If anyone does this, when did you realize it was time. I have a 1.4 BB/HR playing 600 hours of 20-40 in NJ and a standard deviation of 9BB. I have a job so I have a constant bankroll. Basically, did you have an "ah ha" moment and it just clicked or did you just realize you could make good money playing cards? Thanks for any information.

The general rule for these situations is: "If you have to ask, you're not ready."

How do you calculate your standard deviation per hour? Do you actually log your win or loss after every hour of a session?

Unless you work at mcdonalds, don't quit your job to play 20. The aha moment isn't going to be a revelation about cards. Its going to be realizing that going to work is costing you too much money to outweigh the other benefits of having steady income. unless you make <40 a year, this is highly unlikely to happen.

When the sole client for my consulting business entered insolvency and I sent out 75 resumes, got one interview, no offers and my wife yelled at me that I couldn't just mope around the house all day.

I may not make enough to keep us in the style to which we had become accustomed, but I am making money.

Go for it. I am not an expert on live play, but 600 hands isn't all that much is it? Play like 2000 and then see if ur still winning that much, then go pro.

If he's played 600 hours at 1.4 BB/hr, that means he was won over 800 big bets...about $34,000. I don't think anyone can run good for this long; it is basically certain that he is a winning player, and he probably has pretty good reads on all the regulars in this game. His actually win rate might not be 1.4 BB/hr....it might only be 1 BB/hr. But if the OP is happy making $40-50/hour playing LHE, I can't really complain about his bankroll or sample size.

The "aha" moment for me would involve a sufficient bankroll, and one year's living expenses set aside in case I have to transition back into the real world for whatever reason.

Not to mention calculations that I can make more than enough to survive, calculations that take into consideration that if I turn pro a lot of the additional hours I play probably aren't going to be as profitable as weekend and evening play.

Some questions: What has been your biggest downswing?

What times/hours are you playing? i.e., are all your hours against drunks on Friday and Saturday nights vs. a full-time player having to take on the retirees and actors waiting for a call on the weekday shift.

Are you currently taking money out of your winnings for other things or is it all being preserved for bankroll?

Are you willing to travel some and travel on a tight budget?

600 hours of winning 20/40 proves that your sample size is way too small...

If 9BB is your hourly standard deviation, then after 600 hours an approximate confidence interval for your hourly rate would be 1.4 plus/minus 0.7, so it looks like you are likely to be a winning player, but perhaps (worse case) by only half the rate you think.

you could drive a semi-truck through a hole as wide as 9 BB deviations.

This really isn't a very large deviation for LHE...assuming this is his deviation per hour and not the deviation for the estimate of his sample mean. I still don't know how he calculated his hourly deviation, but for the estimate of the sample mean, you can divide the SD by the square root of the # of hours played. Which means the deviation for his estimate is actually only about 0.5-0.6 BB/hr.

9/sqrt(600)=0.37

A 95% confidence interval would be approx +/- twice this i.e. around 0.7

My own standard deviation/hour for lhe is very close to a 9BB figure, though this is at substantially lower stakes so there may or may not be much read across.

In my experience, most people's "a ha" moment was some sort of life event. It's difficult to just "commit" to something like this, but sometimes you just get a "push". I've known people in your situation (good stats, decent bankroll, a backup plan) to go pro after:

Getting laid off
Graduating school
Near-death experience (car accident, cancer, etc)

Having a job and making money on the side is comfortable. To make the transition to go pro, sometimes it takes more than that.

That said, your stats (if you're being truly accurate) are good, and plenty to go on, assuming you've saved a little for enough living expenses to find another job if need be.

if you have a job, my suggestion would be to take a two week vacation with a good bankroll and see how you do playing every day, all day.

Personally I would think there is more money to be made in no limit, I would think that your unit size would have to be larger in limit, with longer drawdowns but if you like limit then try to play it every day for a couple weeks straight, based on my own experiences you will start to discover things phsychologically about yourself that maybe you never knew about. it's easy to do it on paper but when your out there depending on the money, it puts everything in a whole new perspective and if your margin of error is tight, it makes it that much more challenging. only the strong (and good) players will survive

I wish the 2+2 magazine was searchable but a couple years ago there was an article doing the math on how large an upswing a losing player could have (at least I think it was the 2+2 magazine ). It was rather eye-opening. Now it is unlikely OP is a losing player, but its hardly impossible. In fact this week a "pro" who started off on a massive rush last year asked me for a loan. Ironically I had a chat a week ago with another poster about how he was doomed to go busto.

OP, to illustrate how hard it is to grind 20/40; how many of your opponents that you respect grind 20/40 as their sole source of income? I can only think of one (a couple more I don't respect seem to manage to grind 20/40 anyway... still its not many). Everyone else that I respect has other sources of income, whether from a business, playing online or plays higher.

Actually you can't since the standard for live fullring games is 10BB per hour.

My biggest downswing was 75BB in about 40 hours. That messed with my head pretty bad but I learned from it.

I randomize my times since I work. I try to play when I feel my best and I can focus.

My bankroll for poker is tied into my salary. I just save it and buy things I need. I'm not much of an ignorant spender.

The games run daily where I play and so I'm not concerned about travel just yet. I don't see much chance the games will dry up soon, but who knows?

600 hours. I calculated I get on average 35 hands per hour live. I've also logged over 100k hands playing HU limit online with about 50k or so 6max and fullring. I ran at about 2bb/100 hu and slightly over 1bb/100 with 6max and fullring.

I use StatKing.

I notice 1 player who playes near optimal winning or losing and I know another who plays well but plays tired and and sometimes gets into predicable patterns. I think you know who I mean if you play at the Borgata.

I think this really comes down to you. How much do you like playing poker? Enough to play 40hrs/week? Can you deal with losing for 2-3months in a row? Do you enjoy your current job? How much money do you need to make to live the lifestyle you want? etc..
It seems that you're alomst certainly a winning player and should be able to support yourself unless you have an extravagant lifestyle, so whether you decide to play professionally should simply be a matter of personal preference and convenience.

I would prefer to be over rolled to just play. I'm finishing school right now and I think I would have a better chance to play and learn as instead of working,playing and learning. My current job is not my career so I really don't mind quiting it.

I was really trying to find out if there is a higher level of thought about poker that would help me quantify my abiltiy to support myself other then just the standard "you need to play a super large sample". I agree some people playing live can just run well for a long period of time. Thats why I was looking to see if there was other ways to tell if I was ready. (different levels of thinging other then standard preflop play and postflop play). If anyone is interested in advancing their knowledge of poker and disscussing it, pm me and we can constructively debate and advance. I'm also looking to learn all forms of PLO. (HU 6max and fullring.)

Also, if anyone wants to talk in person I go to the Borgata weekly.

This is hugely eye-opening. Thank you for your post.