[ramblinman]

First of all your monthly "nut" as you call it will not be 2K in Vegas. A decent apt. is going to cost you half of that at least! Since you will be playing poker 8 to 12 hours a day, four or more days a week, you will be eating out a lot. You can of course get some comp benefits from the rooms where you play, however, keep in mind that not only are most places starting to tighen up on comps but it takes a lot of poker action to get any really decent comps out of a large room. Chances are you will be eating a lot of buffet food if you expect to live on 2K and comps.

Next, you need to figure on $20/day in gratuities (mimimum). 20 days out of the month, that's another $400 you need to clear. You may have seen or heard much debate about the need to tip or not tip but I assure you that if you plan to hang at the Wynn or Bellagio or the Mirage and think you can get away without tipping the cocktail waitress, the dealer, the brush (or cardroom manager) as well as a myriad of other "service personnel" then you are in for a rough time.

So let's do the math and see what it will really take...

Let's say you actually need $3000/month, not $2000. (probably a conservative figure) Divide that by 20 days and you only need to clear $150/day every single day that you play in order to achieve your monetary goal.

Assuming you can average a 40% rate of winning sessions (this is the figure Annie Duke told me that she was averaging after years of cash game play) that means you will actually leave the game ahead 8 out of 20 sessions.

This leaves you needing to average $375/session to earn your $3000 "nut". (and that buffet food isn't tasting so good after a couple of months).

Keep in mind that you also need to win enough during your winning sessions to recover your losses during your 12 loosing sessions or your bankroll will begin to shrink.

Playing any NL or PL game the variance will be much greater so your won/loss swings will be larger than if you were playing LHE. (one of the math genuises on this forum can help you work out the numbers).

At any rate, I'm sure you are beginning to catch my drift. While it can be done, you are probably pushing the limits of probability by expecting to win enough money playing NL or PL games for relatively small blinds/ buy-ins. Probably would be better served to fortify your BR, hone up on your LHE game and try to grind out one big blind per hour at the 20/40 tables.

That way you could keep your play down to 30 hours per week or so ($1200/week, not too shabby), keep your mind fresh and be able to have the time and money to eat somewhere besides the buffet line at the Imperial Palace.