A Day in the Life of a Professional Poker Player
4/6/2006 12:00:00 AM
Sometimes I feel as if I should have business cards. Maybe then, people will just believe me the first time I tell them that I play poker for a living. It would probably make me popular at Chamber of Commerce mixers; I would be a refreshing change from the hordes of Amway representatives that are usually found there.
But these days you wouldn’t catch me at a C of C mixer if they were giving away free $100 bills at the door. Like most poker players, I feel that the lower my profile is the better off I am. A lot of people still believe most players are seedy low-life types. Besides, I look foolish with one of those “Hello, my name is ________” stickers on my chest. You do, too.
Others imagine poker players lead an exciting life, visit exotic places, win and lose fortunes, hang out with hoodlums, and have to beat off groupies. It’s all fantasy. Full-time poker players are fairly normal people who have what I consider to be an interesting combination of skills, psychological characteristics, and experiences. We’d get along with each other better, but it’s hard to be friends with someone whose money you’re always trying to take.
The skills come first, and are the easiest not only to describe, but also to acquire. You’ll need to be comfortable with the math of poker (probability, counting, and valuing outs, calculating real and implied odds, etc.) and you need to be able to make quick and accurate decisions. There are bookstores filled with the best work by the best writers on the subject. As long as you are careful in choosing your teachers, the path to poker knowledge is easy to follow.
You have to make a commitment to master it, though. Merely reading some book isn’t enough to set you apart from the thousands of players you’ll face over the course of a career. Your goal cannot be to become as good as the competition; you must learn to dominate them if you expect to make a living. Believe me when I say that your willingness to make that commitment is much more important than whether you know how to play AQ offsuit against an early position raiser.
Your psychological makeup is what will make you successful. I’m talking about whether you have the serenity to last through a 20,000 hand, break-even streak.
The discipline--to spend more hours studying than you do playing. A gambler’s instinct--which will allow you to risk your chips even when your edge isn’t very big. The ability to recognize your own flaws, along with an understanding of just how long the “long run” really is, and the willingness to stop blaming bad luck. It’s not easy to work on these traits; you’ll most likely be fighting a lifetime of being comfortable with yourself. But it is imperative that you try. If you think that you’re already good enough, you can stop reading because what you really are is hopeless.
My biggest advantage isn’t in the fact that I know the math cold (and I do); it isn’t that I have the experience of playing hundreds of thousands of hands (even though I do), and it isn’t even because I have a solid grasp of proper bankroll management (which I do). In my opinion, what separates me from my competition is that I’m willing to live a lifestyle so regimented that a monk would probably think I was too uptight. My life is a series of schedules and deadlines, just like everyone else’s. Here is my fascinating life, go ahead and be jealous.
I choose to think of Mondays and Tuesdays as my weekend. The games aren’t very good on those days, so I lose the least if I don’t play. The other five days are tightly structured. In the morning, I study. That’s right; I hit the books. I also read posts on poker forums, review previous sessions, and do a little self-assessment. In the morning, I face the cold truth about my flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses. I also congratulate myself occasionally for being a sometimes genius at cards as well. But the scales, as you might expect, are heavily tilted towards the mistakes and flaws.
In the afternoon, I conduct life’s tedious business. I run errands, eat, pet the cats, return phone calls, and I do one other thing: I think about poker. I may think about what I read earlier in the day, or what I noticed when I reviewed my play, or what I picked up about the people I played against, but no matter what I may be outwardly engaged in, I’m always thinking about the game.
Truth is I am something of a freak. It’s the same way I learned to play the harp. Not the one with the strings, I mean the one most would call a harmonica. I kept one in my jacket pocket and would play while waiting at stoplights, when I was stuck in traffic, or during other odd moments when everybody else was fiddling with the radio or lighting cigarettes. But I was always working it, trying to makes sounds I never was able to make before, a little obsessed, you might say.
My point is I have found most of the competition you will face, the ones you have to worry about, are like that as well, constantly tweaking their game.
By late afternoon, there’s always a good game somewhere. That’s the beauty of online poker. If you like to play against people who have had a chance to drink a few beers, but you want to play in the afternoon, just find an online room where the Europeans play, because it|s late in the evening there.
Buy a globe and make your own adjustments. I try to play for a couple of hours and then take a dinner break. There seems to be a 2 or 3 hour time period when I lose money.
Between 5pm and 8pm (EST), I get absolutely killed, so I just don’t play then. I’ve given up trying to figure out why.
Maybe all the casual European players quit for the night by then, and I’m left playing the other pros. Maybe my biorhythms are low then. Maybe it’s all in my head. I just don’t care. I keep careful records, and it had always been between 5 and 8 that I got creamed. The biggest danger in quitting for that much time is that I’ll get interested in something else and not want to go back to the tables for a late evening session.
Discipline, baby. Evenings are when your friends are having fun. Get over it or pick a new career path. I don’t even want to start on the effect your poker will have on your loved ones, that’s a whole other article.
Okay, I’ve made it back to the tables for a long session. I start at about 9:00 pm and play until the games begin to change, which normally happens at about 1:00 am. Except under unusual circumstances, I stop after 3-4 hours for two reasons. First, I lose my ability to concentrate fully after that much time at the tables, especially because I play more than one game at once. The number of hands that you’ve watched adds up fast, and I don’t get to relax after I fold. I pay attention to how and what my opponents are playing. The second reason I stop is that I don’t do as well once everybody else is drunk or frustrated. Some pros feast on table conditions like these, but I don’t because I choose not to play in extreme high-variance games.
I can play that way, but games like those make my blood pressure jump. Who needs that? I don’t play unless I am 100% confident that I have maximum advantage, so once I get tired or the game changes in a way the affects my edge, I’m done for the night.
Time for a late night snack, maybe some TV and I hit the mattress like a Notre Dame halfback slamming into the line of scrimmage. Wake up tomorrow, my head full of possible poker hands, and then do it all again. Discipline and commitment are the secrets, not starting hand charts or the proper use of the check raise. Do you still want to hear stories about how exciting my life is?
I didn’t think so.