So since I started to take my life a little bit more seriously. I mean, considering it's very obvious that my ceiling is clearly not as high as I originally believed it might be regarding how much money I could potentially be able to make in the future as a poker pro, this is what I've come up with....

Here are my estimated monthly expenses:
HEALTH INSURANCE - 125/mo
CAR INSURANCE - 155/mo
STORAGE - 180/mo
RENT - 1000/mo
MEDICATION - 540/mo
FOOD/ALCOHOL - 700/mo
MISC - 1000/mo= 3700/mo

3700x6 months = $22,200

22k? If I'm just keeping that locked up, what am I supposed to use for a bankroll? Sometimes I play 5/10nl with less than this in my bankroll. Geez, all I need to do is double my hours weekly and I would be flush. I'm pushing 10-15 hours a week lately which is even worse than the previous few months, even after I said I need to up the hours I put in each week. Kinda sad to see I haven't made any progress, but such is life. I think it's mostly a matter of motivation. Hopefully being around another poker player with a much better work ethic than myself will push me to want to play more and earn more money. Being at the Rio today and watching Brian Hastings win the 10k HU shootout for 370k definitely helped to make me feel like I should put more effort into my poker. I'm really tired of seeing people who aren't as good as me making way more money--not saying this about Brian haha, he's >>>>>>>>>>>>me--I just am speaking in generalities.

I've been doing this for pretty much 6 years now for a living and I've never kept this kind of money as a backup. Sometimes my bankroll is less than that amount. And this is also with the consideration that I've played somewhere between 2.5-3 million hands (3/4 of that being at 400nl+). Nobody can know for sure at this point though because I've lost a lot of databases along the way, but ~600k hands a year my first 3 years and probably ~300k hands a year the following 3. This is the most accurate I can be, I mean, give or take 500k hands. Since January 08 I haven't been anywhere near close to bust.

If you play a super high variance style (or just PLO for that matter), I could see this being necessary, but even when I used to do that, I still never came close to needing this much money just sitting waiting in case something bad happened. If you watch my videos nowadays, you see I play a pretty low variance style, and I feel comfortable with just 5k as a backup.

If your lowest level as a regular isn't 400nl, then I think things might change a bit for you because, me, personally, if I for whatever reason just randomly lost 80% of everything I had, I could just get a loan from a friend for like 5k and grind .5/1nl and 1/2nl and come out and just rebuild everything I needed to live. If your highest game is lower than 400nl as a regular, then you would have a bigger problem, because you (likely) wouldn't be able to get as large enough of a loan, and you would have to start at much lower stakes to rebuild your bankroll (and your life), which will take a lot more time and probably force a lot more pressure.

What I'm deciding is that I need to probably keep somewhere between 5000-7500 for emergency expenses (obviously I can cut down on medications and alcohol expenses if it's a matter of living in the streets versus earning a wage), and now I need to start thinking about how I want to manage my online bankroll versus my live bankroll. Seems like a pretty good time to give my old coach Tommy Angelo a call and ask him his opinion regarding how I divy it up.

Never in the past have I even considered keeping both a live and an online bankroll since, well, for one I never have planned on playing live games for a living, and two, I always felt like any cash I had that was outside of an online poker website wasn't to be used for anything other than spending cash.

Times are changing and I have to adapt. I've been adapting in one form or another the past 6 years regarding online poker and if you've watched my videos you'd know just as much. This type of adaptation is a bit different, but it's obviously something I'm going to figure out. I always figure things out, despite all my terrible habits and self-destructiveness. But this whole idea of starting to play live as well as online is forcing me to re-think the way I've done things in the past. One thing I'm realizing is that I never really prepared myself to play live before since all I would do is withdraw a certain amount from my online roll and play way higher live than the amount I withdrew could handle. I don't want to do that anymore, so I need to make some changes.

I did attempt to make a change when I went to Arizona to coach that HS basketball team. And I actually had some pretty good success. I was pushing 210 pounds and ended up dropping down to 175 by the time I left. 35 pounds isn't something most people could let go of in 3 months, so I know when I put my mind to something I can come out with strong results. When I head up to NorCal, I want to drop another 15 pounds and get to my target body weight 160LB while also putting on some muscle this time. I don't really wanna be a beefcake dude or anything like that, but if I can get a little toned it'd definitely do nothing but increase my self-esteem. I guess that will be my goal when I head up there since my roommate and I are going to be hiring a trainer on full time to work with us in the gym and on our diet by preparing our food for us. It'll be expensive but I'm willing to work a little harder because of the potential benefits I see. He won't be able to do anything to stop my drinking, but when I was working out so much in Arizona my drinking actually receded considerably, so I do expect that to happen again. Only good things I see in the future. As long as I don't choose to be a bum.

I've never been one to state blatant lies or agree to something then go back on it, so I think I have a pretty good chance, and either way, I won't be lying about how well or how poorly I'm doing. So I guess it's just time to wait and see what happens.