When to go pro?

[axeshigh]

I am wondering what kind of iron discipline I must have to play 1000 SnGs a month while going to school full time... You guys are funny.

[helpmeout]

If you arent making around $2k a week dont even bother (unless you have a real deadend job and have no prospects).

To go pro you need to have a large BR and backup money of 6months living expenses because you will experience bad downswings no matter what games you play.

The games are also much tougher during the week. When you play 20 hours a week you are always fresh and play the best times. When you play more you play during the toughest times and your EV goes down a lot because of a combination of long hours and tougher games.

You arent even close to being able to go pro so dont waste your time.

To put it short your results suck, you have a weak sample size. 10 months and you are at only 7% ROI at the 20's that is poor, surely you cant expect much more improvement.

20k credit limit jesus you dont even have savings.

There are another 100 reasons why you shouldnt go pro, use the search function there are so many threads on this topic already.

[Xhad]

[ QUOTE ]
If you arent making around $2k a week dont even bother (unless you have a real deadend job and have no prospects).

[/ QUOTE ]

$12/hr equates to less than 2k/MONTH, even before taxes.

Well Ive heard alot of suggestions to not do it and a few to go for it, so you are probably right. But is it incorrect for me to assume that my results after 2000 SnGs is indicative of my future results?
As long as they are, I can make more with my terribly low roi at sngs than I can working at my job.
And yes it would be easy to find another with my experiance if need be after a month or so.

[helpmeout]

Poker is a high risk job, your future is uncertain. At the end of the day the games might be good for another 5 years but they might be unprofitable for most in a year.

You dont know thats why you need to earn more at a high risk job than a regular job.

A $12 an hour job provides benefits that poker doesnt provide. Its also a stable income, you also get work experiece which may result in a higher earn down the track.

Poker provides money but you get no experience, if things go bad and you have to get a job then what?

Also as has been said it is much tougher to play fulltime, you lose motivation, it is psychologically tougher when you have to play to put food on the table.

[helpmeout]

Your experience is during the best poker times and shorter hours.

When you go pro you play during the week where the games are no where near as good.

You also play more hours which makes it more difficult.

Poker also becomes your main focus which becomes a negative, you do not get forced days off. When you have a job you play fresh every few days or on the weekend.

When you go pro you play all the time, [censored] I just lost $1k today $500 yesterday and $500 the day before what do I do now? You cannot escape.

You also lose motivation, when you arent playing for a living there is always that dream there that pushes you on. Hey I can sit at home playing poker and make a cruisy living.

When it happens it is no longer there, that dream because jesus I gotta keep winning money.

[crew]

I think the main problem with your logic, and a cause of some of the dissension is your prediction of playing 40 hours a week. I LOVE to play STT, and can play 2 hours a night, and 6 hours on Saturday and Sunday. Anything more than that, and I'd pray to be transported to a call center. If you can increase your ROI/rakeback/stakes/amount you make from turning tricks, so that your poker income will exceed your work income in 20 hours a week, than quit by all means. If you do manage to play more than 20 hours, the extra money will simply be gravy.

[The Don]

[ QUOTE ]
I think the main problem with your logic, and a cause of some of the dissension is your prediction of playing 40 hours a week. I LOVE to play STT, and can play 2 hours a night, and 6 hours on Saturday and Sunday. Anything more than that, and I'd pray to be transported to a call center. If you can increase your ROI/rakeback/stakes/amount you make from turning tricks, so that your poker income will exceed your work income in 20 hours a week, than quit by all means. If you do manage to play more than 20 hours, the extra money will simply be gravy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. I just cannot play for 40 hours per week for some reason. Even this summer break when I was a "pro", I still averaged only 28 hours per week. Granted, I made WAY more money than I would have had I not made the decision to do the 'pro poker' thing.

After graduating this semester, I am definitely going to play professionally for at least the first six months of my post-college life (my friends will still all be in college... I am graduating in 7 semesters). Here are the reasons:

1) I hate the man
2) I would be taking a monster pay cut if I get a "real job."
3) I want to travel a lot

[ebaudry]

I would recommend waiting a little while b/c:

1) Working 40hrs per week at poker (playing your A-game) is tiring in a very different way than just showing up at work. Before you can rely on doing that for your rent, you should have made absolutely sure you can handle the hours. Even just the eyestrain/backstrain etc. could get you, let alone the poker dreams, and cold runs of cards.

2) When your ROI is relatively low (less than maybe 15-20%), the swings are huge. You can go for days and weeks without making any money. I went a month breaking even (not unlikely) with an ROI in the 20's. Even if you have credit, it can be a huge emotional drain to be breakeven, or god forbid, down for long periods of time. That lowering of your confidence then tends to have an affect on your ability to bring your A-game, things get worse, you wonder what you're doing wrong. You get the picture.

3) Before considering using credit cards look into the term "Risk of Ruin" extensively. Give some serious thought to what you would do if down several thousand without a job or potentially the poker skills to repay it. Also, what's the stress of that possibility costing you emotionally? Do a little math to figure out how long you would have to work at your "new" $12/hr job to save up $2,000/$5,000/$20,000 to repay your credit cards if all goes poorly. Obviously the best case is a good one, but you have to do your "future-self" a favor and give a moments thought to if you can really handle the possibility of it not working out right.

Also if you use credit, you must make a fair assesment of the cost of credit associated with that borrowing and make some exact calculations about how it might affect your ROI to be subtracting interest charges, balance transfer fees, etc.

To be complete, also think about if it would bother you at all that 9 out of 10 people would think you were nuts if you openly told them you were living on borrowed credit card money to make a living gambling... I'm not judging, I do it myself, but it takes a serious commitment towards not caring what my parents and many other people think. This has some sort of cost.

4) To make going pro a good idea, you should have no doubts about how good you are. You can wonder if you are "good enough to make a lot of money", but you should be pretty damn sure you are very, very good at poker. To overcome the rake and variance you need to be very solidly beating the game. I know many people approach the game differently, but I personally had read 6 poker books before feeling good enough. You can get the infomation in lots of other ways if books aren't your thing, but there is a lot of info out there that you should be very comfortable with before you go pro.


The last thing I would suggest is to start at the $10 tables until you've played 1000+ with a good ROI, or read things that lead you to believe you're in the top 10% of online poker players (not many people make money doing this, and many of us are big time nerds with math degrees, finance backgrounds, chess masters, etc.

Best of luck whatever your choice.

-Eric

[johnny005]

Y can really make more money thatn that, and with a 7% roi at the 20's your in for some insane swings I think you should stay at the 20's until you are close to 20% ROI.