I'm coming across a fork in the road...

[bigloser2448]

I've been trying to figure out over the past few weeks if poker is really going to be profitable and could ever become a source of supplimental income for me. What I mean by that is I don't expect to ever become a Poker Pro pulling down Darin's kind of money or more. I'd be happy if I could get to a point of making $20 or $30 an hour and putting in 10 or 20 hours a week. Now even as I typed that last question, I can think of some of your reactions. "BigL, you just started playing 6 months ago, what do you expect?". "BigL, that's a pretty ambitous goal, you'd better get up to $100NL or higher and run good if you expect that kind of WinRate".

I guess if those two (suspected) reactions are acceptable ones, and I'm starting to think they are, then maybe poker isn't the best way for me to make extra money; even though it is something I love doing & that's almost as important as the money.

I read something from a poker book recently about SnG's that went something like this, "If someone is smart enough to win even just 50% of all the SnG's he played in, then he could probably make a lot more money doing something else". Now the author was actually saying that to suggest that muli-tabling could be a way to profit if you have a fairly high winning % in SnG's. But the main point sticks out in my head. Forget SnG's for a minute & let's just think of Cash Games... How much of a winrate can I expect even if I could get to $100NL and run at an adequate pace? Or if I expended that much focus and drive towards something else, could I make more money doing that?

Sevens posted what I consider a pretty impressive graph for June where he played almost 27,500 hands ($25NL I think, 7's correct me if I'm wrong) and brought in $210. Like I said, the graph was pretty impressive as it just went up and up and up without any significant downswings. Doing the math, even if those hands were all played 4-tabling, that's boils down to about 69 hours of playing @ 100 hands/hour per table (which is probably high). So for 69 hours of work the pay was a little more than $3/hour.

I hope Sevens knows I didn't post that to belittle his performance 'cause I don't think I could match it. All I'm saying is I'd like to think if I tried hard at learning something for 6 months that I should expect to make more than $3/hour at it.

I guess I'm reaching a turning point here. Yogi Berra once said, "If you come across a fork in the road, take it". I think as far as poker goes, I have several potential forks I could take:
*Multi-Table SnG's
*Multi-Table Cash Games
*Cash games with a mix of MTTs (more or less what I've been doing with little or no profit )
*Play for fun whenever
*Give it up altogether and put in an application at The Home Depot

I'd love to hear what you guys think. Are any of you (other than Darin) making what you'd consider good money and more than what you would make if you tried just as hard doing something else less volatile.

[sevens]

Nah, a good majority of those hands were 8 - 12 tabling, and that was all (except maybe 1500 hands) 10NL. I have full confidence that if this is something you really want, you are capable of doing it. Personally, my #1 poker goal, the reason I play every night and work on my game all the time, is because I want to get to 100NL/200NL asap so I can pull in a decent side income.

If you want to take the trip through micro cash games, I'd be more than happy to review hands with you and help you develop a solid game. Sure I had a decent month as far as running well, but I played the best I've ever played, and I know alot of where I made money was not just in getting cards and flopping sets vs TPTK. So yeah....if you really want it, I have no doubt that you (and not a general "you", I'm talking about you personally, because I've seen where you started on felt and where you are now) can do it.

[Mirage]

To each his own. I didn't start playing to make extra money, though I'm glad it worked out that way. I played pretty crappy poker and broke even for a LONG time before I got serious about it. Maybe I should go ahead and import all my old hands into HEM so I can show you my lifetime graph -- hundreds of thousands of hands of essentially breakeven poker before I ever got it going, and that doesn't even count the time I spent playing SNG's for pennies either.

Long story short, if you don't enjoy it, it's not even close to being worth the investment in time and energy to get good enough to make any kind of substantial income. Play whatever you enjoy most and don't even worry about making side income off it until you have proven to yourself that you're a long-term winner. That's not to say you can't get serious about learning and improving, but don't set such lofty goals for yourself that you can't enjoy playing until you reach them. Even the guys who "make it" to mid or high stakes understand that they won't be able to live hand-to-mouth off of poker forever and look to make investments with the big income they generate... the wiser ones do, at least.

If playing poker is just a means to an end, to make money, and you don't really enjoy it, even if you do get good enough and bankroll enough to make some income, you'll burn out pretty quickly.

[bigloser2448]

Mirage,
I hear where you're coming from. The fact of the matter is, I do thoroughly enjoy playing poker. It's just that I don't want it turning into another "golf" for me; where I know I could get good at it if I spent the time and played A LOT, but can't afford the time so it has to wait until I get old and probably won't be able to get good anymore.

Unfortunately for me, it may become something I can only do occasionally if I can't find a way to turn the corner and make it a profitable endeavor. I would have no problem locking myself in a (nice, comfortable, climate controlled) room for 2 or 3 hours every night if it could produce $750-1000/month. If you're not doing the math, that's 60 hours at up to $12-16/hour.

If that's way too ambitious a goal for me to obtain after making every possible effort to get as good as I can be, then I'm afraid it may become like my golf game where I can play whenever I get a chance and just be happy when I get to play.

I'm quite confident that if I committed that same amount of time doing many other things (albeit that I don't enjoy quite as much) that I could achieve that money goal.

I'm curious what others think about this too.

[Carrera]

What's unclear to me is whether you would enjoy being in that room for 2-3 hours a night. Or would you enjoy it only if you were making money. And in that case would you be just as happy doing something else in that room making the same money?

Do you need to make money during these hours, or is this real free time? Could you be just reading a book and not making any money?

[MewsicLovr]

Thinking about how much money you could be making is probably the wrong way of looking at things.

[Carrera]

Poker's not about winning and losing... It's about making the right decision

[Mirage]

Well, the neat thing about online poker as opposed to golf is that it doesn't cost you a thing to gain experience; no greens fees, travel, etc. If you can do it in your spare time and you enjoy it, then the opportunity cost isn't necessarily bad even if you don't wind up ever making decent money at it. In other words, if you would have been doing some other hobby during that time, what's the harm in it? Before I played poker, I was playing a shitton of video games in my spare time, and while it was certainly fun, it wasn't going to go anywhere. At least with poker you can learn a hobby, have fun, and just maybe you can make some money while you're at it, so it's a pretty ideal hobby given you have the patience for it. There's no guarantee that you're going to be able to supplement your income with it, however, so if you need some additional income, a part-time job will better suit your needs. You can still play with whatever time is left over.

I went ahead and imported all my old hands I was missing. Below is my lifetime cash graph dating back to September '06. It took me a lot of hands to get the hang of it, as you can see. I have made roughly 10k in bonuses and rakeback on top of it, but assuming I've averaged about 320 hands an hour (just guessing,) it's a pretty poor liftetime hourly even with the bonus and rakeback. The second image is that low point on the graph, see the # of hands and the amount won? 215554 hands to make $115! lol. Jeez I was such a degen tilt monkey, the worse I ran the more I played and the more I played, the worse I played. Ugh.

[Ugignadl]

To answer your question, I make enough money playing poker.

I don't think you can expect 20-30 per hour anytime soon however. You need to put in some serious deposits and move up further in limits, and then multitable. I think I played for about a year and a half online cash NL before I achieved anything like that.

I want to make several comments but am strapped for time. One that I will mention is that I completely disagree with the sentiment in your book. It simply isn't logical. You cannot take some activity, and say if you are good at that activity then you can be doing better at some other activity. It's not true. You can't make that conclusion. For example, someone who is freakishly good at mental arithmetic may get 100% in every test in primary school and then completely die when faced with more abstract concepts. Similarly someone may be exceedingly good at reading people and play live poker insanely well and then play online shithouse.

That same person might be not able to make more money doing anything else. A statement like the one you describe just isn't correct, and even worse it is incorrect to a large degree. These aren't fringe cases I'm talking about. Online poker is not a job. It's not something where you have to apply and then deal with annoying bosses or whatever the fuck. Comparing it to something like that isn't a fair comparison on either side of the coin. What do you do, add in extra money for online poker for convenience factor? Do you add extra money to the menial job because it has no variance?

Such comparisons are ludicrous when you boil them down to what the fuck you're ACTUALLY talking about, and it angers me when people make them and worry about them. The fact it is in a book as well angers me even more so.

Well I guess I'm an angry guy.

OK I must run. Lest I be deported.

[bigloser2448]

Originally Posted by Carrera

What's unclear to me is whether you would enjoy being in that room for 2-3 hours a night. Or would you enjoy it only if you were making money. And in that case would you be just as happy doing something else in that room making the same money?

Do you need to make money during these hours, or is this real free time? Could you be just reading a book and not making any money?

That's a very good question that I guess I didn't clearly answer. At least at this time and for the foreseeable future I need to make money during this time. Could I get away with not making money during this time for a while? Sure, maybe. But if I am going to spend this time playing poker instead of spending time with the family and doing family sorts of things, then I'd better make some money at it. Yes, it's partly out of guilt, very much like I'd feel guilty playing golf every night while my family waited at home for me to return. And sure Mirage brought up a good point, Poker doesn't cost like golf does. That is, if your time isn't worth anything to you.

So to make a long story short, my consciounce and my family's outlook would be happier if I worked a part time job making a little then it would be spending 2 or 3 hours away from them playing poker making next to nothing.
(and if you're thinking that I can play poker AND be with the family, no. that won't work for me if I'm going to play seriously).

Originally Posted by Mirage

Well, the neat thing about online poker as opposed to golf is that it doesn't cost you a thing to gain experience; no greens fees, travel, etc. If you can do it in your spare time and you enjoy it, then the opportunity cost isn't necessarily bad even if you don't wind up ever making decent money at it. In other words, if you would have been doing some other hobby during that time, what's the harm in it? Before I played poker, I was playing a shitton of video games in my spare time, and while it was certainly fun, it wasn't going to go anywhere. At least with poker you can learn a hobby, have fun, and just maybe you can make some money while you're at it, so it's a pretty ideal hobby given you have the patience for it. There's no guarantee that you're going to be able to supplement your income with it, however, so if you need some additional income, a part-time job will better suit your needs. You can still play with whatever time is left over.

I went ahead and imported all my old hands I was missing. Below is my lifetime cash graph dating back to September '06. It took me a lot of hands to get the hang of it, as you can see. I have made roughly 10k in bonuses and rakeback on top of it, but assuming I've averaged about 320 hands an hour (just guessing,) it's a pretty poor liftetime hourly even with the bonus and rakeback. The second image is that low point on the graph, see the # of hands and the amount won? 215554 hands to make $115! lol. Jeez I was such a degen tilt monkey, the worse I ran the more I played and the more I played, the worse I played. Ugh.

Wow Mirage,
I hope you didn't go through that trouble just for my stupid little post? Well worth it though to make your point. The point that I take from it at least is that I need to be serious and focused if I decide to give it a real chance. I look at what I've done over the last few months as similar to what you were talking about with "the worse I ran the more I played and the more I played, the worse I played" statement. Sure I've also learned a great deal over these last 6 months, but too much of it was wasted just throwing money away playing stupid. If I do decide to make a go of this, that BS has to stop.

Originally Posted by MewsicLovr

Thinking about how much money you could be making is probably the wrong way of looking at things.

I'm not attacking you, but your statement, when I say: That's ridiculous IMO.

1st of all I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "money you could be making".

If you meant money I could be making doing something else, what's wrong with comparing? If I'm looking at poker to be a potential second job, why wouldn't I compare it to other second jobs as I would with any other choices?

If you meant money I could potentially make playing poker, the same argument applies. Why shouldn't I try to figure out how much money I can expect to realistically make before considering doing this as a part time job?