How good can I expect to be?

How good of a poker player should I expect to be if I only play for a couple of hours a week maximum online (mostly at $5 or $10 NL) and the occassional home tournament?

I read this forum as much as I can and I have read most of the highly recommended books. I really like playing poker, but I can't find as much time as I would like with the other activities I have. I am not a great player by any means, but I do consider myself better than an outright fish.

Should breaking even be my goal, or is that unrealistic?

You can do better than break even.

you are here at ftr and you know how to read, so you should do better than breakeven if you follow the stickies and advice from other ftr members

good luck
flomo

Cool, I am glad to hear that I should be able to make money playing poker, even if it is a small amount. I expect to make money, so it is good to hear that I have not set an unrealistic goal.

You can do anything you set your mind to.

That out of the way, you can definitly do better than break even. I've been playing at $5-10 NL for 4-6 weeks, and I'm up $200 and I'm a horrible player.

Some things I've learned the hard way at this level:
At every full ring game there will be 2-4 people who will never raise a big hand preflop.

Bluffs are rare, when someone bets huge they more than likely have a good hand (better then TPTK), Most of my loses came from holding onto TPTK to much. You do have the rare maniac, and you can safely assume a bluff from them. But other than that, be careful.

Continuation betting after you are PFR will win a lot of hands.

Best of luck to you, if you play on Party you may run into me at the $10 tables.

It depends

It depends on your commitment to improve the game, time spent on analyzing hands and reading & comprehending theory, willingness to take others advice and willingness to trust people that are better than you if it comes to take sometimes harsh feedback.

And there are lot of other factors.

But the effort is rewarding.

Play on some of the sites where you can collect the smaller bonuses, and a break even player will come out with cash.

Find the sites with the worse-than-break-even players (a.k.a. most of them), and make even more!

if you play 2 hours per week and you only play 1 table at a time then you'll be playing 80 hands per week!! that's less than 5000 hands per year.

For ring play you need to see at least 25,000 hands to go through what i would call a normal "variance" cycle. that mean, if you paly 5000 hands and play them all perfectly then you can still lose based on pure variance for a whole year.

So i would not recommend a ring game if that's all your going to play. Multi-tabling is a way to bump your hand rate, but you need to have "quick eyes" and be able to see what's going on quickly to do that. Plus you need an "automatic" game. Which I'm sure you don't have because you haven't palyed enough.

So, i would actually recommend SitnGo's for you. There's a whole area of FTR where you can get up to speed quickly. SnG's are fun. They're like crack!! Fast and exciting, and cheap. I would play $2.20 on PacificPoker or the $1 on pokerstars. Don't play the $5 SnG's on Party the rake is too much.

That's what I recommend. You can do good on SnG's because they are like little whirlwinds that defy variance. They aren't easy to win consistently, but they are fun, they typically last about an hour (at the lowest buyins), and you CAN get good at them.

good luck. that's my recommendation.

You can do good on SnG's because they are like little whirlwinds that defy variance

???

Originally Posted by biondino

You can do good on SnG's because they are like little whirlwinds that defy variance

???

In SnG's ONE hand can be the difference between going ITM or not. Additionally the escalating blinds make action required and certain "odds play" suicidal. Each SnG is like a reset. I believe people who can get into a flow in SnG's can do very well there. But they aren't standard poker. It's a game where you either make money or you don't. There is no middle ground. Also it's a game where people do crazy things, sometimes in predictable ways, due to blind pressure. If you can get a feel the flow of a SnG as blinds change and chip pressure builds then you can do very well in spite of cards or odds. If you don't understand that flow then you can do very poorly inspite of cards or odds.

Feel free to disagree.

How else can you expect somone to make money playing only 2 hours/week? I think this is the best track for him to have teh best chance and get the most enjoyment out of the poker he does play.

I can't expect him to make money playing 2 hours a week! Maybe a couple of hundred dollars pocket money, which is fine.

If you've never loaded an SNG, bust out early, loaded another, same again, loaded another, gone on tilt, bust out early, etc. etc, you're a better man than I am.

Imagine - this chap plays 4 SNGs in a wek and finishes OOTM in all 4 (through pure variance in this example). Next week, the same. It's hardly unlikely - indeed, it's inevitable at some point - but how galling must it be, to get so little satisfaction from your hobby?

Originally Posted by aokrongly

I believe people who can get into a flow in SnG's can do very well there. But they aren't standard poker. It's a game where you either make money or you don't. There is no middle ground. Also it's a game where people do crazy things, sometimes in predictable ways, due to blind pressure. If you can get a feel the flow of a SnG as blinds change and chip pressure builds then you can do very well in spite of cards or odds. If you don't understand that flow then you can do very poorly inspite of cards or odds.

Feel free to disagree.

How else can you expect somone to make money playing only 2 hours/week? I think this is the best track for him to have teh best chance and get the most enjoyment out of the poker he does play.

Agree to a degree! I would just probably qualify your statement by saying that people get good at SnGs because they put the time in to understanding the little nuances associated with this type of tournament play. There is the tight-is-right at the beginning, open up slighty in the middle and then the bubble. Each has certain factors associated with things like stack sizes, opps skill & style etc

I agree, that for someone with limited time (and possibly a limited BR) SnGs are excellent value for money, because you can only lose your buy-in and you get to play a bit of tournament poker.

I guess, to sum it up, "flow" perhaps is a little misleading, but I agree with what you're getting at.

It may just be that I can't imagine a ring game that can be played 2 hours per week only that's either enjoyable or profitable. It may just be my game. But for me being pressured to perform in a short amount of time on a right game is a big ingredient to impatient play and disasterous results.

But that's just my game. I think people who play limited time really enjoy SnG's more than grinding out a ring game adn only getting a few playable hands. And half of them should be let go before the river, but you don't want to let them go becaue you know you're only going to get to play a few hands before you run out of time.

That's my take. But, you're right a bad SnG swing is about as fun as a prison rectal exam. (the memories, lol)