blonde poker forum

Hey guys, basically ive been an electrician for past 6 years, started like 2 days after i finished school so always been in a job, well obv recession has hit us and im being made redundant at the end of the week. Im actually pretty excited/happy about it in a way, because ive been wanting to play poker for a living for a while anyway and im fully qualified so if it does go tits up, not that i think it will, but i have something to fall back on, and as i live with my mum, she basically said if i quit my job to play poker id have to find somewhere else to live, sigh. So now seems as good a time as any to go for it.

Just wanted to ask ppls opinions on playing fulltime, ive been playing hu cash backed since february and been doing pretty well, had 1 losing month, started at 50nl, and im playing 100/200nl atm and shotting 2/4nl. Whats ppls views on playing for a living and being staked, im unsure wether i should stay with backer or not, im sure alot of ppl gonna say only i will know the answer but just curious.

Also just basically any other advice anyone cares to share. Ive probs not supplied enough info, not sure what else, but if ppl want to know anything that may help me go for it.

Could you not do foreigners for cash too?

how old are you ?

dont play backed imo

bum hunt and play on

The lads at work have said if i ever need any work they can sort me out with the odd foreigners here n there. Not a fan of doing them though if it can be helped


21

How much redundancy are you getting?

Gonna be £1200

ahh, ok, not enough for your own bankroll etc.

I'd say fk it, and go for it imo. Good luck with your mum.

have a holiday. go visit Cos for a week or two and chill out with him. see what the crack is with him and his set up with backers etc. your mum will miss you and when you come back she wont want to kick you out. ps.... £1200 aint gonna last you any time at all. what is that like two weeks wages atm

True, the £1200 wont do much, did manage to have a $8.5k winning sunday last week and have some money saved from my winnings from hu cash+obv the wage ive had coming in, so could have own bankroll if needed

Play smaller.  Be happy with regular $8.5k winning months.  (obv $8.5k days are better, but just swerve the bankrupting swings and grind out a solid earn) Do it for a year or more, get some proper wedge behind you and then do as you please for the rest of your life.

Keep a good amount of money aside for life expenses not to be touched by poker, if you still have enough left over to play on your own then go for it, otherwise staying backed isnt a bad option.

find somewhere cool to live, pay for ~6months up front, have a bit of life money and stay backed.

the biggest key I've found with playing full time is to keep regular outgoings to an absolute minimum, then if you run out of cash but have a gd backer, its not too big a deal you can just sit and play till you have money again.

Your young, go live overseas somewhere and grind/have fun. Your living costs can be half that of the UK too. There are a tons of threads in the travel section on 2+2 about various places poker players have moved to. Asia is pretty popular, Thailand in particular, but there is no shortage of fun countries you could go to.

Stay backed for a while until you have a big enough roll to go it alone.

Good luck with what ever you decide . But don't leave home on bad terms you only have 1 mum she is only worried about you . Poker will always be there .

If you're going to be playing 100/200nl backed I think playing 50/100NL on your own dime is much better.

You're a level headed guy and I know you'll make a success of it, I think that if you do stay backed with S & M then the deal would have to be changed in some way perhaps involving more 1on1 coaching or a bigger % share to yourself as playing for half the stakes (where games are easier) for double the % makes more sense when you're bum hunting etc as theres alooooot more games at 50/100/200 than at 400. If there was a tonne of fish sitting all; the time at 400 and you got as decent stop loss i.2 10+ bi's then perhaps staying backed would be a good idea.

The pro's behind staying with S & M are they are both sound guys, very very trustful and good people to get advice from about poker.

I would play on your own dime till February/March, games are always great in December and January and then reconsider what to do in Feb/March i.e, move away for 6 months with some players, come to live with me in Spain, go to Vegas, etc etc. If things go tits up before March then you know you can get backed either by S & M or by other people and you can do that, or use you're qualifications to get a job.

Oh and

Do it you have a great situation one of the best things to have in this world is a trade to fall back on if your poker goes tits up.

First bit of advice, try and get your mum on side. I know it's of easy, but she may well get there.

If you end up leaving home, I to play free of life stress it's a good idea to have 6 months "living money" set aside. Like Dave says, you should minimise that and if youre not going to be at home I agree - a great chance to go to Thailand, Costa Rica etc and minimise your outgoings  AND seethe world a bit.

In terms of staked or own dime, I'm no cash player - however surely it's just simple BRM and the key question is how much money you have total, life and poker roll and work from there. If you are rolled to play at the level you want, I'd crack on - if not carry on being staked.   Cash should be less brutal variance wise obv - but from an MTT perspective where swings are brutal all I would share about my first year of playing full time is pretty simple; if you play on your own dime the highs are higher, but the lows are horrible.  I didn't appreciate that until I'm actually doing it, albeit I've ha incred swingingy first 12 months.

Based on info given, I'd jump on a plane to Asia, give your mam a big hug, say your travelling, get to Thailand and grind - stay staked until roll enough to go on your own.

As far as staking, it's far to situational really. But obv if going on your own dime could lead to you not being able to survive a couple of bad months then that would be stupid. I'd say if you where comfortably rolled then it best to have 100% of yourself but there's people who have no br issues that prefer being staked.

Run good, bink something and your Mam will come round. VBOL.

Why do people keep saying 100/200nl and 50/100nl i assume you mean 1-2 and .50-1?

Just put it all in play and go for a mad spin, if it works you are the new young wonderkid, if it doesn't get job hunting.

I could have been a wonder kid but I put it all in play and lost at 25,000/50,000 nl and PLO- that does sound crazy high, gonna be my new brag

Don't be a degen

You could check out Blackbelt Poker. Not sure if there is going to be another grading process any time soon, but it could be worth asking the question. Some excellent players have successfully completed the grading process and probably learned a lot about poker as well as getting staking and building up contacts with like minded players.
 Neil Channing will be in Nottingham at the weekend, you could always have a qick chat with him. He seems like a very nice man. I'm pretty sure he will offer a few words of advice.
  Just a thought-Good Luck, whatever you choose to do.

My first reaction when I read the title was "No, don't do it."
I was made redundant in 2005 and took a shot at playing full time, and ended up hating the game.
Ran REALLY bad and found it really hard to adjust to the constant drain on the bankroll for household bills.

Having said that, I had a mortgage, a wife and two kids. (still do thankfully).
If I was 10 years younger with no commitments, it'd be a different proposition altogether.

People did warn me poker made a better hobby than a job, but I had to find out for myself.

I also remamber Barney Boatman saying it was "the hardest way to make an easy buck"
(He may have been quoting someone else).

Good luck if you go for it.

I play a lot of live cash Dubai mostly infinite NL infinite PLO can get pretty hairy at time i tell ya

<3

Look at a few years down the line.

What do you want from poker? To make enough to retire in 10 years? Happy to grind for 30 years?
Want to be a millionaire in 5 years?

Give yourself a limit of time on what you want to do, if you've not acheived the level you wanted in that time then do something else.

Another thing to consider is the opportunity cost of playing poker for a living

So for me in my work it would be career progession, and the ability for me to achieve various things due to having missed 3/5 years etc.

move somewhere sunny. stay backed but reneg the deal (per pleno), don't move to spain (per pleno, because of the impending regulation there) and enjoy life. you're 21 ffs. go and see some of the worlds. ;)

good point on the career progression issue.
Your CV stands still if you take a few years out to play poker.

I ended up working in the gambling industry when I went back into work.
Perhaps you could combine it with some home study.
Project management, business management, software writing, languages, marketting, etc.
means if you do decide you want a salary again you can look at the gambling industry and the poker playing will be a plus when backed up with the extra skills

i will 99% be able to sort him out some work in gaming indust a freelance roll meaning his cv wont be empty.

Thanks everyone for the replies, lots of helpful posts there cheers. I suppose if im unsure about playing on my own then i should stay staked for an extra few months. Obv lots of things ill have to think about, but once again thanks alot for replies

That's why I love you and Dubai lol - when I quit work I remember an email exchange with Dubai where I was saying I had to drop to abi $50-$60 as I only had a roll of "x" - at which point Dave said words to the affect of wtf, spin up etc etc

or he could astually use the time to skill up :)

The opportunities for good software engineers, multi-lingual support managers, project managers or marketing execs in the gambling industry are great.

If I could go back 5 years, I'd have done that instead of attempting the Poker T-shirt business I had going.

just to clarify - i wouldnt be bothered about a hole on a CV  -a hole is only a hole if you cant explain it eloquently

opportunity cost very different to hole on CV

i think getting a part-time bar job might be a good idea. Your potentially going to be looking for a place to live, without the cushion of being able to pay a years rent in advance whilst playing small stakes backed. Per sonally i think its a tough ask to play your best in this scenario. Also i'd much prefer playing .25/50c on my own bean than playing ssnl backed. Being backed for cash games seems like a terrible idea if your a decent winner.

Other than poker, is there anything you have always wanted to do, but found excuses not to do it?

Like have you always wanted to own your own business, become a chartered accountant, or write a crime novel?

IMO you should maybe use this opportunity to both have a crack at the pokers AND dedicate some time to another non poker life ambition. That way, even if the poker goes tits up you will have still made some strides towards doing something else you have always wanted to do.

Lots of people see poker as a CV gap, not because its what employers will think, because afterwards it feels like they wasted that time. This way you get something else out of the poker too.

I agree 200nl, 400nl has always really tilted me for some reason :s

Kinda depends what you want out if all, for me I've always been happy to give up large chunks of action because my goal is to ball around the world doing cool stuff in cool places and then come home and not have to get up a t 9am

this has always been >>> accumulating stacks of money in my life, although i'm sure a decent way to do it would be to lock away and grind on your own money and THEN when you have a nice stash of £'s then start to rock around the world, be warned though the lifestyle is pretty addictive :P

Obviously you need discipline, when i started i grinded 50nl at uni i was at the end of my overdraft and had part-time bar job. I practically lived off 12p super noodles, but at least that base has enabled me always to play whatever game i wanted cash wise. When i finished uni i han a healthy 100bi roll to play SSNL and enough to pay the bills for a few months. When your starting out you need to work hard and make sacrifices. There will be lots of your peers balling around but they will have little to show for their lifestyle in the majority of the cases.

Listen to the most sensible man I have met in poker, except Pab lol - enjoy Macau JP, wish I was able to come.  Fancy a cash student MTTs are tilting me lol. Hopefully catch up soon.

who gives a fuck about missing a hole in ur cv

just lie

my cv is full of shit
 
80% lies

its not what you know its what you can prove............................


as for real advise its pretty stressfull playing poker full time and gets super boring.

I enjoy playing poker more as a hobby then as a way of making a living.



also have you not considered getting a new job or starting your own business?

<3 JP.... thats why i shove my flopped up n down str8 draw over your lead to induce with a set, to get the guy you have been measuring willies with all day to fold his flush draw (that obv got there on the turn).... wow took a while but i eventually found an excuse :)

shaun: :) cheers catch up soon for sure. Jason: i think that guy had it in for me, i won a few medium pots off him on another tbl so he started 3betting me and showing 64o and stuff. I was just 3bet/calling 99 vs him because he was clicking btns randomly. I think you were abit unlucky in not seeing my 3bet ( so annoying sitting in seat 1/9) i just got lucky with the way things turned out, i was so close to going for the c/r which if i did i would have been out the MTT there and then.

+1

fancy sorting me out?

ohh. wait.

You have 2 ask a few hard questions 1 would you miss home and your mates 2 I would imagine grinding all day is pretty boring even if your a winning player . A lot of us play part time and the money we win pays 4 nice holidays and takes the pressure off bills . As you are single with no kids enjoy yourself and do what is best for you good luck

Tips on this please?  I have always fancied working within the gaming industry but not even sure where one would start. 

At 21 with a little money behind you should go and travel the world as this becomes more difficult when you get older and have children etc

If you still want to play poker and have a backer...Why not keep things that way until you build a bankroll  ?

And finally...... decide if you are a cash game or tournament player and stick to it .

Good Luck

Think I'll refrain from commenting.......

I would take that £1.2k and set up my own electrical business on a local level. Guy mentioned opportunity cost and it's a good point really because you need to evaluate the whole trade off. A young guy with a lot of know how and a bit of enthusiasm could build a good business over the next few years. All the money earnt from every electrical job that business did over this time and it's overall value at the end has to be considered as part of the trade. Rather than going from job to job and meeting new people multiple times a day, perhaps even women, getting out there and enjoying each day, you will be huddled in front of a screen. Your mood will prob be entirely dependant on whether the right card falls even thou you will insist this isn't so. There will be no guarantee of satisfaction for a job well done. A backer is working for someone a business is working for you. Oh yeah and you piss your mum off which is highly undesirable. Thus there is a hefty overall cost to consider and really nobody can convince me their edge is so undeniably big that the total trade off is worthwhile. Also if ur doing good playing p/t just continue playing p/t and not put all ur eggs in one basket. Get some bod to run your business when you hit 30 and play poker as much as you like with a significant stable monthly income guaranteed. That would make your mum happy. Man I love poker like nothing else but playing it full time for a living would be proper ghastly.

I do actually have enough to pay upfront for somewhere to live for a year, also, i got the staking deal with my current backers for the coaching basically.


I didnt even wanna be a spark tbh, got given job whilst i was in last week of school and seemed a good place to start working life, obv happy now as i got a good qualification under my belt. Seeing as ive had that all the time ive never really thought about doing anything else, not sure really   ;carlocitrone;


Whilst i think this is a good idea in hindsight, everywhere is dead atm in the building trade so i think it would be a really bad time to set anything up on your own, people just dont have cash spare for work, so many electrical companies struggling its unreal

Not sure if people saying don't worry about the hole on your CV are serious. Might be different for your industry, but in financial/accounting industry, a hole on your CV = GG you. All recruiters say you are more employable if you are currently employed.

I would only go full-time if I had enough in life savings to buy a semi decent flat/house mortgage free.

+1

He never asked if he should go pro or not, thw question was about staking iirip.

Because online we call them $100NL and $200PLO.

Live they are 1/2 and .50/1

true


NOT TRUE


TRUE


So you think Jungleman could have made $8m in the last 2 years doing somethng else?

Jungleman was a complete freak of nature though, incomparable to anything anyone else has achieved recently. It won't be easy but you're 21 so whatever, go for it. A friend of mine who grinded nl400 backed went off to live in Costa Rica and has loved life for the past 3 years. Would definitely suggest you do something similar.

I don't mean him specifically, I just mean that plenty of people play poker because they cant make more money doing anythign else, whereas Mantis makes a good point at the non financial points to consider in deciding between poker as a job/hobby, saying no1's edge is big enough isn't right as plenty of people make very good money at poker

The guys that are smart enough to kill the games are probably smart enough to make good money at whatever they turn their hand to.

[ ] true for jungleman

From the amount of millionaire's that have been made from poker I'd say a very small % of them could've made similar doing something else.

A lot of people seem to also totally overlook the value of being a succesful poker player, even making much lower amounts as you enjoy playing the game and thus love what you do for a living which is worth a lot imo. I don't think there's that many people that play for a living that don't enjoy playing, I also don't think there's that many people who enjoy there job or have the freedom that someone who plays poker has.

True for a portion of that very elite slice at the top.  But who knows, Jungleman could have been the next Warren Buffet if he had turned his hand to it.

However, as a 21 year old redundant electrician playing HU:

a) Jungleman makes a fortune so that's the way to go
b) For every Jungleman, there's a thousand walking around skint.

If I was OP, I would do a few things:

1) Play smaller and have consistent $5k+ months.  I can't think of a better way to get your mum onside quickly than to watch you do this professionally and realise she might have been wrong.  Live sensibly, have the occasional excess, save up.
2) Simultaneously, learn other skills.  It will give you balance outside of poker and options in life.  Learn a language for a while.  (Let's say Spanish)  Get conversational at it, then go and grind from Spain/Spanish island for 3 months and become fluent.  Rinse and repeat in another language perhaps.
3) Now you have a nice roll, travel extensively if that is of appeal.  Grind-n-go.
4) Treat your poker like a business (to pinch a book title).  That means no slacking off because you can.  a few solid years of grunt work and aged 25, you will be in a much better financial position than the average 25 yr old and you will have had much more fun getting there than those that spent the last 4 years looking out the office window.
5) Now you have money, you have choices.  Set up that electrical business if that's what you want.  Carry on doing what you are doing if you prefer.

OR, take your shot that you will be the next Jungleman and play as high as you can as quickly as you can.

GL with whatever you decide.

the Jungleman argument is silly, the only reason I mentioned it is because of Exactly what woodsey posted, nice post Mr W.

you're young, free, no commitments and have a hobby your passionate about and the opportunity to make good money doing it and having some amazing experiences in the meantime - I mean it's got a ton of potential negatives but so does everything, life's what you make it and half of that is knowing what you WANT to make it, if you wanna play poker go for it, just be open minded and realistic and above all have a ton of fun.

When i left to live abroad when I was 18 I said to myself I was never ever going to wake up in the morning and not be excited about my day and I can count on two hands the amount of days in the last 4 years I have woken up wanting the day to be over already.

This is it in a nutshell for me, even though I've been doing shit the last few months I've still been looking forward to my day, everyday. Whereas when I used to go to work at my job I would just wish everyday away so I could get to the weekend. You spend too much time at work to not enjoy what you do, I'd rather be happy and making 30k a year doing something I like than be miserable and making double that or more in a job I don't.

I think the key to playing poker for a living is making the most of the advantages that it affords you. Travel lots, meet a ton of people and just have fun with it. If you're a solid winner, you enjoy playing enough to put in the hours to make a living and you employ sensible BRM you're unlikely to experience any of this 'financial stress' that people fixate on.

The argument about being stuck in front of a computer all your life is bs too. I'm very sure that most people with office jobs have spent more hours in front of a computer in the last year than most poker players.

My only other advice would be to take with a pinch of salt the advice of those that haven't player poker full time or even attempted it. It sounds like a good idea to take in a wide spectrum of opinions but for every blog, forum post and book you read - you really won't know if it'll be something you want to do until you just go for it. I think you should concentrate less on the opinions of the masses and more on learning from the people that are doing what you want to do because really, you know that you can do it. If you doubted your ability to make money playing poker, you wouldn't be where you are.

Truth is that I've never seen a single player that was a solid winner and a sensible bankroll manager that has failed to make a living of poker, or regretted their choice. You have plenty of good contacts around you, so use them and you'll do fine.

Best of luck

I'm sure a lot of people make good money bud but it's still only a very small % of overall players, and certainly not as many as say they do. Anyway it doesn't matter if somebody makes good money today because +EV career choices should consider the long term. There are lots of pros who are busto today who made good money in the past and other old school pros struggling with changes. A poker pro will say you should focus on the long term but seemingly not when considering your own career. I'd say investing the next say 5 yrs into a trade or business produces a certainty of return across the entirity of your working life poker simply can't compete with. Full time poker will not only be a gamble over the next 5yrs in itself but the decision will also impact future years. The guy with another 5yrs experience should always get the future job/contract ahead of his poker playing rival. You build a career, hence each year of experience, knowledge and networking is a building block for more certain future years. The futures of poker is pretty random imo. Crucially, to assess the trade off correctly you must discount any poker incomes you could have amassed playing part-time whilst building those stable foundations. Playing poker is obv the nutz, but playing full time is like investing ur whole roll into the career game and that can't be good advice. Mum's always know best imo.

Can confIrm this

so its less than 7?

fuccccck, too good

lol wp Guy

tell us about the days you woke up wanting to be over dave. will make for excellent reading