Daily life of a professional poker player?

[subiime]

Hey dinky, I was wondering what kind of schedule you follow in your
daily life. I've recently started playing poker as my main source of
income, but I'm having a hard time balancing poker with life in
general.

Do you have set hours you play? Go to the gym? I just want to be
healthy while I grind away at these mid-stakes MTTs and would love
some advice.

Thanks

[dinkydoofus]

Hey subiim, my schedule usually consists of 6-10 hrs of poker/day 5-7
days a week depending on other plans that I might have. It's funny
that
you should ask about the gym because I just recently signed up after
playing for 9 months straight and getting out of shape. I'd say that
time
spent away from the tables can be just as benficial to your roll as
time
at the tables.
Half of the battle is minimizing your losses in poker, to do that you
need
to know when to quit for the day and be able to go and do something
else
spontaneously. I didn't have somthing like that during bad weather so
i
bought a ps3. It helps.
The other half is maximizing your wins, but more about that next
time...

Dinky

[subiime]

hey dinky, thanks for the advice, and congrats on your month so far.
I have noticed it hard not to just grind away all day, probably
tilting and on autopilot in the process, although sometimes it just
feels like the bad beats and coolers will not stop coming. I really
need to know when to quit some days.

what sort of BR management do you stick to? Ive been trying the 1% of
my BR per tourney thing, but when I'm playing 5-6 tables at once, one
bad run can eat away massively at my BR.

also, when you do have a bad run for some time, what do you do? keep
on playing your normal schedule? I spent july on a friend's account
because of some banking issues (maybe you'll recognize the name) and
pretty much won everything I touched, but ever since moving back to my
own in august I have lost 1/3 of my entire roll...lots of deep
finishes with no big cashes.

thanks,
subiime

[dinkydoofus]

hi subiime, regarding your question on bankroll management I have a
couple of general guidelines that i follow that keep me out of big
trouble. I also usually follow the 1% rule for my average buy-in. When
my average BI was $26 I'd like to start out with at least $2500 in the
account but I would also play any good $11-$109 tournament that would
come up. (Check out my 2nd blogpost about tagging players with colors
to determine which tournies are good) If I lose 30% for the day I
usually take a break and then either come back or take the rest of the
day off depending on plans/level of frustration/etc. I also try to
keep at least another 2.5k in a checking account that's easily
accessible to deposit from. This usually keeps me out of really big
trouble although I have had a -5k and a -3k day once.
As general advice on downswings I would recommend adopting the
following mentality; I am a good player, I win over the long run and
that's how the skill of player is really measured. Because I am good
and therefore more skilled than most of my opponents, I clearly have a
better strategy, and although my strategy can be unsuccessfull in the
short run, I cannot deviate from it lest I begin playing differently
and thus worse. I know for example that checking on the flop OOP w
AxKh on a AhTh2s flop after calling a raise PF is the right play 99%
of the time, am I going to get beat by the possible free card more
than 1% of the time? Probably. Am I going to change my gameplan if
this happens to me 99 times in a row? NO! Never, because the moment
you deviate from a successfull strategy you inherently adopt a less
successfull strategy.
This is especially true for people who move up in stakes as they lose
more and more of their BR. These players become more and more
emotionally attached to the outcome of every individual hand and
become incapable of making the objective reads and decisions that they
need to in order to follow a successfull gameplan. The old saying
applies: when you're losing, tighten up. But don't take it literally
for tournaments. Instead take it to mean that when you're running bad,
lower your buy-ins so that youre not digging yourself into an
inescapable hole.
Remember, if you're running bad for 30+ days or 100+ tournies with
little or no cashes, there is a distinct possibility that you are not
just running bad but also playing poorly/less well that your A game. A
good way of analyzing this without having to go through thousands of
hand histories with an excel spreadsheet is to get a poker tool (I obv
recommend ours) to see what your statistics look like over time. Are
you calling more raises in the last 3 weeks with suited connectors
than before? Are you C-betting every flop and folding to a raise? Some
holes are easier to notice than others, some are pretty difficult to
spot without assistance.
As always, never gamble with money you can't afford to lose, not only
will you feel really bad if you lose, you will also be unable to play
your best game because you'll be sitting on scared money, and scared
money is dead money.

Dinky

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