That's why I couldn't find it. I swore it had CE in the title, but it didn't.

Where I live, average monthly paycheck is like 500 euro. And euro is not the "native currency" in the country (forgot the expression for that xD)

Yet, in casinos, games are in euro. NL50, NL100, etc.

Players, atleast most of them, are your regular live fish.

See how, somewhere, you *can* live even on NL100

On the other hand, how do you get a proper BR in the first place...well, I guess you grind online loool

EDIT: Though if you start to crush NL25 or even NL50 online...you can live of that aswell

callipygian just rocks this stuff...
Most people underestimate just how hard it is to be a good enough poker player to make a living playing 30-40 hours a week at meaningful stakes. You have to be really good at poker, it isn't a small thing. Everyone who has a 100 hour hot streak live or a 50K hot streak online thinks "man, I could just do this for a living". In some ways, that run-hot early allows people the confidence + BR boost to give it a shot. However, the point of transitioning from the best 10 hours of the week to full time is a great one. The pros I know are mostly just amazing at poker. Most of them believe when they first went pro that they sucked, and they feel lucky that they managed to get better before busto. Most were highly regarded as strong players at this beginning time of their self considered suckage. If you aren't amazing at the game you plan to play, it should give you pause.

The other thing that doesn't get mentioned is that if you earn just enough to cover expenses, your BR quits growing. You have the natural human tendency to buy something nice as a reward during hot streaks -- thus, even windfall days don't build BR. Know what your RoR is if you don't grow your BR? Ans: 100%. If you compare a pro who makes just enough to pay bills and a recreational player who only uses his poker winnings to grow BR, the difference is stark. Then you add in you job income (or for pros with passive income) as an ability to add to your poker BR, and the "full time pro" is at a huge disadvantage. Those of us with good jobs can't go bust.
You can make money playing live. If you have a fun summer of poker degeneracy and hope to cover expenses, great. Thinking that a sample of 4 or 5 poker trips shows the long run of your poker expectations, we both know that is silly. As a MTT-er, you know variance in a real way. Think of needing 1000 hour samples of live cash to have decent, but not great, sample sizes.

If you can make a good living playing poker, chances are you can make more money doing something else. Thus, it is a question of what you enjoy. Are you socially broken such that a real job is impossible? Some people are and poker is a great outlet. Otherwise, most people should keep poker a hobby.

I'd put it slightly differently. In general, people are paid according to the rarity of the skill set. Neurosurgeons make a ****-ton of money because there aren't many people who do it. Baristas are paid less because neurosurgeons can learn to pull their own lattes easier than baristas can learn neurosurgery.

Every once in a while, there exist things that are easy and paid well - but they don't last long. In the late 90s anyone who could write basic HTML made a killing putting up websites; in the mid-2000s anyone who could show a house made a killing as a realtor. Will there always be a need for website designers and realtors? Absolutely. But it will get less profitable and only the best will survive.

So ... poker. If you're a poker god, your skill is rare and you should be able to climb quickly. If you've got a superhuman tolerance for douchebaggery you may be able to put in volume at the Commerce that drives others insane. If you've got a huge bankroll maybe you can scare people by playing above their comfort levels. But the idea that a halfway-decent player is going to take a modest bankroll and play a commonly spread game and make as much as an electrical engineer should be treated with skepticism.

If you want a decent living, decide which of your skills is the rarest and exploit it. Chances are it's not poker.

Quick question, is the 60 bb/hr SD a good estimate from a significant sample of live 2/5 or a guesstimate?

Also, that thread had some great stuff but I never actually saw the CE formula in there. Any chance you know it?

Thanks

It's a semi-informed estimate. I asked on LLNL a while back and got various answers from 40-60 to 50-70 to 60-80. My own 1/2 SD is 80 but I'm LAGgy bordering on LAGtard. I assume I would be less degen in a bigger game.

Hmm. The formula I used was from blackjack: CE - V/2kB. But I had to estimate the Kelly number (k) myself and I forgot how I did it. Maybe I just set it at 1.

www.bjmath.com/bjmath/kelly/kellyfaq.htm

I referenced "Death of a Salesman". I should add that "The Honeymooners" is also a seriously good poker reference.

The point is, the desire of Americans to get rich quick, and their failure to understand that capitalism is built on a lot more of us believing we can do it than who actually get to do it, is a very common touchstone of the literary and entertainment worlds. Poker is, in this sense, a microcosm of capitalism. And the weird thing is that it is full of amateur psychologists who are trying to get reads on opponents-- but who never turn that lens on themselves and critically analyze their own goals.

(I once had an argument in one of the NC threads about beating the stock market, in which it turned out that a TON of decent poker players who should know better thought it was a lot easier than it really is. This sort of thing is just embedded in our thinking.)

Lots of good discussion in this thread.

One thing to consider is the black swan factor. If you asked anyone 12 years ago what poker game you should focus on to excel in, the answer hands down would have been limit. NLHE basically didn't get spread as a cash game. Therefore, you might become one of the best at NLHE and find over a 3 year time frame that the money has moved on to another game. While many of the skills will transfer, reaching the top will require putting in nearly as much learning curve as you had to put in the last time. In the mean time, your WR collapses as you try to rebuild your edge. With work, your skills might also drop, but if you work at it, you'll still get paid as you rebuild them.

Depends on how good of a player you are imo. If you are memorizing a robotic formula then this kind of shift will crush you. If you are analyzing your opponents and finding there holes, you should be able to transfer those skills to any poker game. Also, it's not like this is going to happen over night. It will be gradual. You will have time to learn the new game while still making money from NLHE. Yes, your income is going to take a hit or your hours will increase in the mean time, but you should be fine. But, if you aren't putting away money in investments (besides retirement) in case of super run bad or a change in the landscape then you aren't going to last long term. Also, you should definitely think about some kind of exit plan. It's a bad idea to plan on playing cards for 50 years imo.

I think I'm doing something wrong cause I plugged in some numbers and am getting a super high CE.


The link shows that CE = E-V/2kB which makes sense.

So I'm using a win rate of 8bb/hour, SD of 70bb/hour (variance of 490 bb/hour), kelly of 1, and a bankroll of 3000 bbs.

8-{490/(2*1*3000)}= 7.9129

So an 8bb/hour win rate is equivalent to 7.9129 bb/hour given the variance and BR. That has to be way to high. Where am I going wrong?

Edit: Looking at the kelly chart I should probably use something more like 1/3 kelly but I still end up with an equivalent of about 7.75.

70^2 = 4900

thanks

Ok so with 1/3 kelly my 8bb/hour CE would be 5.55 bb/hour.

Interesting though that it's an absolute value compared to win rate instead of a percentage. For a 5bb/hour win rate the equivalent would be 2.55 bb/hour. So increasing your win rate by 1bb will increase your CE by one bb as well.

One interesting thing for this calculation is that your BR should pretty much be your net worth even though you (hopefully) wouldn't put it all at risk. If you want to be more conservative then you reduce your kelly. There's a bit of explanation in that link.

If you over roll (properly roll? lol) yourself and have a high win rate, you can actually get your CE pretty close to your actual win rate in % terms. The only other thing that you would really need to do is find your confidence intervals for your actual win rate. Problem is that these are probably going to be pretty wide, which will introduce a large amount of risk. Gotta make sure that your samples aren't biased (to time of day/week) either so that will be tough, as estimating your actual number of hours per week will be.

Gonna try to put everything together at some point in some easy plug and play excel sheets. Interesting that you should probably be running these calcs to see what stakes/games that you should be playing as well.

Your BR should under no circumstances be your entire net worth unless you're a professional with literally no other life skills.

Your BR is defined as what you're willing to lose before you quit.

Where can one find a casino like this?

I dont understand how anyone thinks a starbucks employee makes 40k a year....

Also, it's actually not easy as pie right now to just go and pick up a 40k+ a year job with benefits. In what Utopia is everyone living? Have any of you actually had a construction job, or worked at a restaurant?

I agree that poker should be a means to an end (one should not plan to play to retirement as their sole source of money), but it can be a very good way for some people to "raise" enough money to start their own business, or something of the like. Also, some people are in spots where they don't have much of a choice anyways.

That being said, people need to be honest with themselves about their true abilities and faults. If you really can beat the game for 40k+ a year though, I disagree that there are multiple better options for most people.

No. Most of us saying this have life skills and experience that make entry level jobs unnecessary. It could be that Day 1, our smart poker player would make less (even CV-wise) than he would at the casino. However, someone with the smarts and discipline to win full time at poker would likely progress out of an entry level job quickly. That's the thing, a person who has what it takes to succeed in poker also has what it takes to succeed elsewhere. In addition with good marketing, our successful poker player may be able to skip a couple rungs on the ladder coming in. We don't expect this person to be a cashier at McD's or a Starbucks Barista for long, if they even start there.
Someone who beats poker for $40k/year has the CV equivalent of a steady 1099 job for $20k/year, which is $10/hour. Then you have self employment tax and benefits which makes that worth the equivalent of what, $7-$8/hour as a full time W2? A $40K/year poker job is a terribly low paid job. You also have the opportunity cost of your poker job being somewhat dead-end. If you grind only $40k, how much BR growth can you have? Playing live, are you really gaining the skills you need to move up?

Early in your career, you're investing in the skills/resume to build your real earning power later. If you have a "covers my bills poker job" for 5 years, are potentially losing tons of future earning power. Don't have a career now? Make a plan to get one. Again, the brains and self-discipline required to make it as a poker pro are valuable assets that can be applied to other fields.
Totally agree that there are some people who may be socially unable to do anything else. For those people, there is no choice. For some people, a very small %, their poker earning power is so large that they can't justify not using it. These guys aren't hand to mouth $40k/year small stakes live grinders. They are on their way to the high stakes cash games.

It think the thing you're missing is that a $40k/year job as a self-employed poker player doesn't compare to a $40k/year day job. It is worth much less due to the uncertainty. For some people, playing poker is their joy. At that point, follow your heart. I predict a tough life, but it may be worth it. However, your hypothetical $40k/year poker job isn't the best job that most starting players can find. It is a bad job, however, for a very few it could be a job that they love.

Yes, for practical purposes when playing poker, you are only going to put a portion of your assets at risk. When I read that link though, I gathered that for the purposes of calculating a CE, that you should use your entire net worth. Your life roll is what actually affects your utility, not your "invented" poker BR. You should be running separate calculations to estimate your risk of ruin for your poker BR. Hope that made sense. Possible that I misunderstood.

I agree that someone with the discipline and smarts to win at poker could possibly move out of entry level fairly quickly. I also agree with your CV argument making 40k poker earnings equivalent to 20k a year. The thing is that there's just not that many careers to embark on, assuming no college education, that would lead to a job earning over 30k with any solid benefits.

In many cases I have witnessed, people have settled for less than 20k a year with no benefits for several years before any solid position opens up such as management/supervisor. In this case I am talking about the restaurant /hospitality business. Theoretically the person SHOULD be recognized and does have or exceeds the skills necessary to be in a better position, but in the real world there are alot of overqualified workers who seem to be kind of stuck for one reason or another.

I don't agree that anyone should settle on beating low limit cash games without some kind of plan to move up in the future. I think if the player is working their game constantly, and trying to excel as they would in any environment, then they should be able to eventually move up to the next level. If someone isn't aspiring to constantly improve where they're at in any scenario, then they most likely never had the potential to flourish anywhere.

Any bright, talented person would constantly be working to move up to the next level. No bright, talented person would settle in at low limit poker for any big duration unless they were somehow happy with it, but I couldnt see that being the case.

You make some excellent points, and I think anyone considering this should definitely listen to your advice, and consider all their options in the long-term. And Never Never settle for anything less than excellence!

The hard thing is building BR while spending a potentially large portion of your expected winnings on rent/food. BR growth is assumed in RoR calcs. It is also required to move up, and each time you double stakes you halve your roll. I know a good number of poker pros, they are really good at poker, and it was a hard thing to do. My first advice to anyone considering it would be to not go pro at the lowest limit that would pay your bills -- be able to move down and make rent. So, if you can barely make a living at 2/5NL, don't go pro until you can play 5/10. In LHE, if 20/40 barely pays your bills, wait for 40/80.

All this assuming you have a choice. If you have none, I guess you go for it.

On the non-poker side, you may have to invest in training. Is that night school, a professional certification, or a degree? I don't know. It is really hard in your late teens and early 20's, but have a plan. The plan can change, but having one helps. If your plan has multiple escape routes, all the better.

Investing early in yourself is a win, no matter how you go about it. If that means grinding low limits while living on a friend's basement instead of a killer pad, so be it. If it means going into debt for a degree, that too.

yes! silly question

[QUOTE=MApoker;37731040]There's a lot of intangibles though:

(1) For most of us, playing poker is a lot more enjoyable than work.

-True ill give you that

(2) It's a comparatively stress-free job.

- Stress free? I think going to a 9-5 and just getting a check at the end of the week is WAY less stress than having a 3 month downswing or a years worth of runbad. Its hard to see the longrun playing live poker at 34 hands an hour with no rakeback and insane rake+tips etc. Yes the players are awful but its hardly an ATM machine

(3) You have a great deal more freedom. Specifically: You have no boss or supervisors. You don't have to put up with ******* co-workers. You make your own hours. You can wear whatever clothes you want. You can't get fired or laid off. You can drink while you play.

- Once you play in a casino for 6 nights a week 6 hours a night you pretty much have a whole table full of "coworkers" now The people at the table dont leave me alone....its like a whole new family and unless you are super social it pretty much sucks. I know a table full of degens arent exactly the people I wanna talk to or hang out with but you are around them for hours and hours hard to avoid talking to them. as for the boss thing. Sure you dont have a boss but you have to be your own boss. There will be TONS of days where you dont want to go player poker all night again... it gets old. If you dont make yourself play enough then it will be hard to meet monthly or yearly goals. and good luck drinking while you play. I bet that will work out great for you

I was a full time internet player making close to 6 figures every year till black friday. after black friday I was playing for a living live for about 6 months. Yeah the players were horrible but the rake and tips were quite insane. Dealing with the degens and having to drive there everyday got old pretty quick.(also I am a non smoker and though the room was non smoking the casino wasnt so my throat felt gross often) ALSO sometimes I would have to wait 30-60 min just to get a seat at a table which eats into my hours (basically working 2-3 hours a week for 0$) I played mostly LHE 20-40 and 8-16 and I was only making about 9$ an hour (felt like I ran pretty bad but gotta be honest with yourself with results if you wanna play for a living) so I quit to take a 40k job. As other people have said in this thread its just not worth it if you are good enough to beat small/mid stakes you might as well do something more productive and make more money

I think callipygian is right because I like his avatar.

Then get a decent bankroll first. You don't go pro at poker with no bankroll. You aren't a pro at poker unless you have one. You're just a degen getting by temporarily if you don't have bankroll.

I'd way rather average 40k a year from poker with some variance than make people coffee or work 9-5 somewhere and grind that life for 40k a year. To each their own on this one.

There's really only one variable that matters in this. Do you have a family? If not poker is a kickass way to live. If you have a family to support, you probably have to go for something safer as a career.

Wow dude did you know there's more to life than seeing how much money you can acquire?

You are completely missing his point -- he's showing a rational basis for comparing two jobs. It is like comparing multiple jobs of any other kind. Job A pays less, has a shorter commute, boss seems nicer (though 1 hour convo in an interview, not 100% indication), and prospect for learning/promotion seem meh. Job B pays more, boss seems like in-your-face type, twice as long commute, and good opportunity for training/promotion. How do we decide between those jobs? It depends on our priorities. What callipygian is showing is that a lot of people over-rate the value of the earning poker of poker as a job, and he's using good math tools to do it.

Given the same input data, two people might rationally make different choices about jobs. That's good, and it reflects different priorities. Nobody has said "make the most money that you can". This is about fairly comparing money, just like comparing a self-employed contract job vs. a W2 job -- you can make more hourly and earn less value overall.

The points here are that someone who plays prime-time Thursday and Friday night as a recreational player can't take his hourly, mere multiply by 40, compare that to a day job and say "I make so much playing poker, I have to quit my day job b/c I make so much more playing cards". There's a lot more to it than that. With the proper consideration, you might still decide to quit your job and find joy at the poker table. I'd contend that most people would hate it, but for some people it is clearly the right choice.