The usual stuff, how it's rigged jadajada

ohhhhhhh baby what a flop. Havn't flopped a straight flush in a while. MY TIME

In regards to taking it for a living, you could grind a living at 50nl. 100k hands 3bb wr +rb on pkr is like $3000. So £2,000. But if you do that for 2 years say and can't move up, then you are kinda relying in those conditions being sustainable or improving. If not and you are a 21 to kid (like me :D) then you are taking a huge life gamble. Like if I did that and got to 25 and the games got tougher or rb changed or poker was outlawed or w/e then I'm making less than average wage, have little or no savings, unable to get a mortgage and probs any kind of loan and 4 years out if a job.

I haven't played poker now for nearly a month and honestly now I look back at it I realise how big of a risk it would have been. Playing on the side, or doing something else on the side is great.... But jbone, it isn't like a shop selling more stuff. I get home at 19:00 in the evenings and OK say ibgrind it out get 50k hands/month maybe possible; but my gf would be pissed and my life would be 100% work.

Those who have played or are playing highstakes I respect massively and jbone, I think your a hero for doing what you do, but I also think that for today's games it is tougher to be a pro starting from scratch. Again, those who do congrats, massive respect and hope it goes forever, it 5 years making 20k with no job would be a huge mistake for anyone in the uk.

Milf, what are you plans long-term? How long you planning to grind 20-50nl for a living?

I don't know actually. I want to beat NL100, and then travel the globe for a bit. Eventually I'll get a degree when I finally find out what the f I want to do with my life. I know I can't work for other people since I hate to work my ass off so that other people can make money on me. If I hit 6 figure score in poker, I'd quit it right away. When I win, I don't really care, but when I lose I feel like shit, so almost 40% of time I feel like shit.

Anyway, got tilted again, going to the supermarket for some beers..

October

Lines. Made 100$ +210$ RB = 310$. Just 1.1k$ below EV. At the end spewed quite a bit mmm.



Stakes. Lost both NL20/30. Ton of coolers at 30, didn't care enough for 20 apparently. Lost 400$ in ACR NL50 games. Didn't hit 60k mark because of tilt last few days. 136h of play



So all in all horrible month. Soo many coolers, lost top FH vs quads like 5 times.

Nice end of month run down there buddy - main thing is to remain positive - YOU MADE MONEY AFTER ALL.

Some may say this is a bad mindset to have as we should always want more but i always think if there is a positive take it then learn from the negatives. Spew and run bad will happen but one of those we can control. Running that far below EV is pretty horrific and made a huge different to your month......does this affect you for a long time or have you kinda now forgotten about it and just moving forward?

Whats the November plans?

Yes. It affects me. I'm still on tilt, barely played Saturday, didn't play Sunday and probably won't play today as well.

Well, I didn't achieve anything on October monetary wise, so the plan for November stays the same - win some money and get closer to NL100 shot.

Playing bad / running bad. Some 800$ loss in very few hands in recent swing, 400-500$ is my spew. Just made my biggest spew ever. You know, when I think of it more, starting playing poker back in the days was the biggest mistake I've ever made. There is no joy in it.

Lately I've been thinking more and more about how to make more sustainable income. I've came up with a concept of a website which could potentially generate decent traffic if done properly. How hard it could be to make just 2k$/mo from a site?

So, my new ultimate goal will be to quit poker for good! For it to happen, I'll have to work my ass of to build something sustainable since poker is my only income. Poker is a dead end career. Period.

Man that is quite a post you have just made and obviously a one which is never fun to hear. You often speak about how spew and plays you made are your fault when you know better...in business you will encounter the same problem. You make the right decision or the wrong decision and ultimately the wrong will cost you money in both the short and long term.

Leaving poker for business is not a bad idea but you can obviously make money in this game and use that money to build your business. What you need to do is stop the spew because like i say this transitions into anything you do. Once you do that maybe poker will not become a dead end career and will help you whilst creating your business to crush,.

I just can't take this run bad anymore. It's been like 60k hands now in non-zoom tables. I understand well how variance works jadajada, but it just so painful. My mindset is crushed. And bad run goes on. Month ago I had ~3.5k$ to my name. Now I've got like 3k$ left, maybe a bit less. NL100 shot would be 2 good month away. Maybe I should move away from 888 to a site where I can get a decent RB, but tougher games?

@MilfGrinder Don't you think there's high a chance that your current views might be affected by that swings and spews you mentioned? To disprove a theory you need to find only one example of it not being accurate and there're plenty of people who made enough money from poker that they don't have to do anything else so it's clearly not a dead end career for everyone. I'm not saying poker is an ideal career path, it's best to stay flexible but in all the other walks of life the money you make is not risk-free. Especially if you're not looking for a traditional day-job. Even if you're working for someone you can get fired, if you try to generate income by creating content you'll most likely encounter heavy competition since everything and everyone is trying to grab your attention nowadays.

If you decide that your main goal is to quit poker you might lose all the motivation to study and play that you have right now and your results will suffer even more. Instead, it might be best to focus on slow transition. Don't go all in on one website idea and don't negate poker entirely. Figure out the minimum amount of effort you need to give poker to make enough money to sustain yourself and use the time you saved to find other opportunities to make money (educate yourself in some area, look for a job, explore other ideas etc. etc.). Don't immediately go from one extreme to the other. Make the change gradually.

Most of all sleep on it. You should probably wait at least 48h before making any major decisions in your life. If you have trouble accepting variance you might want to fix your leak because even day-jobs aren't really risk-free and you said before that you hate the idea of working for someone else. I assure you, there's plenty of variance in trying to sell content and every other creative way of making money so even if you decide to quit poker building up resistance to bad results and/or rejection might be necessary.

Sounds like me a month ago, run shit and spew. I'm so glad I didn't take a risk with poker and have always had plan B in place and have a full time job. I would say that mentally it is a very poor attitude to say you don't want to work for someone to make them money. Not all jobs are like that, I work in marketing and can guarantee I generate close to or 0 profit in my line of work, yet my employers are providing me with work experience very few people my age can get and are paying for a college course equivalent to half a degree.

I think a large part of the problem you have is that you literally live off poker. Do you have any savings? How long can they last if you do? If you literally spend 100% of your winnings a month on food, rent and bills then 40% of the year you will be out of cash which puts you in a very vulnerable position. Look at the other eastern European countries and a lot for the regs are grinding out micros, putting in 100k hands and getting 25-30% rb and can pay the bills. If you don't want to do that you have to play 50nl or 100nl to make a living playing 40k hands or less/month.

I would strongly suggest getting some kind of part time job to pay for bills and have poker as savings money and when you want to splash out. I was in exactly your spot mentally a month back and hated it, but I have a full time job and a second source of income for savings, poker was and is a dream where I can play in WSOP and be a baller but if that doesn't come true, I don't want to be 55yo grinding 50nl just to feed myself and put a roof over my head!

GL, hope things turn around!

Hope you can pull through this, go back a few pages on your blog, and see how well you was running, see how well you can play and what your capable of.

I have little experience in this sort of stuff and relatively new to cash games, and only play as a hobby, so I have no idea how it feels when your losing and make a living off poker.

I feel though, with you in this frame of mind, your not doing yourself any favours, and will only continue a dowmward spiral, and possibly make things worse, with no cash for you. Hopefully you can get back on the horse and get some good flow going.

Maybe the problem is we are thinking to far ahead of ourselves? Obviously having plans and thinking longterm is great but like sometimes just live for the moment and be happy doing something many would love to and many more have failed at.

Like we gotta stop thinking "when were 50 playing 50nl" cmannnnnn guys no one is thinking this longterm and we can do a million things to change, improve, diversify etc etc. Just grind hard, dip your toe in other things, build a business and be an all rounder.

Interesting point @Jon-PokerVIP. It's just that people have a tendency to glorify their current life choices by condemning the old ones. In reality, it's rarely that obvious and the truth is somewhere near the middle. Sure you can gamble your life away at a poker table, you can also do that as a supermarket cashier, you can even do that as a clinically depressed, stressed out of his mind millionaire CEO of a big company. You can also be a perfectly happy supermarket cashier with a loving spouse and balanced life. Planning ahead is important, but we don't live in the future or the past, we live in the present delivered to us with a slight delay by our imperfect senses. You can despair over the fact that "life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" and regret every live choice (Soren Kierkegaard style) or you can try to find some balance in your life which is certainly not easy, but unless you're trying to become an existential philosopher you're probably better of going for the latter option:)

Yeh i just kinda meant like just enjoy the moment whilst you plan everything else. Also there is such thing as development...how many plans have we all made 5-10-15-20-25 years ago and instead we changed our minds of fell into something different. Just as you move forward new things come up. So yeh even long term plans have a downside and can change.

basically

YOLO

FYP

Thanks everyone for input, I really appreciate it!

I spend around 300 eur in average month. Last month I spent more because I bought new phone and lots of clothes. I think this was 2nd time when I've spent more than I've made (had a 1 losing month). 3k$ is all of my life roll. And it's close to 3k more in savings than everyone I know. This is not a Happy Land where I can take a part time job to pay expenses and save up from poker. I don't have a degree + 3 year experience, so I'd look at 3-4eur/h manual labor (with those things it's more like 5-7eur/h after taxes, yeyyy). I rake like 15$/h lol. Therefore, playing NL50 part time theoretically should generate much higher income than 8-17 (+ travel, + travel expenses and eating out more) I could get.

I have very analytical mind and I see many steps ahead of anything I do. I can't quit poker right away before I have alternative source of income, so I'm gonna be around for quite a while. Sure if poker was going my way, I wouldn't consider quitting. But you know, in very first post here I stated that I don't want to play poker forever.

Right now I'm thinking of moving to rooms with rake back. I rake 7-8bb/100 at NL50, so 45% RB alone could give me like 6 eur/h. If I beat the games for additional 4bb/100 - it's income I'm happy about and much more variance free.

...or I could get my ass on plane to Thailand next week.

I don't think flying to Thailand would be wise in your current position... but then again I'm not in your position so I can't tell you what you're supposed to do. Instead, I can tell you that this whole thing turns out to be valuable because it opened your eyes to some alternatives and possibilities. You know that lack of degree might come into play someday so it's best to plan ahead. There should be some areas of work in your country where having a degree isn't a requirement because actual skill matters way more (maybe IT stuff?). Anyway, it looks like playing poker probably has to be your plan A for now, but you can slowly start developing some exit strategy. And as for the rakeback I think it's really important on micro and low stakes since you're paying so much in bb/100. Just don't go into a full on rakeback grinding mode since that might not work out that well for you if you're sensitive to variance. Also, don't sacrifice the quality of games and your bankroll security to play in some shady rakeback grinder's den. You can get 40-50% rakeback on most reputable poker rooms assuming you haven't used your first deposit bonus yet. Good luck sir!

Add our team on Skype buddy support.pokervip - tell them Jon sent you over and you want high rake back on site which have 50nl action. Or i would happily speak to you and get you signed up myself jon_pokervip . Lets do this!