Should I Quit My Day Job?

[Drexel]

Greetings 2+2'ers,

I am not really considering quitting my day job but these poker-for-a-living threads get hits and I am looking for some answers.

I am a relative newcomer to Hold 'Em and this forum. I find this forum extremly helpful and nicely supplements HEFAP. My gambling background has heretofore been primarily sports-wagering focused.

In the month I have been playing at Party, I have done what I would consider well with the $2/$4 tables being particularly generous.

My Questions (Sorry if these are redundant as I have done some searching and come up empty on a few of these):

1) After what number of hands would you consider your results indicative of sustainable success?

2) How do you adjust the odds of making a hand to the reality that in a full ring game 18 of the 46+ unseen cards are unavailable?

3) Should bankroll levels relate directly to multi-tabling? ie: If I am comfortable at 300BB's for $2/$4 is 600BB's recommended if I play two tables simultaneously?

4) I often feel the need to depart a table after a run of good cards/good playing. For instance when I enter a table and do particularly well (and not wholly due to other's bad play) and see my table bankroll double or nearly so, my urge is to flee. Reasons being that I have found players tighten up against me and big pots become rare and also I like to reset my table bankroll because, psychologically, being up like that loosens me up too much. Any comments regarding this?

Alright, thanks guys and good luck to you all at the tables,

Drex

[1800GAMBLER]

I don't think you should switch to playing for a living untill you know the answers to your other questions. All the answers to those questions are around this forum and get asked regulary, shows you have a lot of learning to do yet.

[JTrout]

Welcome to 2+2!

1) Obviously it's a matter of degree. But I'd say at least 20,000 hands to be comfortable it's sustainable.

2) You don't adjust for the 18 cards that are unavailable. You count all cards that you haven't seen.

3) Assuming you are a winning player (or break even), I don't think your bankroll needs to be twice as big to play 2 tables. But it should be bigger. Maybe 50% bigger?
I'm sure a search on bankroll requirements would give you tons of info on this.

4) I think this is a big mistake. I'd think it would be smarter to leave losing tables, and stay at the tables you are winning.

Cheers,
JTrout.

[Drexel]

1800,

Perhaps the following escaped you:

"I am not really considering quitting my day job but these poker-for-a-living threads get hits and I am looking for some answers."

"Sorry if these are redundant as I have done some searching and come up empty on a few of these"

?????

Or perhaps crusty is your nature.

Thanks for providing nothing to this thread.

[MicroBob]

1. i think after 20k hands you have a rough idea of whether you are on the right track or not. some will say more, others will say less. it is possible to have a decent win-rate after 20k hands even if you are a losing-player overall....but 20k starts to give you an almost decent probability that you're success rate MIGHT be legitimate. 30k is much better though. and 100k puts you in the 99% accuracy range i think.

2. the fact that those cards are also in other players' hands is mostly irrelevant. there are 46 unknown and unseen cards to you...they are just as likely to be in someone else's hand as they are to come up on the river. you don't know what they have and you don't know what's left in the deck.

3. bankroll requirements shouldn't really be affected too much by multi-tabling. since playing multi-tables takes away a little bit of concentration it can cut into your BB/100 hand win-rate a little bit even though you are winning more overall. in other words, 2BB/100hds on 2 tables is still better than 2.2BB/100hds on 1 table.
conceiveably, you can adjust it up to 350BB if you really want to to make up for this....but doubling the required bankroll for 2-tables is not necessary.
you are really just playing hands twice as fast at the same amount.

4. if it helps you psychologically then i guess you can do that. there's no real harm in leaving the table....but if there are some super-fish still at the table and you are leaving because 'you have won a fair amount there' then you are costing yourself money.
if the table is good, then stay...if the table is too tight and you think you can find a better game, then leave....this usually doesn't have a whole lot to do with whether you've been winning or not because most players don't seem to notice. you are likely just incorrectly corresponding your successes to the table tightening-up.
you're big wins will seem to come in waves (as will your losses). sometimes you get great cards....sometimes you don't. if the table is good then stick it out there regardless of whether you have been winning or losing.
but again, there isn't much significant harm to leaving if and when you want to. but i think the 'urges to flee' are possibly indicative that you aren't in the right frame of mind there.

[jasonHoldEm]

1) The standard that I've heard is at 10k hands you can have an "idea" of how you're doing but you can't begin to really draw any conclusions until 20k-30k+ (some say 50k or 100k even...depends on how "certain" you want to be, needless to say, ALOT).

2) Doesn't matter, common beginer mistake...they are still unknown cards just calculate with what you know you have vs. the deck.

3) I'm not 100% sure on this one. Your swings do go up as you multi-table so you should have a bigger bankroll, but I doubt you need to double it.

4) If you're winning a lot of money at a table the worst thing you can do is leave. If they change their strategy against you then you need to readjust your strategy against them. If they play tighter against you then you semi-bluff and bluff more...there's more than one way to win a hand.

Good luck,
J

[Robk]

1. It's pretty easy to construct confidence intervals for your winrate, read about it here . Be sure to interpret them carefully, as Bruce suggests.

2. In general, you treat unseen cards in your opponent's hands the same as unseen cards in the deck. If you're very confident in your hand reading, you can alter the calculation a bit, "knowing" an opponent has (or doesn't have) particular cards, but it should rarely makes a difference in your decision.

3. The short answer is no. The long answer is here .

4. Do whatever keeps you playing your best game.

[Drexel]

Thanks Trout.

"You don't adjust for the 18 cards that are unavailable. You count all cards that you haven't seen."

Yes I understand this. But the way the odds of making a hand are presented results in measuring your outs against all unseen cards, at that point in time. However, after cards are dealt the true pool from which your outs may be drawn has reduced by all dealt cards (20). As has likely your true number of outs. So my question is really is there an adjustment that is made to factor this?

Everything I see just has you measure your outs against all unseen cards ie: chance of drawing third Ace on 5th street is 2/46 or 4.35% or 22-1. But in fact just 28 cards remain in the deck and if you can determine that no ace is held by opponents then your chance is 2/28 or 7.1% or 13-1, right? Obviously that difference might have a dramatic affect on your action. I just figured that since many folks utilize implied pot odds relative to pot size, that some would utilize implied hand odds as well.

Perhaps 1800 guy is correct about my inexperience and that this is a stupid question but since 85% of my sessions turn out profitable with about 5000 hands logged at 6.50/BB hr., I will continue to play as I have been.

[Drexel]

Excellent answers, thanks to all.

I hear you on number 2 but it's hard to accept since it is mathematically false and does not factor changing dynamics.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks Trout.

"You don't adjust for the 18 cards that are unavailable. You count all cards that you haven't seen."

Yes I understand this. But the way the odds of making a hand are presented results in measuring your outs against all unseen cards, at that point in time. However, after cards are dealt the true pool from which your outs may be drawn has reduced by all dealt cards (20). As has likely your true number of outs. So my question is really is there an adjustment that is made to factor this?

Everything I see just has you measure your outs against all unseen cards ie: chance of drawing third Ace on 5th street is 2/46 or 4.35% or 22-1. But in fact just 28 cards remain in the deck and if you can determine that no ace is held by opponents then your chance is 2/28 or 7.1% or 13-1, right? Obviously that difference might have a dramatic affect on your action.

[/ QUOTE ]
The cards that you can't see are the cards you can't see, regardless of why you can't see them. Whether you can't see them because they're still in the deck or because someone else is holding them makes no difference. As far as you're concerned, every unseen card has the exact same chance of being the next card off the top of the deck. They all also have the exact same chance of being in any one of your opponents' hands (or yours). How could you possibly make any sort of adjustment without some good knowledge about what your opponents have?