I'm currently a college student, but once summer rolls around I'm gonna try and make a push and take this whole poker deal seriously. Not saying I plan on turning pro overnight or quitting my job anytime soon, but who knows...time will tell. I'm just trying to get the ball rolling to possibly give me some options in the future.

I'm just curious how many hours you log a day, how often you take days off, how long you session for at a time, etc. I have an idea of how I want to schedule my day and I'm really excited to get started, but I want to make sure I'm not pushing myself too hard, and at the same time feeling sorry for myself when I should be sucking it up.

Obviously the best/ideal schedule is the one that nets the most profits, so I'm wondering what it is for you guys...

u serious? even for elite you only need to play 6 hour days at 100nl if you 24 table

in winter...70 hour weeks. but in summer...like 10 hour weeks, and thats basically all sundays. warm weather ftw

Well i turned full about this time last year and it's been a proper rollercoaster but i seriously doubt ill look back and have no doubts i will stay on this general course but it has been a lot of hours!

I think it really depends exactly how you go about it , your skill level , buy in level , game variations you play and how much your looking to earn etc etc ..

For me personally i had only been playing poker for around 18 months in any shape or form when i decided to turn full time, this decision was a lot easier for me though as i was self employed running my own cleaning buisness which paid ok but nothing great and was hard work but as i was my own boss i could just quit and go back to it if i needed too , So thats what i decided to do and quit and gave poker a proper shot as i was making more grinding the PLOH8 cash tables than i was working anyway.

This soon became tedious though and while i was making enough to pay the bills , due to the fact i didnt start out properly bankrolled and had to cash money out every week to support my partner and 2 kids i wasnt letting my bankroll develop and wasnt able to move up in stakes like i wanted too and it was a real worry from week to week as i was the sole earner in my household.

I decided i had to shake things up and spotted a SNG 6max leaderboard on an ongame site for the "poker race trophy" promotion where the winner of the leaderboard would win a seat at an 8 handed live semi televised on eurosport at various cities around the world and if you managed to win a live semi final you got a seat at the 6 handed final in Vienna where everyone was in the money and sharing $500k.

I thought it over and decided that my sng 6max game was pretty strong and due to the fact i was playing full time i could put the hours in and gave that a shot , first leaderboard i played i won relatively easy and got a seat to the semi final in Valencia where i was 5th but i enjoyed the experience. I dusted off and tried to qualify for the next semi final which was in Czech Rep which i done by winning the SNG leaderboard again but was 3rd this time so closer but no cigar , i gave it 1 more shot and won the leaderboard to qualify for the live semi at Brands Hatch where it was 3rd time lucky and i won and got my ticket to the $500k final in Vienna where i got 2nd for $100k, this was last November.

This gave me a proper start to playing full time but i couldnt face going back to grinding cash games so at the start of the year i switched over to pokerstars and tried to get to grips with the MTT's which took a couple of months of fumbling around but eventually ive got to grips with it and am up around $22k after the first few months even though ive been running relatively cold but about $2k of my buy ins was with player points so cash profit is nearer $25k and i feel my game has developed so hoping this will improve in the next few months although i may not be playing as much as ill be in vegas for the wsop during the summer.

Ok sorry for rambling on but i thought id give you some insight into what its been like for me personally and hopefully you can take something from it :)

So all in all its worked out for me however i think i was lucky enough to find a promo that really suited me to get me started and i was lucky enough to travel to a lot of nice cities and play in 4 televised games and i think finding something so easy to beat was down to simple good Fortune which has got my poker career off to a good start.

Theres been plenty negative points though , i was putting in 15 hours a day 7 days a week to win those leaderboards at the start and i neglected my friends and family and my own health and am only now addressing those issues , its amazing how quickly you can get unfit sitting on your backside day in day out playing poker and as a result im now looking to limit my time playing online to maybe 5 days a week 12 hours a day and having a lot of time off from that for live play.

One thing id really recommend if your wanting to give it a shot is giving your game an overhaul and asking some good players to rail you and give you feedback on anything they spot and doing some proper training through training sites , ive no idea of what level your at but i think this can help pretty much anyone at any level , it's always nice to have another perspective on things.

Anyways again sorry for the ramble but hopefully it will give a little insight.

GL in your quest!

Im about the laziest grinder ever, besides the week of the SCOOP which coincided with my spring break I prolly pt in 15 hour weeks. School is a huge pain though and the main reason I dont put in any sort of volume whatsoever

Day and a life of an online mtter... hmmm

Wakeup, register for tournies, jackoff, eat food, suckout for 10 hours straight, ship tournies, jackoff before bed. Rinse and repeat.

In all honesty, I've never played pro but in the summer I obv plan to play for my income... screw getting a job. For me, I'm just gonna go with the flow. If I feel like grinding then I will, obv grind all sundays, if I don't feel like grinding then I go out and have fun. This is probably almost definitely not the post your looking for so I'll give you some advice: Don't play too much where you will almost get sick of the game and will not play your best. Set a weekly routine and try to stick by it. Take a few days off if things aren't going well or you just don't feel like playing. Also set a daily routine such as; maybe go for a jog in the morning, eat a nice breakfast, shower, and grind away. It's always better to be fresh when playing rather than waking up in you pjs and starting the grind.

GL if you do go pro

 

Originally Posted by AwesomeO

Day and a life of an online mtter... hmmm

Wakeup, register for tournies, jackoff, eat food, suckout for 10 hours straight, ship tournies, jackoff before bed. Rinse and repeat.

In all honesty, I've never played pro but in the summer I obv plan to play for my income... screw getting a job. For me, I'm just gonna go with the flow. If I feel like grinding then I will, obv grind all sundays, if I don't feel like grinding then I go out and have fun. This is probably almost definitely not the post your looking for so I'll give you some advice: Don't play too much where you will almost get sick of the game and will not play your best. Set a weekly routine and try to stick by it. Take a few days off if things aren't going well or you just don't feel like playing. Also set a daily routine such as; maybe go for a jog in the morning, eat a nice breakfast, shower, and grind away. It's always better to be fresh when playing rather than waking up in you pjs and starting the grind.

GL if you do go pro

That's almost exactly what I'm telling myself I plan to do. It's kinda awkward because I live in Hawaii, so by about 8-10pm, a lot of the action is already dying down. On the flip side, around 6am things start to pick back up; definitely typical hours for anyone that plays B&M or house games. Of course that's always an option too to play both, but the house games around here have dried up a bit due to the economy and in general the fish just running out of money.

I've never been much of a morning person, but I'd like to get on a schedule where I get up early, either go running or to the gym, spend about an hour on a training site (just subscribed to SNG Grinders as that's all I'm playing now, eventually I want to work on my MTT game and get on PXF when my br allows for it), then grind for 3-6 hours. Take a break for lunch, relax, then go for another 3-6 hour session, then have the night to myself. It's amazing when I look at my ROI by the hour as it's very evident for whatever reason that I'm much more profitable during the day. Have a day or two off, and maybe a half day, and of course if I'm not playing at least a B-game then be disciplined not to play. Eventually I'd rather work on having the discipline to ALWAYS be on at least a B-game (because realistically, I don't think even Ivey is playing his A-game 100% of the time...just that his D-game > 99% of people's A++++ game hahah).

But ahh, this is all in theory for now. It just excites me because my job is starting to piss me off, I got a few more years of college and I just need a break from it if anything, and even when I graduate what do I have to look forward to...workng 5 days a week for the man, whoopdeefkndoo. Poker ain't easy money, probably more stressful than most careers, but god, not working for the man sounds so good.

 

Originally Posted by jdpc27

Take it from a SNG grinder..

if you can, move on to cash or mtt's as soon as possible. sng's have dried up significantly and only a small few are killing each level. The rest are getting by on mediocre roi's and playing pretty much for solely <a href='http://rakeback.pocketfives.com' target='blank'>rakeback</a> nowadays. at least thats how it is in the mid and high stakes levels.

JD

hmmm????

Tough to say average. I have weeks that I put in 40+ and weeks I put in 15ish. I don't really agree that SNGs are totally dried up. They aren't as easy now as they maybe once were, but at least the MTT sngs still have profits in them.

The reality is that it is a grind though. If you want to make good money you have to be willing to play many tables for quite a few hours.

 

Originally Posted by jdpc27

Reality: Most bangers play 5-6 nights a week, 7-12 hours a day. We sometimes pay to play or barely churn a profit for days / weeks. Eventually skill meets luck (see upside of variance) and we hit a couple scores and go on a small to medium heater. Then we usually spends days / weeks chasing said heater giving back a portion of those profits until we either find another heater or we find a bad downswing. What seperates the men from the boys are the ones that pick themselves back up and start the next day like the downswing never happened...The few of us that are lucky will hit a few big scores along the way, enough to allow us to play less or take bigger shots, or a combination of the two.

A small few will hit the super big scores, and their lives will be forever changed..The vast majority of us will hit enuff scores to make a living, but will not be able to leave the days of grinding behind us....in fact, for us it will be the opposite...for us to truly be successful, we have to learn to enjoy the grind..embrace it even.

Fantasy: You can play whenever you feel like it and oftentimes you'll only play 10-15 hours a week. In those 10-15 hour weeks, you always bink a final table of a major and you'll win more money than most people have ever seen in their lives. Soon you'll be on magazine covers, on epsidoes of high stakes living, and you'll spend every month in a different city just traveling around the world.

As for what you can make in a month..all depends on stakes, talent, and luck. I will say that based on stats that i've seen so far in 09, the number of people that will clear 100k profit playing mtt's online this year is very small compared to the number of guys that are playing mtt's. You are either in that group or you are not...and if you are not in that group, than you have to be ready to put in the volume to gurantee that you can pay all your bills this year w/o having to worry. Hard way to make an easy living...but the potential to make life changing money will always bring the players to the tables.

JD

This pretty much sums up my poker career.

seriously though I probably used to play like 60-80hrs a week when i first started

Everytime I see a bunch of posts about playing for a living, I laugh at all the tons of people that tell the person to dive right in, and on the flip side, i laugh at those that tell them to keep their day job as they will be an epic fail.

What people really need to hear is how it really is..no sugar coating..no stories of luck hitting skill on a guy's first week of playing big tournaments..to know how it is for the vast majority. The answer is simple: ITS A GRIND.

Once you accept that fact, than we can begin to really discuss it..

When I said that SNG's have dried up, its not to imply profits are nonexistant, only the difference in the average player tody from 2 years ago is tremendous. At least thats my opinion after logging 14,000 sng's, mostly at the 110+ level. A quick sharkscope check will show that only a few guys on each poker site are up more than 20k on the year playing sng's. Everyone knows sng strategy, everyone knows ICM decently, and ROI's have fallen for even the best players.

Profit still there..sure..printing money like the old days?? probably not..at least for the vast majority. Truth to be told, nowadays the best sng and mtt sat guys are being more selective in what they are playing...finding the sats/sngs that still give them a good edge swallowing their pride and unregistering from a sng if it has too many regs in it, where two years ago, they wouldn't care who was in it.

Understand that the whole key of mastering sng's comes down to one fundamental thing: mastering ICM. And then you discover the universal truth. The more you and your opp's master ICM, the more marginal situations you are going to be in near the bubble, which results in two things: increased variance in the shorterm, but decreased variance overall. Pros combat this by increasing volume meaning they have to be even more rolled online than they were before and play even more games. If you are seaking a huge profit out of full ring sng's nowadays, its a vicious cycle, that only the best at icm and multitabling can master. The majority are counting on their rakeback check or vip points to pay the bills or make the difference every month..Thats the truth.

Thats why a lot of guys have moved on to heads up sng's because they think too many guys have mastered icm, but that since most sng guys are not used to playing deepstack hu, that they will have more leaks to exploit in a hu format.

Mtt's tell a similar story...players have read the posts and discussions, talk about hands with other players, joined training sites..the players are much better today and more aggressive. Tournament variance is much higher today than it was two years go as players let their 3/4 bet ranges go along with their waistlines. Nowadays its ok to shove 200 BB's preflop with a ton of hands that you would muck for 30bb's just a year ago. Pro's have had to adjust by expanding their mtt schedule once again going for volume. Volume up, variance up...br at risk weekly / monthly up..its a vicious cycle. Profit still to be made..sure. We all play cuz we are chasing the life changing money score. But there will be many more nights were we played for 8 hours to min cash then nights that we spent up all night celebrating with friends trying to figure out what to buy with our new found riches. The best players play several hundred tournies a month figuring that eventually skill will meet luck and then hoping that the score is enough to cover the buy in's for the previous few weeks as well as provide a nice profit to justify all that work. Just know what you guys are getting yourselves in for, thats all i'm saying.

I've tried to strike a balance between mtt's, sng's, and sat's that minimize the risk of me going busto, provides an opportunity to make a profit each week, and gives me some shots at some serious money as well. You have a lot of grinders that push their roll and their risk, and there is some merit to that. But the guys that are providing for kids, and having to pay all their monthly bills off of poker have to manage that risk by also providing for their family, and they have to ensure or at least give themselves a good shot at a profit on a weekly or more realistically monthly basis.

I try not to tell guys to go or not go pro...rather i try to provide them with what i think a typical experience is, let them weigh the facts, and make their own decision.

However, I automatically know the guys who will probably not be successful...they are the ones who don't go into it knowing its a grind and being prepared for it. Guys that grind are either built for it or they aren't.

JD

A++ posts jdpc.... thanks for the honest information

cosign A++ posts by JD btw, meant zero disrespect in my post.

the FPP system on stars (trading FPPs for cash) is the same percentage rakeback as you'll get from FT.

pm for details..if i told everyone it wouldnt be a secret..