Prop Job Soon

I seem to be close to getting the job as a 20-40 prop player at the Bike. On Tuesday, I'm scheduled for a physical (not sure why they need this), and I assume I'll be starting soon after that. I'd be working Friday-Tuesday, 3pm-11pm. Including the commute it will probably be more like 1:45-11:45, so the job will consume about 50 hours a week. This is quite a bit more than I've been playing up until now, and I'm not very optimistic about how much I'm going to like giving up some of my free time. For the past few months I've been getting rather tired after playing for about 6 hours, and it's usually not worth sticking around when fatigue sets in except in the increasingly rare event that the game is extremely soft. I've been playing poker on my own schedule for two and a half years now, and I've become accustomed to having plenty of time during the week for everything I want to do. On the other hand, I've also spent more time at unproductive activities such as watching TV than I would have liked, and I know from experience that when my time is more structured I tend to get more done. Fortunately, as far as making the decision whether to take the prop job, it's not necessary for me to know ahead of time whether I'll like being a prop: if I don't, I can always quit and immediately return to my old job with no difficulty whatsoever.

Meanwhile, I need to learn to play stud eight-or-better without losing all my money. My brother got me Ray Zee's book High-Low-Split Poker for Advanced Players, which also covers Omaha. It actually seems like it would be nearly useless for an advanced player at these games, but for me it's been quite helpful. It gives an idea of what starting hands are worthwhile and what to expect from other players. I read Sklansky's section in the original Super System, but that is so outdated that the rules have changed too significantly since it was written for it to be useful (most significantly, there was no requirement of an 8-qualifier for the low). Supposedly, Todd Brunson wrote a chapter on stud-8 in Super System 2 that is much more worthwhile. I think I may go ahead and order that one. Phil Hellmuth has the only other published stud-8 advice that I could find, but I would never purchase anything published by him unless it were the absolute best source on a particular game. Even then, I would probably just avoid playing that game.