Thanks for the heads up. Next time I'm figuring out my poker Sharpe Ratio I'll make sure to see if I beat a comparable benchmark index and also check to see if it makes sense to leverage my investment.

I guess in the GAAP accounting of life one one should be careful to delineate income from revenue.

Then how do you explain that so many people claim to make a sole living paying poker. There are hundreds of books written by people who solely play cash games for a living. Either a lot of people are full of **** or they all can pay all their bills, mortgage, etc on 40 k per year?

I see no reason someone can not play 20/40 - 40 hours a week and earn 1500 a week

1500 a week times 52 weeks totals 78k per year.

And I am talking 78k on top of there bankroll. Sole income.

Also those were not my numbers just was giving you an example so maybe you could give me your guesstimates.

I mean this seems almost tautologically true because that return is going to be the discount rate...

because sometimes you lose

sometimes you cant play 40 hours a week

sometimes you dont play 52 weeks per year

How many casual visitors to Vegas claim they always make money?

Well your right factor in a few weeks for vacation, a few weeks like hollidays you work less, etcc.. But still should go over 60k

Well if it doesn't make sense just tell yourself that you play better when your investments goto **** so it makes sense to diversify. Or you can just admit what's really going on here and say you love spewing chips and sucking out on people and that compensates for any difference in return.

It's more than an accounting technicality, the opportunity cost is real. It doesn't make much difference for a rec player but for an aspiring pro it does.

Not everything is that liquid. And regulations like the tax code make them less liquid, in practice.

The opportunity cost argument is retarded. If you think you need a 20k roll to play 20/40 and can make 40k per year, you just made a 200% return on your investment. If you invested some of those winnings along the way, you would expect to make more than 200%. Had you simply invested it and not played, you might have expected to make 2k in a much riskier way. You're not "losing" 2k by not investing the money instead. You are making 40k by choosing to play with it and not investing it.

If you're a winning player who plays full time then, over the course of a year, the choice to take your roll and play poker with it rather than invest it in the market, is by far the better risk adjusted return. Once your roll gets too big for your stakes and if you're not moving up then, yeah, there'd be an opportunity cost to leaving that money on the sidelines.

Most pros don't turn pro because its profit maximizing. They do it because it's "work" minimizing. While this is clearly an illusion on their part it would help you a lot in trying to convince aspiring pros of things if you understood that.

Edit: That plus I'd love for you to find me a better investment of 25k over 1 year than buying 100% of the action of a full time playing pro who wins 1 bb/hr.

Lets say for arguments sake that someone has a 20k bankroll to start a poker for a living career. The person decided to dedicate 40 hours per week to the job for 50 weeks per year (Taking a day week vacation time) and also running 10 hour sessions on the weeks he plans to take days off for a holiday like Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc..

The person makes 60 k per year (Never counting the 20k bankroll). Pays all his taxes, puts money into a 401K, maybe a little money a year into a CD or investment, Does not need benefits cause they get it from a spouse. Why not play for a living as opposed to working a typical 9 to 5 job where in the world today you work for 20 years then when your making too much money they let you go for someone younger.

Poker for a living would make more sense to me. It is never going away. If anything as more and more states add casinos it is growing.

bruno how old are you and where are you located?

No, opportunity cost is not an 'argument', it's a part of the reality that most people odn't consider. Poker is 1. work and 2. tie up of capital. It looks ok when it looks like just work or just an investment. But you have to do both. So you didn't really make 40k, you made 38k. And if you worked at a job that paid you 39k and added in the 2k you made on the 25 you would have made 41 total.
It's a discount that applies whenever you tie up money. It's not like the cost just goes away because you made more than the 2k. If you want to consider all the income as a "return on investment", then why don't you think about for a second what kind of risk adjusted return you get at a desk job, and how that compares to poker.

Whatever their reasons, I pointed out something that I thought was true, and they can do what they want with it.

You're right, 100% of the action of a full time player would be an amazing return. I believe that's called a 'slave'. Returns on slaves are great, especially when you don't have to pay for them.

Phil Ivey could have been an astronaut

I suspect that a lot of this winrate talk can be cut through by thinking about things from the opposite direction:

Where does the money come from? For every winning player, an equal amount needs to be lost, PLUS RAKE, from other players in the pool.

The result of that math is that unless there is a constant flow of tourists or whales in a particular poker venue, most of the REGULARS must be net losers.

Absorb that. Most regular poker players lose.

To be a net winner at any stake, you need to be significantly better than most players in the pool. To make "a living", you need to be not just a net winner but a significant net winner, which means you need to be one of the very top players, probably in the 90th or 95th percentile. If you have any doubt about this, look at the data on PTR regarding online play.

Only the very cream of the poker crop makes a living playing poker. The rest of the pool feeds the beast, to a greater or lesser extent.