The Professional

ChrisB · The Professional

Yesterday I was sitting in a £1/£1 game at the Victoria Casino in London when a man asked me if I were a professional. I did not answer because I don't like to talk about poker at the poker table, but it did make me think.

I guess for all intents and purposes I am a poker professional and have been so for almost 2 months. Now don't get me wrong I dont have $100K profits or anything like Kierkegaard, but I make enough to live a decent life in one of the busiest cities in the world.

I thought I would continue my BR story (now that the challenge is done) in a new post where I described my day as a professional.

My daily outline right now is to grind about 4 hours online and then grind live in the evening, my goal is ultimately to live purely off live, but I need way more experience and a higher BR for that so online kinda helps me pay the bills and grow my roll steadily.

Online I'm playing $20-$30 double or nothing to release bonuses. In april alone I made over $2.5K doing just that. May should be slightly sweeter where I expect an end-result (before profits/losses on the games) of over $3K, add to that a hopeful profit in the live games and I'll be doing all right.

I've started playing the £1/£1 games on Victoria, until I get some more experience and build my bankroll slightly. The games live usually play much deeper than online because you can buy-in for 200bb. So even if I did have the roll for £1/£2 (100bb buyin) then I would rather play the £1/£1 and buy in for 200bb in that game.

The games seem really soft and the players that join the 1/1 are definitely mostly recreational players coming in to gamble a bit, many shortstack and so don't really care what they get in with eventually.

I'll update my progress, for now my goal is to play 50 double or nothings every day before I even consider if I want to go to the casino that night.

I want to thank everyone at Tagpoker for having the coolest community in the world, talking poker constantly to people like Blazing(still lost on skype?) Kanitey, Dom for his great videos and insight and I'm sure im forgetting some here...anyways guys, talking poker with like minded is the absolute nuts and it will propel you thru the limits, if you aren't already doing this you are making a massive mistake. My skype is public: jokahdkslagelse so feel free to add me if you want to talk a bit about anything, or even review a game Smile

z1s6arn

Your idea of playing 4 hours online and then playing live is really sweet.

I live 3 minutes from DTD in Nottingham and am considering staying here for another year to take advantage of their facilities.

Anyways good luck my man. You deserve it. Quitting your job and doing really well is inspiring to say the least.

z1

ChrisB

peteoaten

Hope you suceed with the live play Chris. As you have said to me. Internet poker bores the shit out of you Smile

evprop

Good luck CB in your venture, ill take you up on your offer and add you!!

ChrisB

Yesterday was a very good day at the casino. I hardly played any Online, but my short session at the casino more than made up for it. I racked up a profit of just over 5 buyins after 5 hours. Great start, online was mediocre with a loss of less than 1 buyin, but very little volume.

I kinda felt like today was going to suck, I mean how can you win 5 buyins in 5 hours playing live and then win the next day too? It feels like every time I have a really good session I get over confident and just lose the next day.

anyway horrible session my internet session was. I did manage to make a bit of a comeback in the end, but some very iffy spots where QQ was never ahead and just a complete lack of winning flips I was quickly stuck some $200 which wasnt cool at all, when I felt the tilt coming in I figured i'd better cut my session short and get to the casino.

I'm not sure if its a good idea to go to the casino if you have a tough day online, to be fair you'll probably be entering the casino games with a negative mindset so perhaps I will take the evening off if I have a similar day again.

When I came to the casino I joined the waiting list for £1/£1 (£=$1.6) and decided beforehand that my stop loss would be £300, I bought in for £130 for no particular reason other than it fit with the chips I had.

Well if I ran good yesterday then I guess I didn't ran well today at all. I never really made any big hands, and when I did manage to get a chinese guy to stick all his money in with J9 on a J83 flop when I held KJ and the river came a 9 I kinda figured this was going to be a shitty day. Then I lost a flip when a shortie jammed 66 pre, I made the call with ATs but when someone said after the hand that he folded ATo I guess I wasn't drawing very live anyway.

It's very easy for me to notice when I'm not playing well. I immediately start limping more with very speculative hands in trash position and I start fighting a lot more for pots, including making bad calls or raises. My worst hand came when I opened Q9o in middle position and a very active player 3bet, now he had 3bet before so it's not like he only has AK or KK+ (i hoped anyway) so I made the call. It was a very small 3bet and we were 150bb deep so i dont hate the call.

My big mistake came when the flop came QK3 and he bet really big, I figured it was unlikely he would bet really big with something like AKo because he would want to invite action. I should have just folded but decided to move in trying to fold out hands like AQ, KQ or any other broadway hand or pair that had decent equity against my hand.

Turns out the guy had AA (and took like 3 minutes calling lol) and was obviously never folding.

I made a few other terribad calls and whilst I also definitely played a few hands well, I was definitely playing an impatient C-game most of the evening, possibly because of my run-bad earlier, but It's definitely something I need to work on if i need to succeed in this Smile

I left with just over 50bb so a total loss of 250bb which to be fair isn't really that bad in a game where the average buyin is like 150! Today I improved a bit on my money management by not tipping the dealer a single time (it's pooled tipping so i dont give a fuck) and I took two busses home instead of a cab, it's all about maximizing EV and taking edges. It's kinda like playing poker, but think of it this way: If I save something like 25bb+ every time I get the busses instead of the cabs its a massive improvement to my winrate!

Speaking of organisation (sorry for the ranting nature of my post) I have decided to buy in for only 100 but topping off whenever instead of my 150-200 buyins. This is because I'm still a rookie in terms of live poker and by buying in short I limit my initial risk while still learning and getting used to the whole thing. I already keep a very detailed logbook of my sessions including expenses such as drinks or food, but I would like to be even more organised. Preferably have my poker money 100% seperate and then pay myself a weekly wage instead where XX% went back to the roll to build and YY% went into my expenditure account for any general expense.

I hope you enjoy following my story, I definitely enjoy living it and telling you all about it Smile

ChrisB

Lost like $200 playing online today, which i then offset slightly by winning a 300 player $500 freeroll and a ticket to a WSOP sattelite on sunday.

I did not go play live today, but I'm looking forward for tomorrow. The weekend is a great time to be in a casino playing poker and I plan to play a REALLY long session starting around 6 and ending whenever the underground starts running again (prob around 5am) then repeat on saturday. I'm not sure how much online i get in, but tbh I don't care...weekends are for live poker Smile

JamEaze

The Little Fish

Good luck mate, just a random question but what are usually the opening and closing time for casinos?

ChrisB

Nishido

My buddy keeps wanting me to go with him to the golden nugget and g casinos in london. He generally does well live, but unfortunately I just don't have the role for it. One day though...

Doing what you've done, quitting your job and earning a living from poker is ballsy, but brilliant. I wish you all the best matey.

The Little Fish

ChrisB

evprop

hope you do well CB....

What was your starting roll?
Im interested in playing more live at DTD but pretty nervous doing it!!

ChrisB

ChrisB · Update

Its friday and I'm deciding to go to the casino a bit earlier and skip my Online action for the day because my room mate needed to borrow my pc to do some stuff.

I came at about 5 pm and decided to join the 1/1 game that was running, It wasn't the best table ever but I still spotted some fairly horribad players.

I made my first mistake when I somehow managed to get QQ ai pre for 130bb...unless you have seen players 3bet before, QQ is just not the hand you want to get all in with. Live players never 3bet light and although I did not expect him to hold AA (people often slowplay with it) he did have just that and I was sent to the cage for a rebuy.

I sat doing pretty much nothing until a friend of mine turned up and asked if I wanted to go grab some dinner, I accepted and the break was pretty good. When I came back I noticed that a £1/£2 Omaha game was starting up and from my experience people playing live Omaha generally have no clue about anything in the game.

I decided just to sit down with about £130 and take a shot, a few people had bought in for the maximum £400 but I don't think you have to buy in big, particularly in omaha where you make your own decisions easier by being short.

Anyway, long story short I managed to bank an almost £1K profit from the Omaha game (mostly courtesy of a gambling chinese player who reloaded using £100 and a £1000 chip from his pocket) the biggest pot I won was well over £1K and involved me with top set and a flushdraw all in on the flop against 3 others.

When I left the game a 5 am the chinese player asked if I was gonna be back tomorrow, I said...I'll see you tomorrow! It's 7:30 now, so I expect to leave at about 8.30 to be there at 9. Saturdays should be amazing for poker and I hope I can continue my good run and patient play.

Stats for may live:
Profit: +£1,005
Sessions: 5
Hours: 22
Hourly: £45.70

I broke my own rules today by tipping the dealers after I raked in the big pots. In my opinion tipping dealers is fine as long as the dealer I tip get it, if the whole tipping pool is shared with everyone including the blackjack dealers, kitchen staff and god knows who then I have no interest of tipping whatsoever. The rake of 5% upto £10 is more than steep enough for me to not feel bad about it. I tipped a waitress 50p on a £6 order, which tbh I won't do again. They don't even seem thankful for the tips, as they sour off and take ages to get to you, and ages to bring you a menu, food or whatever.

Tonight I hope to play in the Omaha game again, once again buying in for £100 - This is basically to minimize the risk to my bankroll while still being fairly +ev in the game.

peteoaten

Not a bad day job Chris !

ChrisB · Update

I know this update is a little long time coming, I apologize.

On saturday I went to the casino and lost £450 which is a bit of shame, but still leaves me up roughly £400 from the weekend playing Live. I ran pretty bad and won no pots in the £1/£2 omaha game. Not too many interesting spots to talk about other than the games weren't really that great...like the £1/£1 nlhe is always awesome because people are clueless, but my favourite £1/£2 omaha was kinda nitty and we played short-handed for most of the time.

Online has been pretty swingy this month. I have definitely not been putting in the hours I should have and now I'm paying the price. On a positive note I managed to turn a -15 into +10 which is of course very satisfying. I'm sure a lot of it is run good, but hey...I'll take it.

Garph: http://zeroup.dk/get/donmay08.jpg

I expect to receive a cable for my new monitor tomorrow which means I should be able to play twice as many tables without problems. My volume goal for the rest of the month is to play 1,200 tournaments in 19 days. It's difficult to say what the plan is precisely because I might play some higher stakes games, and I definitely have some days I cant play and I'm not sure how my volume can be with 2 monitors. Obviously the more volume the better.

My estimated may valueback is like this:

Bonus: +$1,700
VIP: +$1,388
Races: +$1,160

For roughly: +$4,250 plus/minus however the games may go.

I hope you all are doing well Smile

kierkegaard1

chris, how is action during the day on weekdays? on june 2 (thursday) my flight gets in at 12.30pm at heathrow. i cant go to my gf's till like 7 (when she finishes work, so i'll be at a loose end for 5-6 hours. i was thinking of going to the vic to splash about a bit. dunno if you'd be interested in joining. lemme know.

ChrisB

ChrisB · May round-up

Hey guys.

I know I haven't been updating a lot recently, but here is my May results. I managed to do rather poorly in online double or nothings (losing 42 buyins in the last day of my grind) so that naturally killed my results a bit. On the upside i managed to run really well over the odd 15k hands i put in PLO ranging from 50 to 200.

Here are the total numbers:

Live: +£560.50 (£12/hr)
Online cash: +$1,022 (PLO50-100)
Online Tours: -$848 (ugh)
RB+Valueback: +$2100 (yay)

+iPad2 16gb (ca. $600)

totalt: +$3,785 estimate. I'm probably keeping the iPad but I figured the value ought to be part of the overall figure.

My June prospects will be to grind 70K hands of PLO100+ and try to firmly establish myself on the level. For the effort I will be rewarded with roughly 85% rakeback and hopefully a ton of knowledge of the PLO. I'm now completely done with HUSNGs - its a great bankrollbuilder, but now that I've managed to build up a nice $5K+ roll I feel like my time has come to return to my favoured cash games.

Live poker this month has been so-and-so. Some ridiculously awful sessions by me which costs a lot. With this rake you really cannot afford playing like a monkey ever. My first session into june i managed to get stuck £500 which as you can see is almost my entire plus from May (9 sessions) so I have a lot of work to do - if I even find the time to go, I fear the 70K hands will take a lot of effort from me.

I've now been a "professional" since mid-march and every day I make mental progress on how to live and how not to tilt, all these decisions that matter a ton when your life depends on them.

The ultimate goal for june is +$10,000 - will I make it? Well, you'll have to look in here to find out Smile

BetMagicMoney

nice man well done Very Happy

The Little Fish

Nice one mate. Good luck

evprop

Its always going to be tough but sounds like your still very positive and wish you a great month!!
wpwpwpwpwp!!

bridgegunner

well i will be checking with u daily on skype would love to do some more work on plo with u. u are a true pro and u will crush your goals

ChrisB

Short update:

Switched to NL50 HU cashgames, started out very poorly. I'm down about 14 buyins for the month so far over 16K hands.

Sorting out a ton of leaks that I have and working on improving my game each and every day.

My goal will be 75K hands and a profit of +$5K after rakeback. It's an ambitious goal, but I'm confident that I can make it.

I hope you guys are doing better so far in June (f june tbh)

ChrisB

Some days its great just to break even:

http://zeroup.dk/get/toughdayattheoffice36.jpg

z1s6arn

The Professional

Update

Update

May round-up