It has begun!

Last night was a great night for me in my endeavor to become a semi-professional poker player. First off, during a dinner out with my wife, we both discussed the finer points of the pro’s and con’s of me taking this seriously as a way to generate feasible, off-season income for myself.  After getting her blessing I laid out my plan to her.

I broke it down into three key areas:

1-      Time usage: Since I am a seasonal worker (April-September) I have a substantial amount of time to put towards this goal. As I play a few times a week anyways, we have decided that if I am to pursue this seriously, it is best that I take this time to put in more volume of play. This week I have played approx 21 hours worth of MTT at $2 stakes. This brings me to a total of $387.86 (cashes) – $115.20 (buy-ins)  = $271.80 profit. This works out to $12.94/hour.

So in essence, if I were to keep up my current win rate and play a minimum of 40 hours a week at my current stakes I would see a hypothetical profit margin of roughly $540 per week. Now, I know this is hypothetical, and MTT is a high variance game, but over a sample of 109 sessions logged in the past 32 days I am sustaining a 77.84% ROI. These figures were not pulled out of my ass, I use Poker Tracker 3 to log and review every session I play.

On top of adding volume, I am also devoting at least 2 hours a day studying, learning and reviewing my previous sessions. I feel this is key. I will not only be reviewing hands where I lost, but also winning hands to see if there were ways I could have played them better, and the session as a whole to establish where I had leaks and how to fix them. I am also a member of Cards Chat. This forum is has an incredible wealth on knowledge and being a member and an avid poster, my game had, and will continue to improve immensely.

2-      Money management: For the past three years I have been playing a regular weekly tourney at my local Legion. The buy-in is $25. I have realized that this weekly game is hurting my overall play as I am always playing the same players and nobody is getting any better. I feel that this $100 per month (plus drinks/snacks) would be better used for my online bankroll.  So on the 1^st of every month, from now on, I will deposit that money into my online account.

Though I am making profit as of late, I am adamant about sticking to a very strict bankroll management strategy. I am currently most profitable in $2 MTT, with the occasional $2 Turbo SNG thrown in if I have time constraints. I will NOT play anything higher unless I have 50 buy-ins minimum, or I satellite into them for the same stakes I am playing, or less. When my bankroll climbs to  suitable amount, I will move up accordingly. I will not spend any more time at low levels than necessary. If my BR drops below a minimum of 50 buy-ins, I will move down again.

I will not, for the first three months, make ANY withdrawls from my online account. I will keep a minimum of $500 in my account for play, and withdraw anything over that amount at the end of each month.

3-      The pursuit of my dream: I am not going to get all long winded about how much I love NLHE. Making a blog about it and stating my intentions should be enough to show it already.  I have never wanted a conventional job. This is not a matter of laziness; my seasonal job is very labor intensive and requires a lot of on the go thinking. This is a matter of spending my life doing what I feel passionately about doing. By no means am I fooling myself into thinking that this is going to be a walk in the park. It will take a lot of hard work, dedication and patience. But if I keep myself dedicated to improving myself as a player, I feel I can do it.

And if I can’t, at least I will never regret not trying. Wish me luck. (Not that luck has anything to do with it J )