifiable about me.
I’ll be tracking my own hours obviously, but I’d like to not make that the focus in this thread for the reasons stated below. There will probably be no graphs. I will be focusing more on specific poker issues, as well as the process of juggling of various real life responsibilities as I think those will be more interesting.
Goals
At the advice of my much more experienced pro friends, I'm gunna go against the current and not set an hourly or year-end goal. This is because of at least 3 good reasons: 1) since I'm playing part-time, my volume won't be large enough and the result may be predominately a product of variance; 2) trying to achieve a certain hourly or overall goal may be stressful and end up impacting my play; and 3) the real goal should be trying to play well in every spot regardless of what the result may be. If I play well, a great hourly should naturally follow over time.
My two poker-related goals:
A.
Volume. Start by aiming for at least 40 hours a month. This should be easily doable if I just play 2x 5 hour sessions over the weekend each week. I think the max I would increase my poker hours to is 80 hours a month (so 20 hours/week), but that would be working for at least 60 hours a week (assuming normal 40 hour weeks at my day job) total excluding travel time. If you’ve done something crazy (or crazier) than that let me hear your experience.
B.
Studying. Spend more time improving my game. One thing I have recently started doing is to write down the less standard hands to be reviewed with people later. Obviously more concrete goals will be needed.
My two life goals:
A.
Balance. This is really important to me. I will try not to neglect an aspect of my life (eg. health, fitness, social life, hobbies, etc) because another aspect (eg. work/poker) is being too overwhelming.
B.
Career. I never desired to go fully pro in terms of poker and this will be a temporary thing that I’m trying out. My actual job will be offering way more advancement opportunities and much less variance, so my main focus will always be on that. If poker ever end up getting in the way then it will have to be trimmed back accordingly.
Thanks for reading, and hope to hear from you as I always love getting comments and inputs!
Last edited by Alobar; 02-10-2017 at 02:36 PM.