Sustainable long term ROI??

[pshreck]

I have been keeping personal records on all my SNG 20+2s for the past few weeks. I have felt for a while I can easily beat these, and maybe make some money doing so. Anyways, 4 tabling, my ROI for 400 of them is 44%. When I play Im making over 45 bucks per hour.

I can say this was way over my expectations. My goal was 25%, expecting to be in the 15-25% range. I have seen threads in the past claiming the highest long term possible is around 50%... but which is very unlikely.

How likely is it that I will stay in the 44% range? Is 400 tournaments enough? Ive made so much money doing this, and I feel like Im getting in over my head at what this could mean for me if I can sustain anywhere near this.

My job offers for accounting out of college will be in the 45k range, thats working 60+ hours a week. I could blow that amount out of the water right now if I played these SNG's full time, and Im seriously considering it. Any advice would be appreciated, especially from anyone who is full timing SNG's now.

[Irieguy]

There have been a million threads on this topic, so you might want to search for them. But here is a summary, heavily tainted with my biases. If people who have played 1000 or more SNGs disagree, it won't be a big disagreement:

1. You can't play $20 SNGs for a living.

2. The limit of sustainability at the $33 level is an ITM of 44% and an ROI of around 35%

3. The limit of sustainability at the higer limits will drop about 5-8% ROI each time you move up.

4. Keep in mind that if you are planning on playing at the limit of sustainability, you are planning on being one of the best SNG players in the world.

5. I work >60 hours a week at my "real" job and still find time to play a few hundred SNGs a month... you might want to consider a nice accounting job... on the side.

Irieguy

[eastbay]

pshrek,

Your results are very good and I'm confident you're a winning player. However, I wouldn't expect 44% to last forever, even if you've maintained it for 400 games. It's possible, but it's definitely not the kind of figure you want to make a career choice on.

If you have a degree in accounting, I would strongly advise you to start your career as you planned, and not skip it entirely to pursue poker fulltime. Pursue poker part time. Give yourself at a bare, bare minimum a full year of experience before considering any career changing moves.

I know it's tempting and it seems like a free way to live, but all the accumulated experience I've seen on these boards for the past year make me very wary of this as a full-time career choice. As they say, it's a tough way to make an easy living.

But, I know from experience that it's a fantastic way to provide yourself with lots of extra spending money and extras every month once your day job has paid off your nominal living expenses.

Not to mention that as an accountant, it's not hard to move up from your starting salary. Over the longer haul, it may be quite a bit easier than moving up in the poker world into six-figure plus incomes.

I took a different career path in science, but believe me, what I do each day is a heck of a lot easier than grinding the $109s or $215s for five or six hours a day, which is what I would have to do to match my income. And, barring disaster, it's guaranteed. No variance is a great thing when it comes to income. For example, you want to buy a house some day? You expect to get a mortgage listing professional gambler as your profession? When they want to see your last three pay stubs (and they will), what are you going to show? You gonna put down the party support 1-800 number as your reference? Just something to think about.

eastbay

[Gramps]

[ QUOTE ]
No variance is a great thing when it comes to income

[/ QUOTE ]

I like that quote. Hard to appreciate the value of paycheck stability until you start experiencing income variance like that in poker.

[pshreck]

1. You can't play $20 SNGs for a living.

... Just a little confused by this. Starting out with 4 tabling and moving up to 8 tabling... I dont see why this cant make 60k a year if someone is in fact a long term succesful player.

Both responses were very helpful. A big factor is that I HATE accounting. Ive done it for about 2 years now, and am getting prepared to take an offer at Price Waterhouse. It is something I simply don't want to pursue... it is an awful job... and for the most part not much room for great money, unless you go down the management path (and abandon most accounting anyways).

My fiancee will be working as an actuary starting in the summer, her job offers range from 55-65, with 10K signing bonuses. We are both 21, young and looking to be happy and start a life. Considering my hate of my current profession path, and my success in poker (paying for our rent, furniture, and luxuries) we are discussing me doing it full time. It is easier having the discussion knowing she will have a very solid 'real' job.

Im preparing to make the decision by next June, which will be about 1 full year of me testing out these SNG's. If through 3k SNG's I am showing a 30%+ ROI, I may very well do it full time. Thanks for all input.

[Irieguy]

One more piece of advice I offer to aspiring pros is this:

Ask yourself the following question...

"Why am I so much better than everybody else at this game?"

Some possible answers could be:

1. You've been playing professional poker for years.

2. You have an advanced degree in game theory, and tend to be able to figure out correct strategy better than others because you have studied applicable methodology extensively.

3. You've read everything in print on poker, and understand why most of it is really bad.

4. You are a world class competitor at another game of strategy like bridge, chess, or backgammon.

I'm not saying that this resume is necessary to beat small limit SNGs... just that if you can't think of a very sound reason why you are better than everybody else, you are not likely to be much better for much longer.

I've never known any successful poker player for whom it wasn't clearly obvious why they were winning. The reasons can be as diverse as those listed above, but the reasons are always there, and always clear.

This is meant as a sincere suggestion to consider in your decision to play poker as your exclusive form of income... I hope it doesn't seem otherwise.

Irieguy

PS- the main reason why you can't make a living playing $20 SNGs is because if you were good enough to make a living at the 20's, you'd be playing a higher limit.

[pshreck]

Irie, you seem to have a lot of very highly intelligent stuff to say. Thanks for the responses.

Further inquiry on playing the 20+2's (as opposed to higher). I have indeed tested the waters at all levels. I find that 20+2's are significantly softer than 30+3's. I believe my strengths reside in my ability to recognize what has worked for me repeadetly in these 20+2's, and go with it. Meaning.... sometimes I know that pushing with cards XX in situation X is great tournament $ EV. As you move up in limits, poker becomes less about this, and more about who your opponent is, and other factors. A large % of my opponents in the 20+2's dont account for their stack size, my stack size, the blinds, or how close they are to the money. This is all + for me, because I take advantage of it at the correct times.

I think the key thing in being succesful at multi tabling SNGS is how to play what I call 'The Average Opponent'. Simply, how to be profitable with minimal reads, due to the nature of playing 36+ opponents at once and the fast paced nature of an SNG. If you are a poker player who relies on reads and instinct... indeed, play higher limits, one table at a time, and make your money that way.

The best question you posed to me Irie is ... what makes me better than anyone else? It is an absolutely great question and indeed I have an inkling at some answers to it, but I will always keep it in the back of my mind, and see if in fact I really can be set a part from the average player.

A key thing I have to worry about now is over confidence... and you are helping to keep me in perspective. Please keep posting.

[lorinda]

I almost always give the same, simple piece of advice.

If you have to ask whether you should go pro, the answer is no.

The reason for this is that if you are even slightly unsure about it, it's not the life for you.
There is a certain personality requirement that is very difficult to explain, but the asking of that question tends to (and this is in no way an insult, in fact it's generally a compliment) imply that you don't have it.
It's basically about not giving a crap.

Being a pro gambler involves more than just doing the same thing over and over again.
You are in an environment where time and again things come and bite you on the behind.

There are uncertainties such as American Law suddenly changing, personal illness,your favorite games becoming unpopular , the list is endless.

I've been a reasonably happy low limit pro gambler for many years, and the only thing that has kept me afloat is not my amazing poker skill but my versatility and my general ability to 'see what happens' and not panic about it.

Also I live in favorable tax conditions in England, so I get a 20-40% head start over you.

I'd recommend staying at work until you really believe that you want to do this.

FWIW 60 hours a week, every week, is unmanageable for most people.
The grind of doing it every day takes it's toll, which is why although you'll see such posts as $100k in 100 days and other such challenges, you never see the $500k in one year variation, as people who end such labors always, almost without exception, need a long recovery period afterwards.

Lori

[fujowpai]

You will not be employable in two years without a work resume, and your degree won't be worth squat to employers. You won't even be able to state on your resume (should you need one) what you've been doing with your time.

The recent surge is poker is a fad. They all come and go. How much do you hear about "day traders" nowadays??? Zilch. The bubble burst and that was the end of that. You were in high school, so you probably don't remember how similar that phase was to this one. This poker craze has some life left in it, but if my 71 year old mother has noticed it, it won't be long before it vanishes.

Two years hence, all the "donators" will be gone onto to something else, and our culture onto some other form of mass gambling, and you will be left competing against other full-timers who made the same fateful decision. Go spend a day at the track if you want a glimpse of your "edge" under those conditions, not to mention what municipal involvement will mean to your bottom line when politicians wise up to the money flow.

Software "advancements" will probably wipe out any edge you may now hold.

I imagine your "sustainable long-term ROI" may be a whole lot worse than you think, even before you consider health insurance, taxes, and such.

Use it as a profitable hobby, buy something nice for your parents, and get a stable day job that will look great on your resume.

Eric

[hhboy77]

there's a lot of great info in this thread. fyi, i'm a sng player at the 100 level w/a roi of about 25%.

from what i've read, it seems like my numbers are pretty good, and like pshreck i've thought about how much money i could make playing full-time.

what keeps me from doing it is that i've gone from someone who hadn't played a single hand of poker 18 months ago to this point.

part of me - okay all of me - wants to think that i'm just an amazing mind that other people can't come close to matching. but that's not the reality. the reality is that sng's are soft and it won't take much for them not to be soft.

i don't know if the poker bubble will burst; i suspect it won't keep growing forever, but it will hit a peak and then come down a bit and maintain. however, even if it kept growing, it would take so little to make sng's really hard to beat for good money that i wouldn't want to take a chance on my career by doing the pro thing based such as sng's.