Link to old thread: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...016-a-1596346/

The inspiration for this update comes from two places. I graduate business school next week. There’s a cliché quote how at the end you think about the beginning (it’s true) which brought me back to my old thread. I was going back and forth on whether to do an update, when a reg I kind-of-sort-respect (nah, I hate you all) asked me about my old thread and about my plans. Was fun to hear that someone actually read through my old ramblings and decided an update was in order.

This post will cover:
I Business School Year 1
II Summer Internship
III Business School Year 2
IV Plans Going Forward
V Censored 2017 Poker Results

I Business School Year 1

For my first year of business school, I had in mind maximizing the opportunity in front of me and completely buying into the program. For me, this meant giving up poker completely. Balancing any reasonable grind schedule with classes, meeting new people, and recruiting would be impossible.

Business school students tend to segment into 4 categories based on career goals: banking, management consulting, “tech”, and industry/other. The split is roughly, 30/30/30/10 with some overlap (ie some crazy people will recruit both banking and consulting). I decided to follow the herd into consulting recruiting, for no better reason than I have/had no idea what to do professionally and its allegedly an excellent launching pad.

My first few months of business school consisted of long days of classes (attendance mandatory in most), prepping for consulting interviews (case practice, sad times), happy hours, and recruiting events (corporate presentations, mock casing, etc). Recruiting felt unnatural to me, the combination of “networking”, cold-emailing, and trying to build contacts really turned me off. In combination with my unique resume (poker/trading/no real other experience), this lead to poor yield in terms of interview offers. I take this failure as a mixed blessing – after hearing some horror stories from friends in consulting over the summer, I am pretty sure I would have been miserable along this career path.

In the end, I was fortunate enough to receive a summer internship with a large fast food chain (not posting their name for their privacy but google should yield the result easily) headquartered in Miami. More below on this topic.

Outside of academics and career, I met a ton of interesting, humble, nice, and hardworking people at school. Contrary to my expectations, I met very few arrogant, elitist or douchey people. I spent more than my fair share of time at happy hours and late nights out during the first few months of school. And at the end of semester 1, I met a girl…

During Winter Break, after my “failure” in corporate recruiting, I decided to start grinding poker again. Immediately upon my return, I went on a supreme heater, and despite having not played for 3 months, I posted my best month ever in December 2016 playing only 15 days. This was obviously very fun. I decided that in 2017, alongside with school, I would attempt to grind nights and weekends full-time. This would be easy given recruiting was over. The big “sacrifice” would be giving up happy hours and nights out but that was an easy tradeoff for me.

II Summer Internship

In early June 2017, I moved down to Miami for 10-weeks in corporate. I worked on a 3-person NA finance team doing a lot of work in excel, PowerPoint, and SAP, while venturing out to restaurants a few times. The work itself was okay, occasionally interesting, but largely a very boring grind. I made quite a few friends who were also full-time MBAs and summer interns at the company. The internship was paid (pretty well!) and I had an offer to return with them full-time. Despite a solid guaranteed salary, the prospect of steady income, and a future of promotions and potential stability – I decided to turn down the offer. There were a few reasons, but I won’t lie, poker probably played a part and not moving to Miami played big part.

Over the summer, I generally worked 9am-7pm Monday thru Friday and spent a lot of my free time grinding live poker for the summer. I played 2-5 (biggest game that ran regularly) at the Magic City Casino in Miami (a huge dump of a poker room). The games were interesting. Sometimes they were soft with the typical live 2-5 weak passives or crazy gamblers. Occasionally, the lineups were filled with young guys squeezing all my opens. I posted something like ~200 hours played and ~$9k profit before expenses for nearly $~45/hr cash money. Live poker really sucks, but it was better than nothing.


III Business School Year 2

This section will be short, because I did not “do” much. I largely neglected full-time recruiting in favor of grinding. This is in part because deep-down, I do not want to work full-time. I take a lot of pride in being able to make a living in this silly game, and I love every second. My life consisted of attending 60% of my classes (grades still fine, attendance was more flexible year 2), spending time with my girlfriend, neglecting my friends (they now hate me ☹), and grinding hard.

IV Plans Going Forward

As the last section alluded to, I plan to keep grinding poker full-time. This is not in my best long-term $EV interest; I could certainly make more over my career getting a real job. Ultimately, in terms of what I want to do be doing, poker makes me happy (even 50k hands into a be stretch), whereas my corporate experiences have all been largely neutral. I spent a lot of time this summer staring at the clock waiting to leave, but when I play poker I’m in the flow and 10 hours grinding online goes by like nothing.

That said, I am applying for a few full-time jobs with flexible work/life balance. The ideal for me would be to work in corporate finance from 9-5/6 and then grind a few hours a night. Barring my ability to find this balance, it will be poker full steam ahead.

I also turn 30 soon

I am cautiously optimistic about the future of poker, more so than in a long-time. With the recent interstate compact between NJ/NV I see political winds changing. That said, in the medium term, I’m not sure who this will translate to my bottom line. The WSOP games since the merger seem quite a bit less profitable. Waiting to see what happens when PA goes live and crossing my fingers about movement by NY state.

V Censored 2017 Results

Decided to not post uncensored results, but to give a little context, I did better over this 900k sample than I did in 2016 (results in the old thread). Also given my summer job and business school travels (I went to 5! Countries last year - shout out to Bena, sorry again for making you wait!), I only played roughly 38 weeks or so. 2018 is also off to a good start ��



Happy Hunting

In Updates?

Hi all, a quick update on my 2018

Real Life Happenings

2018 felt like a year full of work and not too much else, but upon reflection I did quite a lot.
• Graduated Business School in May, declining to look for full-time work in favor of returning to poker
• June moved into a 3-month sublet with my gf, took a proper lease an apartment together in August
• Spent a week around x-mas in and NYE 2018 in Colombia at a wedding, went to Peru for a week in March, and visited Hawaii for 11 days in July
• Turned 30 in September. Lots of changes to my social life over the last year, more weddings, baby showers etc and “couple dates” relative to my social life in my 20s. Much less time wasted in bars.
• Played a ton of poker and posted my best year ever

Results 2018


2018 was a great year in poker. Most importantly ran well and played a consistently heavy schedule. Only small complaint is that I did materially better in the first half of the year than the second. It should not matter much but it does. Think this was due to a combination of things: running slightly worse, games being slightly worse, and a shift in policy on a few sites to HH-less and HUDless. I am still bullish online poker, especially with Pennsylvania joining the mix in the coming months. I am also still having a ton of fun, every session.

Plans for 2019 and Random Thoughts

Looking forward to 2019, I have no clear poker goals other than to work about 2k hours. The biggest “impediment” to this is my GF, who for the most part, is incredibly supportive (especially of me working during the week), but also prefers (demands?) that I do not work weekends. While I wish I could work whenever I want, I am also grateful she pulls me away to enjoy things outside of poker. For the younger/single guys who have gone pro or are deciding to go pro, I think the toughest part of this job is balancing family life and something I must continue to work on. Big respect to the guys who do this with wives and kids and find the right balance to work hard and be there when it counts.

In terms of next year’s results forecast, I suspect I will not post another best year ever for the third time in a row, and it’s not a goal of mine, but of course I am rooting for myself.

I am also starting to realize there is a pretty large divide between the best regs in my pool and me. I have a few target areas to work on for my game and hope to catch up to the best of the best. I’ll never be the guy battling in the toughest line ups or giving reasonable regs HU action, but I hope to inch my way into slightly higher stakes and good but more marginal line ups when I think I have an edge.

Thanks for reading
Happy 2019 and good luck!

That's a lot of hands! GG

Holy volume. Awesome results, congrats on your year

Another year in the books and another million hand graph, here's the 2019 wrap:

Tracked Graph



Had roughly 30% of my profit on HH-less site, so no idea on volume there or EV. In terms of year over year progress, I did roughly similar in EV (maybe a touch less), but ran bad in flips so won less.

Unfortunately, I got a little complacent and settled into small/midstakes and did not really push myself to player higher. Maybe next year, ecosystem permitting.


Investment

I made a pretty large speculation in Precious Metals earlier this year, my biggest portfolio move to date. The investment thesis isn't particularly complicated or unique, when the Fed signaled easing I figured it was great for PMs. Also, I really really loved the chart. I bought a bunch during the 1380 break-out which coincided with the fed announcement. When it looked like the break-out was serious I added some silver etf and gold miner etfs. I'm optimistic about this position into the 2020s. Either way, my risk/reward from my entry to my stoplosses is fantastic, imo.




Plans for Next Year

I'm going to continue playing full-time in 2020 and give the new online market in PA a whirl. While having a big year for 2019 was not a goal, I'm hoping to push things (slowly) to the next level in 2020.

Happy NY to all and good luck

Do you have an estimate of typical hours played per week? Hands/hr? How you structure your day?

Nice work!

If I had to guesstimate, around 45 hrs a week, 6-700hands/hr.

As far routine, I would commute in, eat lunch, play 4-5hrs, break and have dinner, play 4-6 hours, go home.

Grinding almost never feels like "work", and whenever it does I often quit because it means I do not want to be there and likely not playing well.

I used to hate pokerarb. Now I don't. Good buddy.

Wish I had the drive to play literally half the hands he does.

GL in PA

2020 First-Half

Poker



My volume has been absurd YTD, but the graph oversells my results. Unfortunately, I spent a good chunk of above winning something like 3bb/100, for my worst win-rate over such a sample ever. Think it could be a confluence of factors, I definitely played too tight for a good bunch, too many tables, distracted (too much music+background podcasts), and covid/politics got me a little depressed (stopped working out ate wayyy too much junk put on some weight). Fortunately, games were so plentiful and relatively soft that I got away with some bad habits.

However, this way my best 6 month stretch since 2018, while the world imploded around me, so it's hard to be too negative outside of the poker bubble. In discussing with good poker friends and acquaintances, a lot of poker people did really well in the first half, so in that context I feel like I under-performed a bit.

Gold Trade Revisited



In March-April 2019, I invested a meaningful chunk of my net-worth into gold and gold related investments at roughly the $1,400 level. I saw this as a massive resistance zone of 7 years, and I thought the comments from the fed were bullish gold. To date, my gains have been roughly 30% and I've sold nothing. It's fun when a big investment works out and that asset class as a % of net-worth grows without adding any principal.

I marked up the chart above to show my thoughts, but essentially I see $1,800 zone as the last real area of resistance on the chart. The $1,400 is now major major support with some other zones in between. I see the situation likely to play out as a cup and handle (drawn crudely with paint) and much higher prices to come over the next 2-4 years.

The investment universe at large makes no sense to me (why are stocks rallying?). But IMO, bonds are total dead money, and stocks appear hyper valued to me. I view my money in gold, to a large degree, as a hedge against conventional asset allocations which in my view are likely to perform extremely poorly going forward. Of course, I could be flat wrong Such is life

Plans for H2

Nothing too concrete but I want to take at least one proper vacation and a few mini-trips. I've take probably a total of 5 days off all year (and a number of half days to recharge) and I'm looking forward to some rest. Games have also cooled off, although still very good. For poker, I am still very hungry to perform in the second half, I feel like I have not gotten comfortable yet in the new pool that I am playing in, so I want to continue to work hard to figure out the regulars a bit better. I get the sense many of them fall into the category of pain in the ass to play against, but not actually making any money - whereas in the previous pool, many of the regs were more nitty/less difficult, but seemed to be doing ok overall.

It's been a wild 2020 from a "history in the making" standpoint. Feel blessed to be doing alright playing a silly card game safe from home. Good luck to all

Congratz! what is your stake and on which soft are you playing? How many tables?

Thanks! I play small/midstakes on regulated US sites. Although all sites are supposed to soft since Covid. Anywhere from 6-16 tables

You're a sick human being. No words for that volume. Congrats on the 1st half and GL going forward

wtf is this volume, absolutely sick mate!

Wow, that is impressive volume!

That's an absurd amount of hands, wp! Also is this bb or $ graph? Looks like zero downswings

fmp.

Graph is in $. I've always subscribed to moving down to chase losses, so that cushions all my downswings. Of course, it limits my upside too. There's certainly a few downswings that graph, 1M hand samples are deceiving.



@All, thanks for the positive comments. Feeling motivated to keep it rolling for the second half!

So it is between 150 000 - 200 000 hands per month this is insane !
Are you zoom 4 tabling ? How many hours per day are you playing ?
Do you work with a solver and are you working on your game a lot ?

No zoom, 6-10 hours per day

I have Pio but do very little work with it. Mostly use it as a better pokerstove when reviewing a tough spot. I do not work on my game enough - been playing the same stakes for 4 years. I do a good job of improving while playing, but all surviving regs have improved immensely too.

2020 Final Results



New career best year overall, slightly edging out 2018. Much happier with my performance second half of 2020, winning ~5bb/100 instead of 3, with a slightly higher average stake.

A crazy year between the pandemic, elections, protests, lockdowns, etc. Happy to be insulated to the extent possible in the poker bubble.

Looking forward to 2021. No concrete poker goals. I'll continue to play NL cash online and to take some low high-stake shots games permitting. I suspect a bulk of my volume will come from small stakes same as the last 5 years. I've also gotten the MTT itch, so I'm going to add a few regular small stakes ones to my schedule, shouldn't change my hours too much although may have to play Sundays more often than I currently do. If it's anything like my PLO itch, I'll be quitting MTTs shortly.

Gold Revisted



The gold trade is going about as "textbook" as I could hope. Recall, I bought at ~$1,400 an oz in 2019. Gold consolidated and held above that level drawn by the first horizontal line above. The next key level I was looking at was $1,800 and the all-time high. Gold blasted above that late summer after bailouts/stimulus/free money. Felt like the trade was over-heating and due for a correction. That is exactly what happened. Gold pushed slightly lower than anticipated (I thought $1,800 would act as strong support), but only slid below support for a few sessions before rallying sharply back above. Looking forward, I suspect gold will bust out soon from the current consolidation and start a new big run. At current prices, I'm fairly irresponsibly long between Gold, Silver, Gold Miners - from any mainstream allocation, but I'm also fairly confident gold will be the best place to be in the coming decade. If I'm wrong, I'll be exiting some below $1,750 and some more below $1,350.

Of course, had I invested a similar principal in BTC or TSLA at the march low I would never have to play a million hands/year again .

A Tech Trade FEYE



I recently placed a trade I'm very optimistic about in FireEye (symbol $FEYE). Caveat: I do not do a lot of single stock trading/investing since I left the business, but this is a chart I've been watching for a few years.

Things I like:
- A history of volatility (when it IPO'd in 2014 it quickly bubbled to $100/sh)
- 5 year base/consolidation (2016-2020 unable to break above $20) and breakout above + confirmation by heavy relative volume
- Fresh news catalyst (solarwinds hack)
- Low relative valuation to peers (as of 2020 close, Feye worth 5.5b, whereas PANW is worth 34B, FTNT is worth 24B etc)

I plan to HnR this one hard, exiting half my position if it doubles in the short term. If the trade goes against me, I'll exit a bit below $19.50, and most below $17.50.

None of the above investment advice, do your own DD

Happy 2021 to all and good luck

You're a monster with that volume year in, year out man. Well played and happy new year!

I'm really curious how you're able to play so many hands/so many hours. Are you just built different? Do you ever feel burnout or worry about your longevity in this game?

Congrats on the year and GL in 2021. That's a sweet graph

Thanks!

Thanks Andees. Got a ton of respect and admiration for what you accomplished this year too.

I averaged around ~42hrs/week this year for actual grind at the table. I'm pretty lazy when it comes to study, maybe 2 hours a week on average (sometimes more, sometimes zero), so call it a ~45hr/week of work. My undergrad/grad friends with "proper" career tracks (lawyer/consultant/banker/doctors) are working 60-80weeks in most cases. Which makes my 45hr/week in comparison not all that bad. I suppose over time, their hours go down and pay will go up, but that's the trade-off for playing cards for a living.

On top of that, as you know probably better than others, my game is not the most complicated or sophisticated strategy on the planet. Simplification helps me add more tables and play longer hours.

Am I build differently? I'm not sure. I was a pretty avid (manic? degen?) gamer growing up, so long hours in front of the computer do not really bother me.

Wrt to burnout or my longevity in poker. I rarely have had burnout issues, but a day or two off always resets me completely. I'm still very motivated to do better in this game, and whenever I get cranky I ask myself if I'd rather be stuck in a cubicle staring at a spreadsheet - that always snap me out of it. Longevity is a bit of a trickier topic. I have a very ergonomic set-up which helps with the physical side, but I worry how things will change as a parent. That said, I have a few grinder/parent friends with toddlers and they are making it work, so it provides a good role model for me of what could be. I think the bigger issue is poker's longevity in general, which at the moment seems healthy, but it's always a concern as a pro as you well know.

See you on the felt, stop pounding on me

Amen. This one really resonates with me