Could be immensely rewarding in a few years if you know what you're getting into, but not if you're currently burned out. I passed on a similar opportunity in San Diego a few years ago, now that company's really taking off.

GL. I am a bit jealous. If you have programming skillz you are going to have a hard time not finding a job when ever you want.

I have a friend who quit his tech job and played WoWC full time for 2 years and then was able to go back as soon as he wanted to. Ironically, he yells at me for not learning to program fast enough because I am playing poker.

Bloody good luck to you.... you're about to live the dream!!!!

Good Luck! I'll be looking forward to reading about your journey.

Read Tony Robbins books and play lots of tennis

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this question:

Your mean is +32 and your Standard Deviation is 390?

That seems like an awfully high SD. Doesn't the SD converge rather quickly? My mean is currently 6.36 with a SD of 37.37. Is this SD low? This SD would be about 4.7 big bets. This is over 151.75 hours and 47 sessions of 4/8 with .5 kill.

Also how are you calculating SD?

I'm calculating as follows:

For each session I take the average hourly rate for the session and subtract it from the overall hourly rate. I then square that number and multiply the result by the number of hours in that session. I sum this number for all sessions and divide by the total number of hours played. I then take the square root of this number. This is correct, right?

Thanks and sorry if this belongs somewhere else. I looked in brags, bad beats, and variance but didn't find anything specific to variance and SD.

How large is a typical SD in big bets for poker?

Haha ... you sir are severely underestimating variance (unless live tells are the nutz and live players don't suffer ds).



My heart is with you, tho I'm an online player. I did the same thing, just quit and started to play.

This is what might happen

1) Your mind will play tricks on you

2) Your social life will die

3) Your health will suffer

4) Your mind will play tricks on you

5) Downswings will repeately crush your soul

6) etc etc


Personally I discovered that I didn't really have any skill, that I never could move up due to always cashing out my roll to pay bills and that playing all the time leaves little room for pokerstudy as you have to pay due to bills looming in the distance.


But I managed to return to college on my mediocre poker salary and finish my econ degree (with a little financial support from the gf).

I have a job as an economist now, where I work with price indices. I get to go to Luxembourg and hold meetings with people of similar jobs from central banks and other statistical institutes. I can go to work at 11 am and leave early and no one says anything as long as I average 37hrs/week. I get paid if I'm sick or even if my new born baby is sick and I have to stay at home for a few days. (well not these days, as teh gf is on maternal leave, but when she returns to work, I will)








And you know what, five minutes rarely pass, where I don't think about quitting and returning to poker as my only source of income. (Despite 'only' having an hourly of 50$)

I'm using the formula from Mason's book, "Gambling Theory and Other Topics"

Best of luck with your new path, I'm sure it will be an adventure and something you look back on with a smile.. however it turns out, but I wish you the best.

With Insurance... If it was me, I would make my last day of work Aug. 1st. that way they will cover you the entire month and you will only have a couple weeks not covered. You also might need to consider the fact that you really dont want a lapse in coverage. If it were me, I would have Aug 1st be my last day and then get Cobra the following month...it will only be a few hundred for a young healthy guy.

Best of luck!

Ive been playing for a living full time online for three years.

Six weeks is way too short a timeframe. It took me longer than that to figure out what I needed to do to succeed as a professional. Take at least six months. The transition from part time to full time is much harder than you anticipate.

You are way underrolled for the limits you intend to play. The first downswing you hit you are going to ship your pants and tilt. I play with 1500 big bets for the largest game I play in. I could give a ship about variance.

If you are in reasonably good health consider getting hospitalization coverage and self insure for everything else. I have saved a ton of money this way.

Good luck. I find playing full time for a living to be rewarding and fulfilling. I love what I do, I am my own boss, make my own hours and I look foward to going to work every day. I hope it works out for you.

The plan I'm getting is basically just hospitalization insurance and will be of use to me mainly if I get into a car accident. Are there plans that specifically only cover emergency care? That could be a useful trick.

Also...my work plan does not do the "cover you the whole month" thing, although my last day is August 1st anyway...My health care is going to start on August 2nd and I will have a lapse of zero hours.

I'm fully aware that 6 weeks is not long enough to figure everything out. It is, however, a long enough time that I will be able to tell if I hate what I'm doing. The most likely outcome here is that after 6 weeks I'll be like "hey, that was pretty fun, I think I'll keep going". I'm never going to reach a point where I'm "committed" to playing poker forever...it'll just get slightly harder to find a job as the months/years pass. At 3 years I suppose I could have a serious problem

As for my roll not being big enough....the players around here like to say "no gambool no future"

Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it. It's nice to hear from someone who does this and actually enjoys it.

Note - you don't even need to pay a COBRA premium for the first 60 days. They'll back-date it if you get hurt in that time period, as long as you pay the premiums before 60 days are up.

It doesn't sound like you're going to use COBRA anyway (it's way more expensive than a 26yo w/o health issues should need to pay).

-d

I'm trying to build something playing 3/6 limit live, and was wondering what negative effects playing daytime has? I have noticed that most of the better, more serious players do arrive later in the day.

Good luck in your trial Jesse. I have no idea what pro life is like; only what I've read, but I wish you the best of luck and good play.

Good luck Jesse. IMO, you are FAR better positioned, both financially and mentally, to take your shot than most posters here.

On your notes, Steven Covey (7 Habits) makes this suggestion:

3 simple questions:

1) What should I KEEP doing? (Should be at least 80% of what you did. Pat yourself on the back for what you got right.)
2) What should I STOP doing? (No more than 10%.)
3) What should I START doing? (Again, no more than 10%)

This makes you look backward and assess and then systematically apply forward and grow. Good luck .

Health insurance issue:

I am a California licensed Life and Helath insurance agent and have been since 1976.

IMO, any "only" plan, hospitalization ONLY or cancer ONLY, etc., are bad ideas. In your position I suggest that you consider a high deductible comprehensive plan, preferably one that is HSA (Health Savings Account) compliant. The reasons I say this include:

1) Today, hospitals get you out of there as quickly as possible. Suppose you have that auto accident and need lots of physical therapy. A true hospitalization plan will cover none of the physical therapy expense because you are out of the hospital.
2) If your health changes, you will be stuck in that hospitalization plan. Remember, you will have to re-prove insurability every time you wish to increase your coverage at a later date. In CA, the rules about these changes make it very easy for a small change in your health to leave you stuck in your current plan.
3) You are more likely to get sick than to get in an accident. If you got cancer, outpatient chemo expenses would quickly expose the big weakness in a hospital only plan.

Buying your own policy instead of going COBRA is a good idea, but consider a HIGH DEDUCTIBLE HSA compliant COMPREHENSIVE plan instead. It will keep you from going broke in far more situations than a hospital only plan. Just something to think about.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take"
Michael Jordan

Go get em!

Great post and great responses.

You've prepared very well and are taking the right approach. This will either be a GREAT learning experience for you or the start of any awesome career.

I did what you are doing now for about 6 months (last year). And suggest again that you take a lot of what these guys are saying seriously, especially the advice about your social/family life and health.

After my 6 months I remade another plan to "go pro". It's going to take me another 2 years to pay off all my current debt and save up for it (18mo living exp and 1200BB).

I think about quitting my job to play again at least 20 times a day lol.

I'm behind you 100%.

Good Luck!

Right. Obviously not a concern in the short run, but you need to think about all of the other benefits that your employer provides (e.g., Dental, Vision, retirement savings, disability insurance, etc.). I was thinking broader about all of these categories when I said that $40 an hour isn't going to be a lot, when you factor in all of these other things that your employer subsidizes.

correct.

For what it's worth, the live 6/12 action at Artichoke Joe's in San Bruno was about as soft as it could possibly be at like 10am on Saturdays and Sundays. Literally I would sit down at the table and play for 3 hours and be the only one who raised less than the current nut holding. Earn rate maybe not as high as the crazy drunken friday night games, but seriously simple to play.

Thanks for the advice. I don't have a "hospitalization" only plan (my plan is high deductible and comprehensive) but thought it sounded tempting. Thanks for sharing the cons

As for proving insurability....if I were to come down with a serious health condition I'd have no choice but (sadly) to go back to work and get covered under a company plan

My total compensation (counting everything I get....salary, health care, vacation, and 401K matching) is surprisingly close to just my salary. Retirement savings and health care turn out to be pretty minor in the scheme of things...the biggest loss actually is paid vacation time

Gretzky, actually.

-d

I'm wondering if you file taxes as a professional gambler, do you have to pay SS and Medicare taxes? I know you do if you are self employed. This would kind of suck, because you would have to pay the employer contribution to SS as well as the employee contribution. Anyone know?

If you are reporting your poker winnings as earned income (which is rightly is), then you need to pay self employment tax, which is what SS/Medicare is called on the 1040.

AB