Cash game pros - lifestyle (and numbers) questions

[TheMetetron]

I feel incredibly old-school coming up on my 4th year of playing poker for a living. I also am starting to feel old as well. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Anyway, I'll answer your questions.

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- How many hours of cash game play do you guys (and gals) try to log every week ?

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Target is ideally 25. Reality is more like 20.

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- How has playing cash games affected your sleeping cycles ? How has it affected the social aspect of your life?

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It affects my sleeping schedule way more than it should. I try to go to bed by midnight and wake up around 8-9 AM. I've been good about it for about the last week, but I can go weeks at a time being completely screwed up and I tend to play horrible poker when I do.

As far as social life, I don't think it has negatively affected me at all, though perhaps when I first started it was hard to get over the "wow I'm losing so much money by not working right now" thing. That passed fairly quickly though.

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- What kind of $ / hour are some of you maintaining ? (please mention stake and # of tables played)

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Hard to say given I play higher now then I did a few months ago (therefore sample size is small). Over the last quarter million hands or so at $2/4-$5/10 I was making around $400/hr. Playing $5/10-$25/50 like I do now, it seems to be more like double that at around $700-800/hr. This is 4-8 tabling.

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- How do you guys pay yourself? Do you do a fix amount of $ per week ? Do you tell yourselves '' i will withdraw X$ when my bankroll reaches X$ ''

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I have to do wire transfers for the most part to get my money off so I usually only do it once a month to keep fees down. I take off everything beyond 20-30 buy-ins and keep a few thousand for expenses, put money I'll need for taxes into my segregated account for that, and invest the rest in my SEP-IRA and taxable mutual funds.

[Phase2]

Thank you for all the responses!

As for all of you who are saying to wait before going pro, a bit too late for that. I was playing part time for the last year, and was able to clear a decent profit. Only thing is i couldnt play nearly as much as I wanted to, due to the girlfriend and job. Now that i got rid of those 2 dead-weights (hehe) I get to play much more. It just never seemed to make sens for me to need to go to bed after a winning session of 400-1000$ in a night, even though i was playing solid poker against donkeys, because i needed sleep to go to my 8hour day job that made me 110$...

I am giving it a shot for this winter, and i have absolutely LOVED the last 2months!! Reading all these posts (and some on 2plus2 where i posted the same thing) has really given me some hope. I woke up early this morning and i just couldnt sleep anymore because I was too excited to get on the virtual felt (and obv i get rewarded with some sick sick -var coolers lol; however on the positive side it did not affect my play negatively and it did not put me on tilt at all, so im happy about that!)


And to all of you worried about me and my BJ problem, I positive that is in the past and will not resurface. I realize the cost now (which is like 2months of intense pokering to recopu my losses on top of paying for my living expenses ..)

[DerekJCEX]

--- How many hours of cash game play do you guys (and gals) try to log every week ?

30-50

---How has playing cash games affected your sleeping cycles?

i sleep too much and wake up later and later every day cuz i dont have to wake up

---How has it affected the social aspect of your life?

i wake up in time to pregame

---How do you guys pay yourself?

i like to withdraw as much as possible while slowly building my roll

im gonna try to start getting up at like 1:00 pm consistently and also start going to the gym. i would also like to have some sort or loose playing schedule instead of just waking up and playing all day/night once the coffee wakes me up. somethin like 4-6 hours/day 5-7 days a week.

[cts]

these days i'm on a pretty normal sleep schedule, have been seeing my friends at college a ton, have had a few girlfriends this semester, and am spending a little less time on poker. my game has been much better lately because of it i think, and i'm enjoying life more than ever. i've gone through phases where i didn't play at all (usually after a huge downswing) as well as phases where i played nonstop severely hurting my social life, it's definitely important to find a happy medium and i'm getting much better at this.

that said, the past few months i've still averaged probably 40k hands which is a lot considering most of the time i'm just sitting around waiting for action. also i've been focusing on making my money work better for me and other nonplaying poker ventures (cardrunners etc).

i used to just cash out whenever i needed money in my bank account, with the occasional big cashout when i just had way too much online and wanted to put it in esavings or index funds. but lately i've changed this and have been cashing out more frequently just because it makes me feel a little safer about life in general i guess considering most of my friends are graduating right now and are getting ready to hit the real world.

i also reenrolled in school and am starting classes up next semester. it's going to take me three more semesters to get my degree i think, meh, we'll see if i make it

[Trivial]

i've been pro since june inasmuch as i have no intention of looking for a job while poker remains as profitable as it currently stands. i typically log about 100k hands a month which i guess requires 30-40 hrs a week of my time.

as far as sleep scheduling goes i seem to work on a 26-28 hour daily cycle which means i get around the clock every 8-9 days and have the joys of waking up at 6am, 9am, midday, 3pm, 5pm, 8pm, etc through the week. this is purely because i sleep until i wake up with no external influences such as alarms. i am getting a little fed up of it as i often see little to no daylight as a consequence. the effects on social activity are obvious.

i have up until now cashed out infrequently which i regret since it has allowed me to blow large sums while drunk (this stands as my number one leak at present) and once i rebuild a sufficient roll for my regular games i intend to cash out a fixed amount on a weekly basis to set a habit and supplement those cashouts semi-regularly with additional withdrawals if i hit a good spell.

[SEABEAST]

it's amazing how the first reply to an OP can really set the tone for a thread. someone could have easily mocked OP for asking a question that has been done 100 times before, but instead skier wrote a really good response and now we have a quality thread.

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but in reality, the answer is truly what you make of it. If you keep a good sleep schedule that lines up with other things you would like to do with your life (I think this is very crucial) then it doesn't have to [censored] with your schedule. For poker playing at night is obviously best but when you find yourself needing to do something or buy something at a store and you get up at 8pm, you gotta do something about it. This causes you to move your schedule, or if you are visiting someone you have to flip right around. Constantly changing your schedule leads to lost days and many days of being tired and adjusting.

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this is bang on. i spend about as much energy just trying to balance my life as i do playing poker, especially now that i have started coaching. but it's completely necessary to do so, especially as you get further down the track.

i have been playing for a living/gaming hardcore for 5+ years now and as you get just a little older it becomes more and more clear that it won't matter how much money you end up making or how many people think you're a great player - if your entire life consists of spending time alone while the real world is asleep and you never get anything done IRL, you will not be happy.

it's fine/standard to go into sick grindermode for a while when you're young and obsessed with getting better, but it's not sustainable as a lifestyle when you move into genuinely playing for a living, and having a balance to your life becomes increasingly important.

personally i am quite content with the numerous facets of my life and the balance i have on paper, but i still really, really struggle with the sleep thing.

totally agree with what skier said about waking up too late to go run errands or do normal IRL stuff and how that can make you feel really alienated... so now i often tend to just stay up until the next day and do whatever i need to do then (whether it's getting a bunch of things done i've let slip for a few days, or catching up with a friend i havent seen for a while), but this is where the lost days thing comes in, and i'm sure i'm taking years off my life with all of this.

[ocklind]

- How many hours of cash game play do you guys (and gals) try to log every week ?

I try to play as much as I can! From the hour I get up (around 11) to the hour my girlfriend comes home from her work (around 6). And I eat/freshen up for like 1 hour. So I play like 5-6h's per day. Obv w/ the occasional break for events, shopping, sports etc.

- How has playing cash games affected your sleeping cycles ? How has it affected the social aspect of your life?

I sleep waaaaaay more now then when I studied. I get 9h sleep almost every night.

- What kind of $ / hour are some of you maintaining ? (please mention stake and # of tables played)

Not a clue, playing from 3/6 to 10/20, mainly 5/10 though. Never had a losing month so far. I can add that I aim for 5ptbb, I can only achieve this at 3/6 so far though.

- How do you guys pay yourself? Do you do a fix amount of $ per week ? Do you tell yourselves '' i will withdraw X$ when my bankroll reaches X$ ''

If I need cash, I cash out some... =)

[Phase2]

Wow, this thread really delivers. Thanks to all for your replies.

Few points id like to make:

- i do keep in shape, currently playing ultimate frisbee once a week, going to do join another weekly league (frisbee or soccer most likely) so i get to socialize/excercise all at once...i also plan on doing a lot of snowboarding this winter. I also do either pushups / chinups or ab work on the daily.

- I feel really bad talking about what i do now... at first, I was honest with my friends. THey would ask 'how is poker' and i would tell them. But then I feel bad saying i made more friday night then they are going to make in 2weeks of work :/ I would also tell them if i lost, but most people dont understand when i say i lost 1k last night ... usually get some speeches about gambling and how its so wrong to lose 1k in a night , to be careful etc.

So now, when I meet people and they ask what I do I will tell them im a stock broker. I sorta am, my stock is my poker-skill and i am betting on it.

Past few weeks I have been reserving 1 night of the weekend to partying/drinking while the other is reserved to pwn donks who have been partying/drinking.


Thanks for all the comments, i will update when i hit 100k hands [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Animus]

My man, I just keep it cool and roll wit it.

[Subfallen]

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My man, I just keep it cool and roll wit it.

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I like how you couch your thoughts in italics, as if the surface reflecting them is wrinkled by the phantasm of a soft breeze from wonderland. [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]