Ok, i'm gonna' give it a try! Advice wanted

Flipz4Rollz

I Dropped out of college last week as the course i was doing didn't suit me. Gonna go back next year but I have sooo much free time now as it's so hard to find a job! I have decided to try play poker to make money until the summer(going to america in the summer)

This is how I am going to try it:
-deposit 3k on ipoker
-get the 50% RB deal( as I have never played on ipoker so i'm eligable for it)
- 6-table 100nl on a decent monitor

-play 45-50hours a week( people will probably find this far-fetched but with my friends in college I think I will have enough free time.)

-Take out my RB(RB calculator has it at $4.5k a month if you 6-table 100nl 6-max for 40-50hours a week) each month to as my wage

-keep the rest of my roll in my acc. until the summer.

I have HM and i'm getting a fairly decent monitor on friday. I am at no stage going to move up levels as I feel I more than likely cant beat 1/2. My usual game before this was 3-tabling 100nl HU and i was beating it(for a v,modest rate mind you) over about 40k hands and i feel I can def beat 100nl 6-max as people say HU cash is the hardest Holdem game there is. Working during the night wont be a prblem as i've always been fairly nocturnal. I go to the gym a good bit so I dont really have worries of getting fat,unfit etc.)

even if i was beating 100nl for like 1-1.5BB/100 or just breakeven i would be still making a decent wage of like €700 a week off RB from the volume of hands i'm putting in?

This is about the only chance I have of making € this year as I'm not claiming the dole.(under 19s only get like 100,to proud,would be scummy if i'm making a living off this etc.)

Any advice welcome. I expect to hear that i'm going to have downswings like i havent even heard of and that poker is not fun when your trying to make a living off it. 3k is prob not enough of a roll but its all i have so i'm going to give it a try starting next monday(going to a wedding this week)

Thanks in advance for the advise

suilen

If all you have is 3k and cant reload then start at 50NL, move up to 100NL if ya break $4k. I wouldnt jump straight into 6 tabling either if your only used to playing 3, just add one at a time.

shanethemofo

Claim the dole anyway :pac:
Have a back up plan.
Dont let it consume you.


Best of luck

mdwexford

Oh how i wish i could grind 7 hours a day every day.

Good luck.

BobSloane

How many hours do u normally play a week. 40-50 hours sounds like a lot if you're not used to it. 40k hands of hu doesn't sound like a lot of hours in the bag. Good luck with this but be careful with your goals - like suilen said going form 3 tables to 6 and playing way more hours than you're used to could hurt your roll quickly - especially when its only 30BIs

Flipz4Rollz

suilen wrote: »

If all you have is 3k and cant reload then start at 50NL, move up to 100NL if ya break $4k. I wouldnt jump straight into 6 tabling either if your only used to playing 3, just add one at a time.

I played 3-tables because it was HU...I feel i would be fairly comfortable 6-tabling 6-max. I 'm starting at 100nl but moving down to 50nl if i have to. Thanks for the response

FeetMagic

Good luck, Id start at 50NL too

gorrrr72

3k is not enough for 100nl. You will have 20% of your total bankroll on the tables from the start. Not good imo.

sickpuppy

As has already been said man start at 50nl moving up after a month if your a winning player at the end of the month you should have over 60 buy ins for 100nl.
Its easy to say that you will move down if you lose some buy ins,
but grinding at the lower level for the month will give you nice cushion and get you accustomed to having more tables open goodluck.

a-k-47

sounds to me like your jumping in the deep end. How many hands have you previously played at 100nl?. Table selection is vital and 6 tabling wont be easy to miss the reg grinders. I would advise starting at 50nl if you dont have at least 20k hands at 100nl. There is still good money to be made from 50nl, so forget about the 4k rb per month at 100nl for now. Lump in 2k start at 50 and see how it goes, i also dont know how your planning on getting rb on ipoker?.

Flipz4Rollz

a-k-47 wrote: »

sounds to me like your jumping in the deep end. How many hands have you previously played at 100nl?. Table selection is vital and 6 tabling wont be easy to miss the reg grinders. I would advise starting at 50nl if you dont have at least 20k hands at 100nl. There is still good money to be made from 50nl, so forget about the 4k rb per month at 100nl for now. Lump in 2k start at 50 and see how it goes, i also dont know how your planning on getting rb on ipoker?.

.

a-k-47

how many hands have you played at 100nl?. Its not as easy as some ppl might think.

Flipz4Rollz

Played 40k hands HU 100nl(5bb/100 winner) and about 35k 6-max(from summer until start of college)(2.9bb/100 winner)
if thats a help

dvdfan

Giving your previous winrates you should be able to maintain at least 1bb/100 so that part of your plan seems fine. Its not that wise to be posting about rakeback on public forums btw:) as rakeback isnt allowed on ipoker.

I dont doubt that you will have 40-50 hours free but from my experience its pretty difficult to play more than 4-5 hours a day and play your A game, after 4 hours your going to be more suceptible to tilting and losing concentrating, IMO its just not possible and youll find your winrates in the latter stages of sessions will be poor. Everyone is different but i find playing for about 2 hours is long enough and then take a break and play for another 2, this again limits your playing time eg play 2pm-4pm break from 4-5pm play 5-7pm break 7-8pm, play 8-10pm so thats 8 hours taken up even though you only play 6 hours of poker. If your planning on playing 50 hours thats 8 hours a day not including breaks.

You might do ok the first week when your motivated but i think youll explode pretty quick trying to force that many hours, also bare in mind that your win rate will decrease if your playing that many hours also because there isnt 10 hours of jiucy play on ipoker, its pretty hard to get good tables before 2pm and after 1am so your going to have to sit at tighter tables sometimes where you edge isnt as big. Use HM table selection tool as this will make a big difference.

I think if you commit to a more reasonable amount of hours per day, and if your not unlucky enought to hit a downswing early on you should be fine and should achieve close to what your looking for. I reckon playing 30-40 hours would return the same amount as playing 40-50 as your winrate will negate the difference as you wont be playing your best for the extra hours.

Finally 40k hands isnt that great an indicator, from experience even 100k can be unreliable although most times it should be pretty accurate

the whole year inn

gl with it

Dacelonid

Best of luck, hope it works out for ya

Grafter

A few random points ...

You say that you haven't played on ipoker before, so your winrates on other sites may or may not be a good guide.

You can have accounts on as many ipoker sites as you like.

NL$100 is where most of the grinders/shortstackers play.

Rakeback calculators are usually very optimistic.

If the 50% deal is an under the table one (which it sounds like), it might not be wise to put all your BR into a site that's breaking ipoker rules.

TommyGunne

As everyone else says, starting with 30 buy ins when you are relying on it for a living is insane. I'd definitely be starting at 50NL. Having the comfort and cushion of heaps of buy ins is severely underrated. I always feel really dodgy with less than 30 buyins and I feel like I don't play well for extended periods of hands unless I have 35+ bis as I feel the heat of DSs more, and I also have a bit of a mental block with moving down, in that I don't move down quick enough, and don't play well for a long time after moving down. I'm not alone in this as well, so ask yourself if it applies to you, and then consider if you are really comfortable with 30bi.

GL with the 6 tabling 8 hours a day. It'd do my nut, and there is no way I could stick it, but be very careful with getting stale.

Slash/ED

Yeah start at 50nl. With the amount of hours/hands you'll be getting in you'll move up quick enough anyway. Take a 10 buy in shot at 40 buy ins and you'll feel comfortable and play alot better, it really wont take you long to move up and also the learning and adjusting process, if there is one, is far less costly to your BR so that's a bonus too. Unless you mean your depositing 3k euro, then start at 100nl by all means.

I'd also not play on iPoker, as there's softer networks where your winrate will be better even without the compensation of RB (Or, more accurately, just less RB), but if you enjoy it on there it's fine I guess. I just think iPoker is probably the toughest SSNL network out there at the moment.

Also have the amount of hours you set as a goal, not a minimum requirement. That's seriously tough, and if you're pushing yourself to play it you'll find yourself playing when tired/not in a good mindset to play. This will usually result in you just slowly losing your money, especially if you lose a couple of pots because now you'll tilt easier too. If you don't feel up to playing, don't, even if it means you haven't played as much as you like, this will benefit you way more in the long run unless you have a sick ability to grind and not many at all do. 20 hours of winning poker is far better than 20 hours of winning poker and another 15 of tired/not concentrating/tilting probably losing poker, especially if this impacts on your ability to play your best the next week because you're still tilted/bunt out/just hate poker.

pok3rplaya

Do all your projections and then divide the answer by 2.

jpr1973

Looks like my contract may not be renewed in Jan so I was thinking along the lines of the OP to use poker as a source of income. So for the past 6 weeks I have been playing 2 hours every evening after work and then 6 hour sessions on sat and sundays to try and gear myself up for playing long sessions.

Results after six weeks (ball park figures)
running at +20bb p/100 hands when I play for 2 hours after work during the week (Between 50nl and 100nl over 20k hands)
But a massive loser when I play the long sessions at the weekend , when all the supposedly bad players play!! Lost €500 yesterday alone - 200 at 100nl when AK didn’t get there againsts aggro better's QQ and when my KK v A7s lost and another coooler I cant not remember now. So I took a break of a few hours and came back to grind out a few hours of 50NL instead, and I porceeded to tilt away 6 buyin's.. And not the obvious tilit where I jam any two cards but I was playing needlessly aggressively and making bluffs when I never make those bluffs.

So, the hardest part of poker is playing you’re A game constantly… Best of Luck OP, however I think I may have to go another route and p1ss off abroad to look for a a proper job.

luckylucky

Some really good advice here methinks. 8 hours a day 6 tabling is very very tough. Some rare gifted mental heads who are possibly insane manage it, but be realistic if you are a decent but not insanely good then like others have said here don't try to overdo it, I've set out these sort of plans many times myself and it never pans out the way I planned.

Treehouse72

1. 3k is not enough for 100NL. Virtually every reply in this thread has mentioned this. A normal person would ignore this advice, because normal people lack wisdom and self-awareness. But serious full-time poker players don't have the luxury of ignoring good advice. So please prove to us that you are not normal, but rather that you are wise and reflective by taking this advice. 3k is not enough. End of story.

2. 45 - 50 hours a week is, IMO, almost impossible. Or, let me put it another way: only a tiny, tiny percentage of poker players can play this much. Maybe you are one of those, but chances are you are not. If you manage 4 or 5 hours a day (7 days a week), that is A LOT. You can't really understand this till you start playing full time, but after a few weeks playing you'll understand it better. Make your calculations based on a lower amount of play.

3. RB calculators over-estimate the amount of rake you receive. Sometimes by a lot. You should do a dummy-run of 10k hands to absolutely nail down your precise income.

4. There's quite a difference between 3-tabling HU and 6-tabling 6M. In fact, there a very big difference. Are you sure you are on top of this?

5. The sample sizes you quote are not sufficient to denote a winning or losing player. No offence, but this is a statement of fact. You may be a winner, but you don't know that from your sample sizes.

6. VERY IMPORTANTLY: there is no RB on iPoker. You can get RB deals, but they are under the table, and thus inherently dodgy and might disappear at any moment. Skins and affiliates that break these rules are routinely kicked off iP. This could jeopardise your roll, or at least delay your play if the skin is down for some time. My preference would be for a reliable, solid deal where my roll is secure and my monthly RB/cashback/bonus payment is assured.

7. Don't take the dole because it is fraudulent, immoral and plain wrong. You could come to seriously regret it. I'm glad this isn't in your plan.


It is possible to do everything you are planning, but it's a bit like NAMA: you need everything to go right and nothing to go wrong over a long period of time. The odds are against it unless you adjust according to the advice in this thread. Do that and you have a good chance of being just fine.

Fwiw, it is very possible to make a reasonable living on a modest winrate at 100NL. I know because that's what I do. Good luck.

colquhom

I suggest choosing another network. I use eyepoker to table select and i have a very large database and it is not unusual that i only find a handful of players with a VPIP over 30 at the entire level. The amount of 14/13 rakeback grinding nits is incredible, not that they're any good but there are obv more profitable people to play against.

Also for your rake calculations, "if there was rakeback on ipoker" hint, nudge, wink etc you would earn between 35/40 dollars per 1000 hands w/50% rb if that helps, i think 6 tabling u get about 480/500 hands an hour so extrapolate!

Lurker1977

Treehouse72 wrote: »

4. There's quite a difference between 3-tabling HU and 6-tabling 6M. In fact, there a very big difference. Are you sure you are on top of this?

Hey Treehouse,

Great post, quite informative. However, I was intruiged by this statement. Could you elaborate further please?

Thanks.

colquhom

Lurker1977 wrote: »

Hey Treehouse,

Great post, quite informative. However, I was intruiged by this statement. Could you elaborate further please?

Thanks.

i think 3 tabling heads up vs different opponents is infinitely harder than 6tabling 6 max, i dont think its close either

Lurker1977

colquhom wrote: »

i think 3 tabling heads up vs different opponents is infinitely harder than 6tabling 6 max, i dont think its close either

I totally agree which is why I was asking. I wasn't sure if thats what TH72 meant. My mistake. Carry on.

Treehouse72

All I meant was that they are different in nature - the game OP has most experience at - HU - is not the game he'll be making a living from. I just thought it was worth mentioning. Different mental, technical and bankroll challenges. That's why I asked OP if he was on top of these difference.

Also, I'd slightly demur from the previous couple of posts: I think it is easier to HIDE playing 6 tables of 6M than it is 3 tables of HU. But is that the same as it being easier? I'm not sure it is - having fewer decisions and more breathing time in 6M brings with it a whole range of problems, probably best characterised as difficulty in sustaining your A-game.

But I don't play HU these days so it's not something I can comment on authoritatively.

Wreck

I don't think playing 8 hours a day is going to be as tough as people are suggesting - I currently play 3-4 hours a night Monday to Thursday on top of working 9+ hours a day. With no full time job I'm pretty sure I could manage at least 50 hours with no adverse effect to my game.

Lurker1977

Treehouse72 wrote: »

All I meant was that they are different in nature - the game OP has most experience at - HU - is not the game he'll be making a living from. I just thought it was worth mentioning. Different mental, technical and bankroll challenges. That's why I asked OP if he was on top of these difference.

Also, I'd slightly demur from the previous couple of posts: I think it is easier to HIDE playing 6 tables of 6M than it is 3 tables of HU. But is that the same as it being easier? I'm not sure it is - having fewer decisions and more breathing time in 6M brings with it a whole range of problems, probably best characterised as difficulty in sustaining your A-game.

But I don't play HU these days so it's not something I can comment on authoritatively.

My point was harder in the sense that there are VERY few players who can play well even 2 tabling HU. Yes, there are profitable 2 and 3 tabling regs but they are very easy to play against, much akin to a 12 tabling nit. Playing 3tables, you can become nittish and not fight for the small pots which is where HU can be most profitable as not every opponent you face will limp fold and play 90% VPIP from the BB, check folding if they dont hit. By playing one table and concentrating 100% on your opponent and what they are doing you can quite quickly build a profile of what type of player they are and then what strategy to employ to either get them out of their comfort zone or make them go bat**** crazy and make bigger mistakes. This is especially important at lower stakes where rake can be pretty rough on winrates. So the quicker you figure out how to take his money the less rake you pay. Funny comment I read yesterday was a guy who insists on raising to $1.45 at 50nl and $2.95 at 100nlHU to save $0.05 in rake if called and flop is won with a cbet.

A lot of the guys you meet at lower stakes HU cash games are pretty bad and the most important traits to have to beat the game for a decent clip are adaptability, even if your opponent is not adapting to you and playing as tiltless as possible (read playing your A game). Getting reads as quickly as possible can stop you leaking BB's to your opponent while you try to figure him out. This means full attention one tabling at 50 and 100nl can be far more profitable than 6max especially in the current climate of training sites etc teaching ppl more correct HU strategies even if CTS says stuff like 3betting the first hand is +EV so now everybody does. Also, game select like your life depended on it if you are doing it for a living and play other "regs" when you are bored and/or are looking to move up in stakes and want to test yourself.

The Snapper

dvdfan wrote: »

Giving your previous winrates you should be able to maintain at least 1bb/100 so that part of your plan seems fine. Its not that wise to be posting about rakeback on public forums btw:) as rakeback isnt allowed on ipoker.

I dont doubt that you will have 40-50 hours free but from my experience its pretty difficult to play more than 4-5 hours a day and play your A game, after 4 hours your going to be more suceptible to tilting and losing concentrating, IMO its just not possible and youll find your winrates in the latter stages of sessions will be poor. Everyone is different but i find playing for about 2 hours is long enough and then take a break and play for another 2, this again limits your playing time eg play 2pm-4pm break from 4-5pm play 5-7pm break 7-8pm, play 8-10pm so thats 8 hours taken up even though you only play 6 hours of poker. If your planning on playing 50 hours thats 8 hours a day not including breaks.

You might do ok the first week when your motivated but i think youll explode pretty quick trying to force that many hours, also bare in mind that your win rate will decrease if your playing that many hours also because there isnt 10 hours of jiucy play on ipoker, its pretty hard to get good tables before 2pm and after 1am so your going to have to sit at tighter tables sometimes where you edge isnt as big. Use HM table selection tool as this will make a big difference.

I think if you commit to a more reasonable amount of hours per day, and if your not unlucky enought to hit a downswing early on you should be fine and should achieve close to what your looking for. I reckon playing 30-40 hours would return the same amount as playing 40-50 as your winrate will negate the difference as you wont be playing your best for the extra hours.

Finally 40k hands isnt that great an indicator, from experience even 100k can be unreliable although most times it should be pretty accurate

Not much can be added after this piece of Gold. Nice post and seriously sound advise.

I would add one point on the subject of table selection, as a concept its much discussed but in reality, table selection doesn't end when you add your last table.

Tables break or change mid session, players sit out, fish leave or are gobbled up, their replacements are usually reg. TAG's. You will need to add tables all through your session. Table selection is a continuous and endlessly distracting process throughout your entire session, the amount of effort and concentration this process demands cannot be underestimated.

Fairplay for making an excellent first step with this thread, most of the replies are bourne of lessons learnt the hard/expensive way, use this free information wisely and Good luck with it:)