I ran across a post on the CardsChat blog and while I agree with some overall premises raised by the author, I have to point out some mistakes in his logic. First off, the author’s main point is that it’s too hard to make a living playing poker. He says he needs about $5000 a month and he feels the only way to do that is playing $10/$20 30 hours a week (with another 10 hours a week spent studying poker).
Alright, so if I can play three tables simultaneously for 30 hours a week, at $10/$20 and beat the game for 1 measly big bet per one hundred hands, I’m at the same level of income being a professional poker player as I today have being an engineer. Of course, I miss out on some stuff like coworkers, paid leave, pension, free coffee (not that the coffee machines at work are so great, but still!) and, of course, a stable income. If I’m smart, I’ll have a huge bankroll that can more than handle any downswings I will fall prey to, but there will be psychological impacts nonetheless. Worrying about whether or not I will manage to pay my next month’s bills is not something I have to do today. I know how big my paycheck will be, and I know when it will arrive. How much is that worth?
First off, I’m not sure of what world the author lives in but the number of jobs offering strict 40 hour work weeks looks like a graph of Bush’s approval ratings. I think a more realistic estimate is playing for at least 40 and maybe putting in 50 or 60 hours a week. Furthermore, shooting for a 40 hour work week is exactly the opposite of the kind of mindset one should have in order to think about ditching the corporate world and taking up, what amounts to, starting their own business. Going pro isn’t about replacing a cushy 40 hour a week job. Going pro is about doing whatever it takes to be successful. If that means putting in 60 hours a week at the tables and another 20 a week studying, posting hand histories, and improving your game, that’s what you have to do. The only time you can really consider slowing down is when you start making so much money that putting in additional hours has no real impact on your lifestyle. When you’re making $100,000 a month and living on $5000 and have socked away enough to retire three times over, okay, maybe you cut back to playing 30 or 40 hours a week.
Plus there’s an additional angle called quality of life. I’ve worked 60 hour weeks in an office and 60 hour weeks working from home and, if you have the motivation to actually sit down and work, working from home is a much better deal. I used to be able to go take a walk down the beach to clear my head, take two hour lunches, and pretty much travel the world at will. Of course, I often would be up late writing code or reports at 2am in the morning (or hotel rooms in exotic locales) but since I’m naturally a nightowl I was far more productive working the late hours.
That’s why professional poker players say it’s a hard way to make an easy living. The easy living is making good money and having the personal freedom to do what you want, when you want. The hard part is that when you work for you, you don’t really have any “off time.” If someone calls you up and tells you there’s a juicy game you have to get into, you jump. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already worked 40 hours this week. If you’ve ever read any of the tales from folks like Ted Forrest or Howard Lederer, they’ve played more than 40 hours in one session because the games were so good. Unless you have that level of motivation you should go ahead and keep that 40 hour a week job and nice pension plan and wait out the next 30 or 40 years for retirement. And that’s not a bad thing. That works for a lot of people. It’s only a bad thing if you are trying to get into a business where reward is based on effort.
Lastly, I would say the author also missed the boat in terms of figuring out what levels he needs to play at. You shouldn’t be playing to break even. If you need $5000 a month, you should be playing to win $7000 – $8000 a month. You’re going to have off months and dry periods which will require you to have a little set aside on the side to see you through. More importantly, you want to keep growing your bankroll. Five grand a month today isn’t going to buy you the same standard of living 10 years from now. That means you either need to keep moving up in limits or lower your standard of living. Moving up in limits requires a bigger bankroll.
Most professional poker players think of their bankroll like businesses think about capital. Without capital they can’t make money. The more capital they have the more they can (potentially) make. Someone who is thinking of going pro would be well advised to spend some time reading up on how to start a business. Many of the concepts such as a business plans, goals, fiscal planning, cash flow, etc translate to poker more readily than most people imagine. For the vast majority of people who consider going pro, the difference in whether they succeed or fail will likely have more to do with how they view and treat their profession than their actual results at the table (if they’re a winning player). There are excellent players who spend money like it’s going out of style. If you can’t budget, plan, and display self-control away from the poker table your results at the table will have little impact on your success or failure being a poker professional.
Going pro isn’t about playing poker all day with no boss. Going pro is about having a boss (you) who needs to push himself hard enough to keep the business growing.