If you're a FULL TIME professional, internet poker player...

[jrbick]

Sweet posts. Thanks to everyone who participated. I was just really curious to see how most people treated their "careers" and how they have dealt with the "self-employment" aspect of playing for a living.

More questions that I developed after reading everybody's posts:

1. Do you guys find it hard to discipline yourselves to put in the hours

or

2. do you find that you are more determined to treat it less like a job in order to keep that "sweetness" about the deal?

or

3. Do you just find that you want to have fun and goof off more often than not.


Obviously the answers to those questions will depend on the following:

1. monthly expenses
2. marrital status
3. additional dependants
4. work ethic
5. stakes played (it's understandable that a 15/30 player would play less)
6. what you deem as "OK" for a yearly income (at least an estimated income).


Also, I'd like to hear more from those who have done this for 1+ years. Microbob, I've read a lot of your blog lately and see that you started out doing this as a 40hr/week-type-thing... has this tapered off and why?

[webmonarch]

My benchmark is to average 1,000 hands a day, so if I'm only playing five days a week, I try to get in 1300-1400 per day. This can include limit games to as much as 5/10 and NL up to about 1/2.

I am single, live by myself, etc. I have good social situations, (friends from college, law school, etc.) so I don't really need work for that situation. I just graduated from law school and took the bar and I'm going to get a job in law, but poker is fine, (and fun) for now, esp. because I have an "excuse" for taking some time off (waiting for my bar results).

[MyTurn2Raise]

I have no problem getting enough hands in, though I'm usually quite the screw-up. I think it was my upbringing of playing strategic and sports video games. I spent many a weekend playing video games 8 hours a day minimum. Poker has the same strategic/competitive fire and it aligns with the pleasure center programming my brain received from ages 8 to 19.

I've always worked since 16. I, surprisingly, have a great work ethic, be it bagger at a grocery store, bookseller at Borders, auditor, etc. Working as my own boss is much more fulfilling. I'm off topic now. I don't have kids. I'm single. that helps. I have no problem playing enough.

[daryn]

[ QUOTE ]
Try getting a real 9 to 5 job and then you'll see what real work is like.

[/ QUOTE ]

i have worked 9 to 5 before, it sucks

[XChamp]

I suppose I consider myself to be full time since I only substitute teach about once every ten days.

I got in 30k hands last month of 1/2NL 3-4 tabling. That was my first real month of full time play (105hrs) although I've been playing a lot and consistantly winning for the past 3 years.

The Party/Skin split is killing me this month. No RB really hits the winrate for a small-mid stakes NL player. I've been dabbling around at other sites but no site offers RB and tons of tables of NL$200 (enough to jump around a lot until I find tables full of fish from noon-6am EST.

It really looks like I might have to go crawling back to Party.