Posted by Junelli 2:20 PM
Play Hours Not Results
by Daniel Negreanu

Most of my ideas on how to actually make a living playing poker successfully were formed in my teens back in Toronto. I fiddled with many thoughts, and basically came to what I thought was right through trial and error. Of course reading poker material helped me make educated guesses as well. One of the things that I came up with that appeared to be very important was when to quit?

Should I quit when I hit my goal for the day? Or quit when I'd lost too much? Or how about when I'd lost a certain amount of my win back? I finally came to the realization that rather than think about all that, I should spend all that energy playing every hand well in every situation.

When I was in my teens you could say I was pretty anal. No make that VERY anal. I wrote down everything from my mood during a session to how many smokers there were in the game! I know, I know, pretty anal. I guess I was just a stats freak too.

Anyway, I started to think about how I could balance a 'normal' life while playing poker for a living. How can I REALLY make this a job. The charity casinos I used to play at were open from noon till 4am every day. If you didn't get there by noon, you'd be out of luck as far as getting a seat goes. I didn't think sleeping all day and being up all night was what you call a 'normal' life. So that left me with this,"I'll play the day shift."

So it's noon and I'm at work. I've had a nice little rush and I'm beating the 10-20 game for $1200 by 2pm. Then I'd get this,"How much are you trying to win?" "Why don't you just take a win? Why would you want to give it all back?" Yada-yada-yada! Then someone would ask me,"How much are you winnin' kid?" I would reply,"Well what time is it? 2pm? Let's see, $86.44." Nobody every understood what I was talking about, but that's the way I 'trained' myself to see it.

After all, we all know by now that wins and losses aren't how you measure your profits at poker, it's your hourly rate. My hourly rate in that game was $43.33. Multiply that by two and you get $86.44. Simple right? OK.

Understanding the difference between playing for results rather than EV brought me to my next step. How hard do I want to work? I came up with the number 40 hours a week, since that's what felt 'normal' to me. Since I was the boss, I also decided I'd get weekends off, cool! That left me with 5 days to get 40 hours of play in. Well, that's simple enough, I'd play 8 hours a day, five days a week, done!

So for years that's what I did, I showed up at noon, and when they collected time for 8pm I was out of there. Of course this isn't neccessarily the best way to make the most money, it was just a way for me to have some sort of routine in my life. Something I desperately needed at the time. There were some pros and cons to this, but overall I liked the pros so much I could live with the cons.

As far as pros go, I NEVER had to worry about when to quit, I already knew! I didn't have to play mind games with my self. Am I running bad? should I quit winner? etc. I was left with playing the game and trying to make good decisions.

Of course I sometimes played in bad, tight games for a while, and also missed out on some good action after 8pm, but big deal! I was lucky enough to be in a game that was good enough for the most part. Optimally you'd only play poker when you are getting way the best of it, but that's just not a reality for most professionals.

There were occasions where I played some overtime, but NEVER when I was loser. Only when the game was extremely good, or if I'd given myself some early outs earlier in the week. After all, I was the boss right? If I was sick or just tired of playing, I allowed my self a sick day here and there. Not too many of course, my boss was pretty anal:)

This system helped me avoid one of the pitfalls that are the downfall of the majority of poker players. Playing long hours when you are stuck, and hitting and running with small wins. Everyone knows it's silly, but they can't control themself. They are obssessed with putting a W in their records. Well I've looked at some of those record books, they look like this: 2h +340, 3h +285, 2.5 +540, 5h +145, 6h +90, 1.5h +335. Not bad for a 10-20 game right. 20 hours for a profit of $1735 dollars. That's an hour $86.75! But wait, you didn't see day seven, 15 h -2135. Hmmm, not so good after all. Hey six out of seven wins is pretty impressive, but what good is that?

Now this may or may not work for you, but if you are having that big problem of playing all night to get even, it's something to think about.

I taught myself that there was always tomorrow. If I got the hours in, the results would follow, and they did. Amazingly, almost all of my friends, also professionals, got on the same schedule. It was great, we really felt like co-workers and had a lot of fun together all day, and then again at nights. I miss those days. At 8pm there was a huge turnover. All the tough players went home, and a new cast came in. I know what you're thinking, man, seems like 8pm was the time to play! Well it was, but that's the sacrifice I made to try to balance a 'normal' life with playing poker for a living. Now that I look back, it was well worth it.

2 Comment(s):

Posted by  Anonymous, at 12:25 PM, May 14, 2005  

That's a great approach if you are playing limit poker. You have swings in that game, but you aren't potentially risking your whole stack on every hand.

In addition, when you play at the same place all the time like Daniel talks about, you develop a "home court advantage" where you know how everyone plays.

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Posted by  Dr Fro, at 9:09 AM, May 15, 2005  

That one speaks to my soul. My track record has more W's than L's, but a handful of those L's are marthon tilt sessions.

I have been in the process of putting myselt on a time limit before I sit down.

I used to never leave a table when there were tons of fish. One day I realized that most of the time I sat down (primarily at PP) there are tons of fish. I tell myself "They'll still be there in the morning" and I go to bed.

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