Really? That sounds like a terribly boring way to make a living. Frankly, I have much respect for those that can stick to playing a boring TAG strategy. I'm not that disciplined to play like that consistently and it's pretty obvious that you aren't that disciplined either.

This thread is basically everyone running a train on OP, all the while he's thinking he's some pro. Can't write comedy this good.

Never change 6BM.

When is your vacation happening again?

OP,

As I and others have said, you’re not actually serious about being a poker pro, you just want to play out your being a poker pro fantasy for a while before you go back to delivering pizzas, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You crave the action more than the EV and avoiding risk of ruin, and that’s fine, you’re just having a fun break for a bit.

But if you want to actually be a live pro, here’s the simple way to do it.

1. Play tight and nitty. Make a consistent profit for a while doing that. Pot control a lot and only play two pair and better hands fast. You’ll notice some spots where you could have squeezed out a little more value. Take note of them.

2. Play tight and a little more aggressive. Play your one pair hands and draws a little faster, adding in a few semibluffs, and value bet a little thinner in the spots you noted in phase 1.

3. Still play tight and aggressive. Now start adding in some pure bluffs too in spots where your opponents don’t have anything in spots you gave up in phase 2 where a bet would have taken it down. It’s ok because they’re now used to you always showing up with stronger hands than them.

4. Now start loosening up your game in late position, playing more speculative hands late and adding in some late position squeezes.

5. Now start loosening your game up a little across the board in the right games, plus adding in opportune squeezes from the blinds and playing back from EP against late position stealers.

That’s a recipe for success, and each phase might take you months or years to master. Your skill and bankroll level put you in phase 1 or 2, but you want to play like phase 5.

Anyway, I don’t think you’ll listen to any of that, because you’re interested in having fun and being a badass poker pro, but figured I might as well toss in some solid advice just in case.

Baby steps team, baby steps

El D spitting fire itt. great advice, will be 100% ignored but great advice nonetheless.

OP do you have any plans to play the world series this year?

I think this is spot on for OP. He's living out a fantasy/dream of his for 1-2 years, before he has to go back to a real world job. Which is fine I suppose. But like you say, I don't think he's serious about being a poker pro for the long haul.

Spin,

Lol 1-2 years. I’d back the truck up to take the under on that.

This is great advice and mirrors my own progress from when I "went pro" about a year ago. At first I tried to start out in phase 5 LAGging it up, but it wasnt working well for me wrt results. After a few months I figured out I needed to retool my game and play a lower variance style. I played phase 1 for about a month, phase 2 a couple months, phase 3 a couple months, phase 4 several months, and the last month or two I've started playing more phase 5. My results keep improving and by starting tight and slowly becoming more aggressive I've grown my bankroll and moved up to 2/5 which is going very well.

Basically I've met all my goals I had for the year aside from number of hours put in. I just find it really hard to play my A game for more than 100 hrs a month, but I'm working on slowly ramping up my hours too. I hope in a few months to be at 120 hrs a month, and eventually maybe 160.

I've also learned to keep my living expenses as low as possible which allows me to grow my bankroll quickly. I expect I'll be beating 5/T before OP is out of 1/3, unless he actually listens to some of the sage wisdom ITT from the likes of El Diablo and commits to real changes in poker strategy and lifestyle changes.

It must really be true that when you go pro poker isn't nearly as fun anymore. I put in 100 hours a month and work a full time salaried tech job. I'm really glad I decided to stay rec when I was considering playing full time before I went back to school at age 25. Who knows where I would be now 7 years later if I had "gone pro", probably miserable grinding out 30 bucks an hour at 2/5 or maybe even 20 bucks an hour at 1/3.... yuck.

This might be some of the best advice that 6betme will ever ignore. (We all know he wont listen to it). Im serious when I say its some of the best advice Ive ever seen written at 2+2. If I was coaching someone, I would want them to do exactly this and be able to prove that theyve played a minimum of something like 300 hours profitably at each stage. If they cant complete a stage with a pretty nice win rate either due to run bad or because they havent really mastered that stage, they would need to stay at that stage longer.

What most people would do is read the entire list and after 3 days they would be at stage 5 thinking they are ready. Trying to move down the list that fast ruins the entire process. To really be successful you have to master the basics before moving on and most young players never even master the basics of playing TAG. They want to make all the sexy plays they see on TV.

I did something very similar myself, not necessarily in that order, but I slowly added new plays in from raising SCs and gappers, to making big raises from the blinds with all kinds of junk to steal the dead money, to finally in the last few months becoming very profitable bluffing...both with bluff bets and bluff raises.

This list is pure genius. It seems so simple on paper but very difficult to actually move slowly thru the steps methodically as you improve.

I've been back at it for about 2 yrs. I'm somewhere around late stage 3/early stage 4. I'm just under 700 hrs in this year at $27/hr on 1/2. That list is so solid, it's ashame that it will go ignored by OP. I hope it helps others reading this thread.

Sent from my LGMS631 using Tapatalk

I wouldn't say it's fun but it's not remotely miserable and better than any real jobs I've had. I especially enjoy the freedom to work when I want and not having to answer to anyone.

I worked 90 to 100 hours a week in graduate school. *That* was miserable.

Moar probe.

lol, lets not get carried away.

Anyway, OP don't listen to rec players like El D, the **** do they know about living the dream. They arent there at the table with the reads you have, and they arent there away from the table to see all the work you put in. They sure as **** don't live in oz talking about their $5 KFC meals, and most of them have no clue what its like holding down a foreign gf. The only one who needs to believe in you is you. You've gotten yourself this far already, and youve shown yourself youve got what it takes, just a little more efficient with the discipline and your going to be looking back at these posts in a year laughing at how far youve come

80 pages in this thread could use some Thai gf pics. Then we can determine whether the $2000/mo food and entertainment budget is +EV.

Played my ~12 hours yesterday (full disclosure: only 11:30 at the table as I took a lunch break), ate two hamburgers (full disclosure: one was a chicken burger), and shipped the $20 at 1/3 NL (full disclosure: yes, I booked a $20 profit over ~12 hours, lol @ me, ldo).

Genquirewithinregardingmycoachingrates,ldoG


Lots of good responses to this already.

The only angle that hasn't really been stressed enough here is that you are on a limited BR that if you bust it you're done. With this in mind, you should likely limit yourself to a very low variance boring nit strategy (and even if you could argue that strategy *may* be less EV than other strategies, the importance of not going broke makes it far more EV long term strategy until you have a significant BR behind you).

GgoodluckG

About the T8s open, xenoblade fails to understand OP's skill, ofc opening T8s from UTG in a table with a lot of bad players is +EV, but only if you're a good player yourself. As an example, gazzyb from this forum can make that open be +EV, he plays really well and has experience in online and live poker, he will be able to avoid some coolers, get max value and will bluff effectively when needed. Now OP can't do that, the most common scenario of what will hapen to OP when he opens T8s is that he will cbet flop and x/f turn uninproved or get into some cooler scenario MW with bottom 2 vs straight or set, or even x/c to hit his flush.

OP should just fold these hands and play as tight as possible to avoid making more mistakes post-flop. Just setmine, see if you hit your set and gg.

This next-level conversation about T8s is fascinating . . . .

I agree w/ Johnny - not enough photos.

You shouldn't troll GazzyBusto like that. He might cry to the mods to protect him and get you banned from his thread....ooops..

While I consider the T8s pure value, is there nothing be said for randomization? I once read an article from PH that said every now and then he'll decide to raise pre and bluff post regardless of his hand. I think these are great spots for a K3o, Q6o, J5o etc open. We obv want offsuit (can bluff 50% of flushes), the low/high combos give us great board coverage, and we're pretty disguised if we hit our implied odds to flop a boat.

well he's on a 45k upswing, that's like 10 times your lifetime earnings

Poker is pretty easy when we can just count the upswings.

I've played some vs him, he is a competent player for sure