lol, yeah I'm sure casino managers are scouring 2p2 in search of posts like yours. -_-

I'm a dealer. A lot of games require you to bring a player if you're dealing. Otherwise, they'll get another dealer who will bring a player.

What stakes were you dealing when you made that much?

In NYC, those games where you can make a grand per night exist, but not so much on the Island (which is where I live). And all the good NYC shifts are locked up anyway. Nobody wants to give those up.

Since the poker boom has died, there's a giant need for players. It's not just on the houseman anymore. If you can't bring players or play in the game once in a while to help shape it, then your shift is at risk.

Never thought of it like that. That's brilliant.

OP is a prime example of a situation where that assessment is clearly flawed. If he'd make $14/hour instead of $16/hour by playing poker instead of working the night shift in a freezer, that might be a vast improvement for his life.

I agree with that. OP is working in a freezer right now. It's not like he would mess up his resume by quitting that job to play poker. It's also not likely that he wouldn't get rehired in said freezer (or a different one) if poker didn't work out for him.

Most "should I quit my job to play poker" threads are by people who have a college degree and/or an at least decent paying day job. The answer to that in most cases is clearly "no friggin way in hell". The situation for OP is totally different and the only reason I wouldn't recommend going pro is the sad fact that most people don't make it and that a ****ty job is usually better than no job.

Why do you troll so early in the morning ?

Only 1 poster implied it was unbeatable by making some illogical " there's a reason why casinos are so big " comment. I think everyone else was just being cautious to the tune it might be very difficult and pressure filled to turn pro at BJ and pokerz at the same time. Um not sure even Bo Jackson could pull that off.

It was a 5-10 PLO , PLO 8 , NL mix with unlimited straddle . Guys would straddle 100$ and players would "re-re" meaning double or triple straddle. The action was sick. I never ate or pissed for fear of missing a big hand. There would be 20-60k on the table , but the stakes ended up breaking the players.

Damn! That's a crazy big game.
And yeah, see that's kind of my points. Games like that aren't sustainable.

That's why I deal a lot of Tournaments now. Tournaments are reliable, steady, and sustainable. People can lose $120 per week, every week. I'm totally fine with dealing a tournament for a couple hundred and not having to worry about players, trading action, etc.

I don't think anyone is saying that's not possible. But people who make a living of exploiting those weaknesses usually travel from casino to casino and don't spend more than a couple days at the same place before moving on and maybe coming back a couple of weeks or months later.

If part of your livelihood depends on being able to play poker at one or two set places that you have to frequent daily, you can't take the risk of getting banned from said places for being an advantage player.

Kudos to everyone who is able to go to the same casino every day to make a living from advantage play. Not getting kicked out within weeks/months is a bigger achievement than being able to beat the games in the first place.

Op:

While you still have a job try tracking your poker and other gambling results for three months.

My impression is you are a good guy with immature and unrealistic expectations. (Such as you can be a profitable blackjack player, and that your girlfriend will marry you months after being a gambler with aspirations of playing 2/5.)

Stay single. Work a job partime. Play poker to supplement your income, and improve your game. Give it 6 months to a year. If it has worked out well enough , then quit and go full time and see how it goes. Do not get married and have children and still try this. It likely will not be a success , but you are young enough and free enough to take a shot in the life situation you have described in the OP.

Mathematically, this is not true. Certainty Equivalent is the amount of variance-free money you'd accept in lieu of gambling for a higher EV. CE in poker is approximately 1/2 to 3/4 of EV, and for most posters who give or take bankroll advice from 2p2, it's closer to the bottom.

You really want to be making $28/hr at poker before you consider quitting a $14/hr job.

Blackjack CEs are even lower because there is much higher variance per unit winrate. For NL, SD/WR ratios are 5-15 for solid winners. For LHE, 10-25. For BJ, 15-50. This leads to breakeven stretches of low hundreds of hours for NL, high hundreds of hours for LHE, and thousands of hours for BJ. There's a real possibility of having a breakeven year playing full time BJ as a legitimate and solid winner.

He said a vast improvement to "his life", not to his wallet.

Fair enough.

Appreciate the responses so far guys. To help give a little more information to the thread on concerns ive seen posted. I book a win in roughly 80% of sessions I play for wins anywhere between $200-900 and never book a loss for more than $400. To be more specific when I touched on playing blackjack and betting sports profitably I meant as I have the blackjack mathamatical chart memorized so I know what to do on every scenerio and might play it once a week. As far as sports go im talking about $20 a bet and maybe looking to make a few hundred a month from it.

As far as my job goes its a bonus that I just have a regular run of the mill job and not a career im leaving and if I take a slight pay cut or possibly make a little more to make my life more enjoyable im all for it. I grossed 32k at my job this year so I brought home maybe 23k so if I could make around 25k playing cards that would cover all my expenses and leave me some left over. I think the timing of this plays a big role also since I more or less just have me to look out for right now and in maybe two years ill have a wife/kid/etc to consider. My short term maybe long term goal would be to move up to playing 5/10 regularly and not live at the 1/2 forever.

1) If it fails, how certain are you that you can go back to a job with at least the same wage?

2) Do you have a track record with at least 1000 hours that show you are a clear winner?

3) Why would you ever go into blackjack or sports betting when the nearest casino is 50 miles away and can just restrict your betting if you make a steady profit. Online casino's are even worse.

4) Do you have the intellectual capabilities to escape the warehouse and pursue a career with a much higher ceiling that you won't get tired of? I'm 27 and half way through school for a new career and I don't regret it.

5) You do realize that starting any new career, whether it is poker, another job or education is kind of out of the window when you get married and take kids? So if you feel this is kind of the last opportunity that might skew your view of the options a bit.

The problem is that you can't use math to calculate quality of life.

A friend of mine is a captain in the national guard. He's making $80k and pays taxes and life expenses from that. Recently he was told he's getting deployed to Jordan/Kuwait for a year this spring. Based on the numbers, he should be the happiest guy in the world. That $80k is going to be tax free money and his life expenses are close to zero for a year. The only problem: He really does not want to go back to the Middle East. So while math might say he should be very happy, he is in fact very sad about the situation.

If you work nights in a freezer, you might be willing to take a solid pay cut to work in a friendlier climate during the day.

Would probably love to be dealer but when I watch them it looks quite difficult and im not sure I could learn it without being a **** up and messing things up!

Do you know this because you keep good records? Or is it just your feeling? I find it dubious.
This tells me you have little understanding on how to make money at blackjack.

The number may be off some, but not alot. Just curious why you think that about blackjack? dont want to derail thread on BJ too much though.

Because even if you play blackjack perfectly you still lose to the house. That's why they offer the game. You need to systematically count cards or rely on ******ed dealers to beat them otherwise.

Is this based upon your recollection of events or actual hard records? Do you know what your hourly rate is? What is your sample size in hours?

There is a reason that they say gambling is a hard way to make an easy living. I made a serious try at it when I was young and unencumbered back in the eighties. I was playing the horses as my main focus with some sports betting and a little poker mixed in. Here are some things I learned.

You have to treat it like a career, not like a job. There is a difference. With a job, you walk away and don't give it a thought until the next shift starts. With a career you have to remain focused on improving your craft. With playing the horses that meant hours of homework every day, going over the form in minutia to find the message behind the numbers and identify solid betting opportunities. This all in addition to the 25-35 hours every week spent at the track itself. Poker is another game where you have to put in the work both on and off the tables. It looks like it's all flips and giggles when it's not your lifeline, even when you are doing it with all of your free time. But when the reality is win or get broke, you have to do the study and the work.

You have to be prepared for those times you get broke. Yes, it will happen to you. There are very few serious gamblers who don't at times get broke. I would venture that there is almost nobody playing poker for a living that has not had a few downswings to the point of being busted. I was fortunate to have a freelance occupation to fall back on (I was a carpenter) where I could always find a few days or weeks of well paid employment when I got broke, and my unmarried no kids no mortgage status meant that when I lost I was the only one who it affected. That didn't stop my friends and family from disrespecting my lifestyle, but it did mean that I was the only one who went to bed hungry.

Resume gaps and lost opportunity are a factor. You need to figure out right now what to do about the resume gap. I was fortunate that I spent decades in freelance occupations. I was able to travel freely for weeks or months at a time, or spend three years gambling for a living, without a blip. In regular jobs, explaining a gap can be problematic, and the lost opportunities can be a big deal. Being 25 and working a crappy job is one thing. Being 35 and competing for those crappy jobs with 25-year-olds is something else altogether.

Dealing with hidden costs can sneak up on you. If you make gambling your living then you can expect several hidden costs to have an impact on your lifestyle. The most obvious one is healthcare. Prescriptions, eyeglasses, dental care etc all become much more expensive without a health plan from your job. Transportation, meals and tips will also eat into your bottom line. As a rec, how often do you tip the floor? I'm thinking never. As a reg trying to make a living in his room you better start tipping him now. And also tip the dealers more too. If you're a rec they all need you. If you're a reg, now you need them more than they need you, and they can **** you up if they don't like you.

Of course the biggest factor is the rake, and how it seems to always go up. I started making a living gambling in my early twenties. I was out of it before I was thirty. Sort of like poker today, the house took away the edge by raising the rake, and 30 years later nobody is playing the ponies for a living anymore, it's too hard to win. So what happens if they raise the rake at your room, say they raise the cap from $5 to $6. There are dozens of threads on this forum talking about such things. Now you are playing full time, 30+ hours a week, maybe 25 hands an hour. So maybe you will lose an extra $100 to rake every week. Can your win rate absorb it? My success with the ponies was based on betting large sums on complicated exacta boxes and trifecta boxes, Daily Doubles, parlays etc, placing $2000 to $3000 a day in bets and clearing a 5% - 10% profit on my bets consistantly with the occasional big windfall. Frankly, it may have been unsustainable long term anyway, because it took a lot of study and was based largely on "feel." I did very well for a few years. And yes, went broke a few times too. But an increase of about 3% in the takeout was all it took to end it for me. That was all it took to drop my edge to where it was unsustainable.

I'm not here to tell you it can't be done, because people actually do it, lots of them. And I wouldn't say you can't do it, I don't even know you. But I will say that you sound under prepared. Frankly, until you can say you have been winning $30 an hour consistently for months or even a couple of years, have a 3 month life-roll in addition to your bankroll and a bankroll of about 50x your average buy-in (not because you need that much to play but because you need that much to not care about downswings,) you are not ready, even if your job does suck.

OP, I found this post in the PG&C thread of a poster by the name of ButterflySymmetry. I think you should talk to him as he has been down the road you are thinking of traveling.

"Re: STARTED WITH A $1/$2nl CHALLENGE, NOW WE'RE HERE.
5k hunting AGAIN.
If I get through this year, I may retire. After 15 years of poker agony, I think I may want a simpler life. When u count on poker for income, it can be emotional warfare on the soul. [emphasis added] Some days I ask, "Why me" over and over in my best Nancy Kerrigan voice. Why do I do this? Maybe it beats the alternative of working for the man, or working a 9 to 5, or whatever. Some days, I'm just not so sure. All I can do is grind on and hope it gets better. It usually does, but how many more times can I go through these cycles before it take its toll?
Sometimes my competitive drive gets the best of me. I just want to win so badly it hurts.
-$600 today. 2 big losses today: $200 from set over set otf, and $400 on a light 3 bet pre and then barreled every street w Q hi.

Stocks not good either from $50k back down to $42k. Sold UA and tried some other things that didn't work out.

Overall lost about 9k in last 2 weeks. 42k stock rt. 4,653 poker rt.

We still keep showing up because WE BELIEVE."

Just got done reading 2pair's post. You should take everything he said to heart.

How can someone never book a loss of more than $400 if they are winning between $200-$900 so often?