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Should I Go Full Time???
Ive been playing poker for around 2 years now and taking it seriously for the past 6months.. in this time i have made a steady profit.. mainly from tournaments but also dyms.. i have played cash but would say im on the wrong side of even... in terms of profit i am up £2200 over the last 3 months and would love to go full time although i know it is not easy... im going to try and make roughly 50pound a day and 350pound a week and would like to know how everyone would recommend this as i know tournament play is too varied and unreliable should i play dyms?? or should i try to improve on my cash game as best as possible?? would like to know peoples thoughts on the subject if possible 
jordz16
jordz16
Comments
Also working into your life that you work 7 days a week is not going to work. Are you realistically going to want to work 7 days a week for the rest of your life?
Have you kept records of exactly how much profit/loss you have made for each month over the last 6+ months?
£350 a week is a little over £1400 a month, how many times have you made £1400 in 1 month? If you've made £2200 over the last 3 months, that's great but is still only abuot £700 per month which is less than half what you're planning to earn, and not taking into account the times you will have losing months.
Sorry I don't mean to rain on your parade, but there's alot to think about before going full-time, especially if you have any responsibilities (rent, bills, kids, etc).
Also, asking others is you should go full time is not a question you should have to ask. The way most do it is get their game to a point where they are earning enough to stop working because their income has surpassed their day job. Not always the case, but more often that way than just dumping the day job and hoping you can make it. Last thing you want to be doing is gambling on your rent/morgage/food money etc if you aren't making enough from the game at the time.
As for what game you should play. Play where you have an edge and are making money I'd say. Then by all means experiiment in other areas to try to make them profitable as well. Cash is often the harder of the ones to crack most people find, but as I said these days not all online profitable players play cash successfully, and many of them are mostly playing MTT's etc, but playing many of them a night, as one or two just isn't going to cut it. So you'd need to learn to multi-table first I'd suggest if you don't already.
My short advice would be this. Do not decide based on 3 months. If you can play a year and show a profit that equals your day job or better than its worth considering, but I wouldn't do it otherwise if it will put your home/family/food money at risk. Heard and seen way to many bad stories from people that have tried and failed when trying too soon when compared to the few success stories.
Dont listen to Pingu or Lambert, they play micro stakes and have no idea what their talking about.
If not, get a lend of 20k from someone, no point in going pro to play 5 pound dyms.
Then just play 2/4 cash, 50 bb should be plently for a 20 year old poker prodigy.
As for multi-tabling. This is a factor for all players when starting, and is something you learn. If you can't do it at all then my guess is maybe your game is still in the fairly basic levels (not meaning to be mean), as it says that you still need to think alot about the simple choices as well as the more complex ones. Or at least I say this depending on how many tables it takes before you lose your edge.
We do all lose our edge when multi-tabling, but what most of us have done is find the balance where our edge loss causes a profit loss. So you find out how many tables you can play before it adversely effects your profit/time-played. Obviously this takes a bit of time to find out exactly as variance can play its part, but its worth learning. I mean I'm in awe of people that can play 20 tables, as that stews my brain trying anything near that many, and my limit is about 6 before my edge is adversely effected.
Just do what most of us did when learning to do it. Just add another table to start with and play two tables, and you'll be surprised that it can become natural quite quickly to make your choices, as more often than not you're folding many hands, so its not to often you are facing big choices on both tables at same time. But again this comes down to how natually you are currently playing the game, and if simple choices like starting hands in postions you aren't having to think about to much, or even post flop how to play certain board with your postion and holdings etc. Its also possible you find playing more than one table difficult because you are playing to many hands, but that I don't know as not seen you play.
Still give it a go I guess if you are in a situation where the money isn't an issue, but I'm not sure I'm a huge fan based on some of the warning signs you've given here that your game might not be quite ready for it. I maybe wrong, and hope it works out if you try.
If you can learn to multi table 4 - 6 tables it would be a start.
Im not a pro & play about 25hrs a week, but by playing 22/33/55 DYMs like yourself, I can earn 20,000 cash for points which equals £800....so if your having an iffy month the CFP will help out
Think the majority of pro players can all win at cash, something you will have to try & learn...
GL Goody (If you need any advise inbox me).
until then will just play as may main events as possible and hopefully use any winnings to improve my cash game
thanks all
anyway thanks for all the help have taken all your opinionson board
It can get very boring and isn't great for you health if you sit there all day.
I know as I did it in May, yes I had a good month and earnt a nice amount, but I don't think i could do it all the time as it would drive me nuts.
Maybe get a part time job and play poker inbetween to start with?
yeh i'm seen alot of people in this spot well.
YH GOING TO PRO IS MORE of A THING where u are making more money in thegame then at ur work and u think f work i make more here i play this. if this is the case then u should i think bout it don't give up ur fulltime as the downswings in dym and cash is sick.
my advise keep playing.
here a link u may want to read : http://www.cardschat.com/going-poker-pro.php
there another better link on poker news.com but could find it may want to check there
If you already have another household income (wife?) or savings or whatever and it's financially viable then do it no matter how small your take home is. Beats working for someone else.
What you have to realise is you work to live, not the other way round, and if you can make a modest living from your own home without getting into debt and can enjoy the odd luxury then go for it.
If you can't make a good enough living though then i would consider leaving it until you're better equipped.
I don't mean to sound harsh but you are never gonna make £50 a day or anywhere near it from £5 DYMs, especially if you can't multi-table. Let's assume you are completely crushing them and have a 10% ROI, that means you make 55p per game, which means you need to play 2545 games per month to make your £1400.
If you reckon a game takes 30 minutes, that means it takes 1272 hours to play that many games, let's assume you get to a stage where you can 4table, that's still 318 hours a month (nearly 80 a week). Do you wanna put 80 hours in per week, every week for the rest of your life? And I do mean every week, because obviously you don't get paid holiday when you're a poker pro.
But saying all that, you're young and don't have any responsibilities so if you don't mind taking the risk of losing what you've won so far, then it won't do any harm to go for it. I do think there's alot you need to consider first though.
The key parts of above and what I have seen on other threads are
Playing for fun vs having to win to pay bills etc is a lot different. How would you cope with a losing month? (have you got enough set aside to cope with this?) - Basically how mentally tough are you?
You must multi table (I found adding tables to a level where you are outside of your comfort zone for a couple of sessions then reducing then going back up worked well for me)
What is your plan for the future? If you are grinding MTT, are you happy (and able to play near your peak) grinding for say 10hrs a day for say 5 days a week?
Regarding your profit, are certain results skewing the result? With MTT a big bink can make things look great when actually you just ran well in one game.
What happens if you go pro for say 2 years and then decide you want to get a "normal" job? What are you going to say to potential employers? Rightly or wrongly if you say you were a poker player it may scare potential employers and you may find it difficult to get a job.
Regarding what game to play, certain players are suited to certain games. For me it is MTT however with MTT big wins can be irregular so you need a decent bankroll as you go between big wins.
Could you not get a job and then play poker on the side for fun and for extra money which you could save up for a large bankroll. It is what I do and others for example TommyD do. As mentioned, if you get to the spot where you make more from poker then you could go pro.
All the best with whatever you decide
Matt
If you still beating the games you play in a year then mayb give it a shot
You have to be enormously disciplined to play professional, sure you can have an extra hour in bed if you want, but it all comes out of your schedule. You have flexibility but that comes with the potential to be lazy and not put in the required volume.
You also won't be getting paid holiday as a poker pro, so for your average person that's 5 weeks per year, probably around £1500 missed out on there. So you wanna go on holiday, that's directly out of your pocket. I know what this bits like cos my mum owned her own business so when I was young, us going on holiday meant her taking time off work, paying for the holiday AND paying someone alot of money to manage it while she away... very expensive so we didn't go on many holidays. Slightly different situation but principal is the same.
If you think you have little 'me' time working 48 hours a week, you're gonna have alot less when you're working 80 hours a week, and it will soon feel like working. I don't think I would suggest anyone being a pro unless you can consistently and comfortably make more than enough for you to maintain your current lifestyle, with some spare to increase your BR and build some savings (as most people with jobs do) and be able to do all this while working no more than say 40-50 hours a week.
80 hours per week is just not sustainable for the rest of your life.
firstly, thanks you all for your input, im going to give it another 6 months how i am while trying to improve my multi-tabling skills, then if in 6months im still making sustained profit i think il cut my work hours down from my current 50 to maybe 20hours part time and see if i am better or worse off with the extra poker time... as i have already said thanks for all the input i will take it all on board.
cheers
I wouldnt go pro unless I had at least six months living expences, a bankroll for the games a wish to grind, A proven track record that I'm beating the games I want to make a living from, the confidence that I am indeed a winning player and a love for the game that will see me througth the hard times and the constant grind etc.
I am not against the life of a poker pro as it can be a great life but I think a lot of people think it is an easy life where you will make lots and play when you want which isn't the case. (Not saying this is you Jordz but is an observation from reading lots of these type of posts).