Or Wayne Rooney for our european - british friends...

Favorite hobby?

Favorite poker game besides NLHE?

What is the craziest prop bet you've made?

How do you deal with long stretches of bad/BE runs?

I have a lot of hobbies that keep me busy. I'm a big fan of games (board/video), reading, and puzzles (Sudoku, Kakuro, etc). I also run (der), play handball, shoot pool, bowl, play bass, and cook when I'm not too tired.

I really like playing O8, but I suck royally at it. LOL

I'm honestly not much of a gambler outside of poker, though I did bet my rich brother a whole dollar that we could take a homeless man out of the getto and turn him into a respectable, honest stock broker, whilst at the same time taking an upstanding rich man with a silver spoon in his arse and turn him into a violent criminal.....oh wait no...that was Trading Places.

I cry. ( Honestly, I just look at them as a part of poker and try not to let those streaks break me down. It's hard sometimes though, for sure. For example, I had an awesome $520 day yesterday and lost about $490 of it today. (I think today has been my worst day ever), but I haven't hung myself yet, so I think I'm okay.

Handball?? I thought you were a PR and not Italian.

Interesting approach....I prefer the yelling and throwing things approach though. I highly recommend it.

Man, in the BX handball is all about Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and some random Asians coming in from Riverdale. Most of the Italians around here...well...I dunno what they do. I do know, however, that they took the handball courts OUT of Pelham Bay Park because they were "attracting too many latinos". *shaking head* Like we ever did anything...*wanders off to find some hub caps to steal* MMMmmmm Cappy....

my dad was a big time handball player in NYC during the 80's, he actually won a lifetime membership to the Downtown Atheltic Club. I just remember going to the tournies as a little kid and everyone looked like my uncle Joey.

You mentioned that $/hr is more important than pbt/100hands. How much can you make per hour in NL50 9-tabling? NL100?

ps - Congrats on poker and health success.

poker is stylized, bloodless warfare (most competitive things can be viewed this way). the same principles appy:

the "fog of war," in warfare is the imperfect information generated by players having hole cards.

aggression in poker is valuable, just as it is in warfare--you win wars by attacking (betting) not defending (calling).

"putting your opponent to a difficult decision," is the same as "getting inside the enemy commander's decision cycle." You do this in either pursuit by making your opponent react to your actions.

analyzing betting patterns and PT stats is the same as gathering battlefield intelligence and discerning the enemy commander's intentions from his actions.

"when the enemy is strong, I retreat. Where he is weak, i attack. when he retreats, i pursue."

Not to trivialize my former profession, but those of you who have not could probably benefit from reading Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," or Mao's Little red Book.

OK, sample re-raised pre-flop hand w AK that I misplay all the time. How would you have thought thru and played this hand?

Villain is 25/17/3 with ATS at 33% over only 48 hand sample.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.10/$0.25 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

UTG+2: $28
Hero (MP1): $29.25
MP2: $14.75
CO: $10.80
BTN: $14.95
SB: $25
BB: $10.75
UTG: $25
UTG+1: $21.05

Pre-Flop: K A dealt to Hero (MP1)
2 folds, UTG+2 calls $0.25, Hero raises to $1.10, MP2 raises to $3, 5 folds, Hero calls $1.90

When/why re-raise pre w AK? OOP?

Flop: ($6.60) J 4 T (2 Players)
Hero checks, MP2 bets $1.50, Hero ???

Lots of outs (maybe)- what should I be thinking about? Does $1.50 flop bet by Villain mean strength or weakness?

I getses it in against the half-wit half-stack. everything else is pretty mehish

Sorry. It worked well for me

Depends on how I've been running at the table and how often this guy 3bets. IME, playing AK OOP carries pretty big negative implieds in 3bet pots and the only spot you're really hoping for is either a split, or an A-high flop against AQ. Against this guy (especially if I've been folding to his 3 bet a bit) I'm 4betting AI here, since he's half-stacked. This will fold him out a good % of the time, and if he calls, you've negated the grossness of playing OOP and you'll get to see all 5 cards.

It's okay. I did run like trash though...maybe today will be better!

Do you believe that a 100NL player can be a full time poker player? For example, if you think that you can sustain a 3.5 ptBB/100 rate, then the odds of making money full time look pretty good for the number of hands you play

90 hands/table-hr * 9 tables * 3.5 ptBB/100 hands * $2/ptBB = $56.70/hr

(assuming Supernova status)
90 hands/table-hr * 9 tables * 0.37 VPP/hand * 3.5 FPP/VIP * $0.016/FPP = $15.73/hr

(Poker + Rakeback) = $56.70/hr + $15.73/hr = $72.43/hr.

However, this doesn't take into account a lot of factors, the most important of which are the downswongs and the sustainability of the winrate. My personal feeling is that you shouldn't try to be a professional until you can at least beat 600NL at a decent rate, but then again I've always been a bankroll nit.

I guess my question is, how much of your session profits stay in your bankroll and how much comes out for expenses? I would think that if at all possible, you should keep most of the profits in your bankroll so that you can move up through limits 100NL, 200NL, and 400NL until you have approximately $15,000-$20,000 or so (plus some months expenses saved up for downswongs), then you can play 600NL and only need a 0.6 ptBB/100 winrate to make the same money at 600NL that you would make with a 3.5 ptBB/100 winrate at 100NL.

I dont know man. Im currently +125ptbb/100 with Armadillo Cloak.

Well I'm sure everyone would RATHER be winning at nl600+ than nl100 but $72/hr is not bad at all, and being a pro definitely doesn't preclude you from moving up. In fact, being a "professional" gives you a huge advantage because you can put in so many more hands than if you just played in your spare time, and experience is FAR more important than just bankroll. If you kept like 20-25% of your winnings in your account you'd be moving along just fine. Also, I think you were just using the .6pt/100 to illustrate how much more money you could make but playing any game for a living you are less than 2pt/100 is pretty crazy IMO, the swings would be unbearable.
edit: sorry if I am infringing on rapid's well, i answered this when I thought i was in a different thread but I think erasing it would be silly. But yeah, there are a lot of nl100 people who play "professionally."

Thks, that's how I want to play it but I often find myself lacking the courage to face yet another flip. I've had sessions where I get AK, shove, get called, and lose like 8 times in a row. At times like that it gets hard to face yet another "flip". At NL25 your shoves often get called and the guy might only have 33 or QT and still beat your AK.

How do you deal with the inevitable session where you get no big pockets but lots of AKs and they all get beaten?

Edit : BTW, gl with the running. I love to run regularly, too and, in February completed my first eva Triathlon.

This was the first "The Well" I have read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks!

I should probably go hunt down the others and see if they are all this entertaining and useful...

TY Bootsza They're all really good IMO...especially the pornographic ones.

Zidane I actually take out more than what goes into my BR because I don't mind staying at 100NL to work on my game. If I'm playing 1/2 by the winter, I'll be fine with that, and if not, it's still okay.

when i read those hourlys and people still wondering, wether its sound to be a pro or not, i would like to know, what alternatives they have.

the average income is about 40k pa, but people only want to go pro, when they hit 10k a month!?

Beats me. I'd be happy with 5k a month, TBH...maybe even 4k...especially if it's part time

You have to realize that those hourlies are only in an ideal setting and the very long term. You also have to account for variance, which can be deadly if you are dependent on only your poker income. Here are two examples.

Example #1:

Since February 14th, I have won $2693.80 playing NL50. My winrate is 3.12 ptBB/100 and my hourly is $18.60 an hour (so my estimate of $56.70/hr at 100NL is probably too high). Now, a session according to Poker Tracker is a single table, so if you play 18 tables at once, you play 18 sessions a day. Even with a winrate of 3.12, guess how many of my sessions I won. 80%? 70%? 65%?

Try 52.32%.

So even with a monster winrate, I'm only winning 52% of my sessions. Since my average win is much greater than my average loss, and since I now play 18 sessions at once, I can limit my variance and not notice this trend. But it goes to show that even at very high winrates, you're not guaranteed a steady stream of income to live off of.

Example #2:

Well, obviously I'm crushing 50NL, and people on the forums say that 100NL isn't much harder, so I should play there! Guess what my winrate in 100NL is over 50,130 hands.

-2.095 ptBB/100. Total loss: $2101.20. Hourly loss: -$20.06

Now, the reason I am posting this is because even if you think you have an advantage in the long term, "the long term" may take even longer than you might think to come about. And you can be dreamcrushed in the short term, especially if you lose 11.5 buy-ins in two four-hour sessions like I did.

So all these factors have to come into play when making a decision to turn pro. Can you handle the variance? Can you handle/support yourself during a downswing? Can you put in enough hours at enough tables day-after-day to greatly reduce your variance, and will your game suffer as you get more and more tired?

zidane valour, i'd suggest posting this in a new thread, this is kind of hijacking rapid evolutions well.

GO YANKEES!!!!

Yanks fan Rapid? Thoughts on kennedy and hughes sucking so far this year?

jinmoom is right, but still i would like to add that the BR is key in my eyes.

when here on 2+2 a 20buy-in roll is considered sufficent,

i d say that a pro should have at least 100buy-ins to do ok.

maybe he should have even more...