WSOP 2016

[arbboy]

WK is a rec himself.  Surely he has never actually given up work to play poker full time right?  If so as a rec he can do and say whatever the fuck he wants.  He plays for fun, entertainment and his own ego therefore owes nothing to the poker eco system win lose or draw.  Good luck to him.  If he was doing his cash chirping like 99% of recs do nobody would say a thing and just sit there quietly mopping up his cash.  Seems very results orientated to me because he has had a few results.

[Marky147]

WK is a rec himself.  Surely he has never actually given up work to play poker full time right?  If so as a rec he can do and say whatever the fuck he wants.  He plays for fun, entertainment and his own ego therefore owes nothing to the poker eco system win lose or draw.  Good luck to him.  If he was doing his cash chirping like 99% of recs do nobody would say a thing and just sit there quietly mopping up his cash.  Seems very results orientated to me because he has had a few results.

The impression I got from the WSOP coverage was that he had done.

[DropTheHammer]

WK is a rec himself.  Surely he has never actually given up work to play poker full time right?  If so as a rec he can do and say whatever the fuck he wants.  He plays for fun, entertainment and his own ego therefore owes nothing to the poker eco system win lose or draw.  Good luck to him.  If he was doing his cash chirping like 99% of recs do nobody would say a thing and just sit there quietly mopping up his cash.  Seems very results orientated to me because he has had a few results.

I'm pretty sure that, despite labelling himself as a lawyer/solicitor, he is in fact a full-time professional poker player and not a practicing solicitor. He was sponsored by Super Stack as their pro player from May 2016, not that he wore their patch at the main event 😆

[FUN4FRASER]

the WK PR bandwagon rolls on...

http://www.pokerstars.tv/en/tv/channels/2016/11/will-kassouf-no-holds-barred.shtml

WK: "if you're not good enough [to take the barrage of verbal] then you shouldn't be playing the main event". Seems he wants to chase off all the recs then. Because your average farmer from Utah doesn't want to be exposed to this when he wants to play some cards.

He has a point.. I'm sure they'll all love chucking their ten grand in, so they can listen to a parrot on speed all day.

Ha      

He is certainly good for TV but maybe not so good for attracting newbies to the game , that said he certainly is getting some badly needed exposure to the main stream wjich must be good for the game right  ?

Personally I loved him sticking it up the Americans in their own back yard , that may sound wrong but a lot (not all ) are so full of their own rhetoric & American ideology that a good  WK " shake up " certainly gets my vote especially when the like of Griffin Bengers head explodes at the table . Epic  Viewing !

[arbboy]

Why would you play poker from mid 2000s onwards and not go pro in the glory years and suddenly decide to go pro now the poker boom is over?   Hundreds of people like me played poker for a living between 2003-2012 made lumps then quit when it got too hard.  Is WK really bucking the trend (outside of being results orientated on a tiny sample size) and not going pro in the easy years and suddenly becoming a pro now the game has got tougher than ever?  Is he really technically that good?  I don't know i am just asking.  Chirping for a living doesn't add much when you are 12 tabling on line in any era.  Doesn't make much sense to me.  Maybe he was never a lawyer at any stage and has just been a poker pro for 15 years.

[FUN4FRASER]

Why would you play poker from mid 2000s onwards and not go pro in the glory years and suddenly decide to go pro now the poker boom is over?   Hundreds of people like me played poker for a living between 2003-2012 made lumps then quit when it got too hard.  Is WK really bucking the trend (outside of being results orientated on a tiny sample size) and not going pro in the easy years and suddenly becoming a pro now the game has got tougher than ever? Is he really technically that good?  I don't know i am just asking.  Chirping for a living doesn't add much when you are 12 tabling on line in any era.  Doesn't make much sense to me.  Maybe he was never a lawyer at any stage and has just been a poker pro for 15 years.

I was talking to him at The WPT this weekend and from what he said Im pretty sure he just plays the live circuit .His verbals & feels for the game are very much those of a live player but as we know in the glory years most of the big money was won online . Present day online it is technically way harder to beat the game. not to mention all the tracking software /bot technology and training sites one has to beat too.

[SuuPRlim]

Is it possible to make a living from live poker comps with an ABI of >£1000?

What kind of ROI's you think are possible. Some very basic sums in my head (ABI £800 with 200% ROI = £160 p/comp means you'd have to play 176 comps (1 every 2 days on average which in itself seems horrible) to make a GROSS PROFIT of £28,160. If you're being super frugal and playing mostly local comps (can't be possible for this volume surely) and only spending £500 p/month on expenses then your yearly take-home is £22,160.

Average wage in the UK is £26.5k gross (£20,800 net) and average working week is 43.6 hours before holiday, 39.4 after holiday. ~£10.20p p/hour.

My assumptions on the ROI, the possible volume and the expenses are all probably optimistic but it certainly looks like a SUPER SUPER SUPER tough living and if you're doing anything other than trying to move up stakes as fast as possible then I'd say you're in for a world of hurt.  You'd also need a bankroll of what? at least £40k (50buyins?) Looks super dodgy.

Leaving a career as a lawyer to per sue this would certainly seem incredibly ill-advised. Speshly at the rates my solicitor charges 

[Lonohray2]

^ add a zero on there if you meant 200% ROI

150 in a year at ABI of £800 with 50% ROI (might get smaller field 500s, small field 10ks, sell action in 5ks etc) = £400 * 150 = £60k. 100% ROI = £120k.

Minus a lot of expenses to get to these worthwhile 150 MTTs, plane fare, hotels, eating out 3 x daily probably looking at closer to £2500 than £500


Those numbers look a bit better but its tough to play that many good value MTTs outside of WSOP, and variance is ridiculous to make it your sole form of income going to be needing a lot more than £40k.


Incredibly ill-advised to play the UK circuit MTTs without having other income be it cash games or other investments IMO. Unless you're Ben Winsor or Deadman a few years back.

[SuuPRlim]

Oh yeah. I wrote 200, meant 20 but that seems way to small!! Duh

So assume 100% ROI playing 100 ABI £800 comps p/year = £80k GROSS EV £30k on exes at your numbers = £50k net profit, which seems to be ok then really.

I guess if you can throw 1000 odd hours of some sort of cash game in at ~£15 an hour for a much lower variance £15k p/yr B&B money you can be looking at £60-£70k p/a NET which is a cracking little wage in anyones books. If you say 50buyins no where near enough, and increase that to 150, that's what a £120k bankroll you'd need.

I guess it's do-able if you're prepared to travel outside the UK. Really though you need to be playing higher, either backed and managing your money properly, or with a chunky BR.

The crucial point to all this is obviously the ROI, which is pretty hard to know for sure, when it's the difference between £130k and £200k p/yr then I guess it's not so important generally, if it's the difference between £60k and £30k then I'd say it's absolutely critical, and when you're dealing with educated guesswork that's pretty fucking worrying.

[lucky_scrote]

To be making a living from live MTT's you need to be playing at a level where you absolutely crush it.
 
Until your ROI is incredibly high it's not really viable to play MTT's because if you have a 25% ROI in fields 300-400 then you are going to be a 50/50 on turning a profit over a year. That's just how it works. It's a bit different if you play 100-150 fields with that ROI as you are probably going to be an 80/20 to show a profit over a year.

I think if you are playing huge field events around Europe and the states (500-1000 entrants) then you are going to need to have a 100%+ roi to be safe.

[SuuPRlim]

http://www.pokerplayer365.com/poker-strategy/under-the-gun-with-dan-ocallaghan-to-bully-or-not-to-bully/

Interesting read.

[alfiesdad]

http://www.pokerplayer365.com/poker-strategy/under-the-gun-with-dan-ocallaghan-to-bully-or-not-to-bully/

Interesting read.

Indeed. Disgraceful behaviour which makes the performance from WK even more impressive.