I have a question for you guys about career management. I play in a small player pool where there are a lot of really strong NL regulars that are better than me, a few huge whales, and some semi fish. Because the player pool is small, there may be 5 or 6 tables running at peak times and at off peak times like 3-6am maybe 0 or 1 tables so a random fish may sit you hu. For PLO, there's a smaller number of games running, but there are some bad regs, maybe 2 or 3 sharks in the whole pool and a decent number of big whales and semi fish.

For the past 2 years I've been playing professionally and have a 633K sample with an overall winrate of 5.63 bb/100
At holdem my overall winrate is 9.3bb/100 over 362K hands and its 10.5 at HU over 124K hands
For PLO my winrate is 1.15 over 262K hands
over 84k hands with 4-6 players on the table my winrate is 9.8 and hu over 123K hands my winrate is -4.5 bb/100.

Because of the small player pool a lot of the plo games are hu and 3 handed and I feel as though these are the better games because the opponents are mostly fish , but theres a lot of variance in these games and my results arent good yet although I'm putting my focus in improving on this format. Also I see my winrate is much higher at holdem yet lately it feels like every holdem table has 4 or 5 sharks that are way better than me, they know gto too well, but PLO seems like a bunch of fishy loose players so I dont feel comfortable playing holdem lately unless its hu vs a fish.
One interesting thing also is that my winrate is 2 times higher at 2/4 to 5/10 than it is at 1/ 2. I think in my player pool there are more grinders at low stakes and random fish taking shots at high stakes. Whats the best way to manage this given I have a 40k roll, need to cash out 8k a month and want to find the sweet spot between taking too much risk and maximizing reward. I generally have just been playing any tables up to 5/10 if I think I have an edge even though this is risky.

In general whats the best way to navigate the waters of cash games given there are so many different ways to go about it, hu, 6 max, plo, nl. What are some good table selection methods or table rejection. I've been noticing that sometimes when you put your name on too many tables across different sites you get bombarded with too many tables then you just autopilot and its hard to get rid of some tables if you think you have an edge. What do you guys think the sweet spot for all of this is. On the surface it looks soo easy some months you can make 30K and the money is flowing, the players seem bad, but overall its about long term yearly profits which haven't been so great, so what kind of mindsets and daily strategies are best to make sure we are focusing on the most profitable situations. How do you incorporate study and getting better into your career. Thanks

There are alot of general questions in there, so I'll give you some general answers as to how I think it is.
- Having a solely poker carreer is risky.
- Playing 5/10 with 40k seems underrolled to me, especially if you live off of it, 20BI downswings occur frequenly (yearly?) I would say.
- shorter handed increases variance whereas 6+max decreases it.

Perform table selection and determine the amount of tables to how the field is. I would aim for around 6 tables to play your A game, if there are alot of fish, you could play more.
Also note that 4 HU tables is more intensive than 8 6max tables (obviously).
Lastly, don't get cought up on your winrate as a given, it may change at any time.

Tl;dr: Wtf are you doing with 8k a month? Build a ~100k bankroll so you can comfortably play 1knl for a living and keep improving.

Seriously dude, I would have a heart attack with a 40k roll playing 1knl. I have a 40k roll and I play 200nl/500nl with occasional shots at 1k, but I'm definitely not rolled to play it full time.

Also, how do you need 8k a month and only have a 40k roll? When you lose 10k in a month, what do you do? Do you have kids? Do you own a few properties with mortgages? Are your student loan repayments 5k/month? I couldn't spend 8k/month if I tried

Lol wel I play 5/ 10 sometimes if I see fish on the table but I mainly play 400 or 500 nl or plo. I dont have any kids just some loans, My real monthly nut is around 6k but I want to make 8k or more so that I can build up 6 months worth of living expenses plus I have to pay taxes at the end of the year.

I've pretty much burned my bridges I was in corporate america for 9 years and I've been full time with poker for 2 years and I cant imagine going back so I need to make this work. Something I'm doing definitely isnt working I'm making money and I know I have an edge but I need to do something different maybe more study and play more professionally rather than doing whatever feels good. Any ideas on how to be more professional how to put in the hours better structure.

Any ideas on the best time to actually play. I see less regs on early morning, but would having just 2 or 3 fish to yourself at 2/5 a day be enough to make a living or is it necessary to grind the reg infested tables with 1 or 2 fish around?

Spending 8k a month while having a 40k roll is guaranteed to end in bankruptcy.

Live off 1k a month
Spend 1k a month on coaching
Save and invest 6k a month or keep it in the roll if you need to grow it

Never assume your past results indicate future results. You will run horribly eventually. This is partly unavoidable statistics; people are turned pro have largely run career-hot to allow them to make that choice, so they are used to above average runs. For you that means in clear: the past two years you have likely been way more lucky in terms of card run than your next two years will be.

Optimal bankroll management is hard to generalize but 40 buyins is absolutely crazy aggro and only possible if you are a clear crusher who doesn't mind swings or moving down. As a serious full time player, not a gambler, you should have at least 100 buyins to play a limit, preferably 200.

This. Literally almost 100% risk of ruin. Ideally you should have (MINIMUM) 100bi + 6-12 months living expenses if you want to be able to comfortably rely on poker as your sole source of income.

Otherwise you will always be flirting with disaster (which will effect your ability to play), and eventually disaster will strike. Also I'm thinking NL not PLO which as you know will increase your variance substantially.

Thanks for the feedback, yeah I took too much risk and didnt have a total professional attitude toward things just played when I wanted and took too many shots at high stakes PLO. The one good thing I have is a 714K sample showing a holdem winrate of 7.25bb/100 over 4 years winning 80 dollars an hour at NL , and a past 2 years winrate of 9.27 of 360K hands of NL and this is while mixing in a lot of PLO tables with the holdem so maybe if I just focus on holdem the winrate and hourly can go up dramatically.

Assuming a winrate of 10 bb/100 and lets say hourly of 100 dollars an hour and standard deviation of 111 and say I were to play 30 hours a week that means I should be making over 12K a month, and say I cash out 7k per month that would mean that my winrate of money being added to the roll would be something like 4 bb/100 since I'm cashing out 6 bb/100 of the profits. The pokerdope calculator is showing a 4 bb/100 winrate and std 111 so I'd need 4614 BB for a 5% chance of ruin so say avg buyin is 500 thats around 23K and I have almost double that.

Does this sound realistic or am I deluding myself. I see that the key is avoiding downswings so any ideas on things I can do to reduce my variance going forward. As an example I realized I made a check raise vs a good player with a king high flush draw on the flop when I should have just called as I have some showdown value with king high. What are good ways to reduce variance without giving up too much EV?

Also any ideas on game rejection and game selection like should I sit online all day and wait for a hu game vs a bad player or like say I"m playing a bad player and 2 good players come is it best to just leave to avoid the variance. I play in a small player pool so I've noticed there are times like 4 am when a random guy sits you hu and these games have been very profitable, but then I've given money away in other spots like when the reg comes I might stack off with top pair in a 3 bet pot etc. Thanks for the advice.

I think your simulation and numbers and all sounds good.

Only technicality is that 5% ROR is both crazy high (it's more than a chance or turning a set) and not realistic (because you drop down stakes once you have less money, you never hit actual ruin)



But your numbers and ideas suffer from the "everything will go according to plan" syndrome. Sure, if you are healthy, full of energy, and fish show up daily, this is correct. But if you get sick? What if you are demotivated because of bad run or because of non-poker stuff? What if your games dry up around holidays?

Like there are so many things that can (and some will) go wrong. Planning with 10bb/100 as $100/hour for 30hours a week is certainly realistic if things go according to plan. But eventually they don't.