10 years as a live pro, mostly 2/5, approaching $1 million lifetime profit, AMA
As the title suggests, I thought it would be fun to do an AMA for the 2+2 community to see if I can provide some insight
I sorta wonder too, because there’s some social downsides to live poker like being around certain people all the time. I guess the money makes that worth it for you? Or you never experienced that aspect of the game? I used to struggle a lot with the toxic personalities of the environment but I handle it much better now than I used to. I could see someone quitting over the antis
Look, there are downsides to almost every job. I do find a pretty big percentage of the people I play with to be fairly unlikable, especially when things like politics come up, but I just try to enjoy the process of taking their money. And it's not like the player pool is universally sucky people. I've met some of my best friends at the poker table.
So I hear where you're coming from, but it doesn't bother me. I come home every night to a beautiful family.
Not to hijack the thread but for me live poker has always been way easier for a multitude of reasons; concentration (because it's super slow, one table and I'm there to win), socializing is fun (I like to talk sports and a variety of other topics), how soft it is, etc.
I'm sure Live Pro has some similar reasons.
Yeah, I'm not a huge sports guy but I agree about greatly preferring live poker and its soft nature.
curious OP- do you think you would play in a game 2/5/10 autostraddle that has 10% up to $20 in rake?
What winrate do you think you can realistically get in that.
No. Could be beatable if insanely soft, but this sounds like a home game, which I don't play in
What major adjustments would you make to a 2/5/10 game with a $500 cap? In games where most of the hands go 3-4 way.
You must have done well with living a frugal lifestyle, not spending, and investments to hold onto your money. Kudos to you. You seem happy. Good thread.
Just play tighter and more aggro. You can't flat very much at all, especially not with suited connectors and small pairs trying to smash. The fact that hands go 3-4 ways means that if the open size is 3-4x, you can literally just squeeze jam 50bb profitably in a lot of situations.
Stacks should get deeper in a game like this after a few hours, and become a more normal 5/10 style of game.
Most of the live pros I've noticed don't really care about people being dicks and that aspect of live poker. Online players or players that started playing online and then transitioned to live, generally are worse off. More sensitive etc. To me though, the dream isn't living in a casino and grinding away. The dream was being able to travel, live in foreign countries etc. As we
Poker has given me all of the above. I travel abroad pretty much yearly (though I've never lived abroad) and I am able to afford a life that costs a fair bit without stress!
I'm at a point now where a lot of years where the market does well, my passive gains can equal or exceed how much I make from poker. On any given day, the market is more likely to dictate an increase or decrease in my net worth than the poker table is. It's a good situation to be in.
OP, what's your thoughts about private games?
Do you have any aspirations to play higher?
Zero interest in private games. If I'm being invited to one, I would have to seriously question why, and often times I would assume it's so I can be cheated.
I mainly play 2/5, I sprinkle in 5/10. I'm honestly pretty happy with this. I think at different stages of life I want to play more medium stakes live MTT's, but I'm just too busy for that right now. I'm fine with the current dynamic
I play a little PLO but I don't think I'm very good. Live low stakes PLO is kinda stupid. You can make some money but you get way less hands than NL, and so many people just play incredibly face up. On the other hand, once you move up, PLO becomes such a complicated and beautiful game. I generally don't play it because I don't trust my abilities.
Great thread. 13 years in - how granular is your record keeping? Do you log every session with hours/game/location, or just keep a running total? And do you ever actually use the data for decisions (moving up, dropping a room), or is it mostly for taxes at this point?
Great thread. 13 years in - how granular is your record keeping? Do you log every session with hours/game/location, or just keep a running total? And do you ever actually use the data for decisions (moving up, dropping a room), or is it mostly for taxes at this point?
I log every single session with Poker Income Pro. It’s easy, and second nature. It’s mostly for taxes and to just generally know how I’m doing on the year, I wouldn’t say it ever informs a decision.
For example, I could have crazy good or bad results in a given room over 500 hours, but at this point in my career, I can guess pretty accurately how much that has to do to game quality, running hot/bad, etc. I don’t need to look at the numbers.
I’m actually having a pretty subpar year, only up about $40K plus a few thousand in promos, but I’ve also only played 650 hours. Just been busy with a lot of other things.
Still , I wouldn’t mind being above $100K on the year, I hope in the second half I can play ~800 hours, which should give me a good shot. I feel pretty confident in myself averaging over $70/hour at 2/5
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Great thread. 13 years in - how granular is your record keeping? Do you log every session with hours/game/location, or just keep a running total? And do you ever actually use the data for decisions (moving up, dropping a room), or is it mostly for taxes at this point?
I log every single session with Poker Income Pro. It’s easy, and second nature. It’s mostly for taxes and to jus
Thanks for the detailed answer. Interesting that after 13 years the numbers confirm more than they inform — the sample in your head is bigger than the one in the app at that point. Did the logging habit come from day one, or was there a stretch early on where you didn't track and regretted it?
Thanks for the detailed answer. Interesting that after 13 years the numbers confirm more than they inform - the sample in your head is bigger than the one in the app at that point. Did the logging habit come from day one, or was there a stretch early on where you didn't track and regretted it
Oh I’ve logged every single cash session I’ve ever played. It just seemed silly not to, I keep good records and I pay my taxes so that I don’t have to have fear when I invest my money.
I didn’t log tourneys initially, I just kept all my receipts, but for the last several years I’ve gotten better about that
I haven’t talked a lot about investing but that’s a huge part of my success too. I just do boring indexing, I don’t believe in playing the market, but between my assets, and what my now wife has brought to the table, we’ve made many hundreds of thousands of dollars passively. I also got into bitcoin under $5K. This is a big part of what allows us to have such a low stress life, and how I can get away with often only playing 100-130 hours a month.
A couple quick questions as I read through all the posts:
1. Do you enjoy cash games more than tournaments or do you feel you are better at cash games? I do much better at tournaments and it seems like some people do better at one or the other. I was curious what your take is on this.
2. Do you adjust for certain promotions? Just as an example if a casino was doing a quads or better promo for a higher payout, would you play longer, different, ect? Splash pots?
Thank you!
A couple quick questions as I read through all the posts:1. Do you enjoy cash games more than tournaments or do you feel you are better at cash games? I do much better at tournaments and it seems like some people do better at one or the other. I was curious what your take is on this.2. Do you adjust for certain promotions? Just as an example if a casino was doing a quads or bet
I’m better at cash, it’s not even close. I think I’m decent at tourneys, I think I am profitable in virtually anything $1500 and under (and can be profitable in softer $3500 mains and stuff) but my ability to crush live cash is without question after all these years.
Tourneys are way more exciting and emotionally volatile. When I was having big scores, it was the best. But I’ve also never doubted myself more than when I was on super downswings
Cash serves my lifestyle much better right now, especially since I have some fun projects I’m working on outside of poker, and my time is scarce.
Still though, I want to have some stretches in the next few years where I can sink some time into high value MTTs
For your second question, yeah for sure, especially when I was younger and didn’t have a family. Not so much high hands because generally the more money they’re giving away, the more tables are running, so your EV typically doesn’t deviate that much.
But I’ve had other promos in local casinos that I’ve taken advantage of big time!
I mentioned how I was having a little bit of a down year, and then I just rip off 3 big ones in a row and I’m right on track
This is actually probably one of the sickest little 2/5 runs of my whole career. $24K in 72 hours. I cropped the left side so people wouldn’t see my home casino, obv
Thanks for the support as always. I hope this inspires you live regs to keep getting after it!
What motivated you to track your results and sessions early on?
Were your intentions to be professional from the start?
Did you have a career as a recreational where you were logging sessions?
What motivated you to track your results and sessions early on?
Were your intentions to be professional from the start?
Did you have a career as a recreational where you were logging sessions?
There was no motivation, I just always did it. I wanted to know how I was doing at poker!
“What gets measured, gets improved”
I wouldn’t say my intention was to be a pro poker player IMMEDIATELY, but it became clear very quickly that I could make a lot more at it than my regular job, so it became my focus very quickly (within a few weeks I’d say) . I was making over $30 at the lowest stakes, and this was 13+ years ago when things were a lot cheaper.
So yeah technically I had a few months where I wasn’t a full time pro because I had a regular job, but that was quite short-lived
I probably quit my job earlier than I would today, in terms of how much cash I had, but I was young, my expenses were low, and I knew I could go back if I had to.
Thankfully I ran well and never had to look back!
I’ve been asked about tracking a lot…do many of you not just track all of your results?
... I’ve been asked about tracking a lot…do many of you not just track all of your results?
Not a poker-related response, but I've been using the Lay The Draw method of betting on soccer on Betfair for the last eight years, and I keep an ongoing simple Notepad record of my results, with notes about particular games and competitions.
Looking at it now, I see I often don't keep a note of my online balance when I have a run of individual bet losses; but the notes certainly help a lot. Because of my notes from the last World Cup, I have managed to make a good run of wins this time.
So I'd agree that tracking with notes is a vital necessity for those who want to take their gambling as a serious enterprise.
