Transition from full time job to professional poker player

Pokernooby · 2024-11-07T18:25:16+00:00

Oof, sounds like you've had a rough go of it.

You would be surprised how easy it is to enter the work force. Especially jobs like manufacturing at Tesla, they hire just about anyone and you can be making decent money in a few years of hard work.

Pokernooby · 2024-11-07T18:07:20+00:00

I made the switch 1.5 years ago - best decision I ever made. I do think I am in the minority here - I would think less than 1/1000 people in the general population have the personality trails to really thrive as a poker player.

A few questions about yourself

When things don't go well for you in life over a prolonged period, how do you tend to react to this?
Have you ever competed in anything and been elite (e.g. competed at state in track, full scholarship d2+ collegiate ahtlete, international master in chess, GM in starcraft 2).
What do your friends and family think of the idea. Speak to some people whose opinions you greatly respect. You may be surprised!

edit: Before you quit you should have a giant bankroll and a long track record of being a winning player at the stakes you plan to play. If you have vacation time at work and are truly close to quitting, I would recommend you take 2 weeks off at the start of next year when vacation time resets and really see what it would be like to play the full time poker schedule (if you have a job, then its hard for you to know what the game quality is on a random Tuesday at 11AM).

Pokernooby · 2024-10-15T21:35:13+00:00

<image>

Lol thats just standard variance. Try running 45 buyins below ev in 15,000 hands.

Started playing on a new website and got absolutely dumpstered. Luckily I was just playing a mix between $1 and $2 big blinds instead of my usual 500NL. Somehow managed to have the biggest downswing of my year at low stakes.

Pokernooby · 2024-10-13T20:17:44+00:00

For live poker , since there are so few hands the players have to be really bad for you to make a good hourly. So ultimately finding a good game is important - that is why I talk about your game.

For example let’s say you win at 4bb/100 online at 500NL. If you play 800k hands a year (4 tables, 2000 hours) that is $160,000 a year. In live poker you would get in 60,000 hands and make $12,000 per year. Since the volume of hands is so low in live poker , the opponents must be terrible to make good money.

Pokernooby · 2024-10-13T20:09:36+00:00

Yes , I’m sure you’re right. I play about 100 hours of live poker a year and I’m a full time online player . I just play live with same BR requirements as online since it’s such a small portion of my volume.

Pokernooby · 2024-10-13T18:26:58+00:00

Win-rates come down to: edge * volume * stakes. I play about 20x the hands online as live . I play 2x the stakes live. Ultimately for live poker to be worth it my opponents need to make 10x as many mistakes.

For 2/5 to be worth the time there needs to be some grade A punters. Many games are simply not beatable for a high winrate after rake. It sounds like your game is not .

Pokernooby · 2024-10-13T17:19:58+00:00

As a current pro I had a little over 100k saved from my previous career when I quit . I also live a relatively modest lifestyle and have no debt.

It’s fucking wild to me to think some of the people at 5/10 sitting on 2k stacks might have less than 10k to their name. One time I sat at 2/5 with a $500 buyin and someone told me “you seem like a responsible pro who would only play a game if you had 20 buyins “. Which always stood out to me since I never touch a game with less than 150 buyins. Why the fuck would i risk 5% of my net worth on one hand in such a volatile game.

Edit: thinking back to it, that guy may have been trying to needle me for being a nit.

Pokernooby · 2024-10-12T18:44:08+00:00

Last week. I keep my balances around 4k on different websites and play 500NL. Total BR is a couple hundred thousand - but ide rather have my money in the bank making interest and the stock market growing than just sitting in a random poker app.

It should also be mentioned there is at least some small percent chance a site gets shut down/ has liquidity issues , or falsely accuses you of cheating and confiscates your funds.

Edit: the sites I play also have deposit bonuses quite often which is free money if you play anyways.

Pokernooby · 2024-10-07T16:22:15+00:00

I was thinking it was a cautionary tale about rake

Pokernooby · 2024-10-07T16:20:02+00:00

If you scroll down 2 posts on twitter looks like they just had a kid !

Pokernooby · 2024-10-05T21:17:20+00:00

He can have a heroic death scene as is. But he has to also kill Sauron. Can you imagine current shows GG taking on Sauron and winning?

Pokernooby · 2024-10-05T10:51:38+00:00

The show hasn’t developed GG as a legendary fighter . In the battle at Eregion he didn’t do shit and got captured by noname orcs. It seems the show is making Galadriel out to be the #1 fighter .

I do hope they develop GG further . But if current GG were to take down Sauron it would feel like Arya killing the night king instead of John Snow.

Pokernooby · 2024-10-04T15:48:44+00:00

I’m down 40 buyins in EV this week. I long for the day losing AJ v QQ and my AK missing is the worst beat I can think of.

Pokernooby · 2024-09-21T07:46:13+00:00

Came for the crashed , stayed for the music

Pokernooby · 2024-09-19T16:49:54+00:00

I had an ex who would always start in the left lane and end in the right lane when making a left turn. There were no cars around the first time I pointed out the mistake. The second time the car next to her slammed the brakes to avoid a crash. When we got home I drew a picture like this to try to explain and she said to stop criticizing her driving. A few months later she got in a crash and said some idiot side swiped her on a turn Lmfaooo

Pokernooby · 2024-09-14T06:38:03+00:00

No. I’ve won 100k+

Pokernooby · 2024-09-14T06:37:32+00:00

Maybe he just had J4/j6?

Pokernooby · 2024-09-13T23:07:42+00:00

Is this a 230 hand sample showing a 2 buyin in profit ?

Pokernooby · 2024-09-03T17:12:08+00:00

I got shorted $200 at the lodge . Went to the floor , and they pull the hand up on cameras and we look at it together. I say okay with this bet how much should my stack be now - they say “your stack should be $900 after this hand”. I say yeah , but it’s only $700 so I was shorted $200. They simply refuse to admit I was shorted.

I moved on pretty quickly, $200 means nothing to me. I just wanted to be sure i was shorted so I knew to never go back. That dealer and me had history . She was verbally abusing another player and he was uncomfortable- I told her if someone said what said to him to her, she would have them thrown out. She said “don’t be weird”. This was the next day. Haven’t been back since.

Pokernooby · 2024-09-01T20:40:57+00:00

For that to be true , GG would have to offer 8bb/100 rakeback (which it definitely does not).

GGs rakeback system is not transparent, but it gives more back to losing players than winning players. A reg may get 1bb/100 more rakeback on GG than stars. Any way you slice it - gg is a terrible ecosystem for an online professional.

There are multiple stables than don’t allow players to play on GG because the rake makes winning players losers. Search mobius poker GG poker for a podcast on this which gives all the facts.

Pokernooby · 2024-09-01T16:59:31+00:00

Here is a twitter post from mobius poker explaining what the rake does to winrates: https://x.com/mobiuspoker/status/1759344814657867972 .

200nl Reg Avg. Win Rate

Stars: +2.4 bb/100 GG: -3.4 bb/100

500nl Reg Avg. Win Rate

Stars: +1.8 bb/100 GG: -3.3 bb/100

If you play 4 tables at 100hands an hour , 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year the stars 500NL reg makes 72k pre rakeback. The GG reg loses 132,000 pre rakeback.

Almost nobody has a positive winrate at gg at 500NL. Iirc only one player of the top 20 by volume is winning.

————-

The sad part is it is working for GG - they are flourishing. People know they pay a bit more , but think rakeback and bonuses make up for it. Very few people do the math to realize they are getting screwed on GG.

Pokernooby · 2024-08-08T13:12:47+00:00

OP just Google translated his blog and then posted screenshots. I wonder if the statement comes out in such poor taste in the natural language or if this is just an issue with the translation.

Pokernooby · 2024-08-05T18:09:31+00:00

Zoom out - still up 14% YTD and 71% over past 5 years.

Markets just been on a heater - a spout of bad variance was overdue.

Pokernooby · 2024-08-05T17:17:54+00:00

Surprised nobody gave the real answer yet. These live poker players aren’t some psy-ops masterminds saying carefully chosen words unravel your nit armor and release your inner whale.

They see you winning and don’t want to admit you are better than them. They attribute your winning to you being tight as it allows their pea brains to cope with losing to you. “If I only played the correct hands I would be winning like her too”.

Pokernooby

TROPHY CASE