Poker Pros?

Good Evening all.

I am going through the process in my mind, to quit my job, and become a professional poker player full time, and really grind the game!

In the past year i have made £29,000 - my job pays me around £21,000 and requires a lot of my personal time to be invaded where as poker, i have played on the side on weekends and such so i know i will have plenty of time to spend doing things i enjoy... and poker is one of them.

What is your opinion on playing poker?

Do you have any tips for me to actually go and achieve my goals??

I currently mainly play live poker tournaments, i am better live than online, do you have any tips to get me going online?

Is there anyone out there that has completed the process from a recreational player to a full time poker pro?

What bankroll should i achieve before i hang up my job?


I usually play tournaments because its my style of play and i'm currently only thinking about this its not a definite yet i need to weigh up all the situations.

 

@Wintastical

As long as you're sure you aren't just getting "lucky" (hate to use the word) and you're actually playing each hand well with a positive EV then absolutely quit your job and focus your effort on learning poker

 

What stakes are you playing live and what's your sample size? Live tournaments are significantly easier to show a profit in than online cash/MTT's but there's far less to play, meaning higher variance

Live cash games are the easiest starting point for someone wanting to go full time, they're always running and ridiculously soft. I'd recommend trying cash games out or studying MTT play and trying to transition to online MTT's if you want to go full time. You're just not gonna get the amount of hands you need to know if you're getting lucky or consistently playing well, and you can't use software like PokerTracker or Poker Copilot to tell you what you're doing right and wrong and ignore the results.

 

I recommend working your way up the stakes online... it's recommended not just because it's a good way to build a bankroll, but because you have to prove yourself consistently over a large sample of hands before moving up and see where you stand.

 

Guys thankyou very much for your feedback, i am playing at least 3 tournaments a week at either £30 - £550 buy ins, i cash in 3/4 tournaments, consistently. ive played around 400 tournaments in 3 years, and cashed in over 200 of those, however i have no transformed in the online game yet? - any recommendations for me to get going online, i find its a total different play altogether. I have tried cash tables in the past and it just seem to be not my scene i guess its because i have intensely studied MTTs.

 

You can start with MTT's, you don't need to transfer from cash to MTT's. Just deposit an amount to start with and play tournaments that you can afford to buy into 100 times (that's a conservative number, but it's better to be on the safe side). I started with $0.55 $25 prize pool tournaments on America's Cardroom.

400 tournaments isn't a very big sample size and cashing in 50% of your tournaments won't hold up for long as you get your numbers up. The best players in the world don't cash in 50% of their tournaments.

We all think we're better than we actually are. Just gotta put in the time and prove it to yourself with consistent results before you make any potentially life-changing decisions (like quitting your job and going full time or moving up in stakes). I'm not telling you that you're not a good player, just that there's no way to know if you are or not just yet. Online MTT's would be your best shot at finding out because you can play so many and they're much faster pace because you're not waiting on a dealer and shuffle machine.

 

Enjoy your profits, keep your job, and treat poker as nothing more than a fun hobby. You cannot actually play live tournaments for a living unless you play buyins much higher than the ones you are playing and you are many many many years of training and playing away from being skilled enough to play those for a living. The 21k a year you are making at your job is something that you COULD make playing online poker but only after many many years of playing and thousands of dollars of losses. The proportion of tournament poker players who make 21k every year for multiple years is less than 1%.

Many people just like you have a small winning sample and then think that all they have to do is play more or play bigger and their wins will expand when their winning sample is just a streak of luck. The best tournament players in the world cash in tournaments 18-20% of the time and you say you cash in 50%. Imagine you had only cashed in 20% of the tournaments you played, you would be down quite a bit of money yet that is the cashing rate of the best players in the world. The reasons for how they are still able to profit are very complex and even the best tournament players can go on year-long stretches where they don't make any money at all.

If you continue to pursue poker as anything more than a hobby, you will be severely disappointed in your results. The effort you would need to put in to become a winning poker player can be put into another activity for better results. Don't strive to be the .1% poker player who makes 80k in a fantastic year, strive to be the average financial analyst who makes the same 80k EVERY year on top of benefits and the general life satisfaction that comes from not having to question if and how you are going to make money from day to day

 

I play quite often, especially now. Learning spins and playing MTTs whenever there is an opportunity to get in a juicy MTT through sats.

www.Registracija.poker Is one of my main poker rooms now (gives 20usd with a first deposit until the end of May).