Maximising your earnings from poker?

Imposter

I've got a bit of time on my hands at the moment and i'd like to see exactly how much I can make from playing poker. So I guess I need an organised plan but i'd like some opinions on things I think may be relevant

So I guess this is aimed at players making a decent second income or their living from poker, although it's probably useful to everyone. I also know the type of games people play as well as their strengths will differ.

How much do you rely on rakeback deals? Are they a huge part of your earnings that you couldn't do without? Do you find the sites with good rakeback deals have better players or players that are harder to make decent money from?

Do you find different times of the day are better for making more money? If so, when and why do you think that is? (Is it dependent on the times that you are more focused, the time you have available or the time when more donkeys are online?)

How much time off do you allow yourself? Is it really a case that the more time off you have the better focused you are and the more you can win (within reason obviously)?

How do you split your time between online and live? Does this correspond to your profits as well?

Do you plan study time or what if anything do you do about learning more from poker?

What games do you play (%'s or time) - MTT's, STT's, cash, (limit/PL/NL, Holdem or other games)? Do you get bored with one type and need a good mix? Do you ever get completely fed up with poker? If so why did you return?

TacT

Imposter wrote:

I've got a bit of time on my hands at the moment and i'd like to see exactly how much I can make from playing poker. So I guess I need an organised plan but i'd like some opinions on things I think may be relevant

So I guess this is aimed at players making a decent second income or their living from poker, although it's probably useful to everyone. I also know the type of games people play as well as their strengths will differ.

How much do you rely on rakeback deals? Are they a huge part of your earnings that you couldn't do without? Do you find the sites with good rakeback deals have better players or players that are harder to make decent money from?

Do you find different times of the day are better for making more money? If so, when and why do you think that is? (Is it dependent on the times that you are more focused, the time you have available or the time when more donkeys are online?)

How much time off do you allow yourself? Is it really a case that the more time off you have the better focused you are and the more you can win (within reason obviously)?

How do you split your time between online and live? Does this correspond to your profits as well?

Do you plan study time or what if anything do you do about learning more from poker?

What games do you play (%'s or time) - MTT's, STT's, cash, (limit/PL/NL, Holdem or other games)? Do you get bored with one type and need a good mix? Do you ever get completely fed up with poker? If so why did you return?

Rely on rakeback deals to make a bit more but managed just fine most of last year without one, so no, not at all. No with regards good rakeback deals and tougher competition. Donkeys are online 24/7 but the best time is usually late night or early morning (because the rest of the world is online!)
you can make money at almost anytime, whenever there are donkeys around -- gotta keep your eyes open for em, sit in and hope you catch a piece of the action.

As much time off as I need (whenever I feel I need a break) gotta take breaks to stay focused, at least 1 day a week. Hard to find the perfect balance there but gotta gauge that on an individual basis so there's no concrete answer.

I play online mostly (95% of the time so can't help there). Buy books, read sites, google searches and always keep my odds calculator open while playing.

Cash games 90% of the time, few SnG's and MTT's.

willis

Intersting questions imposter which i would like to see answered from full time players here, i only get to put in about 10 hours a week to poker and have wondered how much i could make if i was full time. Any chance we could get more replies here? ty in advance

RMcG

I dont have a rakeback deal, I play betfair and they only offer rakeback deals to new players in the last six months or so I think. They said they might have some deal for me when they branch out on their own. Conversations lately with various people have led me to believe I am missing out on about $1000 a month worth of rakeback for the amount of poker I play online, so I am considering moving accross to Carribean Poker which is also crypto. Just have to see what their policies are on account restrictions .

However I have also been toying with the idea of completely giving up online poker and concentrating on live poker, I make alot more cash from live games than I do from online games. This has nothing to do with there being more fish live than online because infact it is the opposite, it is something I cant explain but I feel that I play a completely different game online than I do live and its costing me profit.

Its just too handy to switch on your computer rather than head into town to play.

I find that the day shift is alot harder than playing in the evening. Lots of people who play for a living prefer to play during the day and the games are alot tighter, you normally have five decent players attacking one fishes stack and the games can be very boring. At about five or six in the evening you have a good oportunity to get people jumping in after work. You find alot of people jumping in with short stacks here, and the games can be very choppy with people coming and going every five minutes. This can be a profitable time but short stacks are difficult to play against some times and I have been caught out by these a good few times.

Things usually settle down at about 7 or eight in the evening and this is when i like to play. Dinner is finished and people who have been working all day like to spend their evenings playing poker. This is when I make most of my profit. My house is nice and quiet at this time too so I can relax and just play a solid 6 hour session and pick up some decent cash. Its also the best part of the day for Multi's and I usually have one Multi running at the same time as my cash game. It helps to soften the boredom as I never multitable cash games.

Early morning i.e.from maybe 2 to 3 a.m. and onwards is tricky, you have alot of decent players online midweek at this time but at the weekends you can make a good amount from people coming in from pubs and clubs, I have been this idiot on a number of occasions. I only play at this time during the weekends. And this is especially when I play live poker. Thursday nights to Sunday nights cash games in the Fitz or SE are good for drunk people wanting to donate their cash. Excellent infact from a monetary point of view but does not do alot for my state of mind. I have ongoing debates with myself whether it is right to go in to play poker with the intention of relieving some drunk fool of maybe a hard weeks wages. It just doesnt seem right to me sometimes....but when they relieve me of my cash on occasions it softens the blow.

I have heard that some dublin pros play for 40 hours a week and when they reach that 40 hours they stop. I try to play live cash games at the weekend and I am online the rest of the week. I play far too much poker and I think its hurting my game. When I take breaks and go abroad I always see the difference when I come back, I am always more refreshed and have a much better game after breaks. I really need to address this problem, I think it boils down to boredom. I have too much time on my hands and I just play poker to fill it, recently I have started going to the gym, last four weeks or so. I am feeling physically better and I think it can only be a good thing for my poker. I am getting better nights sleep and when I come to the poker table I am feeling more confident as a result of my healthier lifestyle. I have also given up drinking, havent touched a drop in five weeks. This has made me feel better too but on the flipside I have alot more time on my hands that would have been spent in the pub, is now being spent at the poker table.

I only play NLH/PLH. Nothing else. I have been trying to debate my tendencies to gamble of late........no special reason just am ...I wrote here that I only play poker, I dont do the lotto, bet on horses, bet on football, or even buy raffle tickets! But that statement is incorrect. I dont only play poker...I only play two variations of poker and thats NLH and PLH. I dont play anything else. Even in the Fitz when there was a round of each I would go home rather than sit in and gamble on Omaha (I would be gambling because I dont have the required Omaha skills). This doesnt happen anymore as PLH has at last become the game of choice and there is always a couple of tables running.

And the question of questions is, do you ever get fed up with poker and why do you return?

Fed up is an understatement. I absulutely hate poker sometimes, alot of the time infact. Every time I get a beat or lose I hate poker, I have sworn never to play poker again a hundred times over. In any job you have bad times but not like poker. In poker I have been virtually on the edge of tears, I have been right on the edge of rage, I have been on the edge of dispair and on the edge of a nervous breakdown...lol...well maybe not quite that far but close enough.

It hard to think of another job that on a weekly basis can drag you this low, and in poker there is no-one to turn to. You are all alone. The 'told you so' crew are always waiting there, waiting for you to fail......

And then 'BANG', 'ZAP'....like a flash of light from heaven you are lifted up again with an amazing string of results. And this high, this feeling of greatness from winning in poker is just about the most amazing feeling that you can feel. And it is not hard, but virtually impossible to get this high from a job on a weekly basis. But I get it, every week.

And thats why I return, because through all the heartache that you have to take its worth it for the highs. And as long as the highs outweigh the heartache I'll be playing poker. I'd much rather have the roller coaster of emotions day iin day out than a steady nine to fiver.....

Of course give me 10 years and I'll defintely be in a mental institute

FastMachine

Imposter wrote:

How much do you rely on rakeback deals? Are they a huge part of your earnings that you couldn't do without? Do you find the sites with good rakeback deals have better players or players that are harder to make decent money from?

I'm have a credit card coming in the next two days so I can start getting some rakeback. I've no idea how much it'll be but I've been getting on just fine without it so far.

Do you find different times of the day are better for making more money? If so, when and why do you think that is? (Is it dependent on the times that you are more focused, the time you have available or the time when more donkeys are online?)

I mostly play during the day for handiness but I've started doing some evenings/nights too. I'm moving up to 5/10 at the moment so I think most of my playing will be done in the evenings/nights from now on as there just aren't enough tables going during the day on Tribeca.

How much time off do you allow yourself? Is it really a case that the more time off you have the better focused you are and the more you can win (within reason obviously)?

I usually end up taking one day off a week but I take more if I have other commitments. Sometimes I'll play 7 days a week. I'm not strict about how much i play but I put in alot of hours because there's not much else I'd rather be doing anyway.

How do you split your time between online and live? Does this correspond to your profits as well?

I only play cash games so I don't play live at all. I find live too slow, too much variance with just one table, and too boring.

Do you plan study time or what if anything do you do about learning more from poker?

I don't plan study time but I'm constantly going back over interesting hands and situations that occurred during a session. As in looking at the lines we both took and seeing how the hand developed based on that. If a hand is particularly interesting or I think there's alot to be learned from it, I'll still be studying it a few days later. There's so much you can learn after a session if you focus on the crucial hands. You can't just start playing full time and be a winning player, you have to put serious thought into it.

You should make notes on where your leaks are - Ie. why didn't I respect the reraise and save myself a few hundred quid?, are am I paying off shortstacks too easily?
You should also make notes on what kind of situations you want to avoid in future - what got you into trouble in the past and then try to avoid making the same fundamental mistakes again.

What games do you play (%'s or time) - MTT's, STT's, cash, (limit/PL/NL, Holdem or other games)? Do you get bored with one type and need a good mix? Do you ever get completely fed up with poker? If so why did you return?

I only play NL cash. I never get fed up with it. Now and again though, if I feel my head is not in the right place, either through playing too much or not playing my best, I will take a few days break and come back stronger. If I lose alot of cash through a few bad beats in a row, I'll log off and take a half an hour or an hour to refresh. Not really to prevent tilt, I don't really tilt anymore, more because I'll be a bit pissed off at the nature of poker and don't want to look at a table for a while. Like last week I lost over $800 playing heads up with Q4 on a KQ4QJ board, I just went and had a bit of lunch, thought about the hand and what a bastard poker can be sometimes, and then went back on and finished +€800 for the day.

If you think you can do it, I definately recommend giving it a shot. It's a great job, you know it yourself I don't even need to point out the reasons.
Start off by grinding out a couple of hundred at .25/.50, you could be pulling in thousands in less than a year at the higher levels.
If you keep winning and moving up the levels your weekly pay will basically double every couple of weeks/months. There is an absolute fortune to be made if you put in the time and effort required.

Norwich Fan Rob

if u play regular online cash, a decent rb deal can be the diff between breaking even and making 1200-1500 per month.

(mine works out at average 800-900 pm, and i mainly play tournies)

a necessity for any serious player.

Drakar

I didnt think you got rakeback with tournies, which sites do that? I'm with Party for the standard of the players though, so no rakeback for me

Norwich Fan Rob

cant discuss deal specifics here, but it is possible to get RB for tourny regs as well as cash play.

hotspur

I'm such a sucker never having had any rakeback deal anywhere ever, even when I used to put in 60+ hours per week at cash games.
RMcG it struck me reading that post that one could have replaced the word poker with the word heroin and it wouldn't have changed it much Well *maybe* the pot limit bit, that would be cannabis

RMcG

Eat 'em up yum yum, eat 'em up yum yum!

NickyOD

I don't rely on rakeback or bonuses at all. This is because I do better on the skins with no rakeback. I could have rakeback on Party but it would mean a lot of hasssle changing my identity, netteller account e-mial address etc etc and I don't want to risk getting banned from the site.

hotspur

Nicky you have to figure though that if Norwich Rob is earning €10k+ a year from rakeback for playing mostly tournies that we really are being pretty dumb not playing with rakeback at our online cash games.

Ste05

hotspur wrote:

Nicky you have to figure though that if Norwich Rob is earning €10k+ a year from rakeback for playing mostly tournies that we really are being pretty dumb not playing with rakeback at our online cash games.

If the site allows it, you really should have a RB deal in place, even if it's only a small amount a month. It's all free money.