Do u guys think its posible to grind 80hours weeks for months ? or are rest days mandatory for the brain ?

Grind= Playing + studying and daily exercise(30-45min) for better recovery

It’s possible short term, although it doesn’t sound sustainable or healthy.

I did a 80 hour month once. Would not recommend

i always collapse when i megagrind

Not saying good or healthy, but I did it in my job (before retired) several times for 2 to 3 months. Then again, I averaged 60+ hr/wk for the last 20 yr of career. To me that wasn't a grind as I REALLY LOVED my work (would still be doing it except "people and mgmt" changed. But while more challenging than poker it was also (to me) much more fun.

what kind of job ? im wondering about very brain challenging jobs, i think physical jobs it can be more easy

Elon musk said that he went from 70-80hr to 120hr weeks for motnhs

Investment banking is a profession where most average 80-100 hours per week for the first few years. They even had to pass a law to force them not cap weekly hours to 80. They pay well too if you are interested in 80+ hour work weeks.

Ya online but Im a massive degen and luckily dont support myself solely from poker as I have investments that give me passive income etc.

Engineering with finance involvement. Was making many 8 figure decisions. Think similar to back office decisions to drive commodity trading.

Definitely not physical. Very brain challenging because when something did not make immediate sense, we did not implement the decision until we understood the why and finding out the why depended on very deep knowledge of the underlying processes.

From a very young age, I recognized I was the type of person where I could bury myself in a project regardless of cost. 120 hour work weeks? No problem. Stay awake for 50+ hours? Easy.

I thrived in those situations. Part of it was my personality, in that I would get engrossed in whatever consumed me, part of it was my one track mind.

That said, poker helped me realize that I could do such stuff as long as there was a goal or deadline or a specific predetermined end.

Put me on a project that had to be finished by X date? I would do whatever it took until X date. I would go to Vegas for 7 days determined to play poker as much as possible and I would play 140+ hours out of 168 hours.

I could do anything as long as there was a predefined endpoint.

Then one time I went out to Vegas for a few months. I had no schedule or deadline. I was there to play poker as much as I wanted. I struggled to figure it out. I would play 40+ hours in a row (I had no where else to be....), I found that my play suffered after playing long periods (Duh.....). I never knew when to stop playing.

Point is, if I had a predefined end point, I could push through and be 100% for that period and do well. Without an endpoint, I didn't know how to pace myself. I couldn't just play 8 hours a day for 5 days a week, that isn't my style. I am either 100% engaged regardless of time period or I am not. Restricting myself to 8 hours a day would cause me to lose focus because I wasn't fully engaged. I felt like I was just passing time. I literally need a deadline/goal. Even if it requires nutty hours.

The ultimate point is you need to know yourself. You need to know what you can and cannot do. What are the factors that make you most focused and when are you just mailing it in to put in hours.

Inspiring, i think the same about go all in or i feel like im wasting my time doing things on a half, i dont find joy on it

I will definitely test 100hour weeks, the key is to find something that i can do it for months and even for years, maybe 70-80hrs hour weeks is something that can be done.

Im talking about doing it while masstabling, not playing 4 tables and watching a movie in the 2nd monitor. and trying to get the best quality of study u can, not random **** watching a video, etc, hard work

Does it count if I take 10 minute smoke breaks every half hour and only play 2 hands per hour while I spend the rest of my time at the table swiping right on Tinder? I clock 400 hours a month since I never match on Tinder.

I know someone who played over 3600 hours last year, he is a massive nit playing live low stakes and has even been kicked out for sleeping at the table.
Bet he would win more playing 2k hours and not being a disgusting nit learning how to actually play poker.
I do admire the grind a bit though, there was a rakeback promotion at one of the casinos for most hours and heard he played a 80+ hour session, went to bed for 8 hrs then played another 80+ session when he woke up.

That's about 11:30 hours per day. I would say it's possible for a few months, then you will want to rest so bad.

I used to play like that during some promotions and Covid quarantine. Resting was to pleasant haha.

I recommend playing until you feel you are losing focus/getting tired.

Yeah but you get burned out and then want to do nothing so it just evens itself out.

If u get paid per hr and taxes aren't an issue it can make sense to push sometimes for high amount but with poker mostly its not the case.

I play full time probably 300 hours a month, 70+ hours or so a week, 7 days a week. I’m almost 37. Have been playing increasing volume every year for 5-6 years. It can become quite exhausting and I can become extremely irritable and unhappy, especially when losing. It’s harder to enjoy life. My life is mainly just poker. I feel like I need to play even more to get out of the bad streak which doesn’t help either. I really don’t have time for much else. I might exercise a little every day and visit my family once a week or so and go on the occasional date but that’t about it. I don’t have a significant other or a family of my own. Not even a pet. I get plenty of sleep pretty much every night which I pat myself on the back for but that’s more of a mental health concern more than anything else. I don’t have routine hours though, often I play while the game is good and that means changing my sleep patterns regularly. (Oh and I hate the feeling of being sleep deprived during the day. It’s hell. And I probably play worse as a result.)

Also high volume impacts play quality when going on extended break even or downswings, remaining disciplined becomes harder, and the urge to gamble and take aggressive lines with hands you might ordinarily call with starts to grow.

My friend who is a great player complained the other night about how boring the game (plo) had become. Once you reach a certain level the intrigue of a new poker variant wears off and spots become routine. You don’t get any enjoyment out of it anymore. But you still get annoyed at losing. I have to play different games to stay engaged so I learned mixed games and still play hold em occasionally, usually when I can’t take losing at plo anymore.

For all my efforts I have a lot of money saved and my investment and retirement accounts are in great shape. In one day I can make what I make on a very good day of poker in passive income from my stock market returns. At this rate I will be able to retire comfortably hopefully after a few more years of playing as I have low costs of living and minimal expenses. I own my own home with an affordable mortgage and have a nice car. So I have made a good life for myself with all the sacrifices I made to the game and in my life.

But is it worth it?

The OP's suggestion that someone should do >twice the hours I do in my day job "grinding" poker seems like sixth level of hell sort of stuff

How many hands do u play monthly ?

Dont u take days completly off to rest the brain or they are not needed in your experience?

Didn't the years affect the ability to grind more hours?

Maybe 3,000-4,500 hands a month ... just a rough guess of around 10-15 hands per hour.

I rarely take days off. I wouldn't know what to do with my time off anyway. I went to the beach recently with my folks for a night, that was it this year. Sometimes I take poker trips for changes of scenery. I slept 12 hours last night, that's sorta half a day off.

You'd think getting into my 30s would impact stamina, but so far not a huge impact. Generally I start to tire around 12 hours into my session and at that point it's either coffee if I am buried and the game is good or I head home to sleep. I have noticed some minor cognitive issues like having a worse short-term memory and occasionally misreading my hand though.

I think better question is as you could retire at relatively young age and ur accustomed to work basically all ur waking hrs then how do you replace that when ur suddenly no more working?

Imo. start to live Now take a break travel somewhere u haven't been before, get new perspective, etc. I don't have that much money and am not perfect example of doing bunch of things besides poker but life is here and now we don't know what tomorrow brings .

Most of his work is meetings, completely different than having to make multiple decisions every second

Key question is why. If you are trying to optimize your performance, spend 40-50 hours a week playing your A-game and 5-10 hours a week studying/dissecting your hands. That is already more than 90% of pros are doing. That way you are not just running on auto-pilot and can improve and eventually graduate to higher stakes.

80-100 hours a week is the analogy of having 2 minimum wage jobs instead of learning a trade that can lead to a much higher hourly eventually.

Plus, if you are Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or Warren Buffett, it is probably worth it. If you are a poker player not named Lena900 or Phil Ivey, why sacrifice so much? What are you playing for?

I don't like flying. So I don't travel much. Also I don't get a huge thrill out of visiting new places. I think poker as a high / drug has made everything else in life a little less exciting.

Also, I am in my prime earning years, healthy with energy when I should be working hard so that when I am older and less capable / possibly in poorer health I don't have to. My mental health could always decline as I have shizophrenia...so far so good though as my meds are working but it's no guarantee.

Figure a few more years of hard labor / degeneracy and saving and I can consider spending more time on other things, perhaps law related as I am a lawyer too.

This is spot on.

I have been in business meetings where we were discussing large decisions (multi-million dollar decisions). The thing is, there were multiple people and there was time to talk it through and consider alternatives.

In NL poker, you can be put to the test for your stack at any time.

Everyone has had a situation where you are in the big blind where you have 52 suited and there is a small raise with many multiple callers. So you decide to speculate and come along figuring you won't get to deep unless the board hits you hard.

The flop comes 10 2 2. Great.

Until you find yourself faced with decisions that will ultimately mean you are putting a 350 BB stack in the middle. 10 2 2 is in the top 1 percent of flops you could reasonably ask for, but now you are looking at donking it off with a deuce with no real kicker. What can your opponent possibly have?

Sure good players find a fold there or they make soul reads and call. The point is, what seemed like a completely innocuous decision to splash around with a crappy hand for a small amount makes you make large stack level decisions.

There are many such "innocuous" decisions made per hour. Only now you are making them tired with no one to talk to.

Much harder than being in a meeting with 10 other people where there is ample time for discussion.

The most valuable skill in the world is the ability to know thyself. Know what your strengths and weaknesses are and even better, know what they will be in the future.

It sounds like you have a grasp of what your strengths are and what potential pitfalls might be. Good for you.

Just don't lose sight of that. Success can sometimes blind people to how it came about.