Grinding to fortune, the ideal job?

[mattiesmat]

What could be a better job than playing a game you really like for $40+/hour, whenever you want? This is often the idea when someone thinks about turning pro and this was my idea as well when deciding to make poker my ‘main’ income. But is it really all that great and can anybody do it?

In the last months of grinding SNG’s I have experienced the good and bad about doing it for an income and I call tell you, it is not all great and it is certainly not for anybody. The first thing that comes to mind is variance. (Turbo) SNG’s have huge variance swings. You can be a 10% ROI winner and still experience a 50+ buyin downswing and/or a breakeven stretch of a thousand or more games. It can be super frustrating when you keep getting bad beats and bust as 4th. And yet you have to try very hard to play your best game and not let those emotions influences your game at all, since edges are small in poker. Also poker becomes a lot less fun when you are running bad for weeks and you got to have some backup money.

Another downside is that like everything else, also poker can become boring. This is especially true for SNG’s, because most situations are very standard. You fold a lot of hands early and you get to know what hands to push/call/fold later on. When you play thousands of SNG’s the enjoyment will often decrease. Even when you do not enjoy it much, you have to play to earn enough money. Also to become better or at least not get worse you will have to keep studying and this is in my experience not the most fun thing to do. Sure, thinking and talking about some interesting hands is fun, but going through a lot of marginal push/fold decisions after every session is not in my opinion.

Also, grinding SNG’s is not a very (direct) social thing to do. Sure you can get to know other players via communities, but the playing itself is not very social and those contacts you make will very often not become close direct friends. So without other social hobby’s and a good group of friends it can become pretty lonely, especially during times that your friends and family are working themselves. Another social problem can be that not all of your friends and family will understand and support your choice. Some people just don’t understand it and do not want to understand it. They think what you are doing is just “lazy random gambling”. Another issue you mind find playing professionally is that it is not the most helpful job to society and you have to feel okay with it.

Being able to beat SNG’s for a good hourly is not an easy thing and will need time. You will most likely (unless you already are playing for a while) not start with a good hourly and on high stakes. You will have to grind and study a lot an slowly grind your way up over months/years.

Now that you have read all this, you might think it is all just a pain, but that is not true of course. When you can cope with variance, the other issues, have grinded yourself to a nice hourly and do enjoy the game most of the time it is a pretty good job and you can work on flexible times. I just wanted to show you the other side of the ‘dream’.

My advice for if you are thinking about turning pro is to think it through first, talk about it with others, make a financial (backup) plan, try it for a month or two first before giving up your job officially and read The Poker Mindset.

[Vice]

Good post, mattiesmat. I agree with everything you said and I`m going to ask the question: why would enyone want to play SNGs instead of cash if they become boring after you play them alot and have huge variance? I`ve read the thread that taipan started (I`m not completely sure) about SNGs vs. Cash games, if someone knows it pls post a link here. However, I wanted to say that I actually stopped playing sngs after just 600 turbo sngs I played because in the last 500 tourneys I more or less broke even. I know this is perfectly normal in turbos, but why would I choose to play a game with a such high variance if my goal is to make money (and the common wisdom is that there`s more money in the cash games as well as less variance)?

[taipan168]

Great post mattiesmat, I will respond/comment later when I have time. I am really sorry you are running bad.

Vice, I think this is the post you were referring to, if not please let me know:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...ps-t46041.html

[elitemob]

Hi matthies,

I think you made a very well rounded post about the pros and cons of playing poker professionally. It's a very interesting thing, because I suppose almost everyone of us has had that thought some time or another. I hope that you stay confident and everything works out

Vice, generally I'd say it's like this: In cash games, you take part of your bankroll directly to the table. So if you make a bad call, suffer from a bad beat or get outplayed then this money is gone. The choices you make have an immediate effect on your bankroll. On the other hand you can win HUGE in just a few hands. So the swings of cash games are condensed in a much smaller time period, which is just the opposite of SnGs. If you end up OTM (out of the money) in an SnG you only lost your buy-in, which usually is a smaller part of your bankroll than you would take to a cash table. Also, if you make a bad call, or an -EV (expected value) move than that may be of no immediate consequence to your bankroll. You may even end up still winning the SnG. BUT those decisions matter in the long run. You may just have been lucky this time (even though the move was -EV) and still won. But the other times you make the same "mistake" ... well ... you'll pay for them one day or another.

At least in my opinion that's the essential difference how your decisions effect the money you put into play between cash-tables and SnGs.

[Vice]

No, it`s not thread. The one I am referring to is comparing sngs and cash games, who like which ones, why, which one is more profitable, etc. It was a looong thread.

[bonaparte]

Mattiesmat this is a pretty opened minded oppinion on the subject. I have actually wondered for myself how much poker it would take for me to get bored.

As it stands I would really like to get my poker playing to the point where it supplements my current income. Ideally that would mean my poker income is greater than the income I can recieve by voluntarilly working overtime at my current place of employment.

Maybe this is something for others to consider. Balancing poker with a regular (IE steady money) job. I really believe the mix of the two would work well for me because I get bored at my job and playing poker instead of working more hours will hopefully become a great way to balance the boredom, as well as give me a skill in case I ever am out of work.

One other thing, I really would love to read that thread on the cash game vs. SNGs. Again it is a matter of learning the poker game which will give me the best hourly rate. For now though I'm learning SNG.

[bjsaust]

I've been thinking about this a bit lately (no intentions of doing it, just daydream planning). You allude to a couple of points I've considered.

1. You not only need a big enough BR to handle downswings/variance, you need enough savings outside of your roll to handle the weeks you cant withdraw (or an extremly conservative BR).

2. If I ever did do this, I'd be more likely to work part-time, 4 days per week maybe. Social interaction, and some degree of stable income to supplement things. Heck I work from home 4 days per week now, and the 1 day I go into work is voluntary largely because of the social aspect.


3. I think I'd get bored stiff fairly quickly if I was only playing poker. Maybe if I could earn enough playing say 6 hours per day it might be better.

[Vice]

Hey, this discussion was interesting to me, pls continue with the comments, guys!

[fjuanl]

interesting topic about playing lots of sng's

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...d.php?t=103793

[bjsaust]

We've focused on the downside, but there are upsides too:

Flexible hours/days. Even if you decide you'll spend 40 hrs per week playing poker for a living, they dont need to be 5 days per week from 8am-5pm. I can imagine this could work well with a 2 income family. You could get up early and play a few hours, mind the child while partner is at work, and then play more in the evenings. Even if you only get 6 hrs per day done through the week, you get another 10hrs in at some point over the weekend and you're hitting your 40 hrs. Likewise, especially with cash (and to a lesser degree sngs), its not hard to take breaks during the day to do other stuff. Schedule a regular golf game at 10am and have the course to yourself, etc.

Downswings are matched by upswings. Yeah, we're talking about grinding out a living, but theres always that chance to hit it big in an MTT, or go on a super-hot streak in other forms. Rarely do you have that potential in other jobs.

One advantage is you can take a break/holiday whenever you want, of course the disadvantage is you arent getting paid by a boss while you do so . Of course, you can always straddle the fence on this one and on some holidays take the laptop and get some games in while away.

[mattiesmat]

I might move to cash, since it seems you can have a higher hourly there.
I feel like I still have to learn a lot about SNG's and I would like to at least move up to $27s before learning cash.

[drmcboy]

if you have equal 'fun' playing cash and SNGs, play cash, and it isn't close. Try MTTs too I guess.

[bonaparte]

if you have equal 'fun' playing cash and SNGs, play cash, and it isn't close.

I've heard this from others as well. For now I'm going to stick to SNGs until I prove myself. Is it a difficult transition from SNGs to cash?

[drmcboy]

biggest challenge in SNGs and MTTs is living with the swings

biggest challenge in cash is figuring what to do with TPTK vs aggresion on turn/river and maybe when to two/three barrel bluff.

the big difference is stack size.

In general, the format of SNGs makes for the least amount of edge for good players, which is why I said if you enjoy them both the same you should play cash.

[fjuanl]

SnG's pretty much have no postflop play. If you arent comfortable with post-flop situations then cash is going to be tough.

[bjsaust]

SNGs have swings, but on the whole, they're pretty easy. You play simple ABC SnG poker and over time you have a +ROI. Cash allows you to exploit your edge (if you have one) more.

[FlyingSaucy]

I used to be primarily sng player with little cash experience. Transitioning to mtt from sng is easier than going sng to cash imho, as long as your metagame head is on straight and can handle longer periods of no cash. I've tried transitioning to cash by starting out at 6-max $25 NL, but it just doesn't "click" as well with me.

Another thing to note is that anytime you transition, it is better to be way overrolled than going straight to a level your BR theoretically supports. For example I'm at $9k in my roll, so if I am transitioning to 6 max NL I should be playing a minimum of $100 NL, however since my skills dictate at this point that I'm fairly new, I'd rather buffer any possible downswings due to my learning curve by playing overrolled at a much lower level.

[Showtime23]

I have only been playing sng for arround a half year and made some money (maybe arround 2,5k) and its really a grind. I play 3-4 20$ 6-handed tables on FT and find the most enemies to be rather bad (there no difference between 10&20$), there are some rounders with 5000k+ and nice ROI on FT but I know their names and try to avoid them . In SNG im a winningplayer whereas in cash im a losing player. Its very easy to see through the standard players move and outplay them. The only problem I have is variance, I always try to avoid all-in sitautions and dont like / can play good push/fold. I often thought about switching to cash (mtt take too much time) and try to improve my game, but I find cash much more boring, especially because NL25 hasnt much money behind. Ur post made me think about my decision for SNGs and wheater its a waste of time or not.

[Vice]

Ur post made me think about my decision for SNGs and wheater its a waste of time or not.

I have a couple of friends who play cash games, one of which is really experienced and he plays 400NL. He`s always told me that the real money is in the cash games and sooner or later I have to switch to them. However, I started playing SNGs about an year ago, had some success, made some money, moved up, etc. At some point I started experiecing heavy downswings. I was thinking "Ok, does my game sucks (but wtf, I know ICM isn`t a chain of supermarkets, and I try to make +$EV plays all the time) or is it just the game I am playing?". I then studied some maths stuff like variance, RoR, etc. It turns out that SNGs, especially turbos, have HUGE variance. I know this has been told a lot of times, but I really want to stress on this. And the key concept is, there is no way you can reduce this variance and still play correctly. In cash games, on the other hand, if you play low risk tight-aggressive game, you will have much smaller variance then some LAG player. In SNGs, there is only one correct type of play, which, unfortunally, guarantees high variance.