Sustainable long term ROI??

[fujowpai]

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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.

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You might have a look at Volume One of Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds By Charles MacKay. It was written in 1841, but some things never change.

Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor fills in any gaps left by MacKay.

However, it IS worthwhile to note that the former chair of the Republican National Committee is now the head of the American Gaming Association (the "gambling lobby"), and municipalities all over are figuring out how to milk our national addiction (well, there's also high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar convenience foods), so there's no question that it has some life left in it.

There used to be an entire division of the FBI for stamping out the numbers racket (ie. the lottery) and now there is a mesmerizing variety of Lotto tickets at every convenient store across the US of A.

And of course, we don't want to pay our enormous national debt through personal, investment, sales, property, or business taxes, so there has to be some method of wealth transfer to all the other countries holding US Treasuries .

So yeah, I guess you're right. It will be maintained ... at least until it is no longer sustainable.

Eric

[gergery]

Playing them for fun on weekends for ~15 hours week is very different than doing them fulltime.

Try playing them fulltime for a month. treat them as a job. only spend money that week if you made money playing them. at the end of the month, ask yourself "do i really enjoy this,"

and for god sakes get into a different career. you are way too young to embark on a career you hate. trust me on this.

[ilya]

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The recent surge is poker is a fad. They all come and go. How much do you hear about "day traders" nowadays??? Zilch.

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That's true but...there're still tons of day traders out there making tons of money. They do just fine without the publicity.

[ilya]

All these sensible naysayers are ticking me off. You are certainly a winning player; your thought process seems fairly sound; you are clearly capable of improving as you go; even if you decide not to move up in limits, it is very possible to make a good living off the $20s. Yes, playing full time feels like a grind sometimes. But 1, you don't need to play more than 40hrs/week (vs. the suck-you-dry overtime hours at any big corp) and 2, come on, can it really be worse than doing ACCOUNTING all day?!
Yes, if you go pro but decide later you can't do it, you'll probably have a very hard time getting a job in accounting. But...that's a good thing! Think about it. Even an aborted poker career will help you avoid the soul-draining living hell of ACCOUNTING! Irieguy, lorinda, east, do you realize you are advising this guy to get a FULL-TIME JOB helping some other [censored] keep his money and evade taxes?! Why are you trying to sentence him to this miserable existence?!
Dude, go pro. Your girlfriend's job can secure the mortgage. Your relationship will be healthier because you'll have more time to spend with her, and if you ever have kids with her or with someone else, you'll be around to get to know them and help take care of them.
Say the worst happens. You go pro and things are going swimmingly for about a year. But the poker gods turn against you, the horrible downswing puts you on desperation tilt, and you lose your whole bankroll. Shaken to the very core, you neglect personal hygiene and wander meaninglessly around the house. This frightens your girlfriend, who leaves you for Wilford, the sporty senior accountant from the 6th floor. Since the mortgage is in her name, out of the house you go! No options left, you crawl to the back stoop of PWC and beg them to hire you as an accountant/janitor. They point accusingly at the gaping hole in your resume. You lower your eyes in shame and crawl away on your knees. Disgraced, broke, alone...you might as well end it all...

But don't you see?...even in this nightmare scenario....you never have to work as an ACCOUNTANT!

[AleoMagus]

I am of the opinion that a 44% ROI in the 20+2's while playing 4 at once is...

IMPOSSIBLE

Still, you have been doing it, and 400 SNGs is a lot. That is a actually pretty good counter-evidence to my opinion but I still have it.

It's funny though. If you had made this post saying that you had a ROI of 18%/tourney multi-tabling 4 games in the 20+2 for an hourly rate of about $16, then I'd actually be more inclined to say the pro thing is worth trying.

The reason that I say this is because then I would be reasonably certain that you are not going to experience a huge turnaround from your usual expectation overnight. You would probably not be running extremely well, and could expect to continue.

As it is though, you probably are running extremely well, and over a big sample too. 44% with 1 tourney/time might be possible, but with 4 simultaneous, I just can't beleive that it will continue forever. Hopefully I am wrong, and as I said, 400 is actually a fairly big sample, so if I am right, hopefully not by too much.

The problem with making decisions (like the one you are pondering) when running this well is that it will seem like a huge dark twist of fate if your results start to slide when it's all you have to get by. And this is a recipe for disaster.

400 SNGs when multi-tabling like you have been is less than 100 hours of poker. If you run games continuously after busting, it might be only a bit more than 50 hours of poker.

I know estimates of expectation have more to do with quantity than they do actual time, but the time is a human element we need to consider. You simply cannot expect to get the same results doing this in two weeks to a month if it took you three times that long to get this far. When you start to play full-time, your results will slip and you will find that boredom becomes a factor in tour earnings.

As far as all the resume gap comments, and the horrible damage you do to your future by not working now, I don't really buy any of that. I have have huge career gaps all over my resume thanks to 9-Ball and Poker and it has never been a real problem at all. You just need to make sure that you do a few things on the side that you can use to explain your lack of work. Write even one article/month for a poker magazine or even start a blog or a webpage or something. It doesn't need to occupy much of your time, and it doesn't need to earn a profit at all. It just needs to be something that you can put on a resume later. Writing a book is an even better idea, because if everything dries up in a year, or you decide that you just aren't making as much as you thought you would, you can say "I was writing a book".

I'd also recommend getting involved in outside activities. Join a gym. Take Karate or Judo. Do a class on pottery or photography or something. This is very important for online professionals. It is just too easy to realize that you haven't left the house in days. Simple matters like hygiene and exercise are often things we take for granted, but when you suddenly are not required to do them, its amazing how our ordinarily rigid standards can bend.

I would also seriously recommend getting into a live game as part of your poker routine. Even just a few hours a week at first is a very good idea. I'd also set aside maybe 1K on a separate site and use it to start playing other games, specifically limit ring games. It doesn't matter if you aren't making anything there at first.

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I don't think trying it is a horrible idea like some do. Just getting back to my earlier comments though, I'd probably either wait a little longer or go into it with reduced expectations.

Regards
Brad S

[PrayingMantis]

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I have have huge career gaps all over my resume thanks to 9-Ball

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I know what you're talking about... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[fujowpai]

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As far as all the resume gap comments, and the horrible damage you do to your future by not working now, I don't really buy any of that. I have have huge career gaps all over my resume thanks to 9-Ball and Poker and it has never been a real problem at all. You just need to make sure that you do a few things on the side that you can use to explain your lack of work. Write even one article/month for a poker magazine or even start a blog or a webpage or something. It doesn't need to occupy much of your time, and it doesn't need to earn a profit at all. It just needs to be something that you can put on a resume later. Writing a book is an even better idea, because if everything dries up in a year, or you decide that you just aren't making as much as you thought you would, you can say "I was writing a book".

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You can't really believe that this is an acceptable resume item for an accounting firm; at least not for a job AS an accountant.

[eastbay]

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As far as all the resume gap comments, and the horrible damage you do to your future by not working now, I don't really buy any of that. I have have huge career gaps all over my resume thanks to 9-Ball and Poker and it has never been a real problem at all.

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That's a strong function of what you want to do. For me, it would be absolute suicide.

eastbay

[Desdia72]

there's nothing to say you can't sustain your current ROI. as a matter of fact, i'm a firm believer that if you're really good you can attain both a higher ITM% and ROI. there are plenty of guys around these forums that are making quite a bit of money playing SNGs almost exclusively.
don't let anyone tell you that you can't do it either. don't concern yourself with any player pool drying up or whether you're that much better than the next player (or vice versa). focus on the play that has achieved you your current ROI and focus on getting even better. i think you and any good player is capable of making a living playing $20 SNGs.

[pshreck]

I think a shockwave that I may have given off is that I intend to give up everything I have going and to just play poker. My interest in possibly playing full time does not mean abandon any other professional future. It very well may mean abandoning accounting... but Im willing to let that go. I have interest in writing (not poker writing). I also have interest in pursuing a career in psychology.... I feel investing my time in poker now, will enable me to make money while possibly pursuing other things that are MUCH tougher to find money in than business (specifically things like writing and other things within the liberal arts that are much tougher to start out in. Accounting is follow the steps and get a job...)

I couldn't agree more with the people who say you really can't base your whole professional life on poker (unless you intend to be world class). I am in no way even looking down that road. I dont want to be a road gambler, and dont want to have to adapt with the game for my whole life.

I want to do it for maybe the next five years... while pursuing other professional interests on my winnings... and simply trying to enjoy life more while I'm young.