Quick question. (Sorry if asked before)

[Alfred Greene]

I want to start taking steps and begin taking poker a lot more serious.

I’m thinking about taking a few months off the tables to build a bankroll and join a couple sites to help my game in the time I’m taking off. Is this a good strategy to begin with? I know it almost sounds like common sense that it is a good idea but I’d rather ask people that may have taken the same steps or went a different route. I’m interested in all opinions. Thank you

[hjk]

I am confused. You say, “thinking about taking a few months of the tables to build a bankroll”. Does this mean you are getting a job to build a bankroll? You playing now? Hard to help you when things are unclear.

[Alfred Greene]

At the moment I play live a couple times a week. But what I meant is I am thinking about taking a few months to build a bankroll and study.

[hjk]

I like the idea of taking some time off to do a regular job and putting together a bankroll. You should probably have 3 months expenses in the bank, a life roll, and then your poker roll. This way you will stop for one of two reasons (should things not turn out the way you plan – like not winning). You quit when your life roll runs out, or you quit when you have lost all you poker roll. Now, if I was doing this like that, I would study everything I could. Watch every Utube video from all the vloggers. Participate in every forum. Read every book on poker you can.

Assuming you take all that information to heart, starting 1/2 NL, and slowly increasing your level as your poker roll increases you can make a living out of the profession. Remember, be professional! That means working hard at it! Grinding! Although being a professional poker player seems glamorous, its a lot of work too.

IMHO

[Alfred Greene]

I was thinking about jumping into 2/5 for a couple reasons, there’s more money to be made at the higher stakes (obviously) and the level of skill from some other players may benefit me to play a better game.
I plan on joining a couple training sites. The main ones being Live At The Bike, and the hand history lounge. I like that LATB for the archive of every stream they’ve done and hand history lounge because it is more about the stakes I am playing or plan on playing. I currently watch all the better vloggers for strategy and thinking.

I was definitely aiming for 6 months or more in expenses and 15-20 buy ins in the game I wanted to play. I figure if I lose 5 buy ins faster than I plan I’ll drop to 1-2 and should be in a pretty great spot until I gain the money to go up again.

I’m planning on taking the chance on myself for a couple months to see how I do. If I do great, sure I’ll continue but if I do bad, I’ll feel like I’ve tried to do what I like and continue to be a recreational player while working a job.

[John S]

I wouldn’t really consider LATB a great source for poker training. The put together their line-ups for entertainment and action games, but there’s not a whole lot of sound decision making going on. It’s really just more gambling.

My personal favorite site is Crush Live Poker, run by Bart Hanson (who often crushes the LATB line-ups). He really focuses on the 2/5 to 5/5 level of poker in his training.

As far as bankroll, just know that 15-20 buy-ins can go quick. I’ve seen pros lose 3 or more buy-ins in an afternoon on bad luck alone.

If you want to try 2/5, just try it. You can always go up and down as you feel more comfortable. Play a short session at the higher level, feel comfortable with the players and the bet sizes. You need to be consistently winning at 2/5 before trying to take playing full-time.

[Alfred Greene]

Yeah I don’t mean taking it full time only when I have 15-20 buy ins. I plan on keeping my job for while playing but atm taking time off now for building a bankroll and studying to get better and take it more serious.

I don’t think I’m good enough to play full time yet but I definitely want to set myself up to get there.

[John S]

You don’t need a bankroll to do that. Just play a session – take a shot. Even if you only plan to play 2-4 hours, just getting that feeling of the table and the stakes is huge.

My first session at 3/5 I had a few pros that were targeting me because they saw I was new blood. But I find I play better at 3/5 since I tighten up my pre-flop range and tend to focus a lot more.

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