Month 1 as a Pro

this was originally on 2p2 2/7/06.

so today i finished my first month as a pro poker player. it's been pretty awesome. i started off playing a mix of mtts and stts, where i would generally play one or more mtts in the 55-215 buy-in range and then add in $55 stts till my monitor or my attention was full.

this is what i did for the first 3 weeks. it didn't go very well. at first my mtt's were characterized by getting to the final 30 of a 500 person tournament with a very healthy stack and then busting out in 24th. it's really annoying that making the top 2% of a tournament only pays out a few buy-ins. the stt's were going pretty well though, and i finally broke through for 3rd in a PS 22 rebuy for 2k, and that was enough to put me at even for my first three weeks. not exactly a great start, but i've always known that mtt's were ridiculously high variance (and i rode the variance wave to a great november/december).

then about 10 days ago, i decided to just play stt's for a while and see how that went. it's been great, both in terms of the results and the quality of life. i like being able to play whenever i want, and to not be committing myself for hours every time i start a game.

the results have been unsustainably good so far, which is always a good place to be.

55s: 362 stts, ROI = 24.6%
109s: 199 stts, 18.0%

all in all, i'm pretty psyched that i quit my job. having time to play poker has been great. i really like playing.