poker is a way of life vs. poker is just a hobby

[CanKid]

I just sent my letter of resignation to the president of the company I've been working at for 2-3 years. Poker for awhile.

[creedofhubris]

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pokerroom

2-5 was the top limit there for a looooong time, and many regulars were beating it for quite a bit I'm sure. It felt like one of the best midstakes games on the net. (I feel weird saying that since I have extremely limited experience on other sites to compare it with.) My biggest criteria is just a feeling I've gotten when other games have been described on this board, contrasted with the general play I saw at the 2-5.

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I should also point out that there have been recent changes to the site; they've added bigger games and gotten rid of the 2-5 game.

A bunch of sharks have arrived to feed off the big games.

That's in part what prompted this post; the game is now tougher and bigger, which is why I need to reevaluate what I'm doing.

[OtisTheMarsupial]

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My advice is to drop down in limits and finish your PhD.
You can still hone your game part time.
Poker will still be around long after you have your degree.


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[CHiPS]

I'll chime in. I have my PhD in Electrical Engineering and make 100K+ per year at that. I play poker as a hobby and I make some money on the side. I also make more money trading commodities than I do playing poker (both are gambling). I enjoy what I do as an engineer. I like the social interactions that come with working at a company. I do not consider myself particularly suited to live casino poker. I dont live in the right place and I know I would not enjoy spending all day , day after day in a casino. I love vacationing in Vegas though and I am a winner there. I find it hard to think I would like to sit at a computer all day for years to play internet poker.
Out of all the people I have talked to about gambling virtually everyone underestimates the impact of short and medium term luck. I would say the same about investments. From the people that bust out quick, to those that are successfull early on. And its not just the financial impact of a loosing streak, it is the psychological impact. The younger a person is, the more likely they are to underestimate the luck.
But my job is ending in a few months. I have some money set aside so I am playing poker now, trying to ramp up in skill a bit. I may take 6 months and see how I do. I want to take some time off from the corporate world - I've been there 9 years, so its a good break.
Its great to have more than one way to make money or live your life. Having only poker your whole life I think would take a special personality.
But I think the bottom line is two things - 1. Do you like it that much ? and 2. How good are you ? And with this one you need to be brutally honest with youself and realize that if you have not played for a long time, your estimate of how good you are could be wrong. If I were going to do it I'd get to know several pros and try to get a no BS evaluation from them as to how good I really was. And if you are really good - go kick some butt at it.

[freemoney]

with very good bankroll management and enough hands played and the ambition to continually prove in terms of financial risk poker is a lot less of a gamble then working for someone else where you are at their mercy. i am not saying its an attractive way to spend the rest of your life but in terms of fiancial certainty you can prob be more accurate then in nearly any other profession. i think you are over rating medium term luck

[Oluwafemi]

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Just wondering how some of you other successful high-stakes players weigh the attraction of full-time poker, and the attendant wins, vs. a more intellectually & emotionally satisfying career. In the midst of a bit of an existential dilemma here.

Right now I view myself as a part-time poker player. (This may be self-delusion.) I spend about 20-25 hours/week playing. It's been my primary source of income for a while now. For a comparatively long time, I made a comfortable sum basically nut-peddling at $2/$5 NL; I was playing at that level for about a year while other strong players who opposed me moved up in limits. I never did. Now I've had to; thanks to some structural changes at the site I play, I've started regularly playing bigger games, $5/$10 and $10/$20.

Anyway. Moving up out of my "comfort zone" has caused some embarrassing mistakes (yesterday alone I dropped three buyins that I had no business dropping, for a $4K hit!), but there is, of course, much more earn potential.

But to play at those levels and win significant sums, I really need to clean up my game. I've been essentially a gentleman amateur. I don't even have pokertracker or a rakeback deal, fergoshsakes. (No need to offer me one, thanks.) I have plenty of leaks, and it would take significant study, discipline, and introspection to turn myself into a consistent big winner at a level where nut peddling is not enough.

I'm also a graduate student. Poker has pulled me about a year off-schedule and if I don't get my nose to the grindstone right now I'm basically never going to finish my degree. Intellectually, I find poker interesting, but since I'm working on an English degree it's not a similar sort of thought to what I'd viewed myself spending the rest of my life doing.

My girlfriend is not a poker player but is very amused at my poker success and supportive. My parents are not so amused.

I imagine stockbrokers and other "sellouts" go through the same sort of angst when they realize/consider that they're spending a lot of time in an essentially meaningless, stressful profession whose sole point is the accumulation of money.

Since I've essentially been "kicked upstairs" to these higher limits, I feel I'm at the point where I need to either acknowledge that this is my life now and I need to get all the tools of the trade and spend my spare time and brainpower working on improving my play, or admit that it's just a hobby, ease back on the hours, focus on finishing my PhD, and treat it as a profitable sideline.

I am also reminded that the guy who got me into this game was originally a physics grad student who dropped out to play blackjack, and who has since convinced another mutual friend to drop out of his grad program to play blackjack. Seems like a common result.

Anyway, comments from those who have faced similar decisions, or found a way to balance poker and profession, would be appreciated.

(This post may amuse those who play against me, since I probably seem like a "full-time player", but, really, I'm not! Really!)

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and what is a "comfortable sum" nut-peddling at $2/$5 NL?

[creedofhubris]

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and what is a "comfortable sum" nut-peddling at $2/$5 NL?

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A bajillion dollars.

But, if I move up in stakes, I could make a gajillion dollars.

Think about it.

A gajillion.

Dude.

[Smock8]

I must say, this is one of the most interesting posts that i have ever read.

I am in a similar situation though not so far down my educational career. I am a freshman in college and do pretty well for myself online. If the playing field stayed relatively the same for the rest of my life i could drop out of school and make a comfortable living for myself very easily. However, there are no gauarntees that things will stay so easy and, like many people have mentioned, it seems like an unfullfulling life.

What im plan on doing with my situation is, ill finish college, probably go to grad school. Poker will simply mean that a can do whatever i want with my life and be able to live reasonably well. Without a doubt you should focus and finish your degree, quitting and focusing on poker would narrow your options to a great degree while finishing school still leaves everything open.

[Oluwafemi]

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and what is a "comfortable sum" nut-peddling at $2/$5 NL?

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A bajillion dollars.

But, if I move up in stakes, I could make a gajillion dollars.

Think about it.

A gajillion.

Dude.

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in the immortal words of Mason Malmuth:

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nothing else needs to be said.

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[kagame]

realize i need to remember this thread and add it to my favorites...