Ed's Sept. article

[Peter666]

I agree with you. Give me 50-75 thousand dollars in excess cash from my normal living expenses which poker can do, and in 5 years of wise investing I will never have to work for my living expenses again. Give me 10 years and I will be very rich. Life can be good if you are smart.

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with you. Give me 50-75 thousand dollars in excess cash from my normal living expenses which poker can do, and in 5 years of wise investing I will never have to work for my living expenses again. Give me 10 years and I will be very rich. Life can be good if you are smart.

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Well you're an investing god then, and my hats off to you. I'm not nearly that advanced. I don't think that if you gave me 250k right now and assuming that I didn't have to tap that but didn't put aside any saving from my job, that I could be in a position in five years not to ever work again, much less if I was only getting 50k a year to invest.

10% return a year after five years gets you to about 411,000.

--Zetack

edit:

Just for fun I looked at it as 75k (to give you the biggest benefit of the doubt) coming in a year with 10% interest. After five years you've got 503K. Retiring on that? Really?

Ok after 10 years, 1.3 million. Doable, I suppose.

If you split the difference between 50 and 75K a year you end up at just under $1.1 million.

Now if you can get 30 percent returns annually, your numbers do start to look very good. I just ain't that good an investor.

[Ed Miller]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with you. Give me 50-75 thousand dollars in excess cash from my normal living expenses which poker can do, and in 5 years of wise investing I will never have to work for my living expenses again. Give me 10 years and I will be very rich. Life can be good if you are smart.

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I assume you didn't read the article, because one of my main points was, "Take 50-75 thousand in excess cash and invest it in something other than poker."

EDIT: Sorry.. that came across ruder than I intended. Hopefully you agree with my premise that if you have a $200k poker bankroll and no other assets, you should take a significant chunk of that money out of your bankroll and invest it.

[Ed Miller]

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I think he is full of it. Am I the only one? I am sure the games will dry up a little when the poker boom dies down, but great players getting in 1500 hands a day are not gonna have to worry about making rent 5 years from now.

FWIW, I also found the article interesting and well written, I just dont agree with most of his points.

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I don't think a great player will have to worry about making rent. I think a decent/good player who is making good money now needs to start planning, though.

For instance, you play ok, put in a lot of hours, and make $150k a year. You're single and 23. You are oozing money.

Now you're the same player, it's five years later, and you still play ok. You even still put in a lot of hours. You're married and have two kids. Because conditions aren't as ripe as they used to be, you make $100k a year.

Single and making $150k a year is WAY different than married with two kids making $100k a year. If you are smart when you are 23 and put a lot of that excess cash away, then you'll be fine when you're married with kids. If you piss that extra cash away buying toys and playing $50-$100 NL with David Williams (ahem) then you're heading for a major financial crunch.

That's the audience the article was intended for. The best of the best obviously don't have anything to worry about.

[Sniper]

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Now if you can get 30 percent returns annually, your numbers do start to look very good. I just ain't that good an investor.

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The odds of success for an individual with the right skillset to make 50K+/yr playing 3/6 poker online, is roughly equavalent to the odds of that same individual making 30%+/yr return on up to $1-2 million equity in the stock market.

[Peter666]

Also, I should have mentioned that the money invested can be used as collateral to take out a loan of the equivalent money at low interest. I can then invest that as well, almost doubling my results. So your 10 year figures are actually closer to my 5 year figures. I have been leveraging like this for a few years now, and the results have been excellent for me. Taking on debt can pay off in the long run if you know what you are doing.

[Peter666]

Ed, you can call me a crack-whore mofo son of a bitch and I won't be offended because your books make me $$$.

And I like the fact that you encourage people in your articles by mentioning facts and not making professional poker sound like an impossible dream. I agree with Sklansky and Malmuth who wrote that one can make $100,000 a year gambling for a living if you apply yourself correctly. Maybe others can make more in other fields, but I am not a sheeple who will follow the conventions of a corrupt modern society and try to impress people with the number of letters behind my name. Ok, back to the Philosophy forum.

PS: If I had a poker bankroll of $200,000 and no other assets, I am moving to southern Ukraine which has the best looking women in the world, and where I can live the life of a King for 1/3 the cost of living an average lifestyle in America. Besides, the games here are loooooose.