Great thread, really appreciate your contributions and thoughtful answers.

What do you tell people you do? Have you experienced judgment and stigma as a poker pro?

I currently have a business thanks to family connections but I used to play pro and always had a hard time telling people what I did, such as on dates, at parties, and talking to relatives. Few people seem genuinely interested and many seem to think “that sounds degenerate” and “what a waste of life”. That was part of why I quit, but I was of course also fortunate enough to have other options given to me by family.

I play the pipe organ

1 do games above 2/5 regularly spread where you primarily play? if so, then what keeps you from playing them?

furthermore, what would you say were the barriers that you were able to cross going from 1-2 to 2-5 that you aren't willing/trying to cross at 5/T+ and how much of a gap is there between 1-2 to 2-5 to 5-T?



2 have you looked into other forms of advantage gambling?



3 what aspects or study (you don't need to get into specifics if you don't want to burn an edge, but i'd prefer a "no comment" to some bs) did you undertake that you think helped your game the most



4 what do you tell people you do when they ask you for the first time




as far as options for transitions, i agree very much with spyu's sales suggestion - that's a line of work that can pay very well to those who excel at it and since it's often mostly commission basis the barrier to breaking into it is lower than other careers as taking a chance on someone and whiffing isn't too costly - for a lot of companies, the highest paid people are their top salesmen because their earnings are uncapped and they are usually appreciated more by the higher ups because what they bring in is tangible - what joe the engineer or laura the marketer actually contribute is unknown but the sales guy who decided to cold contact a prospective enterprise sale and bring in a 6 figures of sales from them each month is going to get all the credit

Best post I've read in this thread so far.

It's obviously true of any clock-in/clock-out job, but those also come with the advantages of a clock-in/clock-out job.

Poker is one of those jobs where the time, effort and resources that go into physically being at the "office" doing the "job" itself is only the tip of the iceberg. There's all the studying, travel, networking, and of course the amount of capital parked in your bankroll.

But even just the tip of the iceberg requires you to be clocked in for 1000+ hours a year with less-than-astronomical-potential for your rate in most any realistic setting.

It's like a clock-in / never clock out job? Hotel California ass occupation.

Sorry, I guess I should have a question. This part of OP jumped out to me the most:

"Prior to these casino ventures, I was working quite a lot of hours at multiple low paying jobs and just hustling for anywhere from 50-80 hours a week."

Would it be accurate to say you have a greater-than-average work ethic, particularly compared to other live pros? Was the adjustment to the poker work routine a tough adjustment, a breath of fresh air, or more of the same?

How "in control" of your success do you feel? Do you always feel like you can grind/study through any rough patches, or does existential tilt start to creep in at all during breakeven stretches?

Outside of poker, I’m almost always honest. Like with my girl’s family, I always am very forthcoming, answer their inevitable questions, and almost always they are interested in and happy with what I have to say. I’ve always been pretty good at articulating what I do, how I derive an edge, how cash games aren’t really that swingy relative to my net worth, and so on.

In the poker room, I’m played around with lying, but honestly I play with the same people all the time, they know after a while that I have to be a pro. So for many years now, I’ve gone with honesty, and I try to just change the subject or get them to not harp on it.

Occasionally someone will really latch on and ask a bunch of questions, and I just answer them politely and (fairly) honestly.


Public games above 2/5 run “sometimes” but certainly not regularly. And I do play them some now! I’ve probably played a few hundred hours of 5/10 in the last few years. Not crazy volume, but I have no issues jumping in a game

The problem is, a fair percentage of the time, I’ll look at the lineup and it really isn’t that good. On a given day, I might estimate that my hourly would be about the same in the 5/10 as it is in 2/5, but with probably 4-7x the swings.

There’s an argument for just always getting in there, battling, and trying to push myself and my career as much as possible, but sometimes, it’s just as simple as “I don’t feel like leaving a 2/5 game with 6 fish to go battle the other 4-5 best regs in the room”


As for 1/2 to 2/5, I never really ran into any hiccups. It felt like 2/5 players were almost as bad as at 1/2, and I crushed pretty much as soon as I moved up. Certainly there are more regs, but overall the fish are still really bad, and the rake isn’t as soul crushing at 2/5 as it is in lower games.

But at 5/10, it’s pretty common for half, or more than half, of the seats to be taken by people who have pretty solid strategies. They’ll have leaks and imbalances, sure, but the skill gulf between 2/5 and 5/10 has always seemed massive to me, on average

Obviously sometimes an amazing 5/10 game consisting of mostly 2/5 whales pops off, and of course I’m in there if I can get a seat!

2. I’ve never seriously looked at other forms of AP. I know for card counting you need a massive roll and it’s still a small edge, and all the other little hustles that I’ve heard about over the years just never interested me.

3. I think I’ve definitely given some insight ITT on this. It’s hard to point to 1 or 2 specific things that really revolutionized my game. I’ll try to give a few bullet points off the cuff here

-Earlier in my career, just talking tons and tons of hands with people at my level, or a little better, helped me to understand different ways of looking at the game (even some that I thought were flawed) and I fixed plenty of leaks this way.

-I haven’t done extensive solver work, but I’ve definitely done SOME, and I think that was helpful for really understanding what proper strategy looks like at equilibrium, and it helped to shape my thoughts on *why* I make such drastic deviations at live 2/5. It also helped me a lot in choosing sizings based on different textures. I remember watching a bunch of Nick Petrangelo videos years ago that were pretty eye opening

-Understanding what you’re targeting and what you’re trying to accomplish with every decision point you make. It sounds super simple, but a surprisingly small percentage of players, even winning players, can coherently explain why they made all of their decisions. Quiz yourself on some of your murkier spots and see how well you can make sense of your actions.

4. As I said to the first guy, I generally opt for honesty these days!



I think my work ethic is above average, but not crazy. Most years over the last 7 or so, I’ve definitely averaged less than 40 hours a week playing.

Poker has completely and utterly changed my life. The jobs I worked before were bad jobs for little money, and I am full of gratitude for finding this path.

I believe I would’ve found my way in something else eventually, but poker success came to me quite expediently.

I feel very in control of my success. The only time that wavers is if I play a lot of tournament volume. Tournaments are a completely different animal, especially if you’re playing big fields, I’m pretty confident in saying I will never fully rely on tournaments for money.

With cash, 2/5 and even 5/10 downswings constitute such a low % of my net worth that they really just don’t bother me.

If you make good money over 10-15 years and invest diligently and intelligently, you should be on a path to being a millionaire. My s/o and I are on that path, so downswinging a handful of buy ins is just no big deal at all.

Also, without trying to sound like a braggart, I crush these 2/5 games so hard that any kind of losing or break even stretch is exceedingly rare 😃

thanks - very interesting

i don't play much anymore but it was abroad where games were always really deep with either microstakes available at home games (most home or bar games were the equivalent of 0.10/0.20 blind but people still bought in for $300 but then when people played higher it'd be like $10/$20 so i never experienced the process of moving up in stakes but instead just playing whatever was availabe in lineups that i thought i could beat and that often meant borrowing money from someone to cover the buyin one night at a 25/50 game at someone's apartment where if i had a bad session i'd be in a terrible situation followed by a .10/.20 game the next night at a bar

i always struggled with telling people what i did, mostly because they didn't believe me because i'm such a space cadet irl that most people thought it was a cover and i was just some trust fund kid dumping his parent's money - much like how nik airball, alan keating, bilzerian, and helloitslynne profess to be professional poker players but everyone is convinced he's a rich trust fund guy just losing his parent's money but unlike with me they actually are just trust fund kids living out a fantasy and dumping piles

Is being a poker pro really something trust fund kids fantasize about being? I am sort of a trust fund kid but poker pro seems to be something that’s always been looked down on in my circles like it’s something shady. I know of drug dealers who pretend to be poker pros to wash their cash but not trust fund kids especially not ones from a good background.

1.3% of americans do not need to work due to having a trust fund - that seems like a very small number but think about how many doctors you know and then realize that's more people than there are doctors

now many of them still work and live normal lives because that's how they want to live, but many don't and become the idle rich



the idle rich don't ever want to say at social gatherings "i don't do anything" as that's really embarrassing, so they'll often lean heavily into a hobby as their identity





you'll hear someone tell you "i'm a photographer" and they'll show you their work where they went to the amazon for one shoot, an active volcano for another, then egypt and north pole - but even they are selling their photos, it's not enough to cover their travel expenses to get those shots and they are selling them just for the brand recognition they get when they can say at the party I had the nat geo march cover photo last year

they are not going to introduce themselves as "i don't need to work but i really like traveling and taking interesting photos"





so a lot of the idle rich who are drawn to gambling and casinos will try to parlay that into "i'm a professional" in order to save face and some do a very good job of it - take allan kessler, someone who lives off his multi-millionaire sister and loses money every single year



but because he presents himself not as a degen loser scumming off his wealthy sister but as a professional poker player he gets a lot of podcast invites and articles written about him - he can go to a party and tell people he's an advantage gambler and people who look it up casually will be fooled


so obviously when the choice is "i'm an unemployed degenerate scumming off my family" vs "i'm a professional poker player" you know which one they'll take every time



also, poker is obviously not the norm, the most common variants are artists, ngo/charity, and academia, etc


this doesn't mean that some drug dealers etc don't also try to use poker as a way to hide their true source of income and perhaps nik airball is actually the meth king of southern california and not just a trust fund brat cosplaying as something else

Based on your answer here and your prior declaration of living in the East, you either don't live in the Northeast or made a great effort at disguising the fact that you do live there. Somehow I'm leaning towards the latter. So. How are the 2/5 games in Atlantic City, Foxwoods, and/or other spots in New England, Live Pro?

You’re correct that I don’t want my exact location to be public. I will concede that I’ve played in the New England states very little, my only times in AC were during tournament series, and during those times, I found the cash to be pretty good at Borgata

whats the place in USA to live if u want to access nature like real forest , real lakes , etc. and requirement is to be able play holdem at a casino. Ideally 2/5 running daily and not like too much of small town vibe (not sure if small town vibe is bad in usa) but like foreigner friendly etc. job opportunities and so on . No need to be big city either! Cold climate is okay . As long as not like super hot / humid .

The first place that jumps out in my mind is Black Hawk, Colorado. I know you said no small town vibe, but you’re like 40 minutes from Denver, it’s possible you could find somewhere in between the two (I’m not intimately familiar with the area, even though I’ve been there a couple times). I understand the 2/5 is soft, and Colorado is beautiful, it’s one of THE states for outdoor stuff obv

My second answer is any number of places in Cali. Another spectacular state for outdoorsy stuff, with just tons of 2/5 and 5/10 in the decent rooms throughout the state. Rake is higher, CoL is higher, but the players are bad enough to mitigate it. Playing 5/10 in Cali feels a lot like 2/5 in other parts of the country

You might have more options in the Pacific Northwest but unfortunately I don’t really know much about that region

Thank you so much!

Amazing thread! I was really inspired by your story. I have a few direct questions that could help me a lot on my journey:

Have you ever considered getting staked to play higher limits in private games? With your win rate, I imagine it wouldn’t be difficult to find backers.

Have you always been this disciplined, or did you ever have any ‘degen’ leaks in the past (like gambling, drugs, or women)? Do you know any succesfull long term reg with bit outside of poker leaks?

Do you ever feel conflicted about taking advantage of losing players? I recently developed a stronger connection to my religion, and I sometimes struggle internally with seeing clear gambling addicts lose their money consistently while winning players take advantage from it. Have you ever thought about this side of the dark side of poker?

Yeah I’ve certainly considered it. I actually think it’s perhaps something I should have pursued earlier in my career.

I think what kept me from doing it was a combination of simply wanting all my own action (not answering to somebody else) and also humility about my skills as a player. I had doubts about my ability to beat big games. These doubts were fueled by running very poorly in the few times I jumped into juicer big games.

In hindsight, I think I probably would have done well if I had taken shots and had people put me in games that were bigger than 5/10

It’s not a big regret though, I have to say I’m pleased with how my career has panned out. I have good financial security and am steadily on my way to complete financial independence.

When it comes to money and frugality, I’ve always been disciplined. I have other areas of my life where I woefully lack discipline.

I feel bad sometimes, especially when I know somebody is really degen, or sometimes when I see guys who I know have young kids at home just spending every night at the casino dumping their money, but everybody is free to do what they want, there are plenty of jobs besides poker where you aren’t really “benefitting society”, and most people are not like this, they have the money to spare and they lose it somewhat responsibly.

Yeah I wouldn’t mind a purer job sometimes, and perhaps later in life I will have them, but there are many horrors in this world, and the vast majority of us don’t do much to make the world a better place, so I can’t give myself too much flack as a poker player. I believe I am doing some good in my personal life (which I deliberately haven’t gotten into to much in this thread)

Your winnings are very impressive. I want to know how you deal with controlling your 'going on tilt' times. Do you play a pretty much stable game or do you ever lose control when down money at a session/game and decide to start tilting or gambling. I assume you have this in check for the most part given your incredible achievements to date.

thanks,

Tilt is essentially not a thing for me at 2/5. I honestly don’t think I’ve been perturbed a single time this entire year or last year to a level that would affect my play. I win at such a high rate, and my net worth has grown over the years to a level where 2/5 swings, bad players hitting 2 outers on me, and stuff like that, just don’t even register anymore.

That’s not to say I am totally emotionless, I think an easy example of something that would mildly annoy me is if I’m up a good amount all session, and at the very end I get dusted and end up even or down on the day. But “mildly annoyed” is the key, and I wouldn’t say I play any differently.

When I play bigger, I find that I am absolutely more emotional, and that’s a hard thing to control. Just focusing on strategy, and perhaps playing a pip or 2 tighter in a lot of positions, to make sure that I’m not getting out of line, is all I ever do.

If I ever find myself so irritated that I think my judgement is clouded, I will step away from the table for a bit, or if it’s a mediocre game anyways, I’ll just leave. It’s rare, but I’ve done that at 5/10 in the last couple years

Do you think your win rate varies by locale? Do you believe (or know) if your bb/hr is higher at your home room? I would guess yes, because you know the player pool so much better than when you travel (keyword is guess)?

If you're an unicorn overall then don't you really stick out in your home room? Don't the other regs know how to play you back? Or why don't they?

How would you rate the quality of an average reg this year versus 5 or 10 years ago?

Great thread, thanks. Your ability to be uber consistent and beat rake and tips for an actual liveable rate is really impressive.

[No reply to this: I'll guess Baltimore.]

I think my win rate does vary by locale, but it has less to do with having reads on people, and more to do with just the skill level in the room. I think there are rooms, and regions in the country, that are far, far softer than others. I happen to think I’m in one of the better regions in the country.

For sure I stick out like a sore thumb after a while in my main room(s)

I’ll say this: I have moved around a few times in the last decade, so my “main room” has changed a few times. If I had stayed in the same room this whole time, I definitely think a lot of the player pool would be “over it” haha, especially some of the smaller rooms I’ve been in.

I am “medium” social and friendly. I’m definitely not the life of a game, but I talk a bit, crack jokes, talk **** to the right people, etc.. so think people I play with generally like me, which goes a long way in people being tolerant of losing their money over time.

Having said that, in the room I’ve made home the last several years, I’m quite confident there isn’t a single 2/5 player that elicits more table changes than I do lol. I don’t mind it when it’s regs because that seat usually just gets filled with a worse player, but it does sting when a whale decides to stop playing with me.

All I’ll say about Baltimore is I’ve played there (Md Live and Shoe) and it’s a good region! It was even better before DC opened

Long time listener. First time caller.
Great thread. Thank you!

Two questions:

1) What do you think was your biggest breakthrough learning moment as far as strategy goes?

2) At 2/5 do you think you bluff optimally or more/less than optimal?

Thanks and sorry if we weren't supposed to ask strat questions (I didn't see any in the thread).

1. I think I’ve probably tried to answer this a couple times in this thread. Hard to pick one. Probably learning what baseline strategy in a two blind cash game actually looks like (super tight), and then extrapolating from that how and why I am allowed (able) to play so much looser than that. The answer is of course because the population plays far too loose and passively. For example, you can easily open 55 or KJo profitably from EP in most 2/5 games, but in a tough game those are pure folds. You’re gonna be wide open for 3 bets and also people won’t be flatting with dominated junk in tough games.

I also had big aha moments in tourneys when learning how significantly bubble and ICM dictates how tight and loose you are, depending on what stage of the tourney you’re in, and what relative stack sizes are. I’m mostly a cash player but gaining proficiency in tourneys was really fun.

2. I hope I bluff pretty close to optimally. If I didn’t think so, then I should probably adjust right?

There are definitely player types who I will go for it a little more, if I think they reliably fold to a lot of pressure (top pair, even overpairs reliably folding on certain boards) , and then other players against whom I only really go for high efficiency bluffs because they are just such stations (like if I have 7 high when I missed my open ender and I can try to bluff out queen high and king high)

People like to say “never bluff a station”. This statement lacks nuance. You should have bluffs against every player, the range just really constricts if you have some dope calling off with 4th pair on a wet board facing multiple bets. Against someone like that, your bluffs should be hands that have absolutely zero showdown value, and hopefully good removal, and then you should have a very robust value range to exploit all their loose calls