Expenses and going Pro

How do professionals pay the bills, when on long loosing streaks? Let’s give our fictional poker pro a $6000 bank roll and assume he will be playing at the $200NL level.
Further, let’s give our hero better than average skills, but nothing earth shattering. Also, for our example, let’s say that in an average week he can win $600 but is prone to down swings of $600 per week as well.

Regular expenses for our hero total $1800.

Note that in the following examples the hero never posts a losing month but is in all actuality a “winning” poker player; even during this one year “down turn in his average winnings.

Now let’s walk through a 12 month period in which our hero goes on a long and dreary sojourn through the murky waters of variance.

Jan 1: Bankroll $6000
Win/loss + $2400
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll end of Jan = $6600

Feb 1: Bankroll $6600
Win/Loss + $2000
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll end of Feb = $6800

Mar 1: Bankroll $6800
Win/Loss + $1800
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll end of Mar = $6800

Apr 1: Bankroll $6800
Win/Loss + $1000
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll End of Apr = $6000

May 1: Bankroll $6000
Win/Loss + $100
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll End of May = $4300

June 1: Bankroll $4300 (Hero moves down to $100NL)
Win/Loss + $1000
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll End of June = $3500

July 1: Bankroll $3500 (Hero stays at $100NL)
Win/Loss + $2700
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll End of Jul = $4400

Aug 1: Bankroll $4400 (Hero stays at $100NL)
Win/Loss +300
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll end of Aug = $2900

Sep 1: Bankroll $2900 (Hero stays at $100NL)
Win/Loss +900
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll end of Sep = $2000

Oct 1 : Bankroll $2000 ( hero moves down to $50NL)
Win/Loss + $2000 (killed this game like he used too)
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll end of Oct = $2200

Nov 1: Bankroll $2200 (hero stays at the $50NL)
Win/Loss + $1200
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll end of Nov = $1600

Dec 1: Bankroll $1600 (hero stays at $50NL)
Win/Loss + $1500
Expenses - $1800
Bankroll end of Dec = $1300

Jan 1: Hero is seen filling out an application at Wal-Mart.

So, clearly the variable that is most affecting our hero is his expenses. Our hero really has three choices, reduce expenses, get a job to cover or supplement expenses, or get much, much better at poker so that even with “long” downswings he can cover his expenses without dipping into the bankroll for them each month.

The point of this exercise is to show that even a winning poker player will have a VERY hard time earning a living just from poker winnings and when you take a hard look at expenses, you begin to realize why!

obv you dont start relying on poker to pay for things until your bankroll can accommodate the swings.

There are many good posts on bankroll management that suggest anywhere from 20x buyin to 40x buyin's. In this case our hero had 30x at the $200NL level. The point is, in most of these articles about bankroll management, they tend to leave out expenses as a variable. If you can't, regularly win the bare minium to cover your nut, you have no business thinking about going pro.

Which sucks because my nut is $well over $4000 and I won't be going pro until I'm old enough to retire from my day job :)

Obviously its retarded to go pro when your monthly winrate is anything like as small as your monthly expenses. Going pro on a 30 buyin bankroll is likewise pretty retarded.

100 buyins is a good start

Ya, I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'd say you need at least 100 buy-ins to play poker for a living at a particular stake. Those buy-ins should cover your downswings and daily living because you still need to eat and pay bills when you're not winning.

In addition to that, whether you play poker for a living or not, you should have 3 to 6 months of expenses so you could live that long without any income.

If you read a br mgmt article that suggested you could support yourself with 40 BIs I would go ahead and delete your link to the site. The vast majority assume the only thing you're doing with your roll is playing poker. This makes sense because those numbers are relatively common but each person's needs outside of poker will be so different it would be impossible and silly to try and cover them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hyPOTcrisy

How do professionals pay the bills, when on long loosing streaks? Let’s give our fictional poker pro a $6000 bank roll and assume he will be playing at the $200NL level.
Further, let’s give our hero better than average skills, but nothing earth shattering. Also, for our example, let’s say that in an average week he can win $600 but is prone to down swings of $600 per week as well.

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You know this is nowhere even close to reality right? 3 BI swings ($600)?? Try 15 BI swings. At $200NL it's a weekly occurrence to be up or down as much as $2K. I wouldn't play $200NL with $6K regularly anyway. I may take a shot but the first downswing down is going to end it since 30BI's would be my bottom. To play for a living, I would need at least $10K and believe I have had a decent winrate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Genitruc

100 buyins is a good start

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This.

Your post is a good example though of how people think they can play for a living off a 30 buyin roll or w/e, truth is you can't.

20-40 buyins is for non-pro's.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Genitruc

500 buyins is a good start

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* savings sufficient to survive comfortably without poker earnings for x months (x varies depending on all sorts, for me it's 12 minimum, and right now loads more) will vary things a little
* 50-100 buyins, minimum
* ability to deal with 15buy-in losing periods

It's easy for recreational players with dreams of turning pro to forget about the expense side. Indeed, poker publications tend to promote this, albeit perhaps inadvertently, by talking about players' winnings, not their net income. Even just playing at home on the internet, if poker is your sole or main source of income, your win rate has to be enough to cover rent or mortgage, food, entertainment and other living expenses. If not, since they have to be paid anyway, the result is bankroll shrinkage.

I guess you could say that I've been semi pro for awhile now. I have other sources of income from a very small business. I've made around $12k in poker winnings this year from mass tabling $25NL, this doesn't include reloads or FPP's. I need to make at least $1k from poker per month, their have been bad months where I haven't quite made it, but mostly because of running bad and lack of discipline to grind.

People usually think its crazy to not move up. I can make $30 per hour + FPP's at 25NL - more than any job i'm qualified for. The swings are fairly minimal - I can count on my fingers the times that I've had more than a 6buyin downswing.

I seriously cannot imagine what it would be like to play 3-4 tables of $200NL for the same hourly rate as a professional. The variance would be insane, and as a result I probably wouldnt' be able to grind all that much.

A lot of the times, it really sucks. There have been days and weeks where I've broke even over 20k hand stretches and it really starts to get to you after awhile.

Even with the small amount of variance, my minimal BR is 40buyins, though I need 24 just to start a session.