If you had to make $20k?

[Steve Swift]

Hi all,

If you had to make $20K a year from on line poker how would you go about it?

Background:

I am a micro stakes MMT player and over the last few years have made about $30k  by just getting a bit of luck one or twice a year. I don’t expect that to change much and am obviously just a recreational player. I don’t play cash or Live.
I am a fulltime college lecturer which I am starting to hate with a passion. I will receive a full Army pension in 17months time.  Am willing to study and learn,
I have 4 lovely grandchildren and they mean everything to me.

Idea:

What I would like to do is give up work in May next year or drop down to part time sessional hours, this would allow me to see my Grandchildren a lot more as 2 of them live over a 100 miles away.
With my pension and other bits and bobs I could manage but obviously it would be a lot better to have some extra income coming in, hence my question.

It doesn’t have to be $20k but it seemed a nice figure to look at.

So what would be the best way to guarantee (I know that is a stupid thing to write) or as best as humanely possible guarantee to do this.

a.   Learn to play cash
b.   Look at rake back scenarios involving multi tabling (rake back pro)
c.   Stars VPP’s
d.   Study and therefore learn to be better at MTT, get coaching
e.   Don’t bother as it is impossible
f.   Stay in job
g.   Find different Job
h.   Any other ideas you may have

By nature I can grind and put as many hours in front of the screen as necessary.  I am willing to view this as a 15 months training period  to get to this scenario but was really was wondering what you lovely people think about it?

Regards

Steve

[rfgqqabc]

I would imagine there would be a better form of part time income out there to be honest. Marking exam papers? Invigilating somewhere? I would have thought there would be something.

 Poker is extremely tough way to make an income. If you literally had to do this, I'd work out which game type you preferred sng/cash/mtt. Hire a coach, study umpteen hours of videos, and be prepared to absolutely love the game to pieces. It'll take a good period of long hours for small cash whilst working extremely hard for this goal to be achievable. You have to choose the game type for yourself though, otherwise the grinding will get too boring and you'd stop.

[Longy]

This is going to be tough and you are odds against to do this imo. This is not a slight on you, but I would happily offer odds to the majority of people who would try something like this.

I think you should stick to tournaments it is what you know and have some grounding in. Choose a format you think 20k is realistic for a good reg, sharkscope leaderboards etc. Then pen and paper calculation of how much you would have to play and go for it.

The problems you will face
1) are being good enough, this is not 2005 anymore and online is tough in almost any format.

2) Being able to grind day in day out. I think a lot of recreational players think this is easy cos they love the game and their job sucks compared to poker etc. When this is your job and you pay the bills that way, the swings stress you out, you have to totally self motivate yourself. Playing 8 hours of poker is a lot more mentally straining than any standard job.

3) Bankroll restrictions, now it certainly isn't impossible to make 20k a year from basically nothing but this relates to 1) that it is going to take a lot longer to get there without enough money to ride the swings.

Best of luck, I am rooting for you but would be betting against you!

[Steve Swift]

TY guys this exactly what i wanted, $  or £, i meant $  .

The figure could be $5k  but just $20k was a meaning full amount.

Think i was wondering if by grinding and breaking even it was possible to make  a consistant return with rakeback.

[Skgv]

Do you mean USD or GBP?  Obviously big difference given exchange rates.

Personally I find live cash to be easiest way to grind up decent sums on a regular basis. The competition is alot softer!

$20 k (£12.5 k) is only 1k per month, which is easy even at 0.5/1.

EDIT: I don't play full time, just a lot part time lol  As stated above, doing it full time is a different kettle of fish.  A full time player would be better placed to comment on mindset etc

Playing cash is defintely the way to go for 2 reasons which would give u more free time.
Its easier as you can game select
An you can start an stop whenever you choose unlike mtts where you play to the rest of the worlds schedule.

[pleno1]

Spend 1000 on a coach and by the end of te year it would more than make up for it.

[Simon Galloway]

Stake others and let them AK<AQ all night while you spend time with the grandchildren.

[SuuPRlim]

I always found having monetary goals in poker is a bad idea, basically anything that distracts away from trying to play well is a bad idea, imo.

Find a game or format you're used to, have enough money to play and just grind away, if you run good you'll have more money than you're supposed to and if you run poorly you'll prolly break even/win a bit.

If you seriously wanted to grind it out, exploiting rake-back and rewards systems is defo the best route.

[Steve Swift]

Again guys thanks for the replies.

[gouty]

Do you live anywhere near a casino with a card room? Sober live cash on weekends is the way to go.

BRM and tilt control need to be learnt first though.

Al

[Skgv]

I always found having monetary goals in poker is a bad idea, basically anything that distracts away from trying to play well is a bad idea, imo.

Find a game or format you're used to, have enough money to play and just grind away, if you run good you'll have more money than you're supposed to and if you run poorly you'll prolly break even/win a bit.

If you seriously wanted to grind it out, exploiting rake-back and rewards systems is defo the best route.

otherwords play cash right ?

[Doobs]

I always found having monetary goals in poker is a bad idea, basically anything that distracts away from trying to play well is a bad idea, imo.

Find a game or format you're used to, have enough money to play and just grind away, if you run good you'll have more money than you're supposed to and if you run poorly you'll prolly break even/win a bit.

If you seriously wanted to grind it out, exploiting rake-back and rewards systems is defo the best route.

otherwords play cash right ?

We are taking live?  I can imagine an ex small stakes MTT player will get chewed up and spat out by multi tabling regs at most levels of online cash.   

There may be exceptions on some sites to this, but wouldn't fancy your chances doing this on stars.

I think you should show you are a winner first at the stakes and games you want to play cash in, before making any step. 

[marcro]

If you seriously wanted to grind it out, exploiting rake-back and rewards systems is defo the best route.

This. 

Most of the regs you will be facing online will be at best small winners and relying on rake back deals.

If you go this route you better be prepared to grind a lot of hands/day.

[SuuPRlim]

I always found having monetary goals in poker is a bad idea, basically anything that distracts away from trying to play well is a bad idea, imo.

Find a game or format you're used to, have enough money to play and just grind away, if you run good you'll have more money than you're supposed to and if you run poorly you'll prolly break even/win a bit.

If you seriously wanted to grind it out, exploiting rake-back and rewards systems is defo the best route.

otherwords play cash right ?

We are taking live?  I can imagine an ex small stakes MTT player will get chewed up and spat out by multi tabling regs at most levels of online cash.   

There may be exceptions on some sites to this, but wouldn't fancy your chances doing this on stars.

I think you should show you are a winner first at the stakes and games you want to play cash in, before making any step. 

Ye I wasn't specifically saying play cash - I have no idea if that's a good idea or not, instinctively just from my personal experience I'd tend to lean on Doob's viewpoint that without a LOT of hard work (and no making any money for a bit) cash games might not be the best route. Live cash games - like gouty says could be a better option but lots of time consumption there.

$20k a year from poker really really isn't that easy.

[Steve Swift]

Thanks for all of the replies guys. The figure of 20K was a just a thumb in the air figure.

I thought cash online grinding might be the way ahead.

I also thought that the overall opinion would be ditch MTT  learn cash learn from scratch over the 15 month period accepting that i would need to deposit a suitable roll, and accepting a loss for a while.  I also thought that more volume and rakeback would figure for consideration.

No mention of grinding sng's either

Thanks again for taking the time to reply


Steve