OT: My mom wants me to be a poker pro - Page 5

Rick Diesel · #41 10-07-2005, 03:15 PM

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I'm a senior at UCF, graduating in August. I've been seriously considering taking a year off and playing poker. I visited my grandparents and spent 3 hours at Foxwoods up in CT. I made $64~ an hour at 2/4 limit and that was folding every single hand for the first hour because I got dreadful cards. You just start thinking to yourself...what job out of college would give you $64 an hour? And on top of that - would you love it? Even if you make it $50 an hour for 40 hrs/week it comes out to $100,000 a year full time. I'm not trying to toot my own horn but just bring up a point regarding people in my similar situation. My parents have warmed up to the idea but they were so concerned when I started playing. They thought I was going to become a gambling addict and get kicked out of school and all that craziness. There were some good points mentioned above about the lack of benefits from being a poker player. I'm just pretty much confused as lots of us fairly successful college poker players are. A lot of graduates take a year off to go skiing, travel the world and whatever, I guess you could consider this just something like that. Did anyone reading this thread actually do this? How did it turn out?

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$50 an hour playing 2/4? Are you serious? A great player would have to run hot for the whole year to average $10 an hour. $100k a year playing 2/4, yeah!

Hornacek · #42 10-07-2005, 03:16 PM

Rebuy whenever you get low to get back up to $100

liucipher · #43 10-07-2005, 03:28 PM

I'm pretty sure you can't extrapolate your $/hr rate when you're running hot + when the casino is at maximum donk capacity to a full 40 hour week. e.g. I've noticed my SNG ROI is better when there are 50,000+ players online than when there are ~20,000 players. Hell, I wouldn't even extrapolate how you're doing this year into a full 30-year career (in ten years, I'd imagine the poker landscape is significantly different).

Second, even if you made $100,000 a year: it's true there are very few jobs out of college that pay that much for 40 hours a week. But there are a slew of finance jobs that pay that much or more for 60-100 hours a week. And those jobs, when you get to your late 20s and early 30s, will pay you significantly more than you could ever make playing poker (unless you're Phil Ivey, but I'm guessing the odds you're Phil Ivey are about the same odds that you're Eric Mindich).

My $.02: poker's a great hobby and an even better career if you're an amazing player. But don't compare how much you're making right now with how much you could make right out of college. The payoffs of a career come much later, whereas the "salary" from poker levels off pretty quickly.

liucipher · #44 10-07-2005, 03:30 PM

Not a bad idea.

Stupid question: how much (off the top of the head) should I expect to lose in a 4 hour session of $100NL at FW just due to variance?

Scuba Chuck · #45 10-07-2005, 03:46 PM

Before we move on, I'd want to know how you mom had the "sex talk" with you first. This might clear up the picture a little more for us.

SNOWBALL138 · #46 10-07-2005, 03:48 PM

Which political theory class? I took classical political theory and modern political theory. Those were two of my favorite classes. Just curious.

Hornacek · #47 10-07-2005, 04:04 PM

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Second, even if you made $100,000 a year: it's true there are very few jobs out of college that pay that much for 40 hours a week. But there are a slew of finance jobs that pay that much or more for 60-100 hours a week. And those jobs, when you get to your late 20s and early 30s, will pay you significantly more than you could ever make playing poker (unless you're Phil Ivey, but I'm guessing the odds you're Phil Ivey are about the same odds that you're Eric Mindich).

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I just graduated with my Bachelors ('04) and Masters ('05) in Computer Science from MIT and am working in NY on Wall Street. My first year pay, while not amazing compared to what I hope to make in the future, is probably the same amount any of the top 5% of the players here will make in a year. Plus, I get free breakfast and lunch every day, medical insurance, dental, life insurance, transportation subsidy, and 401K retirement.

On top of that, I go home every night, play poker (if I want to) without the restriction that I won't have any food to eat if I lose it all.

In short: FINISH COLLEGE. I played 3x as much as I do now in college, and still got decent grades... your parents will be happy, and it's the better long-term goal.

liucipher · #48 10-07-2005, 04:41 PM

Free breakfast and lunch . . . I take it you're doing trading?

MS in course 6 . . . I'm going to take a stab and guess derivatives?

Right/wrong? :-)

Hornacek · #49 10-07-2005, 04:44 PM

You're a beaver too?

trading... equity options and futures... how did you know? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

liucipher · #50 10-07-2005, 04:48 PM

Naw my sis was a beaver. Wears the brass rat and everything. Bunch of friends from high school went there too.

I'm still a senior in college. The firm where I was interning at the past summer though had a 2nd year from MIT that had a 5.0 in B.S./M.S. in CS. He thought finance was the most boring thing in the world . . . but easily the best paying. :-)