I don't know **** about trading (and this might not apply to day trading probably), but I was wondering... Can't you just look up what a good trader buys/sells and copy him/her (AKA buy/sell the same)? Or it's all done privately (so, you know X amount of Z stock have been bough/sold but there is no way of knowing who did it), or the market moves so fast that the delay between know what the guy did and you doing it would kill your profits (that might be true for day trading but maybe not for long-ish term trading)

EDIT: Also, just read in this thread about 'beating the hedge fund algorithms' and 'skills that differentiate you from other traders', is trading like poker? A zero-sum game where someone has to loose in order to other make profit? Didn't know that...
This might be going too far, but can you 'target the fishes' in trading (exploit their mistakes)?

A predictable and profitable daytrade is possible. Becoming a daytrader as your sole source of income is usually the fallacy. You can't make a living waiting for perfect trades, it's like waiting for aces and getting blinded away. What ends up happening is full-time day-traders end up just doing the equivalent of playing trash hands and losing on the rake.

My father is a former broker and I am a professional poker player. I am probably one of the most qualified types to get into this game outside of obvious finance people (ie me being off the street). Him and I are profitable at this point, but I am lightyears from doing this on my own.

painful but true

nowadays I am hearing there are super computers who are day traders, and day trader now has to beat the super computers who can take +ev decisions in less than micro seconds and trades executed almost instantly, they hedge their bets and are impossible to beat,
hence rumorly many successful pro old day traders are broke and driving taxis.

I quit my job with my father, and i was winning like $350-$400/month.
I used to play nl10 for 2 years, nl25 for 6 months, a lot of mtts/sngs and husngs (live and online) and i consider myself a good player.

I'm here to ask for help, i really need to make $400+/month exclusive from poker. I have $500 of bankroll. I want to play at least 5-6 hours a day. What should i play to make that money?
Some friends are saying to play 2,50 sng 180p or $7 Husng until i make a good bankroll to grind MTTS.

Thank you for your time.

NL5 SH
100k hands

winning rate 5 bb/100 plus some rakeback

Never sngs or mtt's. Just grind 5NL if you are a consistent winner for variance free $. I'd advise you to not make poker your main income tho.

If you're needing to ask this you probably shouldn't have quit your job

Please read this thread from the beginning, many people have had the same idea as you.

In all fairness though, you would almost certainly be better advised to just get another job.

Some of the beat advice I read about going pro was to make sure that you have at least a whole year's worth of living expenses in the bank before you quit your job.
Do you have that?
Bankroll management is key to playing poker professionally.
The standard advice is to only enter a MTT using 1% of your bankroll. In your case. Max $5
Only enter a STT with 2% of your bank roll. In your case $10
Only buy into a NL cash game for 5% of your bankroll. Your case $25
And a Limit cash to need 300 Big Bets. So you'll need to play in 0.5/1 limit games.

On top of this you have you factor in your risk of ruin. If poker is your only income you have no way to top up your bankroll if you lose it. The best thing to do is at least double your requirements.

That said let's use the original requirements and calculate your potential winnings starting with a bankroll of $500.

You play the 25NL cash tables like a demon and you play 1,000,000* hands in a year. Let's say you are crushing with a win rate of 2bb/100 you will make $5000 a year of $416 a month. Sounds good but you need to be crushing and playing 1,000,000 hands a year. That's a very tall order. You will need to play 2750 hands a day and be winning at a storming rate at the same time. Additionally, you will be running on a tight bankroll that you can't top up so all the while you will have the risk of ruin hanging over you ever time you have a down swing. This is also averaged out over a year. I your losing months, and you will have them, you'll have no money.

As for MTT and STT the swings will kill you. They can be very difficult to predict. You could go a year with out winning a MMT. What are you going to live on? During that year.

Your best bet with your bankroll if you are serious about this are the Limit Tables. You can buy in bigger and the swings will be smaller. If you played 1,000,000 hands a year. For the sake of comparison. At the 0.5/1 level and winning 2BB/100 (this is Big Bets per 100. It's different in Limit) you would make 20,000 that year. Which is 1,600 a month.


This is a very hard road to travel. Never forget your bankroll management.

My advice would be: Don't do it. Get another job. Build your bankroll with a safety net of employment. Save up a year's worth of living expenses. Then get a part time job. Work on your poker skills. Then if you are doing well, you have great savings and a solid bankroll. Drop the job and play professional poker for the year that your savings cover. If it doesn't work out no problem. Go back to school or learn another trade.

I don't say this to discourage you or to make any kind of suggestions or assumptions about your poker skills.
It is far to easy to go broke by jumping into professional poker before you are ready.

Good luck and Good Decisions.

{I was just keeping the maths simple by using 1,000,000 hands a year. It is a tall order}

I have $4.000-$5.500 to keep one year or use for something needed.
What about deposit a little more?

In what world is 2bb/100 considered a 'crushing' winrate?

You might have a point but I'm really not sure if there are truly many players out there that are beating the 25NL over a year's sample at more than 2bb/100. Year in Year out.

But you are perhaps right that crushing is the wrong word to use.

The players that have decent winrates at 25nl don't play it 'year in year out' though, they move up in stakes.

I've seen people in the PG+C forum post winrates of 7bb/100 at 200nl, 10bb/100 at 50nl etc, so for sure more than 2bb/100 at 25nl is possible over a large sample, it's just such players only play 30 or 40k hands of it then they move up.

Well, I will bow out to your superior knowledge and logic. (This is sincere not sarcasm. )

I am only concerned that young players will quit the day job without proper preparation and have expectations of maintaining large winrates.
If you plan to take a stab at going pro. Be prepared and have a down to earth expectation.

Most of all Bankroll Management.

Oh yeah the guy clearly shouldn't quit his job with the ambition of earning a whole $500 a month from poker (good luck trying to build a bankroll and cover monthly expenses with that).

And a $500 bankroll is nowhere near enough to play 25nl as a 'pro'. More like 4 or 5x that amount needed really. The 20-30 buyins BRM 'rule' applies more to people who can afford to drop down in stakes and rebuild when they have a few bad sessions. As a pro I'd want 100 buyins for the stake I play really (not that OP should go pro at 25nl anyway).

Hello 2+2,

I am a recent college graduate, 23 years old, and gainfully employed. I work for a fortune 200 company doing b2b sales. Guess what? It blows. I get no satisfaction in doing it. I'm now considering making a switch to something where I report to no one directly.

I'm hoping 2+2 can help.

In college I played a lot of micro-stakes NLHE mainly 2.50-5$ SNGs and 10NL. I was slightly better than break-even. I may have profited over the duration of playing maybe 500-1000$. I had almost no rake-back. I only played recreationally and never took learning and improving too seriously.

What I'm asking is for best practices in making a switch to playing poker as a full time job. What is the very best HUD to use? What is the best bankroll management practices? What are the best hours during the day to play? At what point should I hire a coach? Any advice that revolves around making this sort of switch I would really appreciate.

Also, any other recommendations for making money independently is welcomed, too.

Your focus should be on getting better than switching to a full time job, since that's a long way in your future.

I would suggest playing some SNGs and cash games and seeing which you like better. Try to focus on one of them. Go through this site and read articles. Actively study. Review your sessions.

HEM2 and PT4 are both good HUDs, either is a sound investment.

Best time of day to play is the one that works best for you. IMO you don't need to worry about maximising win rates at the detriment of your convenience until it's a job.

dgiharris has a thread in this forum on going pro, I suggest reading it.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that thread.

Do you have any daily, weekly, monthly goals to help keep you focused while your playing?

Before, I always seemed to have very big downswings after grinding up a pretty consistent win-rate. I think it was mainly from picking up bad habits I was unaware of during the upswings. I think having some sort of structure can help prevent that.

Don't expect to be able to go pro within the next 2-3 years.

No. I have no intention of making a job out of this though.

don't expect to go pro ever...but give it a shot anyway, who knows you might get lucky

Most players on here do NOT recommend playing for a living. Besides all the stress it is EXTREMELY hard. Im in the same boat as you though. Actually you are much better off than me because i am 21 and not going to college right now. As for a HUD you can use Holdem Manager or PokerTracker. Personally I like holdem manager.

As for bankroll management(something i need to seriously work on) 20 buy ins for cash game is the minimum. With 30-50 buy ins the money may not seem as valuable and you can focus on making the +EV play.

What site do you play on?

Get a job you don't hate / a job which you can tolerate which increases your freedom to do stuff you like more.

I'm not going to tell you not to play poker because it can be a fun hobby that you make money from (can also have horrible effects on you though and for most people the negatives outweigh positives) but you can get good at poker as a hobby whilst doing what I said in the first paragraph and trust me that will have much more positives than playing poker full time and if it turns out you're some sick poker player who loves it then you haven't lost anything.

Most people want to get into poker because their lives are boring/suck/whatever and not only is it not the answer for obvious reasons which get stated all the time in the "should i be a pro" thread it's an awful time for psychological reasons to get into poker.

I agree with the statement above. I played online poker back in 2005 and won 40K from $50 deposit. I was ballin and decided to not finish school. Luckily I had the discipline to quit poker and promise myself to not play until i graduate college. After college I got a job but hated it. Lucky for me I invested that 40K in stocks and its now over $150K plus I have savings from my corporate job. I'm now married and live in Las Vegas. I'm currently not working for anyone, but I do have a business that makes 25K per year and still making money day trading. Since I have a lot of free time I play poker somewhat professionally or at least think so. (I play 1/2 live and 20NL and 50NL online and myself $1500 per month regardless of results)

In 4-5 years, I'm hoping to have enough money save up to buy a franchise chipotle or starbucks and just play poker for fun. Either that or I change career to something I like.

From my experience if you want to be real poker pro treat it like a business/saving to buy a house. Start investing $100-$500 per pay check and set it aside for your Bankroll. Don't quit your job until you have at least 40K BR. Loosing and Break even months will kill you even if you're a winning player. BRM will only help you not bust your roll but you still have monthly expense to worry about.

Poker Pro lifestyle is not as glorious as you think. Why do you think more than 90% of poker "pros" are single and don't have family.