Should You Quit Your Day Job? — Part I

[Sniper]

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#1 $8000/month
#50 $3000/month
#100 $2500/month
#200 $2000/month (probably high)
#300 $1500/month (probably high)


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Red, how did you arrive at these figures? Are they just guesses? Your guesses are obviously off, as there are several 6 figure winners at Party poker each month.


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The point is... Only the Top 200-300 at Party Poker out of 50,000 SNG players... Are making a "living wage".


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Again, where are these numbers coming from. The Leaderboard is composed of players playing MTTTs and SNGs and it would be very difficult to extrapolate much information from that.

Also, the vast majority of players on party are not trying to make a living wage from poker.

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The vast majority of "Pro Poker Players"...
Make an erratic "subsistence living" of $1000-$2000/month.
Do that for 10 years and you'll be a divorced alcoholic.


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Again, where are your numbers coming from? By trying to extrapolate data from the Party Poker leaderboard, you totally ignore ring game play as well as all the play on other online sites, as well as B&M play.

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In "near zero sum" games like stock trading or poker...

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Stock trading is not a zero sum game, and as a successful day trader, you should know that!

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Working 9-5 sucks no matter how you cut it.

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EXACTLY!

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Agreed.

You wake up at 7 AM just to get ready, spend one hour commutting half asleep, then you just sit down at your desk staring at your computer screen trying to stay awake until lunch everytime your boss walks by. You get to pay for gas and lunch and then you countdown every minute till the end of your shift after lunch only so you can say "That's $100 in the bank" (minus taxes).

And then you go home, eat supper, can barely spend any time with your family and while all your friends are out drinking, you have to go to sleep so that you can wake up the next morning. It's the cycle of doom. 9-5 sucks

That is the only thing that motivates me to learn Poker, I can't wait till college starts, that is when the campus booking and ghetto Poker rings begin [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Our Casino will also have Hold'em starting September.

[adios]

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Whats the deal with all these going pro articles acting as if poker is going to enslave you.

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I've never quite understood this either, I mean this is the impression I get alot from those that are negative on it. I don't make my income from poker for the most part but I've got a lot of experience playing. What I've seen over the past several years (and I've been playing a lot longer than a few years) is that the Internet sites have made playing for a living so much more viable. If you multitable even if you make a fairly modest win rate, you can play so many hands per hour that getting the luck factor more in the noise level isn't that hard to accomplish. Furthermore you don't have to play all that many hours to do it. Five years ago or so I would have stated that one might want to carefully consider such a decision because playing B&M only means that you have to play very well to get the variance in the noise level so to speak. Mason wrote about that in Gambling Theory and Other Topics. Even then it could take many years. I mean to get 250,000 hands in at a B&M place 5 years ago would likely take at least 4 years, probably more. Now getting 250,000 hands in online isn't that big of deal online and can be accomplished fairly easily in less than a year (and I'm sure many do it in much less time).

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If you play 10+ hours a day, have no social life, and are an overweight smoking alcoholic, that is because of choices YOU made not poker. Join a gym, do some volunteer work, spend more time with friends/family.

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Yeah but I think 5 years ago for the guy making .5 BB's per hour in a B&M place this could actually not be too far off in that lots of hours at the poker table were required and even then variance was a big factor. But I agree with you that it's a choice. I mean just do the math by converting .5 a big bet per hour in a B&M setting to BB/100 and the appropriate standard deviation conversions and it's easy to see why the B&M player has to not only play many, many more hours but also is more at the mercy of luck on a year to year basis.

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To me the most appealing thing about going pro is the fact that it would give me more free time to do the things that I want to do.

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And I'd guess you probably play mostly online which would certainly be the case.

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Working 9-5 sucks no matter how you cut it.

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Is there such a thing as job security? I think for the most part no.

Honestly I'm with you on this and I'm not at all dissatisified with the work I do which isn't playing poker for a living. Things have just gotten so much better for the skilled player over the years. I don't think Dr. Al plays much online either so maybe he's referring to the B&M only player.

[adios]

Dr. Al's article acknoweldged all the points I made and I actually think the article is fairly upbeat. He's stating don't count on the status quo continuing and in fact categorically he says it won't. Yeah there's lots of things that could change the status quo besides running out of donators like law changes and such. I think that we'll see the games good for quite some time though.

[phish]

I think what it comes down to is poker for a living can be a good life if you are truly good, but can be pathetic if you're just mediocre. By truly good, I mean you have to be able to crush the 50/100 or higher games live or 30/60 games online at the very least for it to be preferable to most jobs that an educated smart person can get.

And one good measure of "crush" is that you should almost never have downward swings of more than 200 bets. If you see yourself routinely swinging down 300 bets or more, then your edge is simply not very great.

My first post. Great forum.

I'm an attorney and I can say that working 60 hours a week (and commute) is far from fun. And most of us attorneys don't even make as much as a computer programmer.

The idea of making a few hundred bucks in a few hours each day from home is great. But if just a tiny % can do so, then perhaps it's not worth it. It is enticing though.

[chezlaw]

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I think what it comes down to is poker for a living can be a good life if you are truly good, but can be pathetic if you're just mediocre. By truly good, I mean you have to be able to crush the 50/100 or higher games live or 30/60 games online at the very least for it to be preferable to most jobs that an educated smart person can get.

And one good measure of "crush" is that you should almost never have downward swings of more than 200 bets. If you see yourself routinely swinging down 300 bets or more, then your edge is simply not very great.

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The good life is in the eye of the beholder, maybe its not for you but personally I'm enjoying my pathetic life. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Mediocre is fine when you can compete with the bad.

chez

[chezlaw]

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I think what it comes down to is poker for a living can be a good life if you are truly good, but can be pathetic if you're just mediocre. By truly good, I mean you have to be able to crush the 50/100 or higher games live or 30/60 games online at the very least for it to be preferable to most jobs that an educated smart person can get.

And one good measure of "crush" is that you should almost never have downward swings of more than 200 bets. If you see yourself routinely swinging down 300 bets or more, then your edge is simply not very great.

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Someone crushing 30-60 on-line is winning say 1BB/hour/table and is 4-tabling at the least. Thats $240/hr + rakeback.

Isn't that a bit high for a minimum standard?

chez

[chezlaw]

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I'm an attorney and I can say that working 60 hours a week (and commute) is far from fun. And most of us attorneys don't even make as much as a computer programmer.

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It gets better doesn't it? [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

chez

I think there's a major positive factor that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere and that is the ability to live ANYWHERE there is an internet connection. I can see it now - living on a perfect pointbreak in Bali, surfing my brains out in the morning and then 'working' on my pc when the wind turns bad...mmmmmmmmmmmm