Sounds bad.

It's probably too late for this advice, but I would recommend avoiding being a poker pro until you can comfortably beat 5/10 NL (or similar size PL) or 24/40 limit or higher. The winrate at smaller games is simply too low to have a secure life. You'll always be one disaster (poker or life) away from ruin. Or else looking at not paying taxes, skipping health insurance etc in order to make ends meet.

As a general rule, because of the downsides & costs of poker (variance, self employment tax, lack of vacation, lack of insurance, etc), I would say you need to have twice the income at poker you would need from a "real" job to live the same lifestyle. So if you want to live a middle class life (~30K/year consumption or a 50K/year gross salary) you need to make about 100K/year gross from poker.

If you feel like you can't be a winner in those bigger games due to lack of skill or bankroll, I would suggest playing part-time with a job and working up.

Can we just sticky this post and force everyone to read it who wants to move to Vegas to become a poker pro?

No objection from me. I can't for the life of me figure out what a lot of these people are doing. I guess this includes OP, even though he seems a little more grounded than most. But the basic plan of playing 1/2 in Tampa seems like it has to end up as a Florida Man headline - "Florida man allegedly sold meth, contraband alligator taxidermy to undercover officer. Claimed he needed buyin money."

OP is way too talented to stay at 1/2 for long. He's in no rush and is taking his time in moving up. FWIW, I think you can make pretty good money at 2/5. It's not the end game but as a single guy you can make plenty of money to support yourself in soft 2/5 games throughout the country.

I don't recommend poker as a career path in general but if it's something you really want to do then what the hell..you only live once.

This is a really bad way about realizing your dreams.

You only live once but you have multiple chances to make "poker pro" work. It's not like your only two options are to quit your job immediately, or stop chasing your dreams forever.

What most people do is make a half-assed attempt at something, fail, putz around with a half-baked backup plan (ill just become a poker dealer amirite??), then get impatient and make another half-assed attempt. Being patient and making a full-assed attempt is a much better way to go.

The monetary comparison between poker and a job is straightforward but complicated. The concept is called Certainty Equivalent, or the amount of certain money you'd take in lieu of gambling for more. For example, if you can choose to flip a coin, win 10c on heads and lose 5c on tails; or I offer you 1c to not flip, you'd probably flip. EV is +2.5c and I'm offering you 40% of that. But let's up the stakes by 100,000x. Heads you win $10,000, tails you lose $5,000 - or I give you $1,000 to not flip. Same EV, but now unless you're rich enough to absorb a few -$5,000 hits, you're much more likely to take the $1,000. CE depends on EV, but also on bankroll. The math is complicated but can be found in Don Schlessinger's Blackjack Attack. CE ~ EV - V/2B. Bottom line is CE is about 1/2*EV, maybe 3/4*EV if you're exceptionally well rolled.

That's where the 2x your salary comes from. Take a nominal salary at an infinitely stable company (in reality no company is infinitely stable so even salaries have some variance), add 20-50% for benefits and payroll taxes, and then multiply by 4/3 to 2/1 for CE. It's about 2x.

If you face variance in your salary - a commission-based job, or consulting with variable hours, or you just work for a company that could go broke at any instant - it's going to slightly shift towards poker. But not a huge amount, because unless you work for an MLM firm, you probably can't lose money at a job so it's like $3,000 +/- $1,000 per month instead of $3,000 +/- $5,000 per month. It will likely work out to 1.5-1.9x your salary.

This is probably already tldr but another way to look at it is to subtract your living expenses from your winnings and recalculate your ROR with the lower winrate. That gives you an idea of how likely you are to succeed - if it's unacceptably low, get better (improve your winrate) or save more money (increase bankroll) until it's not futile.

What ever happened to old King Krab?

The longer you stay in a corporate job the more difficult it is to leave and the higher you ascend the corporate ladder, the more you will have to give up in order to leave. Also, the older you are, the more difficult it will be to get back in corporate America. That's not even mentioning that poker is a young man's game.

I'm not sure what he's been up to. Last I heard he was roaming about Europe living in hostels and such.

I hated being an employer..I had 3 restaraunts by the time I was 28 years old..Worked my butt off to get to that point..But at 30 years old i gave it all up and turned to poker full time..Followed my passion..The freedom and peace of mind it brought me was unbelievable..Havnt given it up yet..Lol at the idea that a youngster making 25 or 30 per hour cash is not enough live on in Vegas..Come on man..This thread sure turned sour

I could retire today and be fine for the rest of my days..I made it all off poker plus being frugal and wise with how I invested the money..One thing though, you have to be flexible and willing to switch up..I played limit holdem in the early and mid 1990's, then propped a 10-200 spread game in the late 90's..then went fully online from 2002 thru 2009..then back to being a prop from 2010 thru 2014..now I exclusively play PLO here in Vegas and have averaged 38 per hour..all while not being on any kind of freaking schedule..screw 9 to 5

A couple key rules to follow

Once you've built up..Always play well below your bankroll ..That takes away almost all of the stress (if you're actually great at this game of poker)

Take lots of vacations and enjoy your family and friends

Take advantage of all that freedom that being great at poker brings you..Forget being a banker or any other 9 to 5er (unless that's your passion lol)

What is your recommendation for people with spouses and children? Is that dream still feasible?

I thought self employment tax simply made up for the "extras" ie ss tax, etc that are taken out of your check if you work for the man. And these days, most people have to pay something for their health insurance if you work in a corp environment I'm sure it's still a lot less than a self employed person has to pay. So I'm not sure where you come up with having to make double what you made at your corp job to live the same lifestyle if you play poker.

I put in 15 years of the pro poker life before marrying and having kids..Definitely a road less traveled.. but I know for sure, I'm 10 times the husband and father I would have been in my 20's..

but everybody has their own destiny..


Winston Churchill (greatest hero of the 20th century) used to go outside during the German Blitzkrieg and help the wounded..Everybody told him he's much too valuable to voluntarily be in such peril ..His standard reply was he knows his destiny is to save the free world from Adolph Hitler..He knew it all the way back to 1932..Nothing was going to stop him from his destiny.

your quality of life in LA is going to be expensive unless you stay in the more shady areas, and then it will just be the pits. And safety issues. And being followed home or run off the road to get robbed. Expenses will be higher all around.

LA games are marginally better, but in 2017, not much better than Vegas at stakes less than 5/10. and even at 5/10, it will depend on players, which Vegas as many others have said already, has some pros and cons over.

Clearly you've never paid taxes as a self-employed person then. For employees, the company pays 1/2 of your payroll tax. When you don't have an employer, you get to pay it yourself.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small...medicare-taxes

Because this is so important to understand for people thinking of "going pro" - here's a breakdown of what happens to the income of a poker player vs. a corporate cube dweller:

Now yes, Mr. Felt is still has 50% more spending money. But the above skips some critical things:
- benefits like 401K match (often worth about 5% of salary)
- access to credit - Mr. Cubicle can borrow on a car or a house (thereby getting mortgage interest deduction - a notable tax win)
- variance (which callipygian talked about at length)

As a basic rule of thumb, the 2 to 1 rule is right - you have to make 2x as much at poker as you do in a cube to break even.

this is my graph from working in a career, i used to dream about being a high stakes poker player, but i really never gave it a full hearted shot with a real bankroll and went into a career that required 6 years of college instead. However and this is not to brag or convince you to go the same route, I feel now it was the better choice, it really pays well and no variance except for yearly raises. I like the job, find it interesting and am also learning new things. I still play poker for cheeseburgers online, $8 average stakes or so, little donkaments, but its fun and not to cover bills. to me this is a nice way to live, yes i sometimes wish i could be drinking a rum and coke at 2pm in the bellagio playing 5/10 NL, but in reality its a tough game and only a few really can crush it to make similar money that I am making working.



Work Year

Taxed Social Security Earnings

Taxed Medicare Earnings
2016 $118,500 $146,581
2015 $118,500 $155,699
2014 $117,000 $153,069
2013 $113,700 $127,920
2012 $110,100 $132,087
2011 $106,148 $106,148
2010 $48,552 $48,552
2009 $0 $0
2008 $0 $0- college years

Wait, so your argument in favor of quitting your job immediately is that you will make too much money if you stay?

Have you considered the possibility that once you realize how easy it is to make money in the corporate world, you realize grinding out $100k at the poker table isn't as cool as you thought it was in your 20s?

You're right that it's harder to get back into the workforce when you're older. If your dream includes flipping off your boss on the way out and then reentering the workforce in a job where references are not checked, you're completely right. But if you're older, it's easier to not leave the workforce to begin with. When you've proven you're valuable, you have leverage to negotiate, for example, taking a 3 month leave of absence. If poker looks like it's working out, formally quit and give everyone hugs and handshakes at your farewell party (so if you reenter the industry nobody blackballs you for being an *******). If poker isn't working out, crawl back to your job with nobody the wiser.

Sorry, deleted the exact quote by mistake.

I agree that most successful people at poker right now are younger than the player pool as a whole right now. But is that because of age or because of the history of poker in the 2000s?

Poker success will always be dominated by those who analyze more carefully than their opponents, and have the boldness to try new strategies that come out of that analysis. When Internet poker became popular, it was disproportionatelt popular among younger people. It didn't have to be, but it was. Young people got several lifetimes worth of live hands in a few months. They had the edge in analysis and in inventing new strategies. Looking forward, that advantage is nullified - it's not as easy to put in that volume, and older people are embracing the technology.

Looking forward, do you think that the most successful people in poker 10 years from now will be people who aren't playing now? They're not going to have an advantage over the people who are right now considered young but will be old in 10 years. I do see younger people still having an advantage in thr sense older people tend not to give a **** about playing well, and playing for more social reasons than monetary (as you pointed out, older recreational players tend to make a lot more money at their jobs). But I'd be willing to venture the median successful poker player in 10 years will be about 5 years older than the median successful poker player now.

Young people are more willing and able to learn and adapt. They are also less risk adverse.

Living life is about more than just making money. You couldn't pay me enough money to work a 9 to 5 job.

I agree with this. I've never had some cushy dream corporate job where I'm making 100k+ a year or even half that. For a few years I tried to become an actuary. I seemed very qualified on paper but could land very few interviews and never got any job offers. The only jobs I've worked have been in academia. For me, and for many people, the choice is not between playing poker and some cushy dream career, but between playing poker and making $10 - $20 an hour doing some miserable thoughtless work.

Even as a college instructor I made less than 30k a year. I considered being a mathematician, as this job is quite cushy if you actually become one, but the competition is just insane and since I didn't attend a top 10 undergraduate school I couldn't get in to a top 5 graduate school, which makes it almost impossible to land a tenure--track position unless you're the best student to have come through that school in years. And I wasn't. I was competent, but this is a field where even among the smartest math majors, maybe 1 in 10 gets a tenure-track job immediately, and still only 1 in 4 gets one ever, typically after 4 to 8 years of post-doctoral research.

I quit graduate school and got a computer science degree I was told would be quite lucrative, but the only job offers I ever got were Tier 1 Technical Support positions in call centers, which is basically my nightmare scenario.

No one who knows me would say I made a half-assed attempt at either of these paths. Rather I worked myself to death trying to find something I enjoyed doing that paid well, but couldn't. For me poker is an excellent career option. There are many advantages:

• I can work how many hours I choose.
• I can work precisely the hours I choose. I like to play nights, roughly 6PM - 4AM or so. You just can't do this in most lucrative corporate jobs.
• I can take a vacation whenever I want.
• I'm not at risk of being fired or laid off.
• Advancing in poker is more interesting to me than other career paths. I love games and excel at them.

There are downsides of course, most of which have been mentioned many times in this thread, but for me the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. I have not been this excited about my future in a decade. Perhaps it won't work out, but I am overrolled for 1/2 and sufficiently rolled to start taking shots at 2/5 now, and I've only been at this live poker thing a few months. I have no reason to believe I won't be able to make at least $30/hr playing poker. Hopefully I will make more, but as DreamCrusher has said, I am in no great hurry. I will move up at the pace that gives me my greatest chance for success. And if I hit my ceiling at 5/T or 2/5 or whatever, that's fine. I can easily live on $30/hr. And I'd really rather make $30/hr playing poker than $30/hr in a corporate job, or even $60/hr. I only care about money to the extent I can support myself and my hobbies.

The goal of poker is of course to win money, but for me that's just how we keep score at this game. I don't have any delusions of being a Las Vegas baller or becoming a TV professional or whatever. But I think I'm competent and intelligent enough to beat low stakes and perhaps mid stakes games, if not high stakes games, and almost certainly can make enough to meet my goals of having a career that allows me the freedom to do with my time what I will.

You will get so bored.

What you are describing sounds awesome for a very short period, but this will feel like a huge grind at some point. You are also not building a marketable skill or working towards something bigger that will satisfy an intelligent person long term.

Go for it, but don't be afraid to bail early or late and move on with life.

thats cool best of luck with it, i would choose south florida myself for the warm weather and good games. northeast has alot of poker also, and although people complain about snow, skiing or snowboarding is fun to pass time in the winter. I can see all the advantages to being poker pro player like alot of vacation time and ability in the night, it sounds exciting in a way too, especially if you play big tournaments where can win thousands in a game.

How have you enjoyed the grind of playing 30-45 hours per week? Do you see this as something that you can do for a long period of time? What differences (physical, mental) do you see for yourself between spending 8 hours working a traditional job vs. 8 hours playing in the poker room?

Probably yes, eventually, especially if/when I've peaked. But most jobs are boring the great majority of the time. I was looking into teaching math as a realistic alternative, in addition to computer science. Grading papers is worse than boring. Calling strangers to help them with their technical problems is practically torture.

Even the kind of intellectual endeavors I consider exciting like pure math, science, etc., are boring most of the time. There's the occasional burst of inspiration, and if you're very lucky and skilled you may develop groundbreaking work that is understood by at best a couple dozen people. The rest of the time it's teaching, banging your head against the wall proving obscure theorems, etc. Boring, boring, boring.

Anyway poker isn't all I want to do. I like to write, and if I ever attain the ability to grind fewer hours per week it will be easy to do so. And if I don't, there are worse things than being bored. Working any 9 to 5 that requires a boss and significant customer interaction is just torture for me.

That's true I suppose. I can always teach high school mathematics if I start hating poker.

Am I being interviewed?

Anyway, I enjoy it most of the time. I do think I can do it for a long period of time, or I never would have tried. X hours in a traditional job vs X hours in a poker room -- in the former I have a boss, customers, responsibility, and must live on a stringent schedule, whereas in the latter it's just me, I have no responsibility towards anyone, and I can leave whenever I want and even cuss out the other players if I feel like it (not that I would, but I couldn't do this with a boss). The most important difference is I have more freedom as a poker player. I have a very hard time consistently staying awake during the day due to a sleep disorder I have. Just being able to wake up late afternoon and work nights is an enormous plus for me (and the main reason I don't play tournaments).

-------------------

As an aside, it seems odd how many people seem against the idea of playing poker for a living on the internet's biggest poker forum.

It shouldn't be odd if you really think about it.

Many of us either tried or know people who tried the poker life, and realized how few can be truly successful at it.

Yeah, the number of people who manage to make a healthy, well adjusted life out of gambling long term is close to zero. And for those people, the opportunity costs mean it still may not have been a good choice.

For myself I know it's not a smart life choice. I'm winner at several forms of poker (stud, LH, NLH) up to about the $2-5K buyin live level. I've only played above that a couple of times (and won) but the money was too much for my constitution. Even so, it just doesn't make sense to go pro - the opportunity costs and uncertainty is too high. When I see people thinking about going pro in games 1/10th that size, I seriously wonder WTF they are thinking. Sure they may have worse alternatives than I do and thus lower opportunity cost, but still... it's 1/2 NL. This is going to end badly.