"Going Pro"

Suppose you play 25nl full ring on a $1100 bankroll and for whatever reason you make $20/hour and are able to play for 30 hours/week. If your job pays $9/hour, and you get to work 40 hours/week, you should quit your job and play poker if your bills are lower than X.

What is X?

x= $10

You're dumb.

(6:45:01 PM) ***euphoricism went pro way before 25nl

I'll give an example. Suppose you're in school and you only have about $400/month in bills. What happens then?

Going pro doesn't mean you can't go get a job if the poker thing doesn't work out.

I'd think that as long as you are bringing in enough money to pay your bills, live as comfortably as you would with a regular job, and still be adding to your bankroll to move up, then you are OK to try...but thats coming from a guy who is a long ways from that point

20 x 30 = 600
9 x 40 = 360
600 - 360 = 240
still no answer for X

Assuming no benefits from the job, playing poker is better in this case.
20x30x4=2400/mo
9x40x4=1440/mo

You also have to add in a factor to correct for some things in poker, variance being the greatest. Plus your taxes will suck a little more (you will probably pay more). The games might get harder, etc. So I multiply the 2400 by 0.8 and get 1920.

Next you have to figure out your monthly budget, bills plus irregular expenses plus lifestyle costs. If this number is less than 1920 (which it should be if you're only making 1440 a month now). Then you have to decide if the difference is enough. For example, if you're total expenses are 1200 a month, your difference would be 720, and your bankroll would grow this much per month allowing you to take shots and have more cushion. If however, you're bills are 1900/mo, then your BR will grow by 20 a month and you will pretty much grind 25nl forever.

So I'd say x = 1500. If you spend less than that a month (including everything) then go for it.

disclaimer: needless to say i'm oversimplifying a lot. you could find a better job, get sick of playing 30 hours a week plus the study it would take to stay sharp, etc.

i made 17 dollars an hour at my dayjob. I went pro once I had a solid sample size of making over 100 dollars an hour at poker.

my bills were prob 1.5k a month.

you need a non BR cushion W, and a proven history of Z hand being a winning player at some rate.

This is why most people don't qualify. If you've played 100k hands making $20/hr you should have way more than $1k. If you haven't you probably shouldn't rely on it for income.

Although this is basically what I tried and I was up $2k after 2 weeks then UIGA hit and fucked it all up.

I always get a kick out of those silly micro-grinders who call themselves online pros but then get frustrated when they can't get their BR up past a $2K. But anyway...

Yeah, I would have to be making at least $20/hr for every 100K hands to even consider "going pro", not to mention withdrawing a certain amount each month but at the same time growing my BR and taking shots.

regardless of x, hero shouldn't go pro. (conservative)
if you're already living comfortably off your day job, then take a shot (idealist)

There are many external variables beyond those you gave, i'm interested in your thoughts.

maybe x is the square root of -1
imagine that.

x = about 200. our hourly rate is irrelevant at this point. more important is our bankroll. We would ideally want 3-4 months worth in reserve, over and above what we need to play.

Until I'm making about 1.5-3x (depending on how bad variance is up there) my current income, I wouldn't...

pgil's definitely onto somethin' with the reserve...

Having 3-6 months expenses saved is a pretty good standard for anyone, poker player or otherwise.

You can not quit a job and go pro with a $1100 bankroll. Insanity!

Very few responses here are original. This is a topic that's been rehashed repeatedly in magazines, articles, books, and message boards.

A quick look at that tells me X has to be next to nothing, we're talking about an $1100 roll, but we're asking the wrong question, and I'm going to cop out just like everyone else and say something I heard: Going pro is as easy as quitting your job. Assuming you're an adult and capable of going broke and surviving the ordeal, fuck it. Take your shot. Learn your lesson.

$600/week is more than $360/week, so assuming your benefits at work suck, x is a non-factor. Or I guess you could say that if your added expenses (medical insurance and such) after quitting your job add up to less than $240/week, you should do it in a strictly financial sense.

However, swiggidy's quote below pretty well sums up the realities of the situation, which is why quitting your job in the scenario is at the very least a gamble. Go right ahead if you're fine with gambles and don't have any dependents.

I'm trying to reply to everyone, but if I miss you don't take it personally.

Really I think we should have 6th months of bills in our roll inclusive of minimum roll for 25NL.

Lets presume we need 20BI so 500 and our bills for 6months = 600. Therefore x= 100

If X is less than the monthly income from your day job (1440), if you are sure your beating the game at $20/hour, and if you are willing to spend the 40 hours a week you were working playing poker in addition to the 30 hours you already spend, you can do it:

If you are 6-tabling with win rate of 8ptbb/100 and a SD of 35ptbb/100, and willing to put in 40 hours a week, X is around 1750. Bump that up to 70 hours a week, and X can be as high as 3700. If you are 12-tabling 40 hours a week with a win rate of 4ptbb/100 and a SD of 40ptbb/100, X is about 900 in the first two months and 1100 thereafter (need to increase your bankroll), and at 70 hours X would be about 2200 in the first month and 2700 after. This assumes 80 hands/hour/table.

To see the numbers for X, just plug the stats into uDevil's calculator and look at the lower 99% confidence interval:

www dot castrovalva dot com/~la/win.htm

If X is 0 that pretty much means we live with our parents and they pay for everything. Therefore, playing poker for 8 hours a day I would not consider going pro.

On the relevant side, my guess would be around $300, which is still living with your parents, or living in a rural area and your parents give you food money. Though this is assuming you have no way of borrowing money or whatnot other helpful variables.

X = $50.

We need to equip ourselves for 8 weeks of negative variance, 4 weeks of studying/breaks. This is $150. Let's say we lose 15 buyins over this period, that's $375. We then have $575 - just enough bankroll to play poker.

IMO quitting your job is sub-optimal until you have >6X and 60BI.

Therefore our 25NLer needs a minimum of $7500 to quit his job if his bills are 1k/mo.

Eight weeks is way overkill if you are multi-tabling 30-70 hours a week and beating the game. You will be up after two weeks over 99% of the time, which is probably as good as the chance you will not get layed off in a month. As long as you can pay your bills with a credit card the first month so your bankroll stays intact, X hardly matters.

The huge assumption in this thread is that you know you are beating the game for $20/hour. Not many people could make that claim after having won their first $500-$1000 playing poker. But if its true, and you have a credit card or two as a buffer, then you are financially better off going pro as long as X is less than your current income. Do you want to? Are you psychologically capable of relying on poker to pay your bills? Can you handle multi-tabling 30-70 hours a week? These are all good questions, but they have nothing to do with the value of X.

My comments are similar to Dozer's comments. I think the easy answer is the X is whatever you can handle, comfortably or not, but there are a few questions that you should ask as well.

- What are the benefits to the day job? (HEALTH INSURANCE, 401K, did I mention health insurance?). Can you get these from a different source (family, spouse, etc.)
- Do your expenses vary greatly from month to month, or if they are fixed, are you satisfied with them being fixed and for how long (i.e., parents basement)?
- What is your earning potential over time with the day job or does this experience set you up for a better job (intern now, solid pay in a year...)
- Do you have other obligations that would need a steady income (Kids, wanting kids, whoops, your what??)?

I am a little older than most posters (35, ugh) so I have a different perspective, but to me, whenever I see this thread resurface on going pro I analogize going pro to jobs that pay on full commission like realtors or car salesmen. At first, a few sales give great income bursts and it is easy to take a few good months and project them over a few years for potential earnings, but as life goes on and the responsibilities increase (or you increase your spending to accomodate the temporary rush), more people move to steady income jobs because of the benefits and the certainty; it is hard to always live feast to famine and it can wear you out. Also, if you are smart enough to make a living playing cards, you are also likely smart enough to also make a lot of money doing something else.

All this being said though, if you are young, just out of school or looking to take a break, why not give it a try. Keep your business connections in place in the meantime and if it doesn't work out you can always go back. I just don't think you can go into it thinking you will retire a poker player.

*Last edited by Cocco_Bill on Fri, 21 Mar 2008, 9:46am; edited 1 time in total*

My hands this year 2008. I am putting in 211,8/11 = 19.2h/week and am finding it really hard to motivate myself and have the discipline and energy to play much more. These 40-70h week estimations just blow my mind. unless you sacrifice other parts of your life almost completely. In addition to these hours you need to spend time studying and discussing the game to improve, how one can have time for that with such workload is beyond me.

Before you decide to go pro with CCs as roll ( like me ) , you first gotta raise your credit limit soo you can chase losses without having to get another card. Just a friendly advice.

oh and sn/site.

+ HU4ROLLZ.

or should i say HU4CCs

i gots a better solution. You say you has 8.5k limits , deposit 8k play 2 tables of NL5k , 4k at each table , double up twice , then you dont have to grind 194hr/month. If it faills just get another CC(s), and while you wait for the new CC(s) use the 500$ to pay for food/hookers.

But srsly spaghetti go for it. WHERE ARE YOU WITH UR NUMBERS SPOON

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