Appreciate all the responses over the past few days. May reach out to some of you guys via PM.

JOTS, funny you should mention the temp angle. I was actually thinking if I decide to do this, I would contract with a high-level head hunter/temp company looking for 1 week/month work for a little variance free income to cover some expenses.

This is a good post. Quitting a 6-figure job to obtain *financial* independence with poker is crazysauce. You're trading employment at a traditional job for employment at a casino. You have scheduling independence and operational independence, but your level of financial dependence on a source of income has not improved at all. And in fact, you are likely putting off the day you achieve financial independence by playing poker full time because your income will likely be lower, especially when you consider all the benefits you are losing (SS credits, 401(k) access, tax-free group health insurance, accumulation of personal/organizational capital, etc.).

Starting a side business for financial independence makes perfect sense. But then why not continue working for cash and spend your current poker time on the side business?

+1 to the responses of not going pro (especially from the pros in this thread)

1000 hours is such a lol sample size, it really is. At 1800 hours, I was still maintaining my crushing ~10bb/hr, but 665 hours later, I ain't finding it quite that easy, and the game I play in is *soooooo* good. My winrate this year is 1/4 of my 2013 winrate. How well are you going to do on 1/4 of your current winrate? The amount of all forms of variance you will encounter in this game will stagger you; you will encounter them as you put in the hours.

Also, I'm not sure of M's circumstances, but I'm guessing as a lawyer he was able to save up quite the little nest egg to fall back on if things didn't work out (he can correct me if I'm wrong). I'm guessing you're not in the same place?

If your job is soul crushing with crazy hours, fair enough. But there's nothing stopping your from finding another job with guaranteed good income, while keeping poker on the side as a nice hobby / distraction / possible holiday income.

GimoG

Takes money to make money.

I'm at the "capital accumulation" stage of whatever my timeline looks like. I also think the stock market is long overdue for a sizable correction so I want to have as much cash on the sidelines as possible to buy-in when this thing inevitably blows up.

Well, if the activity that will most advance your side business is playing poker to accumulate capital, that makes perfect sense. It would also sort-of make sense to quit your job to work on your side business full time and then conclude that the current priority side business activity is playing poker for cash, but it's a little implausible. Nobody actually puts in 3k+ hours at poker (certainly not at a nights and weekends winrate), so that move probably sacrifices cash compared to poker + work.

Amit Mahija [with 2.6M in live tournament winnings & 3M in online tournament winnings] has this to say about the pro poker lifestyle & he isn't the only one whose comments are similar:

There are some negative aspects to life as a poker pro. It's a very isolating experience. There are people who you are good friends with that you need to beat day in & day out. It seems that people are never fully happy for you either.. Your upswing is their downswing & even if they aren't running that bad, they are depressing because they are not doing quite as well as you. Nobody is ever at the same place, mentally."

I can relate to this 100% at the 1/2 NL level! I shall give one quick example, in the event anyone cares:

So, I developed a poker bond with a much younger guy who has been studying his ass off trying to improve. He is a good player, but he has an ego problem. When he's running bad [or gaining no traction] on a given day, he will ignore the fact that I have entered the poker room, which is small & fail to initiate a hello, or call me out.

See, he is one of those who is hard to easily spot in the room & sometimes I'll miss him but when I do spot him I'll stop by & say hello.

Anyway, the other night I arrive at the room late in the evening & get seated at a table not far from his. I have yet to realize he is there but I can see that his friend is at the table & wave when I see him looking my way but I guess he didn't see me.

Shortly thereafter, the two get up from the table & walk away from their table to chat & are standing not 5 feet from me. I say hello, but they are talking & not looking my way but there is no way in hell they didn't notice me. Plus, I am sitting on ~$350, so I'm not stuck so they shouldn't think that by coming over they'd be embarrassing me, which many players feel when someone comes by when they are stuck.

On to 2 days later when I see him. I again arrive after he does & get seated at a table down from his. I recognize him, & despite the previous occurrence, I say hello as I'm walking by & I get a nod in response.

Fast forward 2 hrs later when I'm going to have dinner with another friend. After the dealer change & I get up, I stop by my the guy's table I'm having dinner with to let him know where I'll be & walk out of the poker room. I have to walk by the table of the guy I'm talking about & he calls me out by name. LOUD. He must really want to talk to me.

Now he must really want to talk to me, because I can't remember him doing that. I'm not even sure it was my name I heard, because it's so loud in there, but it sounded like his voice. So I turn around.

He's waving me over. So, I walk over & he asks if I am "putting anything together over there" ....... I tell him no, that I'm just floating along. He nods his head up & down like one of those head bobbing toys.

He has nothing else to say. That's it. Just bobbing his head, acknowledging what I've told him, waiting for me to recognize the fact that he's sitting on ~$600.00. He usually buys in for $200.

Finally, I realize he went thru all that trouble to call me over for no other reason but to show off his stack. He has nothing else to say. I thought he had some news or something, so, I told him I was going to dinner & keep on hammerin' 'em & left.

His ego is so bad, that when he pulled off a bluff on the river, OOP, by betting ~$140 otr into 2 players & they folded, that he tossed his hand face up into the middle of the table showing he had nothing but king high.

Now I know another guy, ~47 yrs old, that is the exact opposite. He'll come over to my table to tell me that he is at an action table & I should also get over there as quick as possible. He'll then tell me "I'm already stuck $400 but I know I'll get it back" and "You should get over there asap before the fish go broke."

However, he's a rare bird.

He'll even stop by on his way out to say: "Man they ate me alive tonight! I've gotta' give up for today."

I read the two experiences completely different.

Friendship develop amongst regulars as almost kind of a working relationship, just like most other professions except that players are working against each other.

However, it really isn't much different than a lot of competitive firms or even schools in which people do slaughter each other to get ahead, real life Hunger Game.

Amit is comparing it to something different, such as working for a small company in which everyone share a common goal and everyone receive the same positive result when that goal is met.

On the other hand...

It just reads like you're desperate for social interaction, and it's actually very normal for most OMC who walks into a poker room.

It's not that you guys are working against each other per se, because after all, most LLSNL pools are big enough that you can actually avoid each other and do fine.

It is very different than someone who's playing at a very high level that has a much smaller pool and every player becomes necessary target.

FWIW, above is kind of craycray in the stalkerish kind of way.

Anyhow, thank you for putting in words of the kind of social interactions that OMC's are looking for in a poker room.

This is ridiculous. I didn't realize how many people I knew really well until a conversation came up about the risks of loaning money to poker players. I would never do that I thought, except a few. Then I started counting people that I've known over a decade & would loan money to without any worry whatsoever of getting paid back.

Mostly because they are very well off, I have "broke break" with them before & the only reason they have no cash is because they didn't bring much & don't want to pay the ridiculous fee to make a bank withdrawal.

I counted well over a dozen. And, if I was in a jam, say where my car broke down at midnight & my wife wasn't in town to come & get me, I'd be able to get one of them on the phone to come & pick me up. Even if they had to drive 60 miles.

Last winter, when it was freezing out, a friend of mine's diesel wouldn't start. It was one of those big trucks & he needed to hook up an electrical heater to it. So I loaned him my car to drive 20 miles home & get the heater, go to Wal-Mart buy an extension cord & hook it up.

I'm done playing later on & we try together to no avail, so I take him home

"craycray" on whose part?! The guy who went out of his way to call me over to show off? I could understand that.

Or, the guy who says hello whether or not he's stuck? Or me?

Really now? OMC's are different in their social interactions than others?

What about my ~47 year old friend, who is a LAG and talks with everyone in the poker room? Makes it a point to learn everyone's name & be sociable?

Is he exhibiting "stalkerish" mannerisms?

When I went to dinner with him & his girlfriend, we talked sports, about his girlfriend's family, his family etc. No poker.

Anyways, this conversation isn't leading in the direction of what this thread is for. If you have anything further to say, PM me.

You literally wrote a journal on ONE guy in the span of 2 days because he didn't acknowledge you.

Holy cow...

That one guy describes so many poker players.
I've talked about the "Peacock Walk" before, where both young, middle aged, & older players take a tour of the room with their 2 racks of winning to stop off & see their friends, but don't do the same thing when they have less than their winnings to cash out.

Well, this guy did the same thing, only from his seat at the table!

Now, if he had ever gone thru that much trouble to call me over to give me some news about something in the past, it would be different. However, this was an isolated event with this guy.

It describes life in the poker world, for the most part, perfectly.

Ok, my bad. Did not mean to derail.

The posts coming from a variety of people here are actually not that bad. I enjoyed it and its nice to feel like other posters are real people.

+1 to the last few pages of posts.

46

Well, strictly speaking, a hugely negative outlier IS normal variance. Someone, somewhere, is basically guaranteed to be running worse than everyone else, right?

If i detailed my run bad, there would be a dozen people posting calling BS. It has been BAD. But I have never had a losing year, or anything, so it could definitely have been worse. I didn't post to bitch about my run bad, though, but to say there's more to life than how much money you make.

Any wife/kid strat for quitting job and playing full time?

M, I imagine you had a healthy savings account / house paid off / etc. by that time (if lawyer gigs pay what I imagine them to)?

Gyoursituationmightbedifferentthanmost,no?G

My daughter was grown and out on her own when I quit to play for a living. We DID wait for that before we moved to Vegas. I would not have quit law while she was still in college.

Wife strat: Marry the perfect woman. My wife has never said one word about our dramatic change in lifestyle that wasn't completely supportive. Of course, she married me when I was a private first class in the army, so I have always known that having more money than we needed wasn't important to her, lol.

Less than you might think, actually. We have retirement money--that is off limits, period. We just don't touch it. But when I was lawyering, I had huge expenses--we didn't quit until we were out from under most of those.

The other thing was Black Friday for online poker. The Monday before Black Friday, we had over $100K in cash on hand. Then we wrote a big check to the IRS for taxes on my income (which was all on Full Tilt), a big check for our house here in Vegas, and then the Feds seized the rest on Full Tilt. On April 13, I was here with a $100K cushion. On April 14, I was here with nothing more than the $700 I had in my pocket. That $700 became my poker roll and my life roll, and it is the foundation we have lived on for 4 years plus, now.

Wow, damn.

I'd be so tempted to cancel that IRS check and send them a note saying "you idiots just seized this anyway".

Did you manage to get any of it back from FT?

Feds currently taking the (false) position that my FT $ was affiliate income I am not entitled to (it was actually coaching income, mainly). My appeal of that determination is pending, but I expect to lose, as they told me I had to prove it wasn't affiliate income, and lol, proving a negative.

+1 thank for sharing this attitude is kind of why I have trouble making friends in the poker world a lot of players i met arent humble and they're a piece of ish... those players have a limited ceiling for they feel they are already good enough so its hard for them to improve their game, you tell them their reasoning doesnt make sense but they rebuttle with idiosycrasies and bro science(like the auto shuffler is rigged), whats sad about these types of players is you know how its going to end for them and you arent suprised by the situations they often find themselves in, IE broke.... I was hoping to just pull one of my good friends into poker so we can grow and learn together but they're too smart to get involved in poker lol

Ugh.

Showing proof that you had students and agreements to pay (presumably via email or forums) must not be enough then. What a disaster. Good luck.

dont respond to a grown man that uses the term CrayCray wtf happened to peoples brain cells cray cray oh my F

PLease please tell me you have a thread on how you ran $700 up playing live,did you borrow did your wife have a savings did you grind online,how is this possible assuming your being literal, could you get your return back since the funds technically were not claimed yet,oh and how long have you been playing FT

+1!!!! Haha I'd subbed to that

+1 lol hey bro im 26 and young money makes me feel like if i dont have at least a million to my name by now i aint ish,,, but seriously I feel super behind , especially in poker,even though black friday hit and my only options were live games i couldnt afford especially as a noob, i feel my progression in poker isnt where it should be,but I feel pressure equivalent to a 36 year old and I dont know why, i do but i dont