[BlueBear]

So, you're considering giving up your respectable and high paying job to slog it out in the Internet poker rooms.

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I just opened an Empire account 3 days ago and have increased my $500 initial deposit up to a $650 stake by playing only 1-2 hours a night.

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Welcome to Internet poker. Sorry to burst your bubble but a good first few days doesn't mean you'll keep winning the same amount every day of the year. In fact, some of these swings can be brutal.

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I play mostly 25NL, 50NL, 100NL, but went up to 10/20 one night after a couple of bad beats at 100NL in order to make my money back quickly.

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Dear dear dear. You get frustated easily and jump to a potentially crippling 10/20! As any poster will tell you, not exactly wise money management. One of the keys to winning Internet poker is to maintain complete discpline and to stop jumping to bigger games unnecessarily before building an adequate poker bankroll and getting enough experience at the lower limits.


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So by my calculations, I can increase my $50 an hour rate to about $300 an hour by increasing the number of tables and playing higher stakes

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I can assure you your $50/hour rate is largely illusionary to do the very few hours you've played. And making $600 is not as easy as increasing the number of tables you play and increase in limits... After all, the quality of the players become much tougher in higher limits. Economists would say "a diminishing rate of return" for the higher limits.

I think if you're still interested in playing, stop thinking on terms of making enough money to quit your job, read LOTS of good poker books, lurk the twoplustwo boards, play disciplined poker and build up a reasonable and sustainable bankroll from small.