[MicroBob]

Hi Lauren -

Talk of the 'cash-out curse' is common...but that doesn't make it correct.

You are experiencing general fluctuation.
There is a lot of variance in this game.

Many so-so players like to try to find various excuses for why they lose.
The fact is, they are losing because they are either playing badly or are going through typical fluctuations (or a combo of the two).
There is no cashout curse and to think so is ridiculous (but, again, many people do incredibly enough).


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no source of income besides poker I try to cash out $50 - $100 a day after I have increased my bankroll.

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I really want to make my living playing poker because I love the game and am sick of boring accounting jobs. Any advice would be appreciated.

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If you are depositing and cashing-out virtually everyday and trying to make your living playing poker then it sounds to me that you are WAY underbankrolled to be doing this.

At 2/4 or 3/6 you can perhaps make around 1BB/hr per table (rough estimate) on average if you are a good player AND are sufficiently bankrolled enough to withstand the fluctuations.

So if you can play 4 tables of 3/6 at the same time then making $25/hour is not unrealistic.


For a pro (with no other source of income) this generlaly means having 2 months of expenses + 300BB at the bare-minimum and I personally think this would be too light.
3 months + 500BB would be a better minimum.

But conceiveably if you are already a proven winner (say perhaps you've played 50k hands and have a decent win-rate of 1BB/hr or better) you could get by on a bankroll of $6k ($2k per mth in expenses perhaps + another $2k for playing).

If you are just trying to make it by at 2/4 or 3/6 with less than $1000 then you almost certainly are going to bust at some point (if only from the living expenses).

If you are not yet a proven winner (50k hands AT LEAST of winning poker...and again, this is bare-minimum stuff..I would recommend much more than that) then you just shouldn't be playing full-time for income yet.


Ed Miller has had some good articles about this in the 2+2 magazine (very top left-corner on the green bar) regarding bankroll requirements and other such stuff for wanna-be internet-pro's like yourself.

The fact is, if you are confused or worried about cash-out curses and are just trying to 'lock-up' your wins everyday because you need the money then there is no way you should be doing this full-time for income right now.
Jobs suck...sorry. But you need to get another one for steady income while you continue to work on your game.


Also - as Ed mentioned in SSH...the pre-flop recommendations in his book are perhaps the least important part.
Read and re-study the book for all the great post-flop concepts to help you succeed.


Finally - I don't know why a pro would want to try to make it on the ring-games at pokerstars which just aren't that great.
With a decent rake-back plan at Party you can really help your own cause a LOT.

If you don't know what a rake-back plan is then there is ZERO chance that you should be playing online-poker professionally at this time.