Trying to see if its worth it to go play 1/2 live at borgata casino after expenses for 2 days.

Roughly takes about 40-50 dollars for gas money

About 6 different meals 10 dollars each so $60

and $60 for a motel for the night

in total i will play like 17 hours in 2 days , and hoping for a win rate of 20 dollars an hour

So expenses add up to around $170

i would hopefully be making an average of $340

leaving me with $170 profit for 2 days

My question is , is it worth it for all that? Do most live grinders/professionals, incur the same expenses or is it necessary to live around the casino?Btw i would be leaving around 8pm on a friday and coming back around 1-2 am on sunday


Also is my winrate realistic or too little? I would love to be able to win around 30 dollars and hour but from what i've seen that would be pretty hard

When I visited AC over 20 years ago on a weekend I couldn't rent a closet for $60/night. I've read that business has been horrible for years but I didn't know it was that bad.

You should include wear and tear on your car. The gubment prices it at 50 cents per mile. You can make your own estimate but I'm guessing it's going to cost you at least $150.

Nobody knows this better than you do.

Only you can answer this. What else would you do with that time? If you're just going to sit around looking at scat porn, maybe it's worth it to go play poker even if you expect $0. If you're ignoring your significant other to go gamble the weekend away, maybe not even $1,700 would be worth it.

It's likely most regular players live close to minimize expenses. To that end, given there are a bunch of casinos within $40-$50 worth of gas of Atlantic City, you should probably play at Foxwoods or Parx or MDL if you intend to play more often. But if you can spare the time, just go play wherever you want and treat it like a free vacation.

No-one can answer that question for you, is it worth it for you?

I think that's nuts. My car doesn't cost nearly $.50 per mile to drive. Maybe it depends on the car but mine almost never needs work done and the parts for it are cheap. I get about 30 mpg.

Stay longer if possible. It's more efficient time-wise and money-wise.

Try to get comped meals if possible or bring your own microwaveable food. That's too much.

I haven't been to AC, but seems reasonable compared to everywhere else I've ever been. $60 doesn't buy much, but you shouldn't be spending much time there other than sleeping.

Try to play more than this if you can. Just play as much as you can.

There aren't many professionals playing 1|2. I would say it's worth it if you're willing to live cheap and not do much other than play poker. If you're just trying to get away and have some fun there's value in that too beyond the money, of course.

It seems to me that $20/h may be difficult to achieve. It sounds like you're a little inexperienced based on your questions, and most people think that $20/h is a highly exceptional win-rate for 1|2.

Ideally I would want to make enough to build my bankroll so i can i move up a stake, I'm currently doing well in the microstakes so I'm positive i can beat the live players from what I've seen. I guess it's just play a lot of poker until this bankroll builds. Bankroll right now , is around 1k which i know is terrible in terms of bankroll management , but i feel like if i table select well and play tight i won't bust. Might start to play tournaments to try and win big because all i play right now is cash games.

It's going to be hard to make $20/hour if you decide to nit it up because your bankroll is only 5 stacks.

It's going to be almost impossible to make any money from live tournaments if you want to use any kind of bankroll management because rake is extremely high on those $100 and below tournaments.

Based on your calculations I would assume you plan to spend ~8 hours in your car plus a night in a ****ty motel to play 17 hours of poker. As others have said, only you can tell if that's a good idea. Financially it's obviously not, since your hourly ends up below minimum wage if you account for the hours spent in your car, but if you're having fun playing poker that should not be your main concern.

Have you ever played live poker at a casino before? It would make a difference to your questions.

$20,000 car
$5,000 in repairs & maintenance lifetime
100,000 miles lifetime
= $0.25/mile

30 miles per gallon
$3/gallon
= $0.10/mile

Uncle Sam is indeed generous with $0.50/mile but not THAT generous. And maybe he got a great deal on his car and knows how to make it last a really long time and maybe he lives in New Jersey where it's illegal to pump your own gas so it's more expensive and he has a gas guzzler so he's not driving as much as I think he is.

Maybe.

The main point is that gas is a fraction of the cost of driving. And that fraction is probably less than a third.

You have to eat 6 meals regardless of if you are at the casino or not.

You can’t could all 6 meals as poker expeensives, only include the excess you are paying due to casino prices (suppose you normally spend $3 per meal - if casino costs $10 you would count $7 against your win rate )


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

FWIW 10bb/h is crushing the game. It's somewhere close to 30bb-35bb/100 depending on how many hands per hour you're being dealt, which at 1/2 is extremely low. 10bb/h is 100% possible in live poker; especially at 1/2, if the rake structure isn't atrocious. That being said, I sincerely doubt that your hourly is 10bb/h. You seem relatively new to live poker judging by your question and I think it's a mistake to assume your winrate - if any - is going to be 10bb/h.

On that note, if your only reason for playing poker is financial gain, then I would say that it isn't worth it for you with those expenses right now. If your goal is to have some fun and possibly make a little money then yeah man go for it.

+1 to all of this. Don't go play 1/2 hoping to make money. You may win, but with travel time and expense you will make more money doing basically anything else with yourself. Go because you want to go have fun.

+1

I'd suggest that dealing poker is a good place to start building a bankroll, and while you deal you can start to heavily work on strategy and tells while not in the hand. Relocate, deal, cut expenses, build, and then play.

If you're going purely for the money then you won't be profitable. Imagine you had to work a job with those conditions.

You're not going to build a bankroll grinding 1/2 with half your profit going to expenses. You'll just be marking time until you go broke, which unless you get really lucky and crush your expected hourly out of the gate, you will. You need a real bankroll, which means a real job. So focus on that.

If you're doing it as an experiment to see if you might want to do it in the future, go for it. Look on Airbnb for cheaper places to stay. Last time I was there I saw a hostel type place walking distance from the casinos for $20 and I opted for a nice room up the road for a bit over $30.

Why the Borgata? Based on your numbers, you're driving 200 to 300 miles each way. Unless you're living in the ocean, there are big rooms available closer to you in MD, Philly or CT.

Ignoring that, at best you're going to earn less than minimum wage for all the time you put in. You are more likely to lose money. From an economic point of view, you're better off going to a local temp agency and working.

Now if you just want to play in the Borgata room and hope to cover your expenses while entertaining yourself, then go ahead and do it. But don't try to justify it as a reasonable way to earn money.

I live 5 minutes walk away from the casino. And I think most live grinders do the same.

Yeah, i'm in the same boat. I actually moved for the sole reason of being closer to the casino in order to play more regularly, whilst at the same time also wanting to reduce my expenses to a minimum, which my move resulted in.

In regards to the OP...

In terms of your travel and accommodation costs - if your really seriously looking at playing live on a more regular/full-time basis, I would suggest moving so that your in closer proximity of your chosen casino, as was mentioned above.

There's a big difference between paying rent (which I assume you do) + travel + accommodation costs etc...in order to be able to play and simply just paying rent.

You want to be keeping your expenses to a minimum, especially so, when grinding smaller stakes.

In terms of your food budget - I would suggest saving a few $ by being really organised, going to the supermarket and making up your own meals/taking your own food/snacks with you.

Casino meals are more often than not quite expensive unless being comped.

I and a number of others I know who play live, take a mini backpack when playing longer sessions so, that we have snacks and any other necessities etc...readily available for when needed.

I find it to be a lot more convenient as it means i'm not reliant on anyone else, I can have exactly what I want/when I want and can do so without having to concern myself any type of constraints. It also works out to be a lot cheaper in the long run.

In terms of the overall picture for you right now, whether it's worth it or not is a question only you can answer (as others have already stated).
It may or may not currently seem worth it on a solely financial basis but, it may seem worth it for a number of other reasons or factors (finances aside).
You need to weigh up all those reasons/factors and take all those things (including finances) which only you have knowledge of, into consideration and come to a conclusion on whether or not it's worth it for you. At the end of the day it comes down to you as an individual and what worth you place on things.

you have to eat even if you dont go to the casino.

but 1,2 is so small it isnt what you do to make money. you play it for fun or to get to move up into games that have more rewards.

But you don't have to spend $10/meal if you eat at home or prepare your meals and take them to the casino. Huge difference if you spend $60 or $10 on food for the weekend.

What kind of 6 meals can you make for $10?

Win rates are averaged out over hundreds and thousands of hours. Trust me, if you do average $20/hr in 1/2, that doesn't mean you can play 17 hours and make $20/hr. You might win $340, you might break even, or you might be stuck for 2K. It's too short of a session to depend on. Just go, play, have fun and see how you do. You can't start nichol and diming expenses while depending on a certain win rate.

$2 gets you 1lb of pasta (6 servings) and a jar of sauce (5 servings). Rice is like $0.50/pound and potatoes $0.30/pound. You can also buy a 6-pack of ramen noodles for $1-2 or a couple servings of microwave Mac&schese. Nothing of that is really healthy or super nutritious but most casino food isn't either.

$5/day is the food budget for tens of millions of people in the US.

YUM-YUM
what time should we be there?

A $10 meal at Borgata isn't totally impossible, but $15 is more realistic.

You'll have $15 in comps after playing ten hours.

At Bread & Butter and restaurants on the main floor comps are 1:1 (one comp dollar equals one dollar). At Starbucks, Borgata Baking Co. and everywhere in the Cafeteria, they're 2:1, so your $15 only pays for $7.50.