10 years as a live pro, mostly 2/5, approaching $1 million lifetime profit, AMA

Yeah I’ve certainly considered it. I actually think it’s perhaps something I should have pursued earlier in my career.

I think what kept me from doing it was a combination of simply wanting all my own action (not answering to somebody else) and also humility about my skills as a player. I had doubts about my ability to beat big games. These doubts were fueled by running very poorly in the few times I jumped into juicer big games.

In hindsight, I think I probably would have done well if I had taken shots and had people put me in games that were bigger than 5/10

It’s not a big regret though, I have to say I’m pleased with how my career has panned out. I have good financial security and am steadily on my way to complete financial independence.

When it comes to money and frugality, I’ve always been disciplined. I have other areas of my life where I woefully lack discipline.

I feel bad sometimes, especially when I know somebody is really degen, or sometimes when I see guys who I know have young kids at home just spending every night at the casino dumping their money, but everybody is free to do what they want, there are plenty of jobs besides poker where you aren’t really “benefitting society”, and most people are not like this, they have the money to spare and they lose it somewhat responsibly.

Yeah I wouldn’t mind a purer job sometimes, and perhaps later in life I will have them, but there are many horrors in this world, and the vast majority of us don’t do much to make the world a better place, so I can’t give myself too much flack as a poker player. I believe I am doing some good in my personal life (which I deliberately haven’t gotten into to much in this thread)

Your winnings are very impressive. I want to know how you deal with controlling your 'going on tilt' times. Do you play a pretty much stable game or do you ever lose control when down money at a session/game and decide to start tilting or gambling. I assume you have this in check for the most part given your incredible achievements to date.

thanks,

Tilt is essentially not a thing for me at 2/5. I honestly don’t think I’ve been perturbed a single time this entire year or last year to a level that would affect my play. I win at such a high rate, and my net worth has grown over the years to a level where 2/5 swings, bad players hitting 2 outers on me, and stuff like that, just don’t even register anymore.

That’s not to say I am totally emotionless, I think an easy example of something that would mildly annoy me is if I’m up a good amount all session, and at the very end I get dusted and end up even or down on the day. But “mildly annoyed” is the key, and I wouldn’t say I play any differently.

When I play bigger, I find that I am absolutely more emotional, and that’s a hard thing to control. Just focusing on strategy, and perhaps playing a pip or 2 tighter in a lot of positions, to make sure that I’m not getting out of line, is all I ever do.

If I ever find myself so irritated that I think my judgement is clouded, I will step away from the table for a bit, or if it’s a mediocre game anyways, I’ll just leave. It’s rare, but I’ve done that at 5/10 in the last couple years

Do you think your win rate varies by locale? Do you believe (or know) if your bb/hr is higher at your home room? I would guess yes, because you know the player pool so much better than when you travel (keyword is guess)?

If you're an unicorn overall then don't you really stick out in your home room? Don't the other regs know how to play you back? Or why don't they?

How would you rate the quality of an average reg this year versus 5 or 10 years ago?

Great thread, thanks. Your ability to be uber consistent and beat rake and tips for an actual liveable rate is really impressive.

[No reply to this: I'll guess Baltimore.]

I think my win rate does vary by locale, but it has less to do with having reads on people, and more to do with just the skill level in the room. I think there are rooms, and regions in the country, that are far, far softer than others. I happen to think I’m in one of the better regions in the country.

For sure I stick out like a sore thumb after a while in my main room(s)

I’ll say this: I have moved around a few times in the last decade, so my “main room” has changed a few times. If I had stayed in the same room this whole time, I definitely think a lot of the player pool would be “over it” haha, especially some of the smaller rooms I’ve been in.

I am “medium” social and friendly. I’m definitely not the life of a game, but I talk a bit, crack jokes, talk **** to the right people, etc.. so think people I play with generally like me, which goes a long way in people being tolerant of losing their money over time.

Having said that, in the room I’ve made home the last several years, I’m quite confident there isn’t a single 2/5 player that elicits more table changes than I do lol. I don’t mind it when it’s regs because that seat usually just gets filled with a worse player, but it does sting when a whale decides to stop playing with me.

All I’ll say about Baltimore is I’ve played there (Md Live and Shoe) and it’s a good region! It was even better before DC opened

Long time listener. First time caller.
Great thread. Thank you!

Two questions:

1) What do you think was your biggest breakthrough learning moment as far as strategy goes?

2) At 2/5 do you think you bluff optimally or more/less than optimal?

Thanks and sorry if we weren't supposed to ask strat questions (I didn't see any in the thread).

1. I think I’ve probably tried to answer this a couple times in this thread. Hard to pick one. Probably learning what baseline strategy in a two blind cash game actually looks like (super tight), and then extrapolating from that how and why I am allowed (able) to play so much looser than that. The answer is of course because the population plays far too loose and passively. For example, you can easily open 55 or KJo profitably from EP in most 2/5 games, but in a tough game those are pure folds. You’re gonna be wide open for 3 bets and also people won’t be flatting with dominated junk in tough games.

I also had big aha moments in tourneys when learning how significantly bubble and ICM dictates how tight and loose you are, depending on what stage of the tourney you’re in, and what relative stack sizes are. I’m mostly a cash player but gaining proficiency in tourneys was really fun.

2. I hope I bluff pretty close to optimally. If I didn’t think so, then I should probably adjust right?

There are definitely player types who I will go for it a little more, if I think they reliably fold to a lot of pressure (top pair, even overpairs reliably folding on certain boards) , and then other players against whom I only really go for high efficiency bluffs because they are just such stations (like if I have 7 high when I missed my open ender and I can try to bluff out queen high and king high)

People like to say “never bluff a station”. This statement lacks nuance. You should have bluffs against every player, the range just really constricts if you have some dope calling off with 4th pair on a wet board facing multiple bets. Against someone like that, your bluffs should be hands that have absolutely zero showdown value, and hopefully good removal, and then you should have a very robust value range to exploit all their loose calls

1.) How much rake do you think you've paid lifetime (my guess would be in the hundreds of thousands)?

2.) What would you say is the "max winrate" for your typical game, assuming that you exploit your opponents perfectly?

3.) Could you elaborate more on your previous quote about bluffing frequencies?

4.) How quickly do you characterise your opponents to change your play towards them - obviously you have initial thoughts on appearance, demeanour, but how quickly do you adjust to the way that they are playing?

Thanks for the thread!

1. Oh god that’s a good question. I’ve been a live pro for over 11 years now. I am definitely far from playing 2000 hours a year, probably average more like 1600. How much rake would I pay per hour? I don’t even know, maybe $20? So that math works out to around $360K. And then let’s not even get into tips. That’s in the 6 figures too. Yikes

Thankfully there’s still a nice slice of pie for me left over. I’m gonna finish this year around $100K profit, probably only 1200 hours played (big life events). When I started this thread I was at almost a mil lifetime, so now is probably more like $1.1 mil. I’m sure in the next handful of years I’ll be approaching $1 mil profit just from 2/5 which is pretty wild.

2. These questions are so hard to answer. I’ve been averaging right around $100 over the last 2 years which is insane, but if we harken back to years like 2016-2018, I was only making like $50-60. I’m not sure why my hourly has gone up so much. Maybe a little extended rungood. Maybe inflation just making 2/5 more accessible to more people, maybe rooms increasing to a $1K or higher max…probably all of those things

I’m not arrogant enough to say I’m the winningest 2/5 player by any stretch of the imagination either (although I suspect I’m in the upper echelon) so it seems very likely to me that someone is making more over an extended period without running super hot.

3 and 4. I could elaborate on bluffing and frequencies in so many different ways, it’s hard to choose. I’ll drop an opinion I have that relates to this:

I think the VAST majority of the 2/5 pool, even legit professional players, make adjustments too quickly based on incomplete information.

It can take a very long time to really have an accurate gauge of someone’s skillset. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played with someone and I was thinking “wow this guy is pretty solid!”, sometimes even playing with them for 50 or even 100 hours, and then I finally see one or more big pieces of evidence that they really aren’t that good.

The best source of evidence, by far, is at showdown, especially a showdown in a hand where there were critical decisions on each street. Watching a player execute sensible sizings across all streets with a hand that makes sense at showdown, can give you a good inclination that they know what they’re doing. This can even be in a hand where they were bluffing and lost if their hand selection makes sense.

The opposite is true too, seeing someone show down poor hand choices can quickly let you know they are a weak player.

I do stereotype players, I think it would be silly not to, and I’ll make small adjustments based on limited info, but I only make big “heroic” adjustments based on very strong evidence.

I’ll try to make some simplistic examples. Let’s say I’m facing a jam preflop, and with zero info I think I should call off 99+, AQs and AKo. Well, if my opponent is an 80 year old guy who I’ve played with for 45 minutes who I suspect is tight, I’m fine letting go of the AQs, the 99, and maybe the TT, but I’m not gonna do anything absurd like folding QQ or KK, which is the sort of over adjustment that I’ve seen all the time from mediocre players.

On the contrary, if the all in is from some other stereotype, a young guy riding a short stack, someone who seems like they’re drinking or tilted, someone who seems like they’re a gambler, someone with lots of bling, etc.. I might dilate to hands like 88 or 77, AQo, AJs, etc. The stronger the stereotype or read of their disposition that they may be punting, the wider I go, but there are limits. There’s a lot of intuition and estimation to it.

That doesn’t mean I’m afraid of making extreme adjustments, I just understand that stereotypes only go so far.

To exemplify this, in 2023 I folded KK preflop either 3 or 4 times (can’t remember which) and I got shown AA each time. Each situation was unique, but I was pretty confident in all of my folds because of who my opponents were. I distinctly remember doing it twice in the span of a few weeks. When the second situation occurred, I was like damn again??

But folding KK preflop is an absurd adjustment that almost always takes hundreds of hours with a player. You have to know that they are a scared tightass who won’t have QQ or AK in whatever line they took. These scenarios do occur, but they can be quite rare.

I could go on and on, but I’ll stop for now.

And when I say that pros make bad assumptions too quickly, fish are even more wildly off with theirs

Playing live poker, it’ll happen daily or weekly that people will make comments about how I, or someone else is playing, that will tell me that they have no idea what they’re talking about, or they’re extrapolating way too much based on a sample of 30 or 60 hands.

I am neither tight nor loose, but it’s very easy over a sample of 2 hours for me to either be super card dead and not involved in any meaningful pots, or for me to be VPIPing like every other hand and play a ton of big pots. And it’s amusing the wild assumptions and comments people make in response to these samples. And it’s even nicer that they share them out loud, making it that much easier to know how you are being perceived ��

Not sure if there are any rules against self promotion here, but I am considering offering coaching for the first time in a long time.

I would charge $125/hour for video coaching. We can have an initial consultation going over your skill level and your needs.

I’m really looking for people who already play a significant amount of live poker, and who want to improve their winrate, or perhaps make the move from 1/2 or 1/3 up to 2/5. I want my coaching to be worthwhile for you, and the people who will benefit the most are people already putting in the work. If you’re a beginner, there are much cheaper ways to learn the basics.

Given that I’ve been making almost $100/hour at 2/5 for the last 2 years, I think I can be of tremendous value to anybody who is struggling at live poker, as long as they are eager to learn.

DM me if interested!