I think I'd rather bag groceries

It all depends on a lot of factors - do you drink? do you smoke? do you have a coke habit?

If you've quit smoking and drink very little these days(like me) then you will only need $$$ for food/rent/mortgage/internet bills and whatever other hobbies you have.

If you don't drink or smoke you'll need a lot less. I remember a time where I'd spend every single penny I had on beer, and I never had any money left at the end of the week.

And 125K hands is very ridic. I grinded 5K hands the other day playing 8 tables for 11hours. so even at that horrible rate it's 35K hands per week.
I genuinely think 125K is pretty impossible unless you 24 table.

It still is preferable for "bagging groceries" though. bagging groceries you will have to get up at 7am 5/6 days per week, arrive into work taking sh|t off some cockend fat a$$hole boss cause you're 10 minutes late, and in a large supermarket you're going to have countless "colleagues" that you don't get on with, with that nasty tense feeling when you're stuck with them in the break room.

Whats the most amount of hands you have ever put in in a single week before?

I have never put in a very high volume at cash games. I have 6 tabled the PLO cash games for short periods, and have 18 tabled 3-6.50 sngs. I do well for the amount of volume I have put in. I know that if you 8 table rush poker, you can play 140k hands in a month of PLO putting in less than 30 hours a week. I just don't know how likely it is to be profitable given the amount of rake I would be paying at that level. Is it more profitable to play less hands at PLO100? How soft are the games at each level? I prefer not to find out through trial and error! Dear God I would love to hear someone who has had some experience, rather than trolls like Zoogs. Seriously what a piece of **** that guy is!

~20k hands/day, 7 days a week! lol

How can people continue to be this stupid! 140k hands a MONTH... not per week. Dear Lord... anyone who has answered mocking the possibility of playing such a large volume of hands please tell me what site you play on, the game you play and what name you play under. I need to add you to my player search list!

Easily able to live off PLO25 or lower
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if you live with mom and dad.

i woudlnt suggest noone to grind PRO PLO25. u would get burned out after a month if u r lucky enough to last that long.
Anyone having the option to move up, they would, and play less hands and still make decent profit.

Was thinking about this a little more...

Assuming u operate out of a prudent BR for this stake seems like low stakes SnG's might be a better way of turning profit on this BR. I know a few people who whilst turning to playing full time grinding their little butts off playing $3.30 90mans and such to build a roll to take shots at 50/100 6max games. They found that they were able to make more $$$ initially of this BR playing this way...and at the end of the day its all about the benjamins, its fair enough to say play higher and win more (its also 100% correct lol) but he might not have the BR for it.

Just a thought, set urself a target # of 25plo hands p week and make the banjamins of SnG's.... idk but GL hope it goes well for ya

After taxes your $6k becomes like $3500, then add in the reality that you aren't going to make $1k/month every month, it becomes more like $2500. Subtract the added expenses of paying for your own benefits and insurance, it becomes even less. Factor in the eminent burnout associated with playing the same stakes on a constant basis (you can't take a break because your meager earnings as a "pro" prevent you from stashing money aside for necessary time away from the game) and it gets even worse.

Basically, it's possible to make a "living" playing PLO25 but it's a stupid aspiration. You can make a living playing $1/45 man SNG's but it's a terrible idea and it's certainly not threadworthy especially if you possess the modicum of intelligence necessary to operate a calculator or (LOL) use the search feature.

i play i-poker and ongame , my screename is amethyst(x) and i put between 50-70k hands per month.
but except poker i am a student (logistics) and a dj (2days per week).

if i would play only poker for a living i would put over 100k hands per month.
i am rolled for plo100 but since i am at exactly +0,02bb/100 over 200k hands at plo50 i find it a bad idea to move up and make some good money at plo50 from rakeback for greek standards.

Why doesn't your name show up on PTR? Also, not theoretically, but literally what have you received in rakeback? How much have you made total RB included playing 200k hands at PLO50? Thanks for the response man.

i have various screenames because i play at about 5-6 rooms.
my total winnings including rb are 11000$ and my total winnings excluding rakeback are 33$

That can be considered a true breakeven grinder. Well done

actually i don't like it when i open HEM and see my winnings to be +-0.
i would feel better if i would play plo25 and win something like 6-7BB/100 but my winnings including rakeback would be go down and after all its all about mAking $ right?

actually i am down 3000$ since 1st february so maybe i will be back to some positive stats in the future

Its all about $. Had some long breakeven stretches too, quite frustrating.

3000 $ down at PLO25 since february ??? Thats 120 BI . What went wrong ? Had a 55 BI downer last year. I almost killed myself (not really)....

i play plo50.
op was just asking about plo25

so its 60 BI at PLO50. Still nothing anyone wants to have on a regular basis. Hope you will get an upswing soon.

+4

good luck and report back after rush is over!

hmm...

plo25 has more or less payed my the past few months. And my apartment is in a decently nice Bay Area neighborhood, so it aint exactly cheap.
All my poker friends play higher, and Id be very confident playing plo100 not to mention 50, but I have to cash out regularly, so cant move up atm.
This is not something I aspired to, its simply the predicament Im in. Im doing what I gotta do, the same way the middle-aged guy who just delivered my pizza is doing what he has to do. I mean I doubt that hes living his childhood dream.

But yes, planning to play $25 anything as a longterm career just wouldnt make much sense and I doubt anyone in their right mind would think that way. But you could say the same thing about folding sweaters at the GAP. Yet somehow some people find themselves doing it for a much longer time than they planned.

dunno if any of that made any sense

Makes perfect sense to me, makes me laugh how 2p2 seems to be filled with students convinced they're going to be earning 100k+ per year once they leave school, and further more, they wouldnt even bother getting out of bed for less.

Imo, there's a lot of ignorance to what is going on in the world on this forum and it seems to show itself on threads like these all the time, im in the forces and know for a fact that there are people out there who go to war and kill for (much) less than some people round here make playing poker, tell some guy on the frontline in afghan that he can go home and make $4k per month playing poker and he'll snap your arm off for it, tell most of the college boys on here that they could make $40k+ per year playing poker and they'll laugh at you and tell you its not worth it.

There's a lot of people on here that are very wet behind the ears imo and although i wouldnt wish hardship on anybody i'd love to see them in 3 or 4 years once they've lived in the real world for a while, lets see if they would turn their noses up at $5k a month then.

Obv i don't really know what its like in the states with having to pay tax on poker earnings and no free healthcare etc, but i know for a FACT, an absolute FACT, that there are PLENTY of people in the uk who would love to make $5k (£3.3k) per month playing poker, including myself, my parents never made anywhere near that and we were comfortable, i earn £21k per year in the army, with a wife and 2 kids and we're comfortable too, so to hear some people say they'd only be happy making $5k per month if they were living in a 3rd world country is hilarious and completely out of touch with the world!

.............Although i do think that playing PLO25 for a living would be a grind to say the least!!

Yeah, the value of money is relative. I mean I'd never want to play poker for a living because I'm not convinced I'm good enough at it to earn more than I would by continuing with my current career. Also because I enjoy playing poker, and do it for fun, and would probably start to loathe the game after playing it full time for a year anyway. Especially at the micros. Christ.

There's also the issue of sustainabilitiy. The games are getting tougher at the moment, and unless half of china starts playing on stars within the next 5 years that trend is probably going to continue. Which will certainly negatively impact people's winrates. And then, when poker's no longer valuable as a career, what the hell are you going to put on your CV? this isn't to say that I don't have the utmost respect for people who make a living from the game, I just think it's a step you need to take very carefully and with a lot of forethought.

If you can make $30 an hour at poker in US then that translates into about $15-17 an hour from a real job that pays benefits. Anytime you play poker or run your own business you need to make more per hour than you would if you worked for someone else. Also poker can be brutal. I played NLH for a living after grad school and only way I could pass up that 33k a year job is if I was making 50k a year at poker and that's just for now. Then you got to look at your ability to make more in each spot over the rest of your lifetime. You need to know that when you're 55 years old you can afford a decent lifestyle and have decent retirement set up. If you are 18-25 you aren't thinking about this at all but I can guarantee you that by 30 it will start keeping you up at night.

Edit: For me to play poker over a career path I basically need about $75 an hour or more before taxes, IRA, health and life insurance, etc. And let's not also forget how ****ty the job market is right now. I've been looking for quite a few months and I've got close to hired but still can't seal the deal. In 2007 I would get an interview for every application. U6 unemployment in US is really high. Like 20% or more are either out of work or working part time or not showing up on unemployment.

Yeah, and with large scale unemployment not a lot of people have money to splash around on poker tables.

How bout playing poker as a sort of part time second job? Take me for example I work 30 hours per week, if I played 1-2 hours per night playing plo25, how much extra money could I make on average?

Also how vital is rakeback to long term profit?