[4thstreetpete]

Hi Hank. Interesting post, I had a good time reading the various responses.

I'm 30 now and single. When i was 18 I worked at charity casinos here in Toronto. It was such a great time. Met a ton of great people and generally had a lot of fun working there. We would also get a bunch of our coworkers after work and play home games. Unlike the home games today, everyone we played with were either dealers or regular players from the casino so everyone was pretty experienced.
I also met some "pros" at the time who confessed to me that this was what they did for a living, playing poker. At that time all I could think about was what a pathetic existence. It's funny how things have changed for me now.

I've always been pretty good at gambling and at that time I've already understood the concept of money management by figuring out myself. I was good at math and always like strategy games.

At about 19 or so I use to hit the underground clubs quite a bit and was starting to get quite a reputation for myself, I was constantly winning. I spent a lot of my time there. Of course, my grades started to suffer. I remembered being in class at university and I just couldn't concentrate because all I could think about was poker. I started missing a lot of classes because I was always at the clubs.

All my life I was an honour roll student and now for the first time I'm failing a lot of my classes. I hated where my life was heading because I felt like I was addicted to poker. I was making quite a bit of money at the time though but all this didn't seem to matter.

It was soon after that I met the love of my life. There was something different about this girl than the other girls I've dated in the past. I was really in love for the first time and finally knew what being "in love" really meant. I gave up on poker and spent every waking hour with her. This really was the best time of my life as it gave me a new focus.

Flash forward a few years and I've jumped back into poker, only this time it's online. I'm quite dissallusioned with my job and I hate the "real world". I'm also quite lazy, I've never found much passion in anything except for poker to this day.

I have made up my mind and will definately walk away from my job within the next 2 years or sooner to go pro. I am currrently multitabling the 30/60. I'm playing a lot smaller stakes than my bankroll will allow but I'm very risk adversed.

I can't wait to start the next chapter in my life, because I do want to go pro and just start travelling and doing the things that I want to do. I see the next two years as really saving for the future.