Poker
Firstly, let me apologize for leading you on with my last post, saying that I was going to visit this past weekend. I ended up absolutely exhausted on Sunday after I got out of work around 2pm. My brilliant planning started with volunteering for 8am shift on Sunday because they were short-handed. I was also scheduled to close the night before, which meant little sleep to begin with but then I hatched the scheme to take Dani to see Harry Potter after work since the kids were with my mother all weekend and we didn't think they could see this particular Harry Potter. Got out of the movie around 3am and in bed by 3:30am. Unfortunately, I kept getting stomach cramps every time I got in bed (but was perfectly fine every time I got up) so I ended up falling asleep around 5am and had to get up around 7:30 to get to work. So when I got home from work Sunday I just laid on the couch and dozed off until around 7 or 8pm when Dani and I had dinner and watched some Firefly and Mad About You. By 12:30am I realized I wasn't going to bed again anytime soon so I decided to head to Foxwoods and use my awake time wisely. Plus, it guaranteed I would be awake Monday morning in time to beat traffic to my mother's place in Salem to pick up the girls before she went off to Rachel's ultrasound appointment. A very efficient use of my time as it turns out, adding $500 to my bankroll in about 3 hours. After picking up the girls I thought about trying to see if anyone was around, but being that it was before 10am on a Monday I figured it better to just get back home.
Well, to tie into the title of this post, I would also like to pose this question. It is a complete hypothetical as the "plan" I had conceived on "going pro" is far from accomplished, but recently I have made discoveries that have made it more appealing. I want complete, brutally honest answers. I realize this is a subject many of you know very little about, but in some strange way that is exactly why I am asking YOU. I just want to know how people outside of it would react. Anyways, here it is: If I were to announce that starting today I had given up "working" a job and use poker as my only income, what would your thoughts be? The only reason this comes up is that I finally converted my poker journal into an Excel sheet and have come up with some really interesting numbers. From July '06 (when I started the journal) to December '06 I logged a profit of about $4800. That is from 46 games, with 32 wins and 14 losses over 289 hours. I won 70% of the time and $104.80 per game and $16.68 per hour played. Now I wasn't playing too much back then, so that total might seem a bit small for 6 months. This month alone I've played 6 times and won every time, totaling $1400.
Remember I'm not planning on dropping my job all of a sudden and just heading off to the casino. There are a lot of appealing qualities to the lifestyle besides the money. I would "work" when I want to. No having to request days off I want with the family or to come see all of you. When the kids start up school this year I wouldn't have that worry in years to come of having to work or being able to make it to an event of some sort they are involved in. I LOVE the challenge. This is the ONLY thing that has ever really challenged me in new and different ways over such a long span of time. Projection would be my "career" choice if it were still a job which involved good pay and benefits. If I were doing it say 20 or 30 years ago. But even projection did not challenge me this much because eventually I faced all the problems that would come up and it would just be a challenge of "can I do it faster?" In poker the challenges are as numerous and diverse as the people that come through the room. I really am good at it. I get a tremendous amount of satsifaction from being able to tell myself at the end of the day "You did your best and came out ahead because your best was better than theirs." Most of you have played Monopoly with me (Star Wars or otherwise) and should understand that competitive side of me. :)
The original "plan" is still in place, and I think I'm going to put it into effect. For every $5,000 my bankroll (the money I keep seperate from our own that comes ONLY from poker) increases I am going to work one day less per week and spend that "shift" playing poker instead. By the time I get to $25,000 I would be out of work completely and that is really much more of a cushion than I need playing a game that requires a $300 buy-in. I would have to lose 40 buy-ins in a row just to eat away half of the bankroll. Basically the financial side after that is that the bankroll gets half my winnings and the other half is my "income". After the bankroll gets larger I could possibly move up to a higher stakes game, if I thought it would be worth it. Part of the reason I would ease into it like this is because I believe I do have a bit of a compulsive, addictive personality. You all know that is why I don't really bother with alcohol and have never smoked ANYTHING. When I got a computer I was HOOKED and you probably all remember me going to work dead tired because I had been talking to penpals till 5am. I have had a hard time in years past giving up bad foods like soda and fast food (both of which I have been free of for about a month now, thank you Sprite Zero). I don't really envision myself getting "addicted" to poker, because I do treat it more like a job or project. It doesn't make me feel better when I'm in a bad mood or having a hard time with something. In fact those are the times I pay extra attention to NOT going, you really do have to be mentally and emotionally fit to play the game right. And I haven't played online in a LONG time (because I don't enjoy it as much). I feel having to drive an hour and back to the casino would be a kind of safety measure in that if I did start going for the wrong reasons I would have a long drive to realize it.
Anyways, sorry about the long read. I hope to see some interesting feedback, you are my friends and I do care about what you think. Should this work out I would like to know I wasn't causing you any concern and that you could support my decision and be proud of the choices I make. I just figured it was better to ask your opinion now rather than if it was something I had already done. Hope all is well, and I hope I get a weekend day off this week so I can see y'all face to face soon.
Well, to tie into the title of this post, I would also like to pose this question. It is a complete hypothetical as the "plan" I had conceived on "going pro" is far from accomplished, but recently I have made discoveries that have made it more appealing. I want complete, brutally honest answers. I realize this is a subject many of you know very little about, but in some strange way that is exactly why I am asking YOU. I just want to know how people outside of it would react. Anyways, here it is: If I were to announce that starting today I had given up "working" a job and use poker as my only income, what would your thoughts be? The only reason this comes up is that I finally converted my poker journal into an Excel sheet and have come up with some really interesting numbers. From July '06 (when I started the journal) to December '06 I logged a profit of about $4800. That is from 46 games, with 32 wins and 14 losses over 289 hours. I won 70% of the time and $104.80 per game and $16.68 per hour played. Now I wasn't playing too much back then, so that total might seem a bit small for 6 months. This month alone I've played 6 times and won every time, totaling $1400.
Remember I'm not planning on dropping my job all of a sudden and just heading off to the casino. There are a lot of appealing qualities to the lifestyle besides the money. I would "work" when I want to. No having to request days off I want with the family or to come see all of you. When the kids start up school this year I wouldn't have that worry in years to come of having to work or being able to make it to an event of some sort they are involved in. I LOVE the challenge. This is the ONLY thing that has ever really challenged me in new and different ways over such a long span of time. Projection would be my "career" choice if it were still a job which involved good pay and benefits. If I were doing it say 20 or 30 years ago. But even projection did not challenge me this much because eventually I faced all the problems that would come up and it would just be a challenge of "can I do it faster?" In poker the challenges are as numerous and diverse as the people that come through the room. I really am good at it. I get a tremendous amount of satsifaction from being able to tell myself at the end of the day "You did your best and came out ahead because your best was better than theirs." Most of you have played Monopoly with me (Star Wars or otherwise) and should understand that competitive side of me. :)
The original "plan" is still in place, and I think I'm going to put it into effect. For every $5,000 my bankroll (the money I keep seperate from our own that comes ONLY from poker) increases I am going to work one day less per week and spend that "shift" playing poker instead. By the time I get to $25,000 I would be out of work completely and that is really much more of a cushion than I need playing a game that requires a $300 buy-in. I would have to lose 40 buy-ins in a row just to eat away half of the bankroll. Basically the financial side after that is that the bankroll gets half my winnings and the other half is my "income". After the bankroll gets larger I could possibly move up to a higher stakes game, if I thought it would be worth it. Part of the reason I would ease into it like this is because I believe I do have a bit of a compulsive, addictive personality. You all know that is why I don't really bother with alcohol and have never smoked ANYTHING. When I got a computer I was HOOKED and you probably all remember me going to work dead tired because I had been talking to penpals till 5am. I have had a hard time in years past giving up bad foods like soda and fast food (both of which I have been free of for about a month now, thank you Sprite Zero). I don't really envision myself getting "addicted" to poker, because I do treat it more like a job or project. It doesn't make me feel better when I'm in a bad mood or having a hard time with something. In fact those are the times I pay extra attention to NOT going, you really do have to be mentally and emotionally fit to play the game right. And I haven't played online in a LONG time (because I don't enjoy it as much). I feel having to drive an hour and back to the casino would be a kind of safety measure in that if I did start going for the wrong reasons I would have a long drive to realize it.
Anyways, sorry about the long read. I hope to see some interesting feedback, you are my friends and I do care about what you think. Should this work out I would like to know I wasn't causing you any concern and that you could support my decision and be proud of the choices I make. I just figured it was better to ask your opinion now rather than if it was something I had already done. Hope all is well, and I hope I get a weekend day off this week so I can see y'all face to face soon.