Quote:
Originally Posted by Dream Crusher
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.