Poker is hard! A honest insight on my journey to become a poker pro. Discussions desired!
Hello Everyone
With this thread I want to share my hopefully successful poker journey.
I try to be totally transparent about how things are going, how I feel and what my motivations are.
Also, I look for input from you guys and discussions about poker because I don't have anyone to discuss poker related topics with.
Some stuff about me:
I quit a well payed day job at the end of last year because I run out of motivation and started to feel burned out.
During the first month of inspiration taking I started playing online poker again for fun (did so for fun from time to time since I was 18).
I quickly realized how much fun I was having playing the game and thought about the possibility to give it a fair shot since I now have the time to study the game and put in the volume doing it full time.
So I decided to do that, bought an online subscription for study material and started digging through, while also grinding daily.
After 3 months full time studying and playing and things really not going my way I felt lost and hired a coach for an objective opinion on my game and my luck.
It turned out that I was a lot worse than I thought, that indeed I was not lucky and that my competition is a lot better than I expected.
Now 3 months later (6 months into poker), getting coached for about 10 hours a month, studying wider including different sites with study material, I see clear progress and the chance to actually make it.
I also did a lot of PT4 stats studies, fixed many holes in my game and kicked out zoom games because I currently can't beat that over any limit I tried (50NL - 500NL).
At the end of May things still are not going my way though and I consistently have red months online + live games (live mostly because of variance (If you want to know more, ask!)).
While I saw the progress in my game I did not see any progress considering my bankroll and I started looking for mental help books because I had a hard time handling several mental issues.
I found the book "The mental game of poker" and studied it during vacation. I must say I helps a lot so far.
As a next step I tried to make things more structured, playing only one limit for a month, having clear short and long term goals and measuring my performance in terms of how I play and not the monetary result.
Since June (so since 9 days now) I play 100NL non zoom tables only and have the following goals:
Short term:
For June, 50k hands at NL100, being up 1k (rakeback included) at the end of June, 5h hand review in PT4, session rating above 7 in average (1-10), play 3 days the leaderboard into top 5, deep review of interesting hands for 10h, study 20h
Mid term:
End of July, beating 100NL non zoom consistently
End of 2023, beating 200NL non zoom consistently
Long term:
End of 2024, beating 500NL non zoom consistently
End of 2025, playing 5kNL somewhat regularly
Maybe important:
I still have enough money to stay unemployed for quiet a while and would stop playing poker once I see that I am not making any progress anymore and that I still can't pay my bills from it.
So I accept that I will make less or even no money for a long starting period while it has to be worth it somewhen since I plan to pay my bills with poker in the future.
But for now I love the game, wake up motivated every morning, like the competitive environment and appreciated the freedom of self-employment.
I try to post an update weekly, including graphs and how I feel about it.
Thanks to all of you who support me on this journey.
Greetings
tryagain
how are the living costs in canada or in usa?
my gf is a nurse but obviously if start a family she would not be 100% able to work or i were to be alone home daddy + like online poker, lol
how bad is the feminism in canada ? is it real that trudeau decided that boys need to wear girls clothes at school on fridays? Are gender roles really messed up as ive heard? Are they all sick in their heads like wanting to change gender of kids and stuff like that?
There are quite a few benefits to playing online poker professionally. You don't have to commute, you can be more flexible with your time, you don't have co-workers that will bog you down with their drama, and the results you get are what you put it. I really hated working a places where higher ups would overlook my work ethic because I wouldn't brown nose. I can also go on vacation and do fun things with people without having to be working all the time. I can schedule days where I play 12 hours+ or none at all. I try and hit 172 hours a month and try and make a decent hourly and improve over time.
I think it could be difficult with a family or without having a lot of money already. One of the negatives is sometimes getting anxiety about losing my edge. I've been beating 100NL for 7.08BB/100 adj over 314k+ hands so logic says that I shouldn't worry about it too much, but its just this weird thing that always stays with me. Downswings can be a bit mentally tough sometimes.
The only other job that I've ever held that pays you for what you put in is the sales job that I had. I was doing very well at that job, because I knocked the doors of a lot of houses and worked hard on perfecting my sales pitch. It did get exhausting though, more mentally than physically. I quit that job to play poker full time and I have had no regrets since.
I think if you play poker professionally you really have to love the game, because if you play it just for the money you're going to burn out. I don't plan to play poker professionally forever, but I'm way happier doing this job than probably any other job before.
how are the living costs in canada or in usa?
my gf is a nurse but obviously if start a family she would not be 100% able to work or i were to be alone home daddy + like online poker, lol
how bad is the feminism in canada ? is it real that trudeau decided that boys need to wear girls clothes at school on fridays? Are gender roles really messed up as ive heard? Are they all sick in their heads like wanting to change gender of kids and stuff like that?
cost of living is quite high especially in a major city. Don't want to derail thread by diving too far into the weeds of politics but the clif notes version is the reality is somewhere in the middle of what media portrays an issue to be. It's not that crazy but its far from ideal. Regardless Trudeau is not going to get re-elected in the upcoming election and hopefully we can slowly undo the damage he's done to this country. Feel free to DM if you want to chat more about it.
