Going Pro?

[Hoi Polloi]

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I've read a lot of different articles about going pro, but none address the idea of playing poker part time and going to school full time.

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If your main goal is succeeding at school then you should think hard about how running break-even for your next 10K hands is going to impact your ability to concentrate on that goal.

Your job is there. You show up, you get paid, you focus on school, you succeed. If you play poker you are putting a ton of pressure on your main goal; unless your British in which case you're putting a tonne of pressure on your main goal.

Plus 10k hands is utterly meaningless statistically for determining your true winrate (even with GameTime+ [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]).

Get your education. Poker is a nice hobby until you've beaten the game for 200k hands, dealt with crushing downswings, discovered your not as smart or disciplined as you think you are and you still feel you could stand to do it full-time.

[MyTurn2Raise]

As someone who has done it...10k is not enough hands to make the judgement, though I thought it was at that point too (i was over 4BB/100--I wish that held). The variance and swings are truly amazing. Somehow, I feel like a better person having gone through all of them.

If you do it, you're giving up on doing your best at school. It will become all consuming. It's the only way to stay on your A game. People will laugh at you. Most college girls, at least University ones, will NOT find it attractive. So, if you have no game, count on not getting laid that often.

You'll be giving up alot of Friday and Saturday nights. It's all about game selection and the best games are always on Friday and Saturday nights.

You'll become disconnected to the value of money. This is sometimes good, sometimes bad.

You will get rich SLOWLY if executed right. People do play as bad as you think.

I'm not sure it can work. I did it while in a PhD program for about a year, but eventually poker became all I worked on and now rules. But, if you keep your goal in mind, and it's not 3 more years of PhD work, you can probably do it.

[JTMoney42]

So as I see, 10k hands are definetly not a large enough sample to determine a solid win rate. Which is pretty much what I expected. Now as far as debt goes, student loans/mortgage are usually "good" debt. Mainly because if you can get a higher rate of return on the money/or atleast break even, then it becomes worth to keep the money. Not to mention, paying for example: 6000 a yr now, would be a substantial portion of my bankroll. now say after I graduate that same 6000 or lets say 7000 to allow for accrued interest. It will still be a vastly smaller proportion to my bankroll. And obviously if poker didn't work out, i could just get a real job, and pay off student debt like every other student out there. But I'll give it up, I think you guys/(girls?) are right, that at this point it is probably incorrect, I may wait until i get 75k to 100k hands size and adjust my plan accordingly then.

My first 10k hands where I really concentrated, and treated this like its for real, I was about where you are, roughly 3.5 BB/100. I thought great, this is easy! I got my bankroll up and moved up a level, and started right off and am currently in a -100BB swing at my new level. So now, I'm wondering if I was just lucky, if the play at this level is that much better (i'm very very confident that's not it), or if I'm just having a bad run of cards. I think its a little bit of everything, leaving me w/ no real answer as to where I stand. So yeah, play alot more hands for a few more months and see where you're at, you'll have a much better idea.