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I'd wager with confidence that I've put more time in on the tables than everyone on this site combined. I played between 10-12 hours/day for a solid five years. With that, I have the disadvantage of knowing how good poker used to be. Today, it's a lot harder to make a living at the tables. The ratio of donks is a lot lower these days. Although, I'm not sure what the Philly scene is like at all. My exposure is purely based on online and Vegas tables. So, perhaps it may be worthwhile to play there. I'm not sure.
My advice:
Keep good records. Calculate your hourly rate throughout a month. Make sure your opportunity cost of playing poker is worthwhile (i.e. you're either making more money than you would otherwise or you're getting more utility out of not having a different occupation).
Don't burn yourself out. Playing a lot of hours can get tiring and after a while, it becomes like any other job. You hear the same table talk time after time and getting big hands doesn't drive the adrenaline any longer.
Don't drink at the table. Profitable play sometimes involves making tough decisions. Can you really lay down a set against an over set if liquid courage is influencing your thought process?
Anyway, good luck.
Wow, really good stuff and I very much appreciate it. If at any point you have more advice just let it fly man.
Yeah on the burnout I was hours promo shooting which means to cash nicely you have to put in over 70 hours in a week. I don't have an issue doing that but if you're playing at 11 am on a Tuesday you're going to end up going back and forth with other locals and pros a lot, which gets frustrating profit wise until the donks roll in but conversation wise it's nice to talk hands and stuff. Now that the hours promos have lapsed I will be easing up on hours quite a bit. I also have to keep better records but so far it's working out very nicely, I am making a little more than I was doing mortgages and I am doing what I love, though it's only been a few weeks which I know is nothing. We'll see what it looks like in a few months.
I really like the way you put that about the drinking. I will be doing it anyway because it's just something I do (only beer, no hard stuff) but I am toning down how much I drink because the other day I almost hung myself on a massive second bullet c-bet I made on a table image play gone wrong (I ended up firing into my opponent's trips but I straightened out on the river) and I don't think I'd do that if I was sober. I do semi bluff more when I have a buzz going but I view that as a strength.
The Philly scene is cool man. Locally you have Sugarhouse, where it gets a little rowdy sometimes but the staff it great as is the action. They run some nice high hand promos so they are in my rotation, plus when I started I didn't know any of the casino play nuances (for instance the first time someone asked me to chop I was like "what?" and everyone laughed at me ) and both the players and staff were real cool about helping me pick stuff up. You then have Harrah's Chester which is where I played last week, much smaller room than the other two and the local crowd is real cool, a lot of full time grinders though that are very advanced players. I did run into some very loose players in the late hour in the 1/3 there and it will be in my rotation as well. Last night I tried Parx for the first time, a very nice establishment. They will be in my rotation but maybe not on a regular basis until I am rolled for 2/5 ($1k max) because last night I tried their 1/3 and it broke up once the high hand promo lapsed so the few of us had a choice of moving up to 2/5 or going down to 1/2, I've heard their 1/3 breaks up a lot so I'm kind of at a conundrum - the hours promos they have are important to me, it's tough for me to feel 1/2 anymore and I don't consider myself rolled just yet for 2/5. Last night I chose to move up to the 2/5 and actually had a very profitable session but I mean I was there only a few hours, won two hands with bullets and another with jacks over the board and no one else caught anything on any of them. I could tell the table was probably all very serious pros with no donks, and extremely deadly. Also the one dealer was extremely hot and all conversational with me specifically so yeah, I had a fucking awesome time there
Also a great way to blow your roll if things go a little differently.
You can zip over to AC in about over an hour from here if you are so inclined, I did search for casinos running hours promos there and came up empty so I haven't been doing that yet. I've played at the Borgata where I got absolutely shredded (probably a bad idea to play there as my first live casino experience ) and some regulars at other places have been telling me collusion runs rampant out there so I won't be there too much. I also had a session over at Bally's that was cool, pretty small and slow room but the game was easy to follow with what I viewed as a lot of mediocre players.
I'm going to move the blog out here in a bit as per Archie's request so feel free to throw input in there as it would be valued tremendously.
Where were you playing, what games and limits? A player I view as extremely good was telling me to take a trip out to New Orleans and play out there because the tourist traffic is awesome and he thinks I'd clean up there. I plan on doing that in the not too distant future.
Thanks again man