How much $ per day for you to turn pro?

Costco hot dogs rule, tho. I love sour kraut!

[BradleyT]

NPA Ed Miller hits the nail on the head.

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You have a good job that you like. Are you about to get a promotion? Could you see yourself in ten years doing the job you’re doing now? Don’t quit. Good jobs are hard to come by, and, sooner or later, you will want probably one. Building a career is more important than realizing your short-term poker fantasy. In other words, if you are stacking boxes at Walmart, quit. If you are CTO of a tech company and love your work, please don’t quit.

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[Goodnews]

$50 000 a day

This is a great topic!

Calculating what you currently earn/hr is a great start. And translating that into what you would need to make per hour figuring that you are not going to play 40hrs/week is an important step. I would also encourage people to calculate what they are currently spending(keep track of everything for a month -it's a great eye opener), what expenses they will be incurring with out a job(health care, retirement saving, DSL, etc), what expenses will be less without a job(commuting, work clothes, lunches out), and also what expenses will now be tax deductible as a poker pro(DSL, new computer, vegas trip that you would take anyhow). Analyze it like it were a business you were going to start(that is really what you are doing).

Many businesses fail because they don't have enough funds to keep them going through the hard times. Since only a experienced, winning player is going to seriously consider going pro, it should be safe to assume that you already have a sufficient roll.

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have $50k saved

you should have a year's worth of living expenses saved. I know people recommend 6 months, but to be safe, you want more


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Many people actually reccomend 3-4 months of a safety net in savings, but Pokerace is right, as a poker pro, you should have more to accomodate downswings and any possible emergency. Use the figure your getting from tracking your spending for a month. If your making $50k a year, your living expenses are not $50k per year(if they are, you DEFINITELY shouldn't quit your job), they are are your take-home pay(gross minus taxes) minus your savings. From there, figure at least 6 months, preferably more...and put it somewhere that earns interest yet you could pull a month's expenses out at a time without a problem.

You also need to figure in what your long term goals(buying house, family, etc) are and what you are going to do if/when poker falls out of favor. Yeah, there will always be a ton of low limit games, but there was just a post the other day in one of these forums about 15/30 games being harder to find.

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Quote:


$500/day x 200 days/yr = $100,000

I think for many people that estimate would be very high(unless you are talking canadian$). According to the US census Bureau , the mean household income in the US for 2000 was only $56,604 with employed males median salary being only $27K. Which means there's a lot of people out there living on very little....




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I was talking about quitting a decent paying job, in my definition its a job who pay about 50k per year. I need at least to make double of that to quit and turn pro.



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That's what I'm saying - most people are not making over $50k yr in their jobs. But what you say about making MORE per hour playing poker than at your job is very good advice!

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Some good articles by Ed Miller on the subject.

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These articles rock!

[Cumulonimbus]

Dude! You seem very excited! YEAH!

[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]Kyle

[JeanieJ]

Location plays a huge part in playing for a living. I started playing for income at 18 (two years ago) and it doesn't take much to survive here in Arizona. Keep in mind I had no HS diploma or college to back me up, so anything I made in poker was going to be better than a minimum wage job.

Arizona cost of living is very low. A good apartment on a decent side of town runs between 500-900 /month. Not having kids is a big plus too. Your family /location and a number of factors are questionable. The very best jobs here pay 15$ an hour. The worst 5.35

I can make a few grand a month and be happy. More is better but I don't need bundles of cash. If I lived in New England than that'd be a different story.

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I am curious to see what type of responses everyone gives here.

What amount of money would you need to average per day playing poker to quit your regular job and become an online poker pro.
By quitting your job you will be losing health benefits and the office enviornment where you have social interaction. At the same time you will no longer have deadlines or have to commute to work.

Is it $150 a day? $250 a day? $1K a day?

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$100 a day, and cutting back from 40 hours at my job to 20, or maybe 25, would be awesome. Play 5 days a week averaging 100 a day, and work 20 hours at my job. At 40 hours, and taking as much work as I can in those 40 hours I make between 2k and 2.4k per month. Cutting back to say 25 hours, and putting in the time to do a fun "job" with 15-25 a week, with 2 days off - great. I can handle $2900-3000 a month gladly. At that point I could still give myself time off from poker to still really enjoy the game, taking 2 days off a week.

<shrug> This question isn't really about turning pro, it's about what you have when you don't turn pro. If you've got a great paying job, you'd be a fool not to stick the job out. If you make [censored], but manage to acquire money on the poker table and make yourself have a little bit better life because of your *skill*, well that's the way the American Dream is supposed to be. Using a skill to carve yourself out a great life the American Way. Earning it.

[MyTurn2Raise]

$100/day was enough for me to quit my PhD program