SnG sample size to determine if I should quit my job?

[AA suited]

How many SnG's should I play to determine if I should quit my job or not? (single, no kids, but own a house.)

I have 500 Sng's (quad table) at 30+3 and am averaging $25/hr, which is a little more than what I'm making right now. (I'm assuming 4 Sng's take 1 hr.)

I think 500 is too small of a sample size.

How many is enough?

[Phill S]

how many can you cover in a year 4-tabling?

seriously.

Phill

[lorinda]

Your sample size for the simple ROI is probably getting towards enough, HOWEVER, playing pro is different.

What's your ROI when playing 8 hours a day for 6 days a week?
What's your ROI when you wake up with the flu for the third day in a row and feel you had better play a couple of hours?

Have you established fully how long you can play before you burn out.... sadly we all burn out even if we feel fresh when replying to posts like this one I am now typing.

What I am trying to say is not _don't_ do it, but there are many more factors (And I listed just the first three I thought of) that are hidden drains on your winnings.

It is sadly much more complicated than saying you'll win $25 and hour and just multiplying through because your hours will have extended periods where they simply drop down due to you not feeling up to it and your ROI will have periods where it drops because you feel under the weather or simply get out of bed on the wrong side.

Some people are born with the "What the hell, if it goes wrong, I'll find a way" attitude, and some are not.

I don't know you, so that's not my call, but have a serious think about the issues here and also others that will no doubt add to this list.

Lori

[Killer Mike]

$25/hr before or after taxes?

[bucci]

Mathematically from another post, with 95% certainty

3.8/sqrt(#SnG you've played) = +/- your current ROI to find the possible swing in your ROI...


Read the other post in this thread about actually maintaining your level of play professionally. I'd keep the job, play 20hrs for awhile if i were you. build up a 100K bankroll like that over a few years, then see if it's still viable. That's the winning play.

[skirtus]

I guess I dont understand going pro when you already have a decent paying job. From what I understand you are making 40-50K now from your job. I assume the job has benefits and retirement plan of some sort. If your are single with no kids than playing 20-30 hours a week of poker should be no problem. That would give you an additional 25-40K on top of your income based on your current SnG stats. I dont love my job but leaving it for online poker seems insane. If I could make 50k from online poker, I would most likely start my own business or find a job with great benefits and a kickass retirement program.

[lorinda]

If I could make 50k from online poker, I would most likely start my own business or find a job with great benefits and a kickass retirement program.


This clearly shows the "other kind of person" that I've talked about in the past.
This is certainly no offense to skirtus, in fact those that don't want to go pro are, in general, far more rounded people.
It just highlights how different people can be.

For me, the thought of sitting around worrying about a retirement plan my whole life is really something I don't want to be doing.
For other people it is an essential part of their whole life plan.

Neither opinion is right (I'll include the usual arguments below to show this), it is all about what you feel comfortable with.

"What will you do when you retire lori?"
"Who cares? I'll be dead by then"
"What if you are not?"
"Hmmmm, oh well, something will come up"
"What if it doesn't?"
"Hmmmm, I'll have to make it"
"What about if you are incapacitated and so you can't do it?"
"Bah, if it goes wrong, and I have no savings and I am incapacitated, I'm going to hate a retirement either way"

And me asking them...

"Why do you want to waste your whole life working for someone else?"
"Because it means I can live in a nice house and support my family"
"But whats the point of a nice house and family if you never see them because you work so hard?"
"It will be worth it when I retire, you'll see."
"But you have loads of nice things that you hardly ever use, why not use them now?"
"Because I will cease to own nice things if I stop work, what if I get ill?"
"You'll find a way?"
"I'm not sure I would, what if I didn't?"
"You don't see many people who are looking for a job sleeping in the street, something would come up"
"I don't even want to take that risk, you'll see when I've retired to luxury and you're still playing $11-22 SNGs and posting on newsgroups"
"Well, you got me there, guess I better enjoy it all now then"



This is NOT a mock of those who do need the security, in 20-30 years time they will almost all be better off than me and living better lives than me.
I am simply unemployable by most people (I hate being told what to do by idiots, although I can actually take it from smart people... but given the IQ of the average successful London stockbroker is mid 90s, I can't see me getting through any training of any sort, and never could)

Both sides of the coin are utterly non-comprehendable by the other side.
I have learned to quote the "safe" argument parrot fashion, because I long since realised that the two views are so opposed that most people simply cannot understand why the people on the other side could possibly want to live their life that way.

Lori

[PrayingMantis]

Great post Lori.

[ QUOTE ]
I hate being told what to do by idiots

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep, I'd much rather get outdrawn by idiots... /images/graemlins/grin.gif /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[skirtus]

Good post Lorinda. I think there will always be two schools of thought on this subject. Its definitely a personal choice that only you can make. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer. I would never look down upon anyone who made the decision to go pro. Good luck to you in your decision.

P.S. I like the usual arguments Lorinda. Im starting to sound like my parents. Ugh!

[byronkincaid]

I left work after I think 160 $55s with a ROI of 40% at the end of August. I almost immediately went on a horrible losing run. I'm going to work out my stats in a couple of days but I'm sure I'm less than 20% ROI now.

I only really survived by being lucky. First month I played a few $200s had a great run up 2-3k. Second month lost all that back at 200s but won 20k in a B&M tourney. I could very easily be back at work now.

Things I didn't think of were eye strain, weight gain, seemingly constant interuptions when I'm trying to play and I didn't realise just how hard it would be to get your 30/40 games in day in day out.

Having said that I still absolutely love it. I honestly can't think of anything I'd rather be doing for a living and I don't think there's too many people who can say that.

[AA suited]

[ QUOTE ]
how many can you cover in a year 4-tabling?

seriously.

Phill

[/ QUOTE ]

Phil,

I don't understand what you mean by cover?

Do you mean cash reserves?
I have no debt, and 6 months take home pay in the bank. plus 5 years of take home pay in equity in my house if i sell it and rent at approx the same price that i'm paying in morgage/upkeep.

[AA suited]

[ QUOTE ]
$25/hr before or after taxes?

[/ QUOTE ]

before taxes, same as my job. yes my job has benefits (paid vacation, subsidized heath care). i estimate the benefits being 20% in addition to my salary.

so my job is a couple of $/hr more if you take them into acct. to me, that's close enuf to be the same, $ wise.

[AA suited]

[ QUOTE ]
Mathematically from another post, with 95% certainty

3.8/sqrt(#SnG you've played) = +/- your current ROI to find the possible swing in your ROI...


[/ QUOTE ]

3.8/sqrt(500) = .17

what does this mean?

link to the math thread?

[rjb03]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
how many can you cover in a year 4-tabling?

seriously.

Phill

[/ QUOTE ]

Phil,

I don't understand what you mean by cover?

Do you mean cash reserves?
I have no debt, and 6 months take home pay in the bank. plus 5 years of take home pay in equity in my house if i sell it and rent at approx the same price that i'm paying in morgage/upkeep.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm thinking he means 4 table as much as you can for a year and see if it is the "job" for you.

[bucci]

Calculate your current ROI after 500 tournaments. Your actual longterm ROI could be 17% higher or lower. That's my interpretation, anyway... The more you play, the more certain your ROI is correct... By my math, you need about 10,000 tournaments to be 95% sure that you're ROI is correct within 3%. That said, I wasn't the best math student in the world...

I don't have a link to the thread, but search through and read, and you'll find a post that touches on it...

[adanthar]

All other things being equal, I would much rather take an extra year, move up to the $200's, play 500 of them and *then* quit my job when I was sure I could beat them consistently.

It is possible that poker will be a job for me in the future but I'd rather not do it until I knew I could beat the game at the highest levels (even if the 'job' aspect made me move down and quad the 30's for lessened variance.)

[AA suited]

[ QUOTE ]
I guess I dont understand going pro when you already have a decent paying job. From what I understand you are making 40-50K now from your job. I assume the job has benefits and retirement plan of some sort. If your are single with no kids than playing 20-30 hours a week of poker should be no problem. That would give you an additional 25-40K on top of your income based on your current SnG stats. I dont love my job but leaving it for online poker seems insane. If I could make 50k from online poker, I would most likely start my own business or find a job with great benefits and a kickass retirement program.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would I quit a $50k/year job? I don't like the job and want to do somwthing more meaningful. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

I used to have my own consulting company. I liked being my own boss. I liked the flexibility. what i didnt like was the constant effort to find new clients. it felt like a BIG waste of time when i could have been doing something productive or more fun.

with online poker, there's a constant stream of "clients."

i'll probably work or volunteer part-time at a non-profit company to help those in need. i enjoy doing that.

[AA suited]

Lori:

1) being sick does affect my play. i'm sleepy/tired/grumpy and more likely to go on tilt.

i did that once when it was midnight and i (stupidly) decided to play 1 more quad. by 12:30 am, i reeaaaalllly wanted to sleep. so i gambled more just to get it over with.

ie: pushing on non-nut straight/flush draws out of position, calling an all-in re-raise by the big stack with 99, etc.

needless to say, i lost all 4 games w/o ITM.

2) i assumed i could handle poker as a job. i was focusing on ROI and sample size as my deciding factors to quit or not.

but the way you stated it as 8hrs/day 6days/week puts it in a different light. unfortunately, i have no way to accurately test it.

yeah, i can play 4hrs/weeknights and 12hrs/weekend but if i hate it, i dont know if it'll be different if i didnt have my day job. (more free time, can sleep in late, doing something i dont like, etc).

any suggestions on how to estimate how it'll feel like to play poker 50hrs a week for a full year w/o a day job? (besides actually doing it?)

[SmileyEH]

This is just nitpicking but you actually probably average a little more than 5 SNG's/hour therefore bringing your hourly rate in line with you current job with benefits.

-SmileyEH

[jonoo]

[ QUOTE ]
$25/hr before or after taxes?

[/ QUOTE ]
kind of a side note...but i was wondering how much you need to be making a year to report it for income taxes and does it need to be your primary source of income?

[Phill S]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
how many can you cover in a year 4-tabling?
seriously.
Phill

[/ QUOTE ]
Phil,
I don't understand what you mean by cover?


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm thinking he means 4 table as much as you can for a year and see if it is the "job" for you.

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah, in my rush to post that out i forgot to read it over to make sure it couldnt be mis-interpreted.

and i was short cos i was in a sarcy mood.

i went pro not too long after i turned 18, and whilst it was an experience i would do again, i wouldnt do it again cos it was all roses and bunny rabbits. insert common underbankrolled, underprepared, yada yada story here.

since leaving poker dead for almost a year after 'quitting' im now 20, getting my degree and playing grounds up poker, learning tons by the day.

if i had only gotton a job and played in my spare time to see if i ould do it long term id have discovered not only could i not do it physically, i would also hate the grind of limit ring games. (i love SnGs a lot more, and have been tempted even now...).

id recommend you take 12 months. work on your game, move up limits, fix leaks, then decide if you truly want to do this. adanthars advice is a good start. this forum has a wealth of info about what the pros on here play, how they find it and so on.

i admire you for wanting to volunteer part time at a charity or similar org. i really do, wanted to just drop this in.

[ QUOTE ]
yeah, i can play 4hrs/weeknights and 12hrs/weekend but if i hate it, i dont know if it'll be different if i didnt have my day job. (more free time, can sleep in late, doing something i dont like, etc).

any suggestions on how to estimate how it'll feel like to play poker 50hrs a week for a full year w/o a day job? (besides actually doing it?)

[/ QUOTE ]

im assuming you get a few weeks a year payed holiday. set them aside and at some point in 9 months or so 'live' the dream. only touch money you make playing poker. only buy food from winnings and so on. treat it exactly like life as a player, perhaps going to the extreme of opening a new bank account to store winnings. work the hours you think you normally would and treat this holiday as an experiment into whether or not to turn pro.

its not ideal, but it will give a good indication of how you feel about life as a pro.

Phill

[Phill S]

[ QUOTE ]
kind of a side note...but i was wondering how much you need to be making a year to report it for income taxes and does it need to be your primary source of income?

[/ QUOTE ]

it depends on your country.

seach the zoo (on the left, under general gambling, internet). its been covered a ton over there.

Phill

[ilya]

Great post, Lori. But I hope you are wrong about the two sides never being able to understand one another.
Or, rather, I hope you are wrong about the "safe" side never being able to realize how woefully misguided it is... /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[Sponger15SB]

[ QUOTE ]
I left work after I think 160 $55s with a ROI of 40% at the end of August. I almost immediately went on a horrible losing run. I'm going to work out my stats in a couple of days but I'm sure I'm less than 20% ROI now.

[/ QUOTE ]

you quit work after 160 SNGS? holy jeebus.

[tallstack]

I am not a professional and have never been one. I am not likely to ever be one. I do have some thoughts for you, though.

You are the only one who could ever answer whether a move to full-time poker playing is right for you. You certainly have an advantage as a single man without kids. You likely can live pretty lean if you had to, and if you don't make it in the end you could go back to working in your field (with some creative answers during the interview on what you did with your time).

That said, I did not get a good vibe from your explanations of your experience so far. I think there are some ways to get a better idea of whether this move could be right for you. Have you talked with other full-time players about the ups and downs that they have experienced and how they fit in with your idea of life. Have you considered how your family will take this news, and how it may effect your relationships with them? Like it or not, the social stigma of being a gambler for a living has to be addressed in your plan somehow.

Also, I firmly believe that you should be able to at least double your day job income before a move to turn pro makes sense. You will be going from a situation where you can bank on an amount of money, health care, time off, respect, etc. to one where these will fluctuate or possibly disappear altogether.

In regards to your question, I don't think any amount of SNGs will tell you the whole picture. I think that you could play 100 to 200 SNGs per month for 10 years and you would still not know what anything about what it is really be like to turn pro. There will be huge changes once you need to put in the hours and you have no safety net (other than your own money management skills) to fall back on.

I think you could get an initial estimate of the hours you would have to put in, and how that might effect you, if you saved up your vacation time to as big of a block as possible and then devoted that vacation to playing full time. I do think that an experiment such as this is still biased heavily towards showing you the happy side of playing full time since boredom, monotony, isolation, etc. may take more than a couple of weeks to set in. You will also still have the safety net available when your vacation is over. You will however, likely experience more of what it feels like to put in long hours, play at non-ideal times, etc.

An even better idea may be to pursue through your company if a leave of absence would be possible. Several months of playing full time with no other income coming in, but with a built in long term safety net if it falls apart may give you an even better picture.

It's a huge decision that frankly should be pretty obvious once you have the covered off the issues, but I don't think that I would make any jump yet from what I heard.

Just my thoughts,

Dave S

[Bigwig]

This is something I'm considering doing in the somewhat near future (1-2 years). I would suggest the following: Assume you play 25-30 hours per week, instead of a standard 40. Also, don't make the break until you're fairly certain you could make about 33% more than your current job. With these parameters, you allow some room for error and burnout.

[AA suited]

[ QUOTE ]
This is something I'm considering doing in the somewhat near future (1-2 years). I would suggest the following: Assume you play 25-30 hours per week, instead of a standard 40. Also, don't make the break until you're fairly certain you could make about 33% more than your current job. With these parameters, you allow some room for error and burnout.

[/ QUOTE ]

when i was consulting, my rate was double my current $/hr because i factored in the non-paid time of finding clients.

i didn't factor this in for poker because i see no downtime in finding a game.

but i guess it's another thing i didn't factor in. having a losing streak could be considered downtime.

so i should be making more $/hr than my current job to account for a bad streak.

so if variance is 17% (based on the formula above), i should make AT LEAST 17% more $/hr than my current job.

Knowing a little about statistics and standard deviation (sd)- if 17% is 1 sd, then 34% is 2 sd, and 51% is 3 sd away from the norm. by definition, 1 sd covers 68% of the occurances, 2sd covers 95%, and 3sd covers 99%.

so if i want a 95% chance of not dropping below a $25/hr average, then i need 34% more income ($33.5/hr) playing poker. this of course assumes that the formula i used to calculate the variance is correct.

Is my math right????