Who here is a pro

[theBruiser500]

A few thoughts:

A lot of people are saying there isn't upward mobility in poker, I disagree. You can get up to 100/200, or 25/50 NL and make $200+ an hour (possibly a lot more if you can multitable well). $200 an hour, 30 hours a week comes out to be well over 200k a year. $200 an hour isn't that farfetched either, ZJ and Diablo both make more than that.

I've been playing a lot of poker lately, and there is a downside which I don't think anyone has brought up. The worst part of me playing poker for a job lately has been that I stay home all day in front of my computer by myself. It's a depressing way to spend your time. No excercise, no interaction with other people.

I think you left out some very important information. HOw much poker have you played, at what levels, what is your winrate? Someone made a great point before about only playing poker for a job if you are very good at it. I agree - if you are really good your swings will be less, less stress. And ideally, I think you should be good enough so you can live comfortably off poker without working a full 40 hours a week.

[banditdad]

[ QUOTE ]
do you lot have commuting in america?

I waste 2-3 hours a day commuting (pretty normal for London).

If I can earn $40 per hour playing poker that's ~ $1800 a month by itself. Plus they charge me for the privilege (after tax).

so I reckon I can earn $2000 a month just by playing poker instead of commuting.

another pro of going pro? I've almost convinced myself. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

You can live in London on $2,000 a month US? Where? In an alley? London is now considered to be the most expensive city in Europe and costs more than NY to live.

Mike

[thedorf]

Hi Turning stone pro,

don't you think that if you play using a sound strategy and have a big enough bank roll to insure that variance won't make you suddenly unemployed, that the stress of "will i be able to eat?" should go away?

I am a semi pro right now (a little over half of my income is derived from poker.) I play B&M 10-20 holdem about 20 hrs a week. In october I plan to turn fully pro (%100 of my income to be derived from poker). Right now, as a semi pro, I have a deal with my wife that she gets half of my profits after every 20 hrs of play, which she uses for a variety of things. The entire other half stays in my bank roll...and never gets touched!!! All my money for bills and beer and all of life's other necessities comes from what I make at my "real" job.

When I turn fully pro in october I plan to, on the 1rst and 15th of every month, pay the bank roll 2/5ths of profits, my wife the other 2/5ths, and myself the remaining 1/5 (by the way, neither my wife nor I will help with any losses. this comes strictly from the bank roll). I seem to be coming out on the short end of this unless you consider that my wife and I have a good relationship with each other's money (she has a good, salaried job too). She would be happy to buy me a case of beer if I came out a little short on any given pay period. Notice that the bank roll still never gets touched. I really think that, "never spend a bank roll" is a necessary policy. It's really the only thing that will keep you moving up in limits.

By the way, this is turning into a disorganized, fairly off topic post but I think that any move upward in limits should be accompanied by an overbloated bank roll. Read malmuth's poker essays 1 for a good discussion of bankroll requirements. Basically, I think that if you are an excellent player (if your not, keep your day job) you should have a minimum of a 200 big bet bank roll for 5-10, 300 bb for 10-20, 400 bb-500 bb for 20-40...and I haven't thought much beyond that.

If you keep your bankroll really big there is a much smaller chance that you can lose the whole thing. If you are splitting your profits with your bankroll and yourself and whoever else you want to split them with, then even if you do happen to lose your entire bankroll you have still played profitable poker. That's a pretty nice feeling if you think about it. You've made money doing something you love.

My poker career started with $20 in a ceramic bowl of change that I kept in my bedroom. I started playing home games with my friends and doing okay but probably just because I was getting lucky. Then I read "ken warren teaches texas holdem" just because it was the most prominently featured book in the bookstore (I didn't even buy it. I just read it at the bookstore). I realized that the way to beat players that were as bad as I was was to just fold more often than them. So I started winning more, and reading different books. By the way, I haven't read "Small Stakes Holdem" yet but as of right now I think ken warren's book is the best book a person who is completely new to the game could read but that it should be thrown away and forgotten once you understand what it says. I eventually worked my way up the limits blah blah.

Anyway, my point is that even if I suck and am just a disillusioned fish and my professional career ends in short order, I've still made a bunch of money playing an entertaining little game. That's pretty cool. And plus, I think I've worked that ceramic change bowl up to about 35 bucks. So I'll have something to start with if I do lose it all.

dorf

[thedorf]

you've amassed a 25k bankroll for 20-40. IMO that means you're a good player and are playing with a very comfortable roll. I really only wish that people like you would continue to think that you're foolish for turning pro. That way I could just keep playing with fish all the time.

[bobgreen]

Isn't the legalization of Hold-em in California a good model for the future of the internet. When it started here, guys would go four raises with, say an 8, on a JJ88x board. Guys would go four raises with a 9-high flush and five or six with a Q-high. Even the dumbest and drunkest learn a little over time. The vast middle of recreational players move closer to losing not a whole lot more than twice the rake (once to pay their way, and once to pay a pro's). That leaves something for the winners, but not many will earn $100K or even $50K. And as the games get harder and your win rate declines, your fluctuations increase, and... Stand by to go broke.
As I recall my annual wins (weekends and sometimes Wednesdays) went from about $18k the first year of legal hold-em, to $15K to $12K to $10K. And I was significantly improving my game!

[thedorf]

Hey Cero_Z,

Yeah, whatever man. You probably thought you could be a chess pro too while I was spankin' your ass back in chadbourne.

[playerfl]

I'm a few years older than you guys but not a lot older ( 30's ) and I've had two careers already, one financial and one in computer technology. I can tell you there is no perfect career. I can also tell you that being employed in a 8-5 office job feels like an absolute free ride after being unemployed for over a year.

I think some of you guys just haven't had enough hard knocks to appreciate what you have. You also underestimate the stress and overestimate the rewards of going it alone in any endeavor.

Even if you quit your job, I would strongly suggest that you have a low stress part time job or else a source of passive income like bonds, rental properties, etc. or else you are in for some tough times no matter what.

[Chazbot2000]

So many good posts, I feel guilty adding my two cents; and I'm not even a pro.

I started playing a year ago and playing for more than quarters about 5 months ago. Up a little less thank $9k in that period, this all being in my spare time. I feel reasonably confident that with study/practice, I could subsist on poker with some sort of meager income of $35k/year if I all I did was play poker. A few reasons why I wouldn't do this:

1) Better at other stuff. Years from now I might get good enough to be a $100/hour player but in my regular job, $100/hour is very achievable right now.

2) Preying on others' weaknesses. I've been to a number of card rooms in the last 6 months and I've generally been depressed by who I'm winning money off of: gamblers, alcoholics, drug addicts, college students who can't afford to lose the money they're playing with. At this point the die hard poker player takes a very Ayn Rand-esque of view and says "well that's their choice." No doubt, but it doesn't mean I want to make a living off their choice.

3) You create nothing. In poker, it is truly a zero sum game. You're just trying to get chips from one side of the table to the other. In almost any other profession, you're creating something and society is better off as a whole because you did. I work for a company and made a widget. Someone buys the widget and gets more satisfaction from the widget than when they paid for it. The profits from the widget get fed into a pension fund which helps someone retire, etc. You're just not part of this cycle if you're a full time poker player.

4) I think the exception to all of my objections is if someone really has what it takes to be a top tournament pro. Then in my mind poker looks a lot more like any other professional sport like golf, tennis, etc. The stakes are big, most everyone in the game knows what they're getting into, and there's a value to caring about something so passionately that you want to be the best there is at that thing.

But that's just me.

[twang]

...or so I have heard.

Wow, such long a thread, so little talk about the rest of the world. Vehn, your replies tangents one hugely overlooked fact of the financial side of poker: 50k is not peanuts everywhere and for everyone.

I understand that having north american upper middle class standards makes the potential income from poker pretty unattractive. But FFS guys, take a look around. Do you have any idea how much those who are NOT american, college educated, urban upper middle class makes a year?

I have a double university degree and the salary in my profession is a bl**dy joke compared to my american counterpart. I live in a west european country so I still make an ok living (or so I'd like to belive).

Just think about the rest of the world for a while. Internet poker is ATM an american/west european matter. Still, for me, the numbers that has been thrown around in this thread are mind boggling. What will happen when Internet gets more widespread in the former eastern block or in the poorer east asian countries? I expect to see a lot of non-US doctors, lawyers and university teachers on Party .5/1 in the future...

[bobbyi]

[ QUOTE ]

From year to year, more people play blackjack, video poker, craps, roulette, etc. The revenues go up every year.

Why would poker be any different?

[/ QUOTE ]
Poker won't be different than blackjack. I don't think most of us expect blackjack to continue growing forever either.