Pro poker observations so far - work ethic

So I've been unemployed for the last month or so now.  It's unimportant how that happened or why I don't have a job, so let's just move past that.  :-)  I don't know how organized I can make this, but I have some general themes I wanted to get written down.  Here's the first observation:

Maintaining a Solid Work Ethic is Tough

If I play poker again, I'm going to give it 100%.  I'll just wake up, play super long sessions, dedicate myself 100% to poker.  Fuck everything else.  I'll grind 80+ hours per week if I have to - after all, it's poker and I love poker.  Plus I'm better than all of these other guys, or most of them.  At least I know that if I play my game, I'll win overall if I get the hours in.  So work ethic is really going to be my key to success.

Yeah, that paragraph makes sense.  And I 100% agree that it makes sense to give it your all and I should be doing that.  Am I?  Not even close.

As it turns out, it's pretty fucking hard to make sure you are optimizing your time for poker when you have ZERO responsibilities, a wife with no job also that you love hanging out with, and you live in the entertainment/sex/sin/vice capital of the entire world.  Yeah, it's tough.

Since the day I officially wrapped up at my job (5/24) I've played 120 hours of poker that I tracked in my results spreadsheet.  Plus probably another 10 or 15 online.  It's been about 3.5 weeks, so that currently puts me at just under 40 hours of poker per week.

Not horrible, but I'm clearly not dedicating myself 100% to poker.  Nor can I or should I, really.  When I was making a boatload of cash it was easy for me to push all other house work, paying bills, etc to Beth.  Now that I'm an unemployed loser I need to pick up the slack and do some of that work myself.  That all takes time.

Beth just had a foot surgery too, so some of the time I would have been playing was taken up by staying around here to take care of Beth.  But that's certainly not what's keeping my hours down.  It's mostly just laziness and having fun enjoying unemployment.

Then even when you are dedicated, a lot of things take time away from the table.  Driving to/from the casino.  Being on the waiting list.  Taking breaks away from the table while you're there.  Eating.  Everything ticks away from the total time you need to be playing serious poker at the table.

These numbers aren't actually as bad as I feared, so that's nice.  And I do think I can step it up more in the coming weeks.  But it's interesting to me how difficult it is to really get the hours in.

I knew it was going to be difficult to balance everything.  One thing that's helped me is that early on, I recognized that I would be pulled in different directions and I wouldn't be able to maintain the perfect schedule.  Instead, I'm trying to just go with the flow, play as well as I can when I play, and just do my best.  If I end up going out and playing $2/$4 limit after some shots and drinks, I'm going to play that $2/$4 game as good as I fucking can.  And I have been, and the results have been good.  So even if the hours are short, I'm trying to maintain a professional attitude and play as well as possible as often as possible.

My disclaimer for the remainder of this blog

DISCLAIMER : Being a professional poker player is a funny thing.  There's no way to define it except long term success.  So while I'm going to write here that I'm a "professional poker player", I know that it's a "fake it till you make it" situation for me and I'm not trying to be too cocky.  I know I haven't done shit yet and calling myself a professional poker player at this point is a complete joke.  Even attempting to play professionally at this point is a ridiculous goal because I have no results, haven't been training properly leading up to this, and so on.  

From here out though, I'm just going to write like I've made it and I'm going to be a professional poker player.  I think that's how I have to approach it, whether it sounds dumb or not.  So that's just how it's going to go.  

Do I think I can pull it off?  Yes.  Will I?  Who knows.  My results suck so far for sure.  But I don't care, I'm going for it.  

In the next blog I'll write some about how it's going so far and how I'm feeling.  Lot to write about.  :)

My backstory - part 1

I haven't blogged much lately.  I've been pretty caught up in enjoying a ton of poker as well as unemployment fun in general.  I've mostly been posting on Twitter under my @BluffMeat account.  I wanted to start documenting this experience though and getting all of my thoughts down, because this is something I've been waiting to try for years.  Yes, I'm taking a shot at playing poker professionally.  Maybe it will only be for a few months, but I'm giving it a shot.

In case anyone else ever reads this blog (besides Johnny - hey bro whats up), here's what happened with me the last 10+ years with poker.

I fucking hated "playing cards" growing up.  I never got into it.  People would play at parties, or at holidays with the relatives, and I always avoided it.  I don't remember a ton of hold 'em being played but people played games like hearts.  I didn't play any poker at all until I moved out of Detroit and was in Denver for years.  I probably started playing when I was about 26, in 2003-2004.

I played a lot of sports throughout school because my parents put me into them, and I performed on the average to low side.  For some reason I didn't have the competitive drive that I do today.  That certainly hurt my performance in wrestling and other sports.  I simply didn't think strategically enough.  I really didn't care about winning the same way I do today.  I'd try on the physical side (which isn't my strong suit anyway) but never really got into caring about strategy at a deep level.

I graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit with a Computer Science degree and immediately moved out to Denver.  I had been working remote for a company there for the past year.  I had aspirations to do a ton of snowboarding in Denver, but the first time out I blew out my knee and haven't been back since.  That made me search for new hobbies.

Next came foosball.  That's a whole other story, but I got VERY into the fun underground foosball scene in Denver.  That's where my competitive nature started to really come out.  I got pretty decent at foosball and traveled around the country playing various tournaments for years.  I even met my future wife Beth at a foosball tournament right here in Las Vegas.  :-)  Foosball was a ton of fun and it ignited a competitive spark in me that carries through to today.

Some of my foosball buddies were playing online poker.  Through them I saw some of the Moneymaker WSOP stuff on TV, and I started playing very low stakes on PokerStars.  It was a ton of fun and I got REALLY into it.  I was still young and irresponsible and my job suffered at times because of it.  I would stay up ridiculously late and waking up for the job was rough.  I wasn't super successful online by any means, but that's where I learned the game.  I bought some poker books and I'd take long lunches and read every day.  The Theory of Poker and Hold 'Em for Advanced Players were my first two books.  Theory is still one of my favorite books (although I haven't read it in years).

It was really fun and exciting learning to play.  I'd drive up to Black Hawk in Colorado to play $2-$5 spread limit hold 'em and buying in for a rack of $100 seemed like the craziest and most exciting thing ever.

I also got into the underground poker scene in Denver a little bit.  The first live game I played was with a guy named Big City I knew from foosball.  He took me to some ghetto apartments and the person whose apartment I was in had an ankle bracelet on.  He killed someone in a DUI accident.  We played 5 handed games like Follow the Queen and other random shit.  I lost, and I was learning as I went.

Later I met a guy Jeremiah and we got together to play serious poker.  He introduced me to a guy named Arthur who was extremely poor but he took poker really seriously.  I remember going to his apartment and he had a set of chips made that were super fancy.  They had a crown embossed on each chip (King Arthur, get it).  I lost a huge (ie. I put maybe 15-20 bucks into it) Omaha hand because I didn't understand how Omaha worked.  I also remember playing a hand of Chicago and I wasn't sure if an ace counted as low or high.  I lost $60 the first time playing with that guy and it felt like I lost a ton.

One of my earliest and most satisfying poker successes was in that 3 handed home game.  One night Arthur came over to Jeremiah's house to play.  We were improving, and we simply crushed him.  We were no longer the fish in that game.  After that, he said he could keep playing but we would have to play at lower stakes.  We were maybe playing $1/$2 at the highest, or some kind of spread variation that was really small.  I think that's the last time I saw Arthur.  I still remember he would always say things when he got dealt shitty cards like "this isn't a hand, its a foot!"  Good guy.

At some point I met my future wife Beth.  One of the very first things we did was get her into poker.  I started by dealing out boards and had her identify the nut hand, 2nd nuts, and so on.  It's crazy how fast Beth learned to play really, because I had a year of experience ahead of her and a billion hours online.  She got up to speed quick and basically did better than me all through the time we played in Colorado.  She played retarded aggressive and would pull off absurd feats like winning $500 in a $2/$4 limit game.  Yeah, she would lose record amounts too, but she crushed limit.

At some point we started talking about the dream of moving to Vegas and giving it a shot.  Beth is an adventurer and she was into it.  And here I am today.

In my next blog I'll write about how my 2nd shot at professional poker is going so far.  Hint - results-wise, it's not good.  :-)  I'm staying positive though.