I haven't played a live hand for a few days beyond bricking a tourney on Tuesday. I've felt burnt out on the game and I haven't been motivated to hit the tables, but I know that I haven't been playing massive hours recently, so I would like to come up with a reason for feeling burnt out.

(1) I'm incapable of being happy with any profession, regardless of what it might be.

In terms of being open to potential solutions, this is not a helpful reason, to say the least. I'd like to pick something a little less sweeping if I'm going to develop a plan of attack.

(2) I haven't been studying the game enough and subsequently my play is in a rut.

This one is easily solved. In the first few months that I was playing, I was reading four Bart Hanson poker articles on the bus every day on the way to work. The goal was to recognize one or more of the spots highlighted in his articles and to apply his solution whenever it came up in my game. Through this method, I was able to keep my antennae up in a different way during every session. Eventually, though, I ran out of Bart Hanson articles.

Gambler's General Store has a 20% off sale on books, so I bought two Zach Elwood volumes on reading tells. The plan from now until Wednesday is to read for one hour and then to watch videos for an hour every day. When I get back to playing again, study time will be 30 minutes of reading and 30 minutes of watching per day.

Bally's $105 $2k GTD tournament: 3 hours
(-$105)

having only met you the one time, tough to step confidently into this arena...but, since you posed the question; i have to say i found poker to be the most difficult profession i ever attempted. there's no there there. you take advantage of mistakes made by lesser skilled opponents. rinse repeat.

one can feel great gratification walking out of a casino with several hundred dollars earned playing poker. i think that is the limit of its utility. poker success is unlikely to ever feel fulfilling.

you appear to love books, love reading, love writing. and you are good at it. your long passages of self-reflection are gold.

Thanks mendicant loafer! I love to write; however, I need it to stay firmly in the category of 'play' in my mind. If writing ever shifted over into 'work' I would count it as a loss. I'm often reminded of Tom Sawyer's fence painting boondoggle, where Mark Twain showed us the ways that someone can turn work into play, but in spite of that example I've never been able to find the knack for making that conversion in my head...or maybe Twain was showing us that Tom's eager fence painters were all suckers, and that work is a scam.

In any case, I'm going back to work on Wednesday, and I've earned enough experience by now to know that I can't grind for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I think that I can do 6 hours a day for 5 days. At my current winrate, that sort of schedule would give me a fast food assistant manager salary, with zero benefits.

So what to do? Well, I also believe that I can study the game for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week. I've been doing that for the past few days and it's not particularly taxing. Not only would adding study hours be likely to increase my winrate, but it will also serve to get me up to the higher levels more quickly, and once there I'm more likely to earn a satisfactory salary from playing 30 hours a week.

I like their "new" singer, William DuVall (dude with the mini-fro on the left). As cool as Jerry Cantrell is, he's never quite been Ready for Prime Time. I'll have to see them next time they come around.



Edit: Ann Wilson from Heart sang backup on the studio version of the second song, Brother, and they bring her out again for this live version.

Its prolly not something specific to you. Lets face it, pretty much every job sucks balls when you have to do it day in day out over an extended period of time. The human mind just works like that.

There are a few specifics for poker though. Firstly it is a kind of creative work, most peeps are extremely bad at doing such work well for more than 4-6h a day. When I see all these threads with the goal of like playing 40h+ for 50w+/yr thats just setting an impossibe goal to start with.
Second poker has both the blessing and the curse that you get to set your own hours. This is major drawing point into the profession for many but lets face it, most peeps are just too lazy long time when they get to set their own terms. Its easy to keep up the motivation for a few weeks or maybe even months but becomes harder the longer you stay on. Unless you have some major successes along the way.

Just some food for thought. I agree that you would prolly make a good author. Many peeps who went through poker and ****ed up (I got to know quite a few of them) also made it back to RL with some kind of related job, could be part-time dealer, floor, or others.

Yeeeeeeeeeeah they come to raise the bettorrrr yeaheaaahhhhehhehhhhhh

ooooh we're not gonna fooooldddddd

You can always movers stakes to where they respect your raises

I imagine staying motivated in poker would be hard.

Even though other jobs suck, at least you know you are (generally) adding something to society or helping people achieve something, even if it's just helping your work colleague who are relying on you.

Poker is a good career mainly because it's fun, but ultimately your job is to take money away from people gambling. So, any time the fun goes out of it, you can't fall back on the "adding something to society or helping people achieve something" to keep yourself going.

That's not to say that you can't make it fun again. Challenging yourself is one way (reading more books/trying to improve).

lol read that last post and it came across as "poker as a career would suck".

Not intended!

I want to add something I though for a while now but didn't want to say because what do I know? I'm working a standard 9-5. But I don't understand why you want to make a 9-5 with fake weekends out of this Poker thing. That's what you walked away from (with real weekends) after all. And in Vegas, as I understand it, you can play Poker pretty much any time you want.

If I would try something like you do, I would probably play whenever I felt like it, and could for example see me playing every day for longer stretches, even if it was only for a couple of hours somedays. Like 20h one week, and 60h another. But I would never set me some goal about how many hours I play next week. I might turn out hating it, but as I said what do I know? I'm working a standard 9-5.

How about Poker guide for Japanese tourists?

I think you need some structure though. There's still importance in picking and choosing good times to work, as you could end up doing twice as much work (time wise) for the same profit if you don't choose the right times to play.

And SJ has shown there's still heaps of flexibility.

Some great posts here. I will try to give them the attention they deserve tonight when I get back from work. I didn't play yesterday, and I'll admit that it was due to being hungover. I laid off the sauce yesterday and woke up ready to study and to get to work. The upcoming work week will be Thursday-Monday.

Gl with work SJ. Also gl with laying off the sauce a bit, that issue probably slightly worries your readers given your first post in the thread.

You're right about the wear and tear on the brain for long sessions, but I think that I can get away with 6 hours, at least I hope so.

Now, I don't remember if I gave a clear statement of purpose at the beginning of this thread, but here it is:

I'm not playing poker for a living because I love the game. I like the game well enough, and I enjoy the challenge of trying to get better, but that's not nearly enough.

What am I doing here? I'm curious about the elements and the limits of human freedom in the modern world.

I believe Thoreau had something similar in mind when he set off with only a tiny scrap of bankroll to live in a cabin in the woods by himself for two years. Now, Walden Pond in the 1840s and Las Vegas in the 2010s are diametrically opposed environments, but I think Henry and me are asking the same question. How well can a man live when he's beholden in the smallest way possible to the least number of people; can he thrive when he only has himself to tell himself what to do?

Now, if you're already rich, then freedom is easy. That's the idea of "**** you money," right? You can tell everyone to **** off and you'll face minimal consequences for it.

Can this also be done without being rich, and without breaking the law? That's the question that made me turn myself into a guinea pig. I thought that playing a game for a living--one that wasn't a team sport with contracts and whatnot--might be the best avenue for exploration. So that's the very tl;dr explanation as to why I'll never be a dealer or a floorperson.

BTW as far as crime and freedom are related: drug dealers have suppliers and customers, and thieves have fences with whom they have to negotiate, so criminals aren't much more free than the average working Joe, especially with the prospect of jail time looming over them.

Hey I ain't never gonna fold
Hey I'm top top like Jamie Gold
Hey I've been nitting it here for hours
You caught the set and I know now
It hurts to fold, nice hand pal.

Getting there slowly. I hope to do the Red Rock $2/$5 run again soonish.

If I can get into the $2/$5 and $5/$10 levels and make money at it, the plan is to start in with some volunteer work. In any case, you really have to seek out your own meaning in life, but you're right about there not being much low hanging fruit for that in poker.

Unfortunately, if I played poker whenever I felt like it, I would average around 12-15 hours a week, maybe topping off around 22, and I would take a week off every month, so I need to impose a more rigorous schedule in order to make a living at it.

Japan is opening its first casinos in the mid-2020s. At the very least there might be some juicy games over there for the first year or two.

I intended to get 6 hours in last night, but my timing was off. There's a 4 hour window in the wee hours when my bus doesn't run, so I have to time my shift to end before or after that, and I screwed that up and had to leave after 4 hours. Tonight, I'm taking the overnight and I'm going for the 6 ball.

Harrahs: 4 hours:
+$81

Where are you heading tonight?

I appreciate the worries, WorldzMine. It's been quite a while since I've woken up choking from acid reflux, but it's always looming, so I have bought some antacids--which I've never used before in my life, but I assume that they'll be effective--and if I do come home with some of the precursor symptoms, I believe that I'll have the presence of mind to give the antacid a shot before I fall asleep.

Harrahs again. The only gambling addiction I've ever faced is being hooked on their goddamn freeroll. Shoot me a text if you're in the neighborhood.

I love the nits and the freerolls. Mr. suitedjustice you are king-nit, never change. Volunteering is one of the most rewarding things I've done and I always support when people choose to do it, it's also great when you find a specific position that really caters to something you hold valuable.

/grammarlesswordspew

Thanks AlwaysFolding! I might ask you for some volunteerimg leads when the time comes.

A pretty bad night: I started in a bad spot at a bad table and transferred over to a worse spot at a worse table.

I felt like I'd be badgering the floor by asking for another transfer so quickly, so I put up with having 3 good aggros on my left, which led to some marginal and high variance 3-bet and 4-bet spots out of position, which led me to being smooshed.

Next time I won't be so shy about a second table change. The third table was fine and I stopped the bleeding, but I didn't claw back much of my early losses.

The table broke 5 hours into the night, and I drew low card for the single spot at the remaining table. Rather than wait up to 2 hours to get on a bad table for one hour, I left.

Harrahs: 5 hours:
(-$596)

I feel like the Wynn 1-3 game would fit your style really really well. If you want one of my off days we can work it out and I’ll play Uber for you and we can get something to eat and hit the Wynn

I would like that Nat! I've played the Wynn a few times, but mostly during the day when I've found it filled with a fair number of YKRBs.



I wouldn't mind checking it out late night and/or on the weekend. No need for the Uber, though, but thanks for that.

Speaking of the weekend, I punted on playing at Red Rock yesterday , and from Daniel Negreanu's Twitter feed it appears that he was there for a charity tournament, so I missed the chance to meet him.

Last night I played the Harrah's overnight game from midnight to 6 AM. Lately, the wee hours have been the most reg-infested times there, due to Harrah's adding a second freeroll for the top 20 weekly hours-getters from 1 AM-6 AM. I should have known better. This overnight game now presents the toughest $1/$2 lineup in Las Vegas, which makes it possibly the toughest $1/$2 game in the country.

I have zero interest in turning into a pale night creature, scrapping with the other regs for hours for the second freeburger. There is no reason for me to be there at that hour; and yet, there I was.

I don't know what I want out of this spot, beyond being a procrastinator during the day but still wanting to grind out the hours for the original freeroll, leaving me only the overnight to reconcile the competing drive and the lack thereof.

I know that I like the room. Harrah's has good dealers and a great floor staff, their tables are comfortably spaced, and their chairs can be adjusted high to accommodate for long legs--so I don't feel like I'm sitting down in a middle school classroom. As bad as the game is, it's become my comfort zone.

I am halfway through the Zach Elwood poker tell books, and they are starting to pay out--thanks again to the reader who suggested them! Let's look at a hand where I picked up a read, possibly.

Villain is an experienced reg with good hand reading skills who plays solid and can make big moves and put other players to the test.

He has recently rebought after pounding on a $5 straddle preflop, barreling big on all streets and shoving the river, heads up on a

58638 board, creating a $900+ pot that had already been bloated early thanks to the preflop shenanigans.

His villain was a loose but good reg who had defended his straddle and had flopped the straight and then called my villain down. On the river the villain with the straight tanked forever; it looked so much like a boat or quads, either from 86s or from 55, 66 or 88, that it felt like a crying call at best. When he was finally called, my villain mucked. I believe that he was bluffing a busted flush draw.

I had watched my villain closely while his opponent had tanked and tanked, looking for signs of strength or weakness. Big pots like this are where you might pick up some tells. Relatively substantial money is at stake, and emotions come into play. He was very still, and his body was listing 25° off to the right. His villain peppered him with questions and statements--anything to induce a reaction, or to spark a glimmer of something--and he got nothing.

So that's what he looks like when he's running a big bluff, but does he look like that all the time? A lot of experienced players strike the same poses in the same spots regardless of their hand strength. I will have to try to catch his act another time, when he has the goods, and then make a comparison.

I pick up AQ in the cutoff and open for $10. My villain from the above hand calls from the SB, and the BB calls. I have about $440 behind and both players cover me.

Pot ($30) Three players.

Flop: Q63

It's checked to me. I'm going to c-bet my whole range on this flop when it's three way and I'm in position. That's the standard business. It's fine if I get folds here. I would also get folds when holding ATo, J9s, 22 and so forth.

I bet $20, SB calls and BB folds.

Pot ($70) Two players.

Turn: 4

SB checks, I bet $40, and SB raises to $150.

Pot ($260) Two players.

If I call, pot will be $370 and we'll each be left with $280 effective behind.

What a lovely spot for villain to get a tagfish to stack off 225bb with an overpair or TPTK. Let's give him the nutted hands, and--just to keep things in perspective--let's add one marginal made hand, say JJ, which he may have decided to turn into a bluff on a dry board where I could be double barreling a wide range.



I need 29% equity, but only if he's bluffing on 6 out of 22 combos, and we're likely to play for stacks on the river--I can't think of many river cards that are going to make me fold. So is he really bluffing 27% of the time in that spot? Well, let's discount that and say he's only bluffing on 3 combos instead of 6.



Uh oh.

Now look, I don't do this sort of math in my head at the table. I do a fair amount of this work off the table, and I think it's given me a general feel for the equity comparisons in this spot and a few others. So my thought at the table was, he's gotta be bluffing a fair amount for me to call him here. We're going for stacks after this, and it will be really embarrassing if I stack off 225bb with top top like a damn tournadonk tagfish. Is he bluffing me?

Into the tank I went. In the past, I've only had the math, some rudimentary but improving range analysis skills, and the previous hand histories to guide me through the tank; now I have some little bits of Zach Elwood's poker tell books.

Do I have enough of those yet, on a first read, having gotten through only half of each of two books? Probably not, but here I am. Look at him: he's very still, and listing 25° to starboard! He's shuffling his chips, though. Was he shuffling his chips last time? ****, I can't remember! Seems like he wasn't. ****! Grab your chips and cut out a call and see what he does. Nothing. Tank for a little while more and see if he looks at you, at anything. Nope. Can you ask him a question? Induce a reaction? If he gets angry or irritated or gives you an answer designed to goad you into a call then he's probably not bluffing. Table talk? Me? Is there a chat box I can type something into? ****!

I call.

Pot ($370) Two players

River:K

It's SB's turn to tank. He takes as long as I do. Is he hollywooding with the goods, trying to look weak? My first impulse is to doubt that, but Elwood says that bluffers often take a medium amount of time with their bets, as they don't want to stand out in either direction time-wise, which might draw attention and create suspicion.

I have seen plenty of players tank forever with the stone nuts before shoving. Oh boy...I can't fold. I can't fold. I better not fold.



Harrah's: 6 hours:
(-$14)

Just wanted to chime in and say I am really enjoying this thread. As a late 40s desk jockey and mediocre poker player I am vicariously enjoying your adventure!

Thanks AnyAce! I appreciate you.

I wonder, sometimes, if I would still be writing all of this if I'd never started a thread, or if I had started one and no one had liked it. It's likely that I would still have written it all, but I wouldn't be nearly as happy about it as I am now, knowing that you guys are out there reading it.