Yeah i think if i dont start planning now i will eventually just leave poker to the side, which i really dont want
If i did just finish uni and get my accounting degree im pretty certain i would be able to get a good paying job due to very high marks/ability etc. but i dont really want to be an accountant
Im just going to keep building roll and play the odd cash session/tourney at the casino with low percentages of myself

About online, it is probably going down in Australia. I will continue to play to get better, earn some cash, but im not good enough to make significant amounts of money online yet.

finish university it should be your top priority

At least 10BB/100
I havent decided if i will play NL or PLO though
I am much better at NL (i am not bad at PLO but i wouldnt be able to beat any good lowstakes regs online) , but in the 1/3 PLO session i played, its super easy to just play nitty, only 3bet AAxx and get it in pre vs trash. The mistakes people make are much bigger and much easier to exploit than in the NL game

Yeah i definitely plan to, would only leave if i was making too much money from poker and didnt feel need to continue
Also, if i did finish uni then became a poker player, i wouldnt have to pay any of my tuition fees as gambling winnings arent counted towards income in australia

Lots of good stuff here ... I'm a little late to the party. Just a few comments from afar ...

1) You are barely rolled to play NL. The bankroll needed to play PLO 'properly' and handle the swings is probably 3-4x that of NL at similar table stakes.

2) Don't get caught up in the 'turning Pro' aspect of this thread. For a Pro this is their job/life. You seem confident that you will stay in 'uni' and get that 'paper' .. That is very important since you do have limited expenses right now. If you were needing to support yourself, then it would be very easy for me to see school fall to 3rd place here behind poker and covering 'real' expenses. There are plenty of Pros who went to poker full time after school or a brief run in the real world.

3) There are other threads you can search for here that describe the 'requirements' to take a shot. Keeping your 'Bankroll' separate from your 'Liferoll' is very important. Most say you need 9-12 months of expenses covered before you should consider what's in your poker-roll. With you having limited expenses right now this may seem 'easy' to cover, but you still need to think about it. Taking a 1-3 day a week part time job will allow your brain to 'think poker' when playing poker instead of needing to 'make money' at poker.

4) Normally in these types of threads I see a lot of wishy-washy 'holes' in the OP's story. You seem to have a better handle on things but without some true hours/hands played data it's hard to give 'you' the green light to determine what's 'soft' or 'beatable'. I can 'see' by the number of responses posted (with little banter) that others see you as 'real' as well.

5) Remember the more you play the more other regs will be able to find strategies against you. Will you be able to adjust? Will you be able to stick with what works and avoid 'fancy play syndrome' when a session is dragging along at break even?

IMO you are no where near 'turning Pro' status ... But you are to the point where you should 'schedule' poker in your life (at expense to your 'play' time). The point in time that we all will be looking for is whether or not poker consumes your schedule whether it be running good or trying to 'prove' that you have a place in poker because your are running bad.

I try to remember this for my day job and my poker time ... My wife/family/friends should never be able to figure out whether I won or lost that day. I still struggle with this. Just like a cop .. don't bring the job home or let it consume your schedule/temperment to the point where you ruin or pull down the other aspects of life.

So much more to say, we do all wish you well and have some envy of your possibilities. Just remember that like all other 'sports', the likely hood of super high success is very small. You have to have the skill and even then things don't 'have' to go your way. Some players remain in the 'minors' their whole life and are just fine with it. GL

Yeah i think getting a part time job seems the way to go. If i make 200 a week most of that will get saved and i would have nearly 10k by the end of the year (not counting any future poker profit)
I agree im not close to pro, but theoretically if i could somehow find a stake i think i would be.
Over last year ive played about 150k hands online (dont know exact number as HUD doesnt cover PLO) .Over 2000HU tournaments. My winrate is only just above 50% as last year i wasnt as good, had tilt sessions, played plo when i wasnt good at it etc.. My
current HU win rate is above 60% at $7 turbo on stars) At one point i was down 150, now up 650 (820 aud). Have also played about 30 local tournies and won 6 (average first prize of about 900)

Playing so much HU has massively improved my hand reading and so at NL i would be comfortable playing against regs. Also mentally, the variance of hyper turbos has allowed me to just shrug off sick beats. I will need to develop my live reads (im a believer) but not really sure how

Thanks for good advice

I felt how you do when I was in college--I didn't really want to be a mathematician, but I couldn't think of anything better to study and didn't have the guts to defy my parents and play poker. I also thought due to my near-perfect GPA I would have little trouble finding a good job. But for me this was not true, and in fact I've never landed such a high-paying job, just grueling, low-paying jobs in academia like the lowly "instructor" position. Of course, accounting is a more practical degree, and I graduated during a recession, so your chances may be much higher than mine.

I think it's definitely a good idea for you to finish your degree. You need a backup plan if poker does not work out, and alternatively, you could play recreationally as an accountant and quit after a few years, and you will be both more skilled and overbankrolled, so your chances of moderate success will skyrocket. That said, the best time to go pro, if your aspirations are beyond moderate success, in my opinion is around your age. If you want to be a top player, time is your enemy. The younger you are when you start playing (and studying) seriously, the more likely you are to become a world class player. It's still a long shot, but your chances diminish as time goes by, simply because it requires a lot of time and effort to become truly good, and our brains start to go mushy as we age. You can certainly become quite good at any age, but I think there's a reason most top pros started playing young.

This sounds like a very slow way to build a bankroll. It is probably fine to sell your action in tournaments, particularly if the buy-in is high, and in fact many excellent players do this, but I don't know about cash games. What's a buy-in at 2/3 NL? $300? So you have about 12 buy-ins. This is underbankrolled (20 is usually recommended as the minimum), but not severely if you have no life expenses. You might want to take shots at 2/3, playing a nitty, low-variance style and watching your bankroll carefully, and take to selling your action if you lose more than 3-4 buy-ins. If you are highly skilled and the games as soft as you think, you can grind up a bankroll fairly rapidly if you're lucky enough not to experience a major downswing. And busting out is not nearly the nightmare scenario for you as it would be for say a 45-year-old pro. Keep in mind trying this with PLO you are far more likely to go bust, though.

I'm sorry to hear the online situation is that bad in Australia. I still think online is by far the best way to build a bankroll with low risk. I started with $50 on stars, having never played poker in my life, and within a couple months I was making over $10/hr, and after a couple more over $20/hr, and so on. If you were to put in just 10 hours a week at $20/hr, after a year you'd have gained over $10000, not including rakeback. I hope your online sites don't go down, at least not any time soon. That happened to me in 2011--in the middle of a session, I got a popup saying I couldn't play anymore. Still, I would recommend you play as much online as possible while you can, as you can make significant money multitabling lower stakes games with a low risk of ruin (if you're good).

Alternatively, you might focus on playing one table at a time not for the money, but for the experience. If you can beat online cash games your fundamentals will be excellent. There are of course live differences, but you will have a big advantage over other players in fundamentals and the technical aspects of play if you're able to beat online games beyond the microstakes. Even online 25NL I expect is tougher than live 2/3. But the buy-in is also 12 times as small, and you can multitable, so it could be a low-variance route to building a bankroll. Of course, you need to be aware playing live is quite different from online in pacing. I went from playing 24+ tables at once online to playing 1 table live. The difference is grueling, and if I could still play online on the good poker sites, I would. Just remember if you do play a lot online, be aware of the political situation and keep relatively little of your money on poker sites. Full Tilt still owes me thousands of dollars I will never see.

Your ideal path to building a bankroll may be a mixed strategy. You could play online when you can, both for the money and experience, while taking shots at 2/3 NL and tournaments, and work a part-time job as well, though IMO this will have you stretched pretty thin, with university as well.

@panetta23

Why are you obsessed with getting a stake? Why don't you want to play with your own money?

@RedRock what money.

His 3.5k

I don't want to speak for OP but it would seem he agrees with the reasons covered already..? It's only a $3.5k bankroll if he's willing to lose it all. As it is also his liferoll, he's probably sitting out way before that point.

I wouldnt feel comfortable playing on my own money. Even though the 5k i have now would probably be enough i need to account for variance

Overall my strategy is to build my roll playing live (continue playing local tournies as well), and using online to develop my game. Ive considered playing 6max cash online again (havent played in about a year as i was losing at cash when i started), but overall my strongest form is heads up NL, and i have enough knowledge/experience to know about how to adapt to playing 100-200bbs deep as opposed to 40-50 deep. Im only one tabling atm as my auto pilot isnt good enough, but im doing so well at $7 HUSNGs i might move up to $15 soon

Be careful with low buy-in live tournaments. The rake in these is often excessively high. With live tourneys the rake structure tends to become better around $300+, but you're not even close to rolled for that. I might just avoid tournaments for a while if I were you. If you do choose to play such tournaments, just be careful, and do it sparingly. Grinding high buy-in tourneys is not a good way to build a bankroll. Sure, you could luck out and double or triple your bankroll in one day, so it might seem tempting, but you're fairly likely to go bust, especially if playing larger field events, which are usually the best tournaments as far as ROI.

If your goal is to build your bankroll you should probably stick with what you're best at, the HUSNGs. And being good HU will help a lot in both live cash games and tournaments when you're rolled for them.

Well, HUSNGs definitely take more concentration than tournaments or 6-max. But I think if you can beat $7 HUSNGs with an ROI of say X%, you can probably play two tables with an ROI of .9X%, three tables with an ROI of .8X%, and four tables with an ROI of .7X%. There's diminishing returns but I think if you start slowly with just 2 tables and are satisfied you're winning you'll find you can multitable.

I wouldn't have been able to play 24 HUSNGs, but I could probably play 8. I think most people play 2 - 4 though, depending on stakes. I just recommend this as it's a lower variance route compared to doubling the stakes. If you double the stakes, your ROI will be quite a bit lower and your variance higher. Even if you make a bit less 2-tabling $7 games vs. 1-tabling, it is likely you will still make more than 1-tabling $15 games as your opponents will be significantly tougher.

I would guess it's something like this-- if you make $X/hr 1-tabling $7 games, you'll make $1.8*X/hr 2-tabling $7 games (without much affecting your variance), as opposed to making $1.5*X/hr 1-tabling $15 games (with a much higher variance).

You could also practice multitabling with lower stakes HUSNGs until you get to the point of being able to follow multiple tables without making mistakes. That's what I did, just slowly started adding tables until I got to the point I couldn't add any more. It seems tricky at first especially if there are more tables than will fit your screen, but 2 - 4 should easily fit your monitor and I bet you could do it with some practice and double or triple your online winrate.

He has no responsibilities beyond paying for his gas. Big deal.

Take a shot, what's the worst that's going to happen? He loses it. Big deal.

Besides, he's 19. He's not going to listen to "sage advice" on here anyway.

+1

In the 2/3nl game that equates to about $10 an hour, I don't know how many live hands you get in live PLO but I would guess about 20ph? So whats that $6??

I've never been to Australia but I hear its expensive! And minimum wage there is about $22 an hour, so I don't understand why you would think this is a feasible idea!?!

I used to play underrolled with only 3 buyins. It works, if you just give up some EV in marginal spots and play nitty.

You have a good plan just don't quit school and work pt. You will find out what you need to know with your experience. As for experience being 90% hu (I think that is what you said) you will need more full ring experience than hu.
I went pro for 6mo. I did will but I was not happy with it. It's called grinding for a reason. I now play pro as a part time job now instead of a full time, this is much better for me. Oh and I my hourly has gone up with the change as will.
Good luck, take the shot now, don't quit school and have fun you are young and sounds like you have a good head for the real game..... BR management.

Ive moved up to $15 and found it relatively easy (winrate of 55% after 75 games whilst running under EV)

Should i be using piosolver? and how many people are using it? like when i was 12 casually playing mtts i had no idea so many people were using HUDS, what % of people at this level would be using PioSolver? i really want to improve my game but buying it would be so much of my roll im not sure its worth it

Note: My style of play is much more scaled towards GTO (short stacked i nearly always go by the charts) but i do make some exploitative plays, especially on the river

Been there, done that; years ago. It can be boring and tedious to sit there and grind 5-6 hr sessions for 50-100 profit, but it works if you have the awareness to recognize the marginal, high variance spots to avoid. I know strategies like that are always flamed on these boards, but you do what you gotta go sometimes.

We've all read threads like this hundreds of times. A guy has some decent results over a time-frame that seems long in actual life terms but in reality is a very small sample size in poker terms. The game is still fresh, fun and exciting for him, so the allure to "go pro" takes a hold of him even though he's most likely ill prepared both financially and mentally. Most of the time it doesn't work out, but sometimes it does. All I'm saying is if there was ever a situation where someone could take an under rolled shot at playing poker full time, it's a 19yo college student who lives at home with mom and dad and has no financial responsibilities or expenses.

YOLO, take your shot if you want. What's the worst that can happen? If you go broke, so what, you have no money to go out on the weekends for a couple months? Big deal, you get a job and move on. If this is something OP is passionate about and wants to try, I say go for it. Better to scratch the itch now then 5-10 years from now when you have rent/mortgage, bills, would be looking at the prospects of quitting a good job in order to play poker, or god forbid have other human beings that you're responsible for. That's the beauty of being young with no responsibilities, you can afford to chase your dreams no matter how much of a long shot they may be.

yeah this is exactly what im thinking, losing a few grand taking the shot might seem like the end of the world now but i think its totally worth it

Sure im optimistic but im not deluded, i wouldnt waste peoples time if i wasnt sure i was good enough

Being "good enough" and having the patience to put together a proper roll don't go hand in hand obviously. A lot of players have taken shots, me included, but poker, as in life, is about making as few costly mistakes as possible and learning from them. 2-3k is too high of a price, but ultimately your choice.

its extremely unlikely i will lose all 2-3k. Firstly, i wouldnt have most my action. Secondly, i would be able to recognise pretty quickly if i was being outplayed, so if i lost a few buy ins not due to running bad i would just stop + re-evaluate, although that is very unlikely to happen

The Variance.. just hope you are on the good side