You are flat out incorrect. What some of you don't seem to realize is that most poker pros are not Daniel Negreanus or whoever you choose to name. The vast majority are making $30 an hour or less. These aren't the people you see on TV, they're the people grinding out 1/2 NL live day after day or playing $25NL online for rakeback. There are a lot more poker pros making around minimum wage and happy to make it because it means they don't have to work for real than there are people who make millions.

You're right of course, and that's true in almost any profession. There are a lot of actors in Hollywood or New York that are barely grinding out a living while spending most of their day going on auditions. You might see a rich and famous lawyer on TV, but you don't see any of the hundreds of lawyers that are assistant prosecutors in some small county. For every millionaire baseball player that you see on TV, there are many more who have for years been playing for the Grand Rapids Whitecaps or the Toledo Mud Hens, trying to make it to the major leagues.

Only a few make it to the top of the heap, and the odds are against you, in poker or anything else. Major law firms won't even look at applicants that don't graduate in the top 10% of their class. A major orchestra might get 100 applications for one open spot in the clarinet section. Donald Trump wouldn't give any of his children a management position in one of his companies until they got a degree from a good business school, then served an apprenticeship at the lower levels of one or more of his businesses.

Dusty Schmidt, aka Leatherass, got his nickname by grinding online cash games for 60 or more hours a week. Johnathan Little says that he got his roll to play on the WPT by "basically grinding more SNGs than anyone in the world" for three years.

There are no shortcuts. Successful poker players are smart, determined, and usually have a great work ethic. Many spend as many hours studying as playing.

I keep my track of my poker time spent in three categories: playing, studying and administrative. I track it in quarter-hour increments, just like I'm punching a time clock. I have ADD, and it's way too easy for me to get distracted and think I've been working for an hour when I really spent 15 minutes of that time reading news stories online. But the main reason that I track my time is so that I get enough study time. For now I study at least 15 hours a week, but I might have to increase that for a while. As I get better, I move up and play against better competition, which exposes more leaks in my game. So it's back to spending more time studying the math and the theory.

Poker players do have one advantage over professional athletes. If you're good enough, you can play for many years. A concussion or torn rotator cuff won't end your career.

Take a look at this thread for an interesting take on why you can't make it as a pro:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...-poker-905623/

no life strat plz

Poker success and life strategies are inseperable. There was a recent post on these forums. There was a recent post in these forums where a guy went on a heater, bought an x-box and a big screen TV, and moved up a level. Now he's on 2+2, starting to over and asking for advice.

That was all about lack of self-control and lack of patience. Patience and self-control are necessary qualities for any poker pro.