Generally, how long should it take?

[Riverflow]

First, although this isn't my first thread, I would like to extend thanks to everyone involved in any/all information available on this board, hard not to feel guilty reading encyclopedia's worth of information and not being able to give anything back just yet.

This, by no means, is an attempt to acquire a simple temporal answer to the question, how long does it take to start making a nice hourly rate, say 50/hour+.

However, I can't resist but humbly inquire about others experiences in achieving their relative success.

Academic life goals are just starting to get realized for me, and I have put that on pause to try my hand at something I have wanted to do full time for a while, I have given myself a timeframe, and if it doesn't work out, there is something waiting for me, and so be it. I say this because, I decided instead of lurking in the shadows simply reading, I would throw myself straight into the mix, to help make this happen.

I dabbled in limit a little during school, but I just started NL seriously a few weeks ago, Sep18 to be exact. After 25k hands of 25NL at 3bb, I now have about 30k hands of 50NL at 2.5bb and am getting in almost 3k hands a day now. Yes I realize this could still very well be variance, and at this point, I honestly have no idea where I stand, all I can confidently say is that I am trying my best and learning a hell of a lot everyday from both books and the board.

My question does not relate to sample sizes, winrates etc etc...I'm basically just curious, when did you successful players really start to become comfortable with your play, where you could truthfully say to yourself...I know, I can make x an hour...where x is a number you valued as pretty big.

Even typing this I realize how ambiguous, and, well, unanswerable this question is, in essence I guess I'm trying to just get some thoughts on the whole starting out game in terms of monetary success, as opposed to looking for a definitive answer to the question.

I have read the links in the sticky in this forum and looked around the threads, still, no substitute to personalized attention I guess...I apologize if this thread comes off as useless to the more seasoned posters.

[Alobar]

welcome to the boards

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all I can confidently say is that I am trying my best and learning a hell of a lot everyday from both books and the board.

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that's the only thing that matters at this stage in your "career". don't worry about win rates or monetary gains, just focus on making good decisions and on learning. All that other stuff will take care of its self

And definitely dont waste any time worrying about other peoples successes or how fast so and so moved up through the levels, or how many people seem to be making $X/hr, or how fast they were able to do so. Everyone progresses differently, judging yourself compared to other people is pointless. It's super easy to get caught up reading all the success stories here, and reading how player X turned into a high stakes player overnight, and its easy to get down on yourself for not being able to do that to, or to get frustrated cuz it seems everyone can beat limit X and you can't. It's a waste of time and energy and will only frustrate you, or make you feel overly confident because you are doing well and you get cocky and then you spend more time waving your dick around and feeling great about yourself than working on your play.

Just focus on you, and on your game and on playing the best you can. That's the only thing that matters

[Gonso]

Riverflow, there are a lot of players who will never get to $50+ an hour even if they're intelligent, hard-working, disciplined, and generally well-suited to playing poker. For one, it's too easy to get burned out even when you're playing well. Second, many that can do well at poker can also succeed in other areas that are often more rewarding and less risky. The capital needed is often also kind of goofy and could be put to more profitable uses elsewhere.

At $50/hr you're talking 100k/year, no benefits or retirement plan, and that's if you actually work 40 hour weeks (which is more than what most pro online players actually play). Then there's all of the growing pains ($) invested to get to that point and so on.

To answer you question, you might never get to $50/hr, or you could do it in a year and a half the way a few of the online superstars did.

[basementproject]

Nineteen years, at least. Maybe twenty three.

[saal13]

It took me about 12 months to break $50 an hour. I play about 2-3hrs day and usually study about an 1hr a day.

[Riverflow]

Thanks for all the replies. I guess I should say then that at this point, I don't view it as a potential career...it's more of a challenge at an age where I am not ready to start my actual career waiting for me, I want to test myself with this for me, I don't care about TV, I don't care about the poker hype (in fact it's actually a turn off), I just want to see if I can personally do it.

I realize it's just money, raw money, as you said, no retirement plans no etc etc...but the mobility it offers at this point, where even if you can confidently make 20 or 30/hour, you can do that anywhere you want, expenses permitted. Luckily, I do dabble in other things, I have a couple websites that do okay and I will still work on other projects, just want this to be the main active ingredient in my life right now, I'm simply too curious to see what could happen, but again I'm not necessarily expecting anything really.

I get the idea it's not at all definitive though, I'll just have to see what happens. I'll see you around the boards.

[Sir Folds A Lot]

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It took me about 12 months to break $50 an hour. I play about 2-3hrs day and usually study about an 1hr a day.

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What is studying? Are you reading books, or looking at your play?