Well at least you are finishing your degree. I got my degree and went to Vegas to be a sports bettor. I made plenty of money but the lifestyle just drove me crazy. Always better to be a semi-pro and get a regular job out of college because it will never be easier to be hooked up with a job than when you roll off the university assembly line. Believe me, you will have a lot of fun answering the question "so what did you do for the two years after you left college?" and the answer "poker pro" isn't going to go over too well much of the time. Regular job for awhile will keep your occasional poker play fun and interesting and you will avoid burnout. Not to mention avoiding the mental anguish of a bad streak. Have a job and you know the bills are paid, not so in gambling.


I will always remember the interview they had with Dewey Tomko in Card Player a few years ago. They talked to him about how could he possibly have kept his teaching job that was paying something like $20k a year when he was playing high stakes poker on the side (back when he first started out). Average man and even many pro gamblers couldn't fathom it, but to me it was like "been there done that". He quite simply answered "because I knew the bills would be paid". It may seem stupid to many people, but something as small and seemingly inconsequential as that can make the difference between keeping your sanity and playing well as a result of it or playing less than effectively and going broke.


One last thing...is it just me or do other people seem a little bothered that a guy that wants to go pro doesn't even know the answer to such a simple, yet fundamentally basic question? I know a lot of people that could never make it as a pro or even a long-term winner, but they have read enough to know one BB/hour is about the standard for middle limit games.