grinding out a living

Honestly i just try to play at least 100 hands every time i sit down to play and after that if im not feeling it i stop obv i mean each table not total

Just speaking for myself, I found that my results improved, I had more fun and it didn't feel like such a grind when I started playing more of what I wanted to play and less of the "this is best for my hourly" games.

Sometimes that means I'll enter a few hundred dollar buy in tournament instead of playing cash. It sounds counterintuitive but by playing more of what seems fun I find it easier to put in volume, and my bottom line has actually improved. But I still only put in maybe 30 or 40 hours a week, with some longer weeks mixed in when there is a big event or something, and some weeks when I'm doing something else and don't play at all.

I know what you mean about the "poker playing robots." I don't know how they do it. There are regs that seem to live in the poker room, and all they do is jockey for seats. If I happen to be at their table, and it's a bad reg-heavy game, they disappear leaving a stack at an empty seat. If their stack is about to get picked up because they've been gone so long, they magically reappear, play like an orbit or less then disappear again.

Then an action player shows up and they magically reappear again within minutes, and start trying to seat change to the action player's left. It's pretty obnoxious actually. This is part of the reason I started playing more tournaments.

A lot of these players aren't even very good poker players. They just sit super deep, nit it up all day and wait for someone to donate their stack. It's no wonder a lot of the good games have gone private or semi-private.

Anyway, you really don't want to be a poker playing robot. You might try what billy suggested above. For me just getting in the room is half the battle. Then if the game is bad after a while just leave. That's not where most of your profit is going to come from anyway. When the game is amazing you won't want to leave, and that's the best time to put in a long session.

I am coming back to poker after a decade off.
My only rule is absolutely no holdem or PLO. People are obsessed with game theory but not the game theory of the decision to play games that have been so analyzed to death.

Hard to make a living betting on flipping quarters if even the suckers know the odds are roughly 50/50. Even if you figure out some physical error in the flip that changes the odds to 49.9/50.1 expressing that edge in the limit is a complete waste of time in a finite lifespan.

It's tough to play so many hours every single day, and I find it hard to believe that these guys are not sacrificing a huge amount of their own health to achieve such types of volume.

What helps me play volume without detrimental thoughts is logic (I think positive thoughts and emotions, like happiness, can be as detrimental as the negative ones if you can't control yourself).

When you open AA UTG, your expectation in GTO is more or less 9.4 bbs, probably a bit more depending on your real table. It's not 100, not even 50 bbs. The overwhelming majority of the hands in your opening range have EVs close to 0, and you only achieve reasonable winrates because those EVs add up over time and you play well.

If your long term expected winrate is 5 bb/100, and nothing substantial changes, that' s what you should expect to make for every 100 hands you play. Given poker is a game with huge amounts of variance, that's not what you'll see in shorter timeframes. If you have a huge session and win 10 BIs in 1k hands, what is the point in getting excited and happy about it? It won't make you anything closer to your long term goals than if such run never happened, your EV will catch up eventually no matter how excited or sad you get. Same for downswings but in reverse.

Almost no mistakes that you make where you lose a stack are actually worth the full stack, no matter how dumb they are, unless you're really just a clueless spewy recreational. They are usually some fraction of that that, while huge in itself, are not really -100 in EV. If you have a winrate of, let's say, the 5 bb/100 I mentioned, and you make a blunder you know you usually make, it is not really lowering your winrate. You have 5 bb/100 instead of 6, 7, 10, exactly because you're consistently making those blunders from time to time. No point in being angry with yourself, use them as an excuse to learn and you'll stop making those same blunders, and then, your winrate will improve.

I don't have to, and I don't want to play poker 6-7 days/wk for 8+ hours. 5 hours/day for 5 days a week, 6 if I'm really feeling it, are more than enough. Patience my friend, you'll probably get there even faster if you stop trying so hard.

i appreciate the comment peace&love. thanks you for the inspiration.

i havent been to any other casinos so i dont know what the typical reg is like but from your discription im starting to think the traits are universal. The regs here dont go so far as to try to get immediate left of recs but just like your regs some of mine would disappear for a while only to come back in time for the promotions and disappear again. It really do get annoying sometimes seeing an empty seat when someone could be sitting in it. it is what it is though.

I wonder if you have this group of people too. Over here theres this group of older regs whos been in the game for decades. they tend to get really mad when they lose a hand and start cursing and throwing cards. Sometime they would go at it with each other saying stuff like 'no more chop!' We call them grumpy old men. they are for the most part alright, its just a trip watching them act sometime.

One thing that helps me is staying motivated. Remember poker is a game, a game of skill - emotional skill, mental skill, mathematics, everything. This is what makes it so stressful for people like me who try to encompass all of these things together at once in hopes that it will somehow lead to me having this kind of perfect ability to play.

But I’ve learned that as humans we are always going to make mistakes. In life when you get in an argument with someone or lose your temper, or something happens where you feel bad, it’s natural to have the reaction of making some kind of mistake. We’re only trying our best and nobody can be perfect.

Stay focused. Take breaks when you need them. Try to stay motivated about the game and play your best. Ignore everyone else and put on headphones if you need to. Nobody is going to cry if you leave the table. You’re there for you and nobody else.

Try to take some time off for yourself to enjoy things you like or get rest when you have time off, you will start to feel more comfortable. If you’re someone like me who has trouble staying away from poker sometimes, let yourself find peace in that and motivate you to come back and play even better the next time you go in. Maybe a study session or thinking about someone you look up to in the poker world would help too.

Also, don’t forget to look back and celebrate all the times you won and did well for yourself, where you felt proud that you played well. Get excited about it.

Sorry, I know this may not be what you’re looking to hear, but try to approach things from a more practical point of view. Take things with a grain of salt. Hope this helps.

Think it comes down to how much you want it, for some it's the only income and they have to grind. Also being a winning player helps alot too. From my experience, breakeven or losing players get burned out faster or use that as an excuse to quit.

Studying is super boring too so improving own skill is very difficult. Players are so good now, many regs play similar, hard to win money. Need lots of volume and patience.

Mind over matter!

Agreed with above. If you want it bad enough and you are good at the game, what can stop you?

If you can't really see yourself grinding at poker, then at least in the long term, consider what else can you do with your life. What feels like play to you that looks like work to others?