Better playing part time

Speaking from someone who once used poker to provide his full time income then I am probably best placed to discuss the merits of playing poker full time. When you are having to play poker for forty hours a week just to provide you with the same level of income that you need or you had in your previous job then you have something of a long term problem. The main issue with playing online poker for this many hours is that the novelty of playing poker wears off.

In a way this is not a bad thing because you should never view poker as entertainment or if you wish to play it for profit. However you need to be on it mentally to optimise your earn rate and this is difficult to do when you are playing for so many hours. Playing poker for less hours increases your dollars per hour figure in many cases. Let us say that you maxed out at $50/hr when you played for twenty hours per week and so you made $1000/week which was easily enough to give you the income that you needed. However if you played for forty hours a week then your earn rate could drop significantly per hour because you are starting sessions not in the right frame of mind simply because you are playing too much poker.

If your earn rate dropped to say $30/hr then you would only be making $1200/week despite playing twenty hours more. So in effect you would actually be playing those twenty hours for $10/hr. There is a trade off with online poker that many players do not realise. In fact even experienced online players often do not realise how their earn rate drops off the more hours that they play. If you were earning say $25/hr then you need to be looking for ways to increase your earn rate without endangering what you already have. This could be as simple as playing fewer hours.

At the end of the day you do not need to play poker full time and playing it part time could be far more effective. But part time poker is great for many reasons and another main reason is that it allows you to maintain your full time job. This takes the pressure off your poker and in a way this combined with rakeback allows you to play pressure free poker. Playing poker under pressure is a horrible experience and this is especially the case if you have come from a background where you have been used to regular employed income.

This is another area that you are going to have to confront because playing poker full time is self employment and self employment means insecure income. If you have been used to regular income all your life then playing poker full time will put you into an uncomfortable situation. This is another reason why playing part time may be a better option than playing full time and fitting poker around your job.