When I was in high school, I went through a stage where I was having a harder time finding live games. I asked my parents to let me use their credit card to play online, like some of my friends' parents had done, but they refused. Unable to get my poker fix from actually playing, I turned to reading every forum I could find on the internet, watching taped episodes of the World Poker Tour, and thumbing through the poker magazines that were just starting to come out at the time. <READMORE>Oftentimes, when I read through a magazine like Bluff, I would read player interviews and profiles that would make playing poker for a living sound something akin to being a rock star. Wild accounts of partying, drinking, travelling, and prop bets filled me with wonder, and fooled me into believing playing poker professionally was more like a giant circus than a job.

Now that I have been playing for a while, I know the truth; playing poker online professionally is no different than many other jobs. You have to take regular days off, you have things you enjoy doing, and you have others that you don't. There are people that you enjoy working with and there are others cannot stand. There is paperwork, planning, stress, and general monotony. Sometimes you hate your job and other times you greatly enjoy it.

The real difference of course is that you are not working for a consistent paycheck, you do not need a college degree to pursue this kind of work, you set your own schedule, and your coworkers/opponents are people you cannot actually see. The difference most people focus on with poker, though, is of course the money. Stories of young guys making six figures while lying on their couch in their pajamas have caused more than one young hopeful to skip college and other endeavors they might have once pursued.

Over the following paragraphs, I have attempted to explain a typical week in my life, in order to give you all a better idea of what it is like to be an online professional. Additionally, much of my routine is the product of trial and error, as I have tried for a long time to make poker revolve around my life and not vice versa. Hopefully some of my habits, if adapted in your playing schedules, will allow you to find better results and help you balance poker and life more successfully.

I, like many others on this site, focus on MTTs almost exclusively, although I do occasionally play heads-up cash games. I live in Seattle with a roommate around the University of Washington. I am nineteen years old, and I have no dependants.

I typically like to work Monday through Wednesday and the weekends. I like to have a couple days off before the hell that can be Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes my days off have to change because something comes up, but this is the ideal working week for me. If I am feeling especially worn out, I might take Wednesday off as well.

A normal work day starts with me waking up at 10:00 or 11:00 AM. I will come out into my living room, make some tea, and maybe answer some emails or read a few sites I like while I am shaking out the cobwebs. When I feel a little more alert, I go outside and jog on a local bike trail for four to eight miles. I really feel like this helps me a lot when it comes to tournament poker. Many of my tournament wins and deep finishes have come very late at night, where my personal training has likely had a hand in keeping me focused, despite having been playing for 12 hours.

Once I get home, I always shower and shave. Even if I am not going to be seeing anyone that day, if I feel unclean, I will usually play poorly. Coming out of the shower, I put on some sweatpants or shorts and a looser T-shirt and walk a couple blocks to the city. I don't really care if my clothes will impress anybody. I dress more for comfort in the mornings, so I can sit in a chair for a long period of time and not get restless.

In the city, I grab a bubble tea from my favorite place and typically get a breakfast/lunch from one of the restaurants. I try not to eat too much or too heavy, because then I am more prone to get tired later in the day. On my way back home, I will pick up some Arizona Green Tea or a couple energy drinks. I will drink the tea early on in the day and the energy drinks only if my session is going very late. I do not like to get a caffeine high going, only to crash during the ending stages of one of my tournaments.

Back at home I will get on my cell phone and call my backer, Ghettofabolous (Malicous222 on Pokerstars). It's usually around noon to 2:00 PM by then. We will discuss what events I will be playing for him that day, as he only stakes me in higher buy-in tournaments and satellites. Sometimes he is playing a cash game when I call him, so I will have to wait a bit. Once we establish what events we both agree on, he will send me the amount of money I will need to enter these events on Pokerstars.

I put a notepad beside my desk and record what time I am starting my session, how much Ghetto has sent me, and what events I am supposed to enter for him. I will go onto Full Tilt, Ultimatebet, and Absolute poker and register for all of the events I am going to be playing that day. The Pokerstars lobby is something I will have to check often throughout the day, because they do not allow you to register more than an hour in advance for most of their tournaments.

I have a two monitors I play on, although one is a smaller laptop monitor and one is a 20", so there is a bit of disparity. I will often lump Pokerstars tables on my laptop, because Stars' software is excellent for letting you know when it is your turn to act, so I do not need to delineate a large portion of screen space to those tables. The Full Tilt, Absolute, and Ultimatebet tables get displayed on my larger monitor, because they do not do as good of a job of letting you know when your turn is. Missed hands mean missed profit, so it's important I catch these hands before I time out.

To help me separate which table is which, I will often change the backgrounds of different tables. On Full Tilt, if I am playing on a table with a higher buy-in and more professionals, I will change the background to the Vegas theme, to remind myself that the tricks that might work on weaker players might not work here. If it's the early stages of the tournament, I will have the beach theme, if its a satellite I will have the plain theme, if its a rebuy I will have the jungle theme, etc.

As the day goes on, I will rotate my tables, keeping the ones that have been running the longest in the upper-left hand corner of my screen. It's important I know which stage of a tournament I am in on each one of my tables, and this allows me to know that information instantaneously. If I get down to the final couple of tables in a tournament, I will enlarge that one. If I am lacking motivation that day, I will look at the lobby and remind myself how much first is and what I can buy with that, but otherwise I never look at the lobby. I try to put the same amount of effort into each tournament, whether it's the $10 rebuy or the Sunday Million.

I do not have a clock on my computer. If I see that it is getting late, I might become tired. I keep a written record of what happened in each tournament I played in for my backer.

There is rarely a moment when I am playing but do not have music on. At the beginning of the day, I have to relax and be patient, so I listen to podcasts, online radio, or very mellow trance. As things heat up, I start listening to hip hop. I like hip hop because it keeps me mean but mellow at the same time. If I am playing 12+ tables, I like more intense music, sometimes heavy metal.

When my roommate gets home, she often makes a dinner for both of us. I pay a little more of the rent so that she will do this. I will eat my meal on a separate table next to my computer.

If I make a large final table, I will send my roommate out of the room. I will turn off all the lights and turn on atmospheric music. I will put my hands together and clasp them so I do not just reach for the mouse and go with my first instinct.

If I take a bad beat, I will often take a quick walk around. I've even gone into my bedroom and laid down for five minutes, timing out if I really thought I needed it. When I absolutely cannot leave my desk, I look up at the art I have hanging up above it. I surround my work area with Japanese art that depicts peaceful landscapes.

After my session is over, I do my best to not whine to anyone who calls me or is around me. Sometimes I do anyways, but constantly whining about my misfortune would really wear on my roommate if I did it every day. If I do talk about my day, I try to do it with an optimistic attitude or with a laugh when I come to the part where I played badly or got unlucky.

It's usually around midnight at this time. If I feel antsy or need to rethink some of my plays, I go for a walk. Otherwise I watch TV a bit or read. If there are a couple hands that are bugging me, I will discuss them with a bunch of different people on IM.

When I was still living with a girl who wanted to spend time with me every day, I could not have kept this schedule, so I would often try to start earlier in the day and wrap up around 9:00 PM when she would come home.

On my days off, I try to not do anything poker related and get out of my apartment. I am not always successful, but when I do actually plan things well, I like to hang out with my friends, see movies, go to Mariners games, check out concerts, etc. I like to just be a normal teenager on my days off and let go of the stress. I do not read forums, watch poker on TV, or anything of the sort on my days off. I make sure the friends I hang out with do not know anything about poker. The main things you are deprived of every day when you play poker online professionally are the human contact and seeing the outside world, so I try to get a whole lot of both on my weekends. If I have won a bigger tournament, I will buy myself something nice to remind me that my hard work has tangible rewards as well, and that my bankroll is more than just a number on a screen.

The best results I have ever had in poker have come when I had a consistent girlfriend and I was going to school, even just leisurely. Sure, I did not get as much sleep, and I had to take a few days off here and there to do my homework, but being able to see other people my age every day and have someone who cared about me gave me a calm when I played that I did not possess before.

When I have been playing this way for a couple months and I am strung out, other things in my life are bothering me, or I am just running hideously badly, I will take an extended break from poker. Usually its just a week, but every once in a while I will take as much as a whole month off. This was the case last month, where except for the Asian Pacific Poker Tour, I did not play poker at all.

It really can get debilitating, sitting in your house and trying to destroy other people all day. When I take extended breaks, I try to get out and see the world and meet new people. I want to make someone else happy instead of taking away from people. I want to feel new experiences and then remind myself that it is the financial and personal freedom poker affords me that allows me to have those experiences. With that in mind, it is easier to approach my job with more responsibility and grit my teeth through the bad times.

So there you have it. No hookers, no blow, no wild prop bets....I don't even smoke pot. I have a lot of freedom, but I can often be as boring as a librarian. However, I hope even if a glimpse into my life hasn't been super exciting, it gives you a better idea of how one pro lives his life.
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