Roy I know I'm a little behind in your journal but I think I can impart some wisdom with your idea of moving into a hotel to play live poker. First off $100 an hour in a 2/5 game is to high. I run abour $70 an hour in Vegas at the 2/5 games and I really cant see the games being that much softer anywhere. Also 60 hrs a week is a ton of live play, sure you can do it for a couple weeks but 6 days a week 10hrs a day and you are headed directly to burnoutsville. I think 40 -50 hrs is the max you really can play over an extended time period and still play your A game, not get bored or burned out. I understand your love for live poker, playing online after putting in live hours is really boring, plus the players are worse, have less patience, and are usually on vacation to gamble. Which leads to games much softer than anywhere online. As ED says there is a little piece of you that feels bad taking someones money face to face, it can be a little sad to see someone lose their rent money or babies food money face to face. Also living in a hotel and just playing poker you are going to need to find other things to do, you are a smart guy and at some point your brain is going to look for some other kind of mental stimulation. Also you would be there by yourself, it will probably be a bit of a loney life living in a hotel, playing against new people every day. Just some other view points to consider.

They're good points. I've done some more thinking since my last big post and here are my revised thoughts:

I am not going to live in the hotel. I have looked into getting an apartment in a building on the same street as the casino and I can rent one (a very nice one), fully furnished, for between one third and one half of the price that i'd be paying in the hotel. I'm also not gong to make this decision till maybe March next year. Firstly because i'm leaving to India tonight and won't be back till the start of November. Then because i'll be here for a couple of months, then in January i'm leaving to Canada/USA for about 6 weeks. There are 3 times i'll be going down between the time I get back from India and the time I leave to the US so i'll have more time to see how easy the games are and what kind of winrate I can expect over maybe a 250hour sample (not that much for live play, but should be decent).

If I have my own place and i'm not paying on a per-night basis for the hotel I think i'll feel less inclined to "have to" put in x amount of hours each day. I'll also have my whole computer-setup and be able to play online (where i've got a steady winrate of about $80aus/hr over several hundred hours) so if things go bad, I have that to fall back on. This way i'll also be able to take a fair bit of time off and go out, meet new people, join some clubs, live a good life away from poker.

I know the part of feeling bad for taking people's money. There was this one person in particular who was there when I was playing in the 2/3 game on my first day. He must've rebought at least 10-12 times, going to the ATM 4 times. Each time for the max of $200. He was terrible at poker. In one instance the river had the board at 22338 and he bet $100, someone pushed over the top for $300 more and he called with K8. "I thought he was bluffing". He was a really nice guy, always had that smile on his face, didn't get mad or anything. The only way I could stomach it was to tell myself he has very rich parents (he would've been around 23-24) or that he is a rich business executive, or something along those lines. I'm sure it'll get easier over time, even if it doesn't entirely go away.

I understand i'll get lonely so i'm hoping to make some new friends down there. This will be hard playing 60hrs of live poker a week so I think i'll aim for 40hrs of live play, with some additional online play mixed in when I feel like it (probably 10-15 hours a week). One thing I noticed though was that a lot of the players were regulars. I made a few friends down there and if I ever move up to the 5/10 game, i'd say 80% of them all play that game regularly and know each other. That said, the ones I saw/played with were terrible. I felt I was the best player in the room (except maybe for the times Joe Hachem was in there), so even if i'm playing against a few of the same people all the time, I have no doubt their money will flow my direction.

Thanks for the input. I've got Mark Blade's Professional Poker book that i'm going to read on my trip, which should provide some better insight. I'll also pick up TUPs book which I believe has a lot of info about live play.

I think if I can play a solid amount in November and December, then by the time i'm ready to make the move in March I can have about $40,000 saved up (BR + Living expenses). This is AUD, btw, so about $30k US. I think this should be enough to get me started. Rent + other expenses will probably be in the neighbourhood of $700/wk, so i'll have about 6months of living expenses saved up with 40 buyins for the 2/5 game.

Well, it looks like that's the plan. I really think it's possible and would love it if I can make it work. I don't think it's unrealistic, given what I made playing online in September.

Anyway - this is me signing off for a while. If I get a chance to be on the net i'll throw in a post or two from India, otherwise GL to everyone and i'll see you all Nov 3rd.

Roy