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1) I've been playing Texas Holdem on-line for a year and in "live" games and tourneys for two. I don't necessarily want to become a professional poker play, but maybe semi-professional. That is - playing in two to three tourneys a week at a casino poker room and several cash games(2/4 NL and 5/10 to 10/20 limit) a week. I do much better in "live" games versus on-line, so I believe I need to get near a casino to really take my game from an average "solid" player to a "good" poker player. Are you familiar with players in my situation > hold down a job, but are quite serious about playing and improving their game in a local casino? Any advice?

2) I've found a listing on the internet of all U.S. casinos, is there a site or guide that lists the poker rooms in the U.S. I don't think I can assume all casinos have poker rooms.

3) For someone in my situation, what characteristics should I be looking for when selecting a poker room?

The easy move would be to Las Vegas because of the number of poker rooms available. I'm not sure if Vegas is the place for me. Any other advice about this lifestye change would be appreciated.

Thanks for the help in advance. Again, this site is great!!

Answer:

Those are good questions.

First of all, yes there are many players in similar situations to your's. The vast majority of players in cardrooms have jobs. Then the group that doesn't have jobs is mostly made up of retired people. The smallest percentage of players is made up of persons who solely play poker for a living. As you move up in limits, the amount of players you find doing it as a job increases as you would expect, but even then it is really minute. And that doesn't isn't necessarily because the players can't do it for a living, but that they have other projects going too. For example, if you were to ask what everyone does for a living at a $400/800 mixed game, you would find a lot of poker pros, but also a bunch of successful professionals.

And I think that most players are middle limits or above would consider themselves to be semi-pros. Most recreational players don't play that big. The advice I would give you as a semi-pro is to live a balanced life because that will translate directly into your poker success. Be a good manager of your time and try to keep your session length reasonable. Also, the hardest thing to learn is when to just call it a day and suck up a loss, instead of trying to get it back. That tends to make you play longer when you aren't running well and less when you are. Try to play more when things are going well and less when you aren't doing well.

Next, when you play a lot, learning the pace is key. It's not hard to play well once in a while, but if you are in there every other day for eight hours, it can weigh on you. Just understand that sometimes things won't go well, for longer than you would expect, and the important part is to not lose your head and give away the farm. You won't win everyday, which is fine. What matters is overall winning. Sometimes things will be slow for a week, then bam you'll have a monster day. For that monster day to count for its full potentional, you can't have given away rack upon rack on the previous losing days when the cards were dry.

Next, if you've played live a lot then you are aware of this, but I'll mention it for new players anyway. Live games are much looser (and more profitable) than those you'll find online. In a limit game for example, it is common to see multiple (I'm talking 4 or 5) callers on the turn and river. This is a very profitable situation but to beat the games you'll need to have the proper bankroll and card selection. The looser and crazier the game is, the more you can make, but it also means more variance in your bankroll.

I'm not familiar with any sites online that list cardrooms. I would just look online and see what was around. Ideally what you are looking for in a cardroom is game selection. The more tables the better. And the more tables that a cardroom has, the more limits they will spread -- both large and small. In addition to that location, comfort and food are nice. Most of the smaller cardrooms you'll find won't have middle limit games. The max you'll find will usually be something like 6/12 to 9/18. That's fine, but as you keep winning, you'll want larger games.

Southern California is the mecca for poker. In LA there are a number of big cardrooms like Commerce and The Bike. Any day you can find dozens of tables of low limit up to middle limit games, and some bigger games like $100/200 and up. For example, on a Monday at 1 pm you'll have 10 $40/80s going already. That's hard to beat. Vegas has games too, not nearly as many though. California is also known for the quality of games. In Vegas players play much better. You'll even have tight games at $4/8.

Not so in CA. In California you'll be lucky to have a pot where 5+ players don't see the flop. So again, ideal choice for where to live to play cards is in CA. In CA, you don't want to live near the casinos as they are in really bad parts. You'd probably want to live over in the San Fernando Valley and commute over to play. Then there is also the Burbank airport and LAX close. Second choice would be to find a casino there in Maryland to play, but I'm assuming you won't have that great of game selection. I wouldn't move to Vegas without first going there and playing in some of the games.

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