man the fu up and do hu ffs, you both have same experience anyways.

If you guys HU the only winner is amaya at the stakes you'll be playing

Nah we run it in a home game?

Obviously..

this thread has more action lately then when meale was playing. botsonparty isnt far from the mark to be honest. Don't give up meale, get back on 5z and grind it back up.

lol not worth my time. and i don't even have a 5z roll :')

It's not that he isn't far from the mark. He is right on mark. If you don't come from East block or other 3rd world country and you think becoming a pro poker player is a good idea, the truth is you're just not very smart, therefore you will never make NL400+ or whatever.

If making money is your primary concern in life then no, don't pursue poker as a career in 2016. I don't consider those sorts of people to be very smart anyway, but then again I suppose "smart" is subjective. Say you value freedom, privacy or any of the many other things a professional poker player might enjoy? It's not "the truth", it's your opinion. If someone pursues something that makes him happy, whether or not it's the most +$EV, why does that make him stupid. I'd argue that the guy who gives up on something that makes him happy to chase the $$$ doing something he hates is more the fool. Make your own life choices and stick by them. Don't see why you guys feel the need to preach to everyone.

I don't think it's ever been smart to pursue poker as a career.

Imo grinding 2NL in Cambodia is higher EV than smthing like what Brokenstars is doing to himself rn, working >50 hr weeks.

^Was pretty smart in 2008 imo.

How are you going to build up savings for the future?

How are you going to pay for a pension when you're older?

How are you going to get a mortgage for a house with no proof of income and earning a pittance salary?

How are you going to pay for a family (if you decide you want a family some time in the future)?

What are you going to do if games become unbeatable some time in the next 10-20 years?


There are lots and lots of negatives to playing poker for a living if you're making that little money. May I ask how old you are and what's your life situation at the moment?

Gold

Sent from my GT-I8190 using 2+2 Forums

Hopefully through poker, however naive and cliche that's considered to be in today's environment. Regardless, it's something that isn't worth dwelling on. If you haven't already gathered from my posts, money isn't all that relevant to me, providing I've enough to remain self sufficient with freedom to travel.

Again, another monetary based question. There seems to be a repeating pattern amongst all the self righteous cynics. I live in a country where healthcare is free. I have over 40 years until retirement age, likely longer by the time I get there and have a few fallback options should poker fail. I'll start thinking about my pension when it makes sense to do so.

Oh, another money related question - joy. Firstly, why do you assume I'd want a mortgage? Is it because you want/have one and so assume everyone else should to? I hate being tied down with a 12 month phone contract, I'd be pulling my hair out with the weight of a 30 year mortgage commitment bearing down on me. Pittance? Even if we use a conservative hourly of £20 for a decent reg at micro/small stakes, it's still way over the national average which probably puts you ahead of like 95% of the population. I mean, I don't know your background but if £800 for a standard working week is "pittance" wages to you then ye, maybe poker isn't for you.

I'm not going to stress about how to provide for a family that I don't even have yet. Of course if I were to have a family and poker wasn't able to pay the bills then I'd obviously have to go back to working as a croupier or something.

As I said, I guess I'll have to do something else. It's not like I'm just gonna crawl up and die alongside poker. I'm under no illusion that it's a lifelong career. Short term, if poker allows me to earn a reasonable wage alongside the countless other benefits it offers, then I'll take what I can from it, enjoy the experience and worry about future problems when there's a need to.

All the things you listed are things YOU consider to be important. Aside from one day starting a family, I genuinely couldn't give a **** about the rest. Everyone has their own list of priorities. Clearly money takes up the top 2 spots on your list whereas it probably ranks 3rd or 4th on mine. For some people it's religion, others family. For me it's all about the freedom. It's easy to make a list supporting your bias. Name any job and I'll come up with a list as long as your arm with all the advantages professional poker has over it.

The freedom to work as many or as few hours as I choose.
Earning my money doing something I enjoy that keeps my mind active.
The freedom to work in almost any country in the world.
Independence
Anonymity
The list goes on and on...

I'm yet to find something that ticks as many boxes on MY list as poker does. If it flops or the games dry up in the near future then **** it, I'll move onto the next best thing. If doing something else ticks your boxes and allows you to live a more fulfilling life than poker would offer you then do it. I just don't see why you have to project your ideoligies onto other people.

Re my situation: I'm 24 and single. I worked for 5 years as a croupier in some top London Casinos. I was earning a very good wage relative to my age and my socioeconomic background. I had a nice place on the outskirts of London with my GF and my dog and despite all this I was deeply depressed. I spent too much time trying to conform to social dogmas, the same idelogies you and others like you seek to impose on everyone else, as if to get validation or something. Much like a religious person trying to convert others rather than come to the realisation that maybe they're the crazy one.

I'm now trying to make poker my primary source of income. If it flops, it flops. To me it's not as big a deal as you make it out to be. I'll just have to grind my way through the monotonous rat race of 21st century living just like everyone else. However, if it doesn't flop, I've managed to achieve something that has eluded me for most of my life - happiness, even if it only lasts for a short while. I'm not trying to convince anyone to take up poker as a profession, it falls short in so many areas for so many people. However, you need to understand that we're not all looking for the same things out of life and what may seem like a pointless pursuit to you might be only worthy pursuit for another.

As a little side note: I'd consider serious Buddhists to be some of the most happy and balanced people on the planet, often in the absence of wealth, possessions or stability. Compare this to all the high flying bankers and CEO's of the world with their high income and all the other things we strive towards achieving in our society. How many of them do you reckon are balanced and happy, truthfully? Just something to think about...

You won't build savings making 10 bucks an hour. You don't have freedom (especially freedom to travel to nice parts of the world) on 10 bucks an hour. Unless you want to be financially broke by the time you're 30, of course.

Pension is built up from contributions made during your working life. If you're a poker pro for 10 years, that's 10 years of forgone pension earnings. You won't realise this is a mistake until you hit 45-50 years old, by which time it will be too late to rectify.

You're going to rent for your whole life? lol, ok. You also said 10 bucks an hour, not £20 an hour.

That said, no chance you are making £20 an hour in todays micro stakes games. There are not enough huge fish and rake is too high to sustain that sort of hourly at the micros in 2016.

If you get to 40 years old and realise you don't have enough money to properly support a family, you will regret playing poker for 10 bucks an hour. Again, some mistakes only become apparent 20 years down the line when it's too late to rectify.

What, and get a job with that huge gap on your CV, not to mention lack of social/people skills? It's not as easy as that I'm afraid.

10 bucks an hour isn't a reasonable wage though. Poker does not offer countless benefits. It offers no job/income security, no pension, no holiday pay, big gap on CV, no transferable skills into any other decent real world job, it's lonely and the swings are highly stressful if you have to pay rent and bills.

You sound very naive. You will give a **** about these things at 35-55 years old, believe me. I know people in their late 30's, 40's and 50's in real life who deeply regret the financial decisions they made in their 20's and early 30's. But it's too late to change it now. Many of their financial mistakes (related to savings, pensions, buying their own home, starting a family) are similar to the ones you are about to make in becoming a poker pro.

If you take time off as a poker player, that's lost income for you. In a real job, you get paid for your holidays.

Weekends too - you do realise that as a poker pro, you will have to work extremely unsociable hours (i.e. evenings and weekends)? Because that is when the most fish are online.

You don't have freedom earning 10 bucks an hour. You can't afford to take hours off as you choose when you're making so little money.

No one is saying you need to be a CEO or other ultra-high paying job. But don't pick poker, which has zero career prospects and so many negatives (some which I've already listed). It's a short term way of making money, which doesn't lead to anywhere and has massive opportunity costs for anyone vaguely intelligent. At 10 bucks an hour, you're making a big mistake to play this game for a living in 2016 and anyone with any ounce of common sense would agree with me. Why do you think all the pros (including many of the good pros) are working on an exit strategy from this game? Many have already quit in the last 3-4 years. That should tell you something.

Btw, you say you live in London. How will you afford rent in a nice place in London on 10 bucks an hour?

WTF!

I go away for a week and Meale's thread turns into BQ.

****ing hell you really tried to get that "10 bucks an hour" point across didn't you. Don't put words in my mouth. I said I'd rather earn a tenner (£10/$15) than earning more than that doing something I don't enjoy. By no means am I saying I aspire to earn £10/hour, and in reality I expect to make considerably more, assuming of course that I'm even successful. Do you even play the games nowadays or are you just one of these washed up regs from the past? We'll take a conservative 4bb/100 winrate at 50nlz seeing as some of the better regs are getting close to double this. This equates to $20 an hour without even taking RB into consideration. So ye, you can earn 4x the national minimum wage playing microstakes as a decent reg. Moving up to the small stakes we can expect hourlies to easily surpass $30-40 an hour including RB even with winrates as small as 2bb/100. I've also put in 90% of my volume at zoom tables on weekdays between 9am and 7pm and have gone from 5nl-25nl in less than 2 months (whilst learning and playing horribly) so saying you have to work certain hours to turn a profit is, like most of what you've said, complete BS.

Pretty much every one of the points you made revolves around the idea that I'll be making $10 an hour, as oppose to the $40+/hour we can realistically expect. $40/h is the equivalent of $60/h if you account for not having to pay tax. Then account for the money you save in travel and all the other costs associated with working a full time job. How many jobs do you know of that pay $60/h with no qualifications, that allow you to travel, work unlimited overtime, take unlimited time off etc etc... For every negative you list there is a positive to counter it. It's just a case of weighing up which aspects are most important to you. Your criteria for a good life are worlds apart from mine. I can accept that without trying to educate you about your mistakes (from my perspective), why can't you?

I tend not to take life advice from people who's lives I'd hate to live so I'm not really sure what you're trying to achieve. I've already said that I know poker isn't gonna be around for much longer. I already said I'm just looking to enjoy it while I still can. I told you I have fallbacks, ones where CV gaps aren't an issue. I've said that I appreciate poker isn't a good option for most people. And, by now, I hope you see that I'm not most people, nor do I want to be. I'm telling you that this is the best route for me at the moment and who the **** are you to say that it isn't? I was living the life you're trying to sell me and I absolutely hated it - to the point where I was suicidal. The pivotal point in my recovery was when I stopped listening to people like you and started following my own advice. Had you walked a mile in my shoes then you might be able to relate a little better but all the views you've expressed so far, to me, are indicative of a narrow mind and I'm obviously just banging my head against a brick wall. Best of luck with your endeavors mate.

(Sorry for the massive derail meale )

Take a year off, do traveling and see what happens. Don't plan very long term with online poker.
You seem motivated so gl!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk