These are outliers. If you enjoy reading you should buy the book. There are more professional football players than there are poker players making $200 an hour. And the ones making $200 an hour obviously are very intelligent and have significant drive and therefore would be good in most fields.

As for wealth or what you'd be happy with earning over the years etc. Im in finance and this is my job. The major advice I can give you is to begin investing now.

You should have an additiinal goal on your list to "force save" an amount of money each month. Not in your mattress not even in a savings account. In an investment account that you never touch. Index and etf. It can be as low as $100 a month. Your 10 year future self will thank me.

Also, do not count on poker long term. You shouldnt count on any one field long term really. Thats the mistake stock brokers made in the 90s and US poker players made in the 2000s.

100%. I'm actually writing a rather sizable post about this right now. Would be keen to hear your thoughts once it's done.

Subbed for the ride ^^

Yeah, it's tough. I think though that I will put maybe 50% of my side-hussle income into the social fund when I revise my budget on Friday, just so I can actually enjoy myself when I go out without having to feel too guilty.

In terms of hands, really only those two from Saturday - I only played for 3.9 hours and there wasn't much else interesting. No doubt I'll have some cool hands to run over with you guys this evening in the rotation game.

================================================

Hourly & Savings Analysis

So I've been looking at Poker Agent and I'm at about 250 hours in since the start of the thread. Sitting on about $17/hr at the moment - which I'm very happy with considering the disastrous first 40 hours. Obviously, I'd like to get this number up to about $30/hr but the only possible way to do that is to continue putting my volume in and to play the best poker I can. Keep studying and whatnot.

I figured that if I make $15/hr (3bb/hr), that's $600 a week and that's a little more than enough to pay for my weekly expenses. Basically, any hourly over 15/hr, I can start saving money. So it's good to see that number slowly increasing. And decreasing, and increasing again.

All this got me thinking, if at any stage my hourly winrate drops below $15/hr, I effectively cut into my liferoll/bankroll to sustain myself (because it costs me $550 a week to exist on this planet). This is why we have a bankroll of course. But I think it'd be cool to simulate a 5 year poker career and see what stretches we'll go through where income drops below that $15/hr threshold.

So 5 years is a 10,000 sample. Let's say that's roughly 30 hands per hour (since most of my volume now is put into high speed home games and less at the casino which would struggle to get 25/hr). That's a 30,000 hand sample size. I imagine I could win fairly comfortably at 7bb/hr but to be conservative, let's make it 6/hr or $30/hr. This = 20bb/100. I plugged in my current standard deviation which is 266bb/100 (I think this is quite high and I have no idea what sample we require to have this number converge properly...)

Anyway, if we play 2,000 hours a year, we get a 60,000 hand sample which looks like the below.



Note that this VASTLY changes when we change the standard deviation number, so it'll be important for me to keep an eye on this figure over time.

Anyway, over any 2,000 hour stretch (1 year), there's only a 3% chance of losing money - that's with a conservative 6bb/hr winrate. That's fine, but what is the liklihood of staying under that $15/hr mark for an entire year? Kind of difficult to calculate, but the 70% confidence interval is at 5484bb which is $27,000. If we need to earn $550 a week to breakeven at life without dipping into bankroll/liferoll, we need to earn $28,600 a year or $14.3/hr.

What this means is, 30% of the time, we will effectively make no money in an entire year. We'll make enough to survive on but not enough to save any money at all. Over a 5 year poker career, this means 1.5 years of our career will be spent earning no money at all. That's on EV, so that's expected. It's entirely possible we go through a 1.5 year stretch where we make LESS than $14.30 per hour and are put into a precarious financial situation. Our 95% confidence interval indicates that there's a 5% chance we'll actually lose $5k over the span of a year. That's $32,000 under that life "maintenance" amount. Conversely, there's an equal 5% chance we profit $125,000 in a single year - $62.50 per hour.

So with this information in mind, knowing that there 100% absolutely will be a breakeven stretch of a year to 1.5 years (breakeven after life expenses), what can we do about it to ensure we're well prepared. I've made a list of several things:

A) Increase our winrate
B) Decrease our rake paid
C) Diversify income
D) Reduce our standard deviation
E) Save as much money as possible for "the winter"
F) Reduce life expenses
G) Move up stakes

Below I'll briefly look at each of these and how I can apply it to my personal situation.

A) Increase our winrate

This is probably the biggest factor here. I have absolutely no idea what my current winrate is. I've used 6bb/hr as an estimate. It could well be 3bb/hr or 10bb/hr - I simply don't have the sample size to know and I won't have for a very long time. That's why it's important to be conservative in our calculations, in case we're not as winning of a player as we thought we were.

So how does one increase their winrate? It's pretty simple but there are a few factors that influence it.

1. Get better, study, improve your actual gameplay
2. Play in the easiest games you can find
3. Play most of your volume at the best time of the week (refers to no. 2)

Number one and two are the most important. I'd say number two is THE most important one, actually. You can be a crusher, but if you're playing with a bunch of crushers, you'll make no money. If you're a "good" player playing with a bunch of droolers, you'll make a ton. So that's first and foremost the most important thing. There's only so much you can do when it comes to studying and getting better for a live 2/5 environment. You'll typically find yourself in the same situations over and over again. Occasionally, you'll find yourself in a spot you have no idea what to do. First and foremost, as my coach one said, you need to focus on the high frequency spots. That means preflop - nail preflop first and get that right. Then get a solid understanding of how to play your range on different but common boards, and how to play vs different sized bets that happen frequently. Then, and only then, should we spend time looking at really tricky spots and uncovering what the best thing to do is.

B) Decrease our rake paid

This one's really simple for me. I live in Aus with some of the highest raked games in the world. I COULD just say "move to London" and play in low rake games that are heavily comped. But I can't afford to do that right now. So the only thing I can do is avoid the highly raked games like cancer. That means staying out of the casino and playing in the cheapest homegames. The two homegames I most often spend time in are 10% and 13$ cap and the other is 10% and 10$ cap. Both of which are better options than the casino which is 10% and 15$ cap. Logically, it makes sense to put as much volume as possible into the 10% $10 cap homegame, so this is something that needs to be in the forefront of my mind at all times when planning out my schedule for the week.

C) Diversify Income

Or create some sort of residual income stream. If I do this, and I should, I want it to be something that doesn't occupy a lot of my time. It has to be passive. For instance, I won't diversify my income by getting a part time security job that requires me to stand at a door late at night over the weekend - because I can't play poker then, and because it overtly negates the lifestyle I'm pursuing. Some sort of internet business would be optimal. Something I can work at for one or two hours a day - longer at first if necessary. But something I can do essentially at any time of day and something that won't collapse and crash and burn if I ignore it for a couple days. I do currently have a side-hustle income. I guess it probably earns me around $80 a week after tax but it's highly volatile in that some weeks it may be several hundred and other weeks nothing at all. For long stretches of time. The best part about this side hustle is that it occupies virtually none of my time. There's not huge room for expansion on this hustle, so I'd probably look at doing some internet business type thing if I can figure out a high value product/solution/idea. I have some XP in eCommerce and web development, know a lot about internet marketing etc, so imagine I'll end up doing something along these lines at some stage. Even if it's only a couple hundred dollars a month - that plus my current side hustle take a huge dint out of my $550 weekly expense total. If I can make $130 a week from non-poker income, then suddenly we only need to make $420 a week to survive which is $22k annually instead of $28k. That take a lot of pressure off the poker income, nearly 30% actually.

D) Reduce our standard deviation

This is something I harp on and on about. If I ever write a poker book (and if I can maintain my current lifestyle for the next 5 years without going busto from a predominantly poker income, I plan on it!), I'll write A LOT about this factor.

If we take two standard deviation figures it can show us just how impactful this number can be,

95% confidence interval for a yearly sample @ 6bb/100 and 200bb/100 stdev: $11,010 - $108,990
95% confidence interval for a yearly sample @ 6bb/100 and 250bb/100 stdev: -$1,235 - $121,235

Which of these figures would you prefer? If I was someone with a well-paying job and like no risk of ruin because of that income, I'd pick the higher stdev. This is because the extra $13k I could potentially win has more value to me than the extra $12k I could potentially lose. However, I, meale, am absolutely not in this situation. I'm on an aggressive bankroll with fkall non-poker income. I ABSOLUTELY NEED OPTION 1. The difference between the worst case scenarios might be the difference between me going busto/homeless and actually still having a chance of success.

Hopefully this illustrates how vital reducing standard dev is, especially when you're in a similar situation to me. So how do we do it? How do we keep std dev down? What it comes down to is those coinflip decisions where you can go one way or the other. Where you jam or fold. In a single phrase, that's what it comes down to, whether you 'jam or fold' or 'call or fold' and to an extent, but less so whether you 'jam or call'. What I mean is where you have an opportunity for a "low variance" or "high variance" play and you have to choose between the two. Here's an example,

EP limps, MP ($1,200) tight solid reg opens $20, hero ($1,200) OTB 3bets AKs to $60, SB ($500) cold calls, EP calls, MP 4bets to $251, hero ???

What are our options here? Folding is out of the question, it's call or raise, but which? We know villain is capable of 4betting as a bluff since this is such a good spot to do it with so much dead money in the middle. But then again, if we rip it in 250bb deep with AK and get called by QQ+, we're suddenly put into a very unfortunate situation. IF we opt to jam, this spot becomes a high variance spot. If we opt to call, see a flop, perhaps invite some of the other players into the pot, we have a much lower variance spot than had we jammed. Let's assume the EV of calling and jamming are fairly similar.

In spots like these, I absolutely ALWAYS advocate the path of least variance. In this case, calling. If we call and whiff, and end up folding it's a relatively small loss to what you incur when you shove, villain snap calls, and you find you're up against AA, wondering where in life you went so wrong with 0% equity in a near $3,000 pot.

*Flush Over Flush & Set Over Set:

The fact is, over a 2,000 hour sample, we NEED to ensure we're winning the vast majority of big pots. The 400+bb pots NEED to be ours. If we get AA in vs KK and get sucked out on, obv we cannot do anything about that. The Stoics advocate only caring about what is in our control. Coolers we can't control. But there are small things we can do like, in multiway pots, not going ham with 2nd and 3rd nut flush draws - things like falling in love with suited aces when we look to go multiway. PLO strategy, essentially. Play the nut flush draws and the mid/high pairs because they make better sets. In 2,000 hours of poker, you'll find yourself in a set over set situation maybe 20-30 times? Could be way less could be way more, I have no idea. That's just a guess. When each of these pots are >200BB deep, you can start to see very very quickly just how important having the bigger set is, being the cool'er and not the cool'ee. Some people will say it just comes down to variance as to whether you win more or lose more of these set over set spots, but I strongly disagree. If BTN opens w AA and you call BB with 88 and the flop comes A82r, THAT is variance.

But if you're limping 22 UTG on a 10 handed table, and then BTN isos to $40, one or two other callers, and then you call? That is, in most cases, a brilliant way to UP the variance for no increase to your EV. In most cases. People think that if they get set over set there with 22, it's just unlucky. But people, when calculating the profitability of set mining, will very very often overlook the aspect of reverse implied odds. Why are a lot of 6max online players open folding 22-55 from EP? May have something to do with this.

So if we avoid silly **** like going crazy with 45s-89s and 22-55, of the ~50 odd spots where we'll find ourselves winning or losing a big pot by means of flush over flush or set over set, I am pretty certain we can win maybe 30 of them. Live players love suited cards. And they love sticking 10bb in pre when OOP with a small pair because "if I hit, I win all the money!" they say. But the fact is, we can exploit this.

Say in a year we get into 50 f/f s/s spots. Each pot is on average 300bb in size. Many will be extremely large and some will be smaller. 300bb is $1,500 - it's a large amount of money. Losing this pot may take a while to recover from money wise.

But of the 50 spots we get into, there's 50x$1,500 up for grabs. $75k in f/f\s/s pots per annum. If we win 30, we win $45k per year in these "cooler" spots. And we'll also lose 20, or $30k per year. That's $15k straight differential here. Now, by no means am I saying there's 50 of these spots per year. And by no means am I saying we can win 60% of them. But I definitely am a firm believer that we SHOULD be winning far more than 50% of them over a large enough sample (impossible to ever achieve). If my numbers are terribly far off, $15k a year can is a huuuuge sum of money. So where possible, apply our PLO logic to our general NLH strat, but don't do so when it compromises EV. If we're UTG with 55, limp on a 7 handed passive table, BTN isos to $20, BB calls, we CLEARLY have a +EV call. But in the earlier example where the iso size is bigger, ranges are stronger, etc, we should be leaning towards folding. Same goes for limp/calling in general. Do it with suited aces and not 76s. Just the other day I limp/called with 76s and regretted it almost immediately. :') Had I done the same with A6s, it'd have been a very different scenario!

E) Save as much money as possible for "the winter"

Or, as I prefer, "gather as much firewood as possible for the winter"... Because today we've just found out the Winter IS coming. The winter being the extended breakeven stretch. The best possible way to deal with 18 months of no after expenses profit is to ensure we have enough in our bankroll/liferoll to see us through to the summer.

At the moment, my saving strat is going to be pretty basic. We make an EV of $1,200 per week. We spend $550 of that on maintaining homeostasis, leaving us with EV$650 per week. At the moment, all of that money is going toward savings. It's just sitting in my bank (or more accurately in a safe under my bed). But it's really important that this money is saved and not spent on **** like holidays etc. Because ATM I don't have a big enough bankroll/liferoll to see me through the winter (downswing/breakeven stretch in case the analogy isn't working for you). So that's why it's currently super important I'm disciplined in my savings. If I can win at EV for just 6 months, that should get me $17k in savings as a buffer. That + my $20k liferoll/bankroll, coupled with some side hustle income, will HOPEFULLY get me through any brutal breakeven stretch where I'm making no money and spending it.

As suggested by Ava, I probably need to be doing more than just throwing money into a bank account savings-wise now. But I think that would be more beneficial if I had a stable income. Sticking large amounts of capital into term deposit accounts isn't really something I'm going to benefit much from rn. The most important thing is that I am saving whatever I earn after expenses each week instead of spending it. I was planning on doing a Melbourne trip in January during Aussie Millions - treat it as a potential living arrangement recon trip but also to play a **** ton of cash and a couple 1ks. Whether I'll be able to afford to do that trip or not will obv depend on results up til January, but it might end up being that I can't go because saving and adding that money to my bankroll/liferoll is more important. Sure if I do exceptionally well, and run above EV over the next 4 months, I should be able to do both.

F) Reduce life expenses

If I find that I need to move into a real povo room in a cheaper apartment just so my weekly outgoings are less, then I can always bite the bullet and do so. Should be able to save $150 a week if I do that. But obv I wanna try eeeeverything else before doing this.

The other thing I've noticed lately is how little I'm spending on food. That's largely due to me getting free meals at homegames - something that obv doesn't happen at the casino. I've always said the rake is ridiculous but the food rake is also crazy. So by continuing to hit up the homegames, we can save money on groceries for sure.

We got rid of the car which will cut things down a bit more, but in all honesty, aside from the rent I'm paying, there's not a whole lot I can do to reduce expenses atm.

G) Move up stakes

This is something that one mightn't initially consider to be a great option if you're in the business of saving money/not going busto. But here's how I see it working.

Juicy 5/10 game runs on Thursdays. If my hourly at 2/5 is 6bb/hr, it'll be at least 6bb/hr in this 5/10 game. So that makes my hourly $60 an hour instead of $30. I'll be playing on a 50% stake, which means I'll be giving away a lot of the profit differential, but it should still mean my effective hourly is above $30/hr. It's a no-makeup agreement too so that's what makes it so appealing. On most days, I'd imagine my winrate in this game could be much much closer to 10bb/hr - it plays often like a 5/10/20/40 half the time and a lot of the regs who play in it are terrible. Going to look to mix this game in starting hopefully within the next few weeks.

Obviously, actually moving up stakes on my own roll is a bit out of the question at the moment. Partly because there's no games bigger than the 5/5 at the casino and tbh, even though it's slightly lower effective rake than the 2/5, I don't think that game will be my most profitable when I have juicy 2/3 games at lower rake once again. But what it does mean is that if I do go to Melbourne in January, I can bring a "cash shot" roll - which will be dedicated to 5/10 games. If I lose that money, I just go back to the 2/5 games.

=================

Anyway, that's enough drivel for now. LMK if you guys have any thoughts on any of this!

Cheers bruv.

Basically what Avarita wrote.

This will probably ruffle some feathers as well... but I think there might only be a handful of guys who post on this site who actually are big earners in poker and sports. The rest of the pros are just average or slightly below average poker players.

You know, I actually played poker fairly recently, and of course there were some pros (3) in the game. They all had experience/ had been around, late 30s/early 40s... they were solid poker players no doubt... but from their dress and hygiene alone you could tell they were single bachelors, they weren't very pleasant to be around, they were absolute nits with their money (no tips, no drinks etc). And I could tell they were not happy about being at a poker table even though it was their job!

I'll say again that they were solid poker players and probably earned enough to survive/ pay the bills (which is no easy feat!). But something to keep in mind is... if you're at that stage in life: late 30's/early 40s and only pulling in 1k/wk with all the stress tied with poker... compared to many of their peers they would be poor.

And in reality, it's sort of true... because at that age you want to be the guy who has money to light on fire on the poker tables and in the pit... you don't want to be the guy on the other side.

How could you possibly say the rest of the pros are average or below average at poker? Do you even know what % of users on 2+2 are pros?

I'm sorry but I'm just not buying it. How tf did you figure out there were 3 pros? Do you ask at every table you sit at who the pros are? I've played in small player pools for the last 500 hours and have not a single idea who ANY of the pros are. I've heard of one player who is a pro. How is it you can sit down at a poker table and immediately ascertain there's 3 pros there?

Do you realise how infrequent late 30s early 40s pros appear? Chances are that none of these players play poker 40+ hours a week...


Wait so you sat at a table on which there was 3 solid players? That's what happened right? You have no idea whether they play professionally, how much they earn, etc.

At my last job I worked with 60 MAWGs all on the same rate as me. $1k a week is plenty of money to some people. Especially to people who don't prioritise money.

----------

Regardless, I hope you stick around in this thread and that after a while I'm able to convince you that it is possible to be happy earning a modest living from poker, and in fact happier than those who earn more in a "real job". Check back in in 5 years time and see whether I can do it. At that point you'll probably lump me in with the outliers and say that most people hate their life or don't win at poker. But I think there's a good chance you've read too many crash and burn PGCs and have become biased. Just gotta have the mate.

Just get two fat lambs on a sat night, $16 total to get completely munt

Dead set best advice in this thread. :')

So many assumptions and wild statements that have seemingly been plucked out of thin air.

In any profession, there will be those who earn less money, those who are bachelors, those who are unhappy and those who are tight with their money, irrespective of their career.

I find it hard to read stuff that lays on prejudice so thick;
'at that age you want to be the guy who has money to light on fire on the poker tables and in the pit... you don't want to be the guy on the other side.'
What does this even mean? Your assumption that sitting at a poker table = unhappiness and stress is simply based on biased. Every single pro I know would much rather take lower earnings and the freedom to choose what they do day-to-day, than be stuck in some bs rat race getting pumped in the ass by some super douche boss.

Tbf though, you make a good point; I most definitely do not want to be the guy on the other side, just not the side you make out to be the be all end all.

+1,000,000

I think that poker can be used as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Imo people have static opinions of what someone does now and associate it with forever. Either way, I think you should keep grinding and improving and give this a real shot. By no means am I saying you aren't doing so, but I'm saying all these arguments lack merit due to the short duration of this endeavour. Let the results speak!

Oh I'll be giving it a fair whack alright!

Reason #285 I hate Treasury Casino:

Get to casino at 5:45 pm, 3rd on the list. Get a text at 6pm, go to poker room and was told I was texted prematurely but just to wait there for 5 mins because someone was leaving in 5 mins. Floor manager goes home, different floor tells me I can't wait in the poker room and that he'll text me shortly. 30 mins later I'm first on the list of 8 people. 1.5 hours later I go back to the room and ask what the **** is going on. There's two people on the list and my name's not one of them. Absolutely steaming lol.

Edit: It happened again, they put the wrong number. Been at the casino just over 3 hours and I'm now leaving having played not a single hand.

Lmao, that's a ****ing joke in all seriousness

this is exactly why professional poker players are so ****ing dumb, they only think in extremes when the topic of going pro is brought up- in their minds they can either have "unlimited" freedom (when their freedom is actually the extent of how deep their wallets are) and lower pay.... or they can work for the big bad "man" in some cubicle for a horrible boss like office space. <<<<--- which tbh goes to show their lack of experience in a real workplace.

though granted bena, you've never played any serious amount of time at live poker.... almost exclusively online, right? Which is a completely different animal than live poker. Online you get to sit in your underwear, with a seat script with no real social interaction.

In live poker, poker pros are the whales/recs *****. Pros still have to kiss ass, be nice, take mental and verbal abuse, put on a fake sociopathic smile on the regular in order to get into good games etc. It's ****ing toxic to be around. So tell me bena, would you want to be the whale? or do you want to be the guy who's groveling and begging and kissing ass for the whales scraps?

but you are right bena, every pro you know probably does think having "unlimited" freedom and low pay is better than "no freedom" and lots of pay..... until they wake the **** up and realize they want more in life than living with flat mates and watching netflix because they can't afford better.

meale i truly wish you the best man, no hate.

I've not had extensive experience working full time. In fact, I've only ever worked full time for 8 months. But that 8 months gave me enough of an eye-opener into the life of an employee - not saying it's the same in every field or in every job but if I were to pursue any professional office career, it would be much of the same for much longer than 8 months - and probably earning less than a 2/5 pro for a good while too.

Before I went full time with poker, I thought the constant interaction with degen casino regs would be painfully depressing, but the opposite has been true. I've become very close friends with many of the people who frequent my homegames and the environment is pretty incredible... Like how many people do you know get to work in a Penthouse 50 stories up with naked cocktail waitresses attending to your every wish, free cocaine in the back room on a Friday night, a full buffet for dinner, unlimited snacks and drinks throughout the evening, and a surprisingly large number of really cool people to talk **** with throughout the night? When was the last time you and your mates kicked back and drank espresso martinis while on the clock? This is literally what half my working week looks like. It's not toxic, it's not a chore or a resentful enduring. I get out of bed in the morning (3pm) and look forward to going to work.

Maybe I'll feel different about it in 18 months, we'll see. But I've never been happier in my life and that is the single most important thing to me. I'd go so far as to say I'd possibly rather make absolutely no money at all after modest living expenses, than forfeit my lifestyle for any job as an employee where I have a consistent weekly income and can save a couple hundo a week.

Also I know you mean well man, no hate received. I do appreciate your post as it's quite polarising to most of the feedback I've received ITT.

The point is every 20-28 yo adult male goes through the quarter life crisis of realizing they dont "want to work for the man". The unfortunate thing is they dont realize / didnt realize earlier that as long as you have drive and live in a first world country its pretty easy to move up / around in the corporate world and make lots of money doing nothing. Those who end up in dead end cube jobs dont have the drive. I hate to make blanket statements like that but Ive been in the corp world for almost a decade now and I can make blanket statements like that.

Im 29 and at $80k a year and Im posting in a blog in a poker forum from my computer on a Monday at 9:20am. And i dont even have drive. Most of my peers are at 6 figures.

None of this will reach you at your age but it will help you 5 years from now.

If you have drive & ambition combined with some natural intelligence, you will pretty much succeed in whatever you do. The skills that make someone a good winning poker player in 2017 would make them great in other industries e.g financial. People in these industries who have played poker are great at finding edges/more efficient ways of working over others in the industry as we as poker players have trained our mind to think like this. So to Upswinging saying Poker players are dumb, no good ones are.

Dont underestimate role of happiness EV. Personally, i just finished school spending whole year studying poker and got 93 ATAR (for non australians, basically just means 93rd percentile of all end of school exam results). I could pretty easily just get my accounting degree and get a good paying job, but id rather earn .8x playing poker than 1.2x as an accountant.

But Meale, dont settle for being a 2/5 or 5/10 pro. Set your sights at the top and do everything you can to get there.

Or, you could earn 2.0x as a poker playing accountant.

best thing about australia is gambling winnings arent taxed, so essentially pro poker players in australia get a free education as you font have to pay uni debts until you start making money

There are several more assumptions made here, but I'll just answer the bits that seem relevant to this discussion.

I made no point about money in my post - on the contrary my main argument for being a poker player is freedom. Financial freedom, which btw is the thing you eluded to, and continue to hang onto in your last point, has very little to do with happiness in my opinion. It obviously allows for splashing out on expensive experiences and travelling, but by no means is money:happiness.

I'm not even going to comment on your online poker dig as it bares no point in the context of what we're talking about. And fwiw I have a very strong grasp on what it is to be a live pro and an online pro having played for 9 years.

until they wake the **** up and realize they want more in life than living with flat mates and watching netflix because they can't afford better.

Another curious comment around your assumptions of poker players, particularly around money again? The vast majority of the players I know, both online AND live maintain strong relationships with partners, have a large group of friends and lead a relatively healthy lifestyle. I wonder if your disdain towards the idea of live is due to your own experience of poker being one of isolation and lack of balance?

It's quite clear to see your perception of poker as a whole is strongly influenced by some kind of personal experience with it, (given how passionate your opinions are) cus I have no other idea why you would have such a negative stance towards it.

I don't get what you mean by this.

Of course, if I can get rolled for higher than 5/10, I'll look to do it. I've never really had ambitions of playing super high stakes or nose bleeds, though. If I can reg out at 10/25 or 25/25 games, sure. But I'd like to think by that stage I might have diversified my income to the point that I don't rely as heavily on poker income. I imagine though that for the forseeable future, I'll always be playing a large chunk of poker volume each week.

Yup! I've actually written a bit about this earlier ITT. I've always liked the idea of academia and I think I could see myself going back to uni pretty happily!

Ava and upswinging both making solid points as far as I can tell, imo. But I'm only a once-a-week recreational poker player, so what do I know.

OP is still young, unattached, kidless, etc. with the world ahead of him, so if there's a moment to do this sorta stuff, it probably is now. Good luck to him, imo, and I'm sure he'll figure it all out as he goes.

Ggoodluck!G