Fezzik: Poker vs. Sports vs. Job Hours?

Fezzik: Poker vs. Sports vs. Job Hours? Fezzik, around this time of year you have previously switched your focus to poker. But it is tough to appreciate your time allocation. How many hours have you spent playing poker lifetime? And what is your foreseeable breakdown across sports and poker in the next year? My impression is you really enjoy working hard for free money. How does this compare with your previous career hours? You probably saw Jeff Haney rated you as one of the three smartest guys in Vegas, along with poker author David Sklansky and fight promoter Bob Arum.

Splitting time 50/50 poker/sports until 8/1 The 'problem' is that while sports betting is far more lucrative during football time, poker is FAR more enjoyable. And poker is still strong. Frankly, I think I pushed it too much today giving out Saints -3.5 and UN 41 -115 in the Jets game. Trying to find too much in the tough to beat NFL playoff sides/totals...... The SB props will be FAR better, I hope. As for poker, I hear about 'pros' going broke. I just don't get it. Dozens of ways to make a good living. Focus on Baldugi, Omaha, or NL Sit and Gos, short stack, short handed, HU, tournies, promos, rake back, etc, etc. etc. Yet the average square sharp is playing the 5/10 at Bellagio 10 handed grinding away. That's NOT the way to make the easy money IMO.

Will you be working 40 hours per week then? That might be a couple online hours per weekday evening plus another ten hours of live poker on weekends. Then sports would include the Tuesday meeting, handicapping, canvassing casinos, and monitoring online.

I would like to hear more about the easy way to make money in poker. I do grind. I have no idea how to make money in sit and gos. As far as I can tell, that is just cut high. Any quick advice from anyone to help my poker skills would be appreciated.

Learn to FOCUS on 1 specific game: SPECIALIZE In Chess, the quickest way to get 'good' is to REALLY learn one chess opening. In poker, the same is true. Sure, it helps to know all the openings, but if you want to ramp up fast and outplay guys in a very short period time, focus on 1 thing. Sit and Gos WERE good, still decent. In NL cash games, the 100% WRONG choice is full table, middle (or big) stack NL........that is the game everyone plays and knows and has read up on. Contrast that with say, playing HU........ OR better yet........HU AND short stacked. Of course this all assumes online play.

Fez and other Pros, For the casual, but decent player, what limits do you suggest playing and at what limits does the quality of play ramp-up? Thanks Kluggie

Play low limits, go up once you are sure you have a clear edge Micro limits fine to start!

5 year poker experiment [QUOTE=Fezzik;15790]Micro limits fine to start![/QUOTE] Five years ago a few friends decided to get back into poker, starting at the bottom. We played the $1-3 tables and progressed over two years up to $2-4 and then $3-6. None of us made money at the two lowest limit games due to the rake and dealer tip. To our surprise players were no better on the $3-6 game. Plus, they were looser, which helped. We still lost, but losses were a smaller percentage of the total pots. In the last year, with two of us still playing, we went to the $2-10 game and were surprised to find it not much different than $3-6 except with even looser players who seem to be again, no better at the game than the $2-4 players. And the good news is, I'm ahead a small amount and enjoying the game more. Bluffing actually comes into play regularly at this game. I guess it's obvious we found it pays to stay away from places and games where the same guys play almost every day. More fun and lucrative to play with looser, drinking tourists on a weekend evening.

[QUOTE=Fezzik;15790]Micro limits fine to start![/QUOTE] I don't want to appear to be speaking for Fezzik, but I'm pretty sure he's talking about playing online here rather than live, and I fear that not everyone in this thread is aware of this. I'm also confident that the only types of poker games Fezzik feels qualified to speak about at the present time are NL hold'em games. In most small stakes, live, limit games it is tough to beat the rake, especially if you ever tip. Online, even at $0.05 $0.10, the rake is much more reasonable. These are the sorts of micro-stakes games I believe he is talking about.

He is definitely referring to online, but any 1-2 NL game at a strip joint is going to be just as easy to beat as a .05-.10 NL game online. When you bet half the pot and someone says, "wow, so much?" you know you're in the right place.