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An OTF member messaged me recently. He is an accountant and worked for the same firm that I used to work for but in a different part of the country. He was thinking about playing poker for a living and wanted to ask me some questions. In my response I ended up covering a lot of my story and thought some people might be interested in it. I also include my general advice to someone who is thinking about playing for a living. Here it is:
Congratulations on passing FAR. Hope you crushed REG. Yeah, I got my BS/MS in Accounting as well. I also worked for Ernst & Young. I didn’t enjoy it. In Las Vegas, we have a lot of the casinos as clients so working at EY here mainly just prepares you to work in the casino industry once you decide to leave the firm. Casino accounting jobs don’t pay very much money and I was working way too many hours and traveling far too much to be happy wasting away my 20’s in hopes of eventually not making much money as an accountant in the casino industry. I had already played poker for a living before I got my MS and before working for EY. I knew how much my time was worth and I wasn’t getting paid nearly enough to be satisfied. I was still playing poker on the side when I could and I was trying to build up a bankroll so I could get out of there, which is what happened.
I first decided to play poker for a living in March of 2012. I had about $8k in cash and another $18k in investments that I was hoping I wouldn’t have to liquidate. I had just turned 24 and was leaving my first full time job as a Leasing Consultant in San Francisco. I moved to Vegas and did really well in 2/5. I studied hard. I didn’t have any bad habits. I kept my expenses to an absolute minimum. It was going well. I was able to save a thousand or two thousand a month. I had a girlfriend at the time in Newport Beach. I wanted to be closer to her. When I visited her I’d play 5/10 at Commerce and did great. I figured I could move out to the LA area and continue to do well in those games. Unfortunately when I moved out there I ran terrible in 5/10. My expenses were a lot more and it really made me nervous to go on a downswing after I had just moved there. Things with my girlfriend weren’t going well. I was so stressed it was hard to play optimally. I certainly didn’t have nearly a big enough bankroll to be playing 5/10, especially considering how much my monthly expenses were. I went on a $10k downswing over 3 months or something. That’s not a very big downswing when you’re playing 5/10 but I was under-rolled. Between poker and my monthly expenses I went through the majority of my cash quickly. It worried me enough to want to quit poker. It felt like everyday I was just losing.
I had to move back in with my parents. It was embarrassing. I felt like a complete failure and it was the lowest point in my life. First I applied for a ton of other jobs that I wasn’t too excited about. No one was impressed that I had been a professional poker player for 6 or 7 months. I realized I needed to do something to boost my resume. That’s when I decided to start studying for the CPA exams. I passed them all within 4 months. At that time it was around July and I found out that accounting firms only recruit people from colleges. I needed to go back to school and the only school accepting students that late for masters programs was UNLV so that’s where I went. I moved back to Vegas. The program just prepares you for the CPA exams, which I had already taken so it was really easy for me. I spent most of my time playing poker and I was doing well again at 2/5. A few months after graduating I started with EY in August or September of 2014. I did that for a year just to get my CPA license. My heart certainly wasn’t in it so I went back to poker. This time it was easier to play longer hours and take it more seriously after being somewhat used to 60-80 hr weeks as an accountant.
Ok, now you know my story. Back to you. Poker is a great hobby that can make you money. I would never recommend that anyone play for a living at this point. There’s nothing that’s bringing many new players in anymore. That means that most of the players who are bad will eventually go broke and stop playing or they will get better. It’s so easy to get good at poker with all of the training sites, YT videos, etc that edges aren’t very big. It’s going to get tougher and tougher to make a living at it for the foreseeable future. Maybe you don’t enjoy accounting but playing poker for a living, especially when you first start out, can be way more difficult and stressful. There just isn’t much upside in it at the moment. Another thing to consider is that it’s extremely strenuous on relationships that you have with everyone. My parents were very worried about me and didn’t know what to tell their friends that I did for a living. Women really don’t understand it and don’t want to be with someone who is a ”professional gambler.” Most people come to the realization that playing for a living isn’t as good as they thought it would be and try to get a normal job. It can be very difficult to go back to the real world when that time comes.
Where do you live and what industries are your clients in? I would stick with accounting for now. Get your license. Wait until you’re really crushing poker before making the jump if that’s what you decide to do. It’s definitely not as easy as it may seem when you watch me or Andrew or some of the other guys. We’ve all taken our lumps and bruises so you’re just seeing what can happen to the few people once they pass the tough, stressful, and sometimes depressing initial stages of playing poker for a living.
Brad, thanks for sharing your story.
I had a couple questions about bankroll management. How do you determine how much of your winnings go towards building your bankroll versus using winnings for your expenses?
What’s your thoughts on how many buy-ins one should have before taking shot at next level up?
Thanks for your time, sir.
Hey Matt,
I’m not a good guy to ask about managing a bankroll/life expenses. I put everything together and never really understood the idea of mentally separating bankroll and life expenses, whereas about half my friends swear by it. It seems silly to me since all of my expenses will eventually be paid with money that I win from poker. And if I lost my bankroll I’d have to dip into my “life-roll” to play. The friends who do separate the two advise to have 50-100 buyins and then have 6 months of life expenses if you’re playing for a living. Most poker players I know don’t actually have enough money to abide by that.
With regards to taking shots at bigger games, I’d advise that you have at least 30 buyins for that game and play only if it looks good. A lot of players fall into a trap thinking that once they start playing the bigger game that they have to stay there or something. In reality there’s no reason you can’t move back and forth between stakes. Sometimes 2/5 is a lot more profitable for me than if I jump into a 5/10 game so there’s no reason for me to be in 5/10 under those circumstances.
If you do decide to take a shot at a bigger game you should mainly play tight and play shorter sessions until you’re really comfortable. Just play for an hour or two. That way you hopefully won’t have lost much and if you win it’ll build your confidence up for the next time. What stakes are you at now?
Brad, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I like your idea about dabbling at a higher limit for a shorter period to get more accustomed to it.
When I played more often (pre-wife and 2 kids), I mostly played 10/20 LHE or 2/5 NL at the casinos. My BR is not what it used to be, so I’d probably sit down at 1/2 NL to get back in the groove.
My plan is to hit up the casino here in PHX in a couple weeks, so we’ll see how rusty I am. Thanks again for the reply, sir.
Matt – The 8/16 LHE at Wild Horse is a pretty solid game. I don’t know about playing regular, but a few times per year I’m in PHX and I play with the same 5 or so regs plus 1-3 randoms. They don’t remember me, but I remember them and they were all pretty easy to figure out in most cases.
The Spread Limit + cap you have to get used to and certainly caps potential, but mostly it plays just like short-stack NL.
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