My semi-long term plans for poker

This is my blog entry, I just wanted to know if people (I guess not too many people have actually seen me play at all, so it'd be hard to tell for me personally) thought this goal was achievable and I wasn't just hoping for a long-shot.

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I realize this is far from guaranteed, but I feel these plans/goals are acheivable.

I'm currently at $377.39, I'll get to my play today in the next post. I'm starting classes and we're going to get into baseball full swing starting Tuesday. So my goal is to hit $500 by the end of the month. This is very doable only playing 15 hours or so a week (average of 2 hours a day, but I'll play more on weekends and if I have homework sometimes not at all during the week. Also it'll depend on whether I have baseball the next morning as to how late I can stay up. Anyway, when I hit $500, as mentioned hopefully by the end of the month, I'll move up to 10c/25c, as I will be properly rolled for it. By then I hope to be full swing into school and have the schedule down and able to make time for me to play a bit more. At 10c/25c, my goal is to hit $1,000 by Spring break, which is March 10th for us. We then have a baseball tournament in Florida over Spring break. When I get back I'll be properly rolled for 25c/50c. At this point I will play 25c/50c with an aim simply to turn a good profit. My goal will be at least a profit of $15/hour, and $20 or $25/hour isn't out of the question. With my calculations, 9-tabling at 675 hands/hour total, a win rate of 5 BB/100 at 25c/50c would be 5*6.75 = $33.75, so even if I only hit 2.5 BB/100 I'll be clearing $15/hour. For the rest of the year I want to prove to myself that I can indeed beat it at such a rate. If (when) I can do this, it will become my 2nd summer job. I've got a job the first half of the summer umpiring baseball games, but the season ends early July, so this year I was unemployed and couldn't find work the rest of July. This year if poker doesn't work out I'll just have to apply at the beginning of the summer. But the kinds of jobs I'll be applying for will be close to minimum wage jobs, certainly nothing better than $10/hour.

So if I can have a job that I enjoy more than any other job I'd do, makes more money than any job I'd do, and also gives me 100% flexible hours, I'll do it in a heartbeat over finding a "real" job. Still got a ways to go, as I'm currently just doing 5c/10c and the competition at 25c/50c is much better, but I'm destroying the games now while also 9-tabling, so I'm optimistic about my chances. If I can consistently make the profit at 25c/50c of $15/hour or up, I see no reason to try to move up levels over the summer. If I'm successful over the summer, I'll try to start moving up next year and see about actually making a semi-decent profit for a real job. I still don't intend to even think about going pro at poker, but it can be a very good 2nd job and job for spending money while in school. We'll see how it goes, but I like my odds right now. Worst case scenario, it doesn't work out and I just get a real job like everyone else in the summer, and best case scenario I'm playing poker as a job this summer. Seems I can't lose. Anyway for now I'll just keep grinding the 5c/10c until I hit $500.

First off I swear i thought i linked to you via my blog, but apparently not. Done now

As for your goals they're definitely doable, zach. From watching your past vids I think you'll definitely need some work before you hit 25 or 50nl, mainly in tightening up, but otherwise those winrates are definitely achievable. I mean you could probably tagfish your way to a 2.5bb/100 rate at 50nl playing strictly premiums.

One thing I want to warn about is moving up too quickly or playing with the bare minimum for a certain stake. The standard minimum number of hands per stake should be around 10k, but having more to make sure you're not getting in over your head is always a good idea. Shouldn't be too much of a hassle with 8-tables either.

fwiw I played like 12k at 25nl, and am over 20k at 50nl at the moment. I'm also playing with 60 buyins at 50nl, and was playing with around 30 I think at 25nl. Helps tremendously with tilt.

Anyways there aren't any groundbreaking differences from 25nl to 50ln, but it's always good to make sure you're prepared and well-rolled.

GL sir

well good luck grinding the 5c-10c nl
but i think ur goals are quite optimistic{ turning 377 to 1000 by march at those levels}
but i wish u luck
but 9 tabling 10$nl with 377$ roll? arent u a little bt underrolled for that?

Thanks, I have been working on tightening up and sizing my bets better (bigger in general, especially preflop) like you mentioned for the video comment. I should definitely have at least 10k at each stake, considering I played a little under 2 hours last night and played 1k+ hands. From my brief stints (tilts) at 50NL and higher (went as high as 200NL with like 400, that's the main reason I'm down and building again), there is definitely a lot more aggression and in general loose play at the higher levels, and still plenty of fish with money, but that means that my simply raise decent+drawing hands (small PPs and suited connectors) and then cbet whether I hit or not strategy probably won't work as well. It definitely won't be easy, but I'm definitely willing to work to improve my game, and it's paid off so far, this site has been a HUGE help. I'll also probably do another video this time 9-tabling 10NL in the next few days.

And thanks for the blog link, I just linked to yours too . Thanks.

No, 10nl should be 10*20 = 200, 9-tabling makes no difference in BR needed. Think of it this way, IMO 9-tabling at 1/2 (any unit, doesn't matter) for one hour is similar to single-tabling 1/2 for 9 hours, NOT single-tabling 9/18 for 1 hour. It decreases the variance. One bad beat at a higher limit hurts your BR a lot. One bad beat at the lower limit hurts just as much and although you'll have more bad beats per hour playing theoretically more hours/RL hour you'll also see more good runs.


So as another example say my win rate graph is f(x), with the function value being the dollars won with the given x of hands. Assuming all other things (competition basically) equal, playing at twice the stakes changes your graph to 2*f(x). Anyone can see that a graph that fluctuates both directions has a better chance of breaking 0 at 2*f(x) than f(x). I claim that 2-tabling turns the graph into similar of f(2x). For those not familiar with manipulation of functions this is basically the function squashed together in the horizontal direction (so it only takes half of x to get to the old x value). This is really hard to explain and I don't know if this example clarified or confused people, but the point is that we are manipulating the # of hands played, not the stakes.

As to being too optimistic, I'm going to put in some hours. I've got roughly 8 weeks, so to win 623 playing 20 hours a week would be 623/160 = 3.90/hour. I don't plan on playing a full 20 hours a week the entire time, but I'm currently winning at more than $3.90/hour, so that's definitely doable. My tough part will be the move up and being able to continue to beat those stakes.

Well there are still some considerations when multitabling whether you're playing within the %5 per table or not.

Tilt carrying over to other tables is the main issue that comes to mind, but I do agree that you have enough to be 8-tabling atm.