I'm in a pretty interesting situation right now. I live in NYC, married and we have a small child. I was active duty military for close to 11 years but switched to the NY Guard in 2006. I started playing poker in 2013 but cause of where I lived, wasn't able to play often. That changed during my last deployment with the guard. It wasn't overseas but it was out of the country. It sucks being away from home but FaceTime allowed he to stay connected with my family and the pay beats the hell out of the security job I had in the city. During this time I thought I wouldn't be able to play poker at all but I was so wrong.

I found a home game Hosted by a civilian contractor. I figured it would be a friendly 1/2 game. Again I was wrong. Was a friendly game but it was 5/5. No way I was BRed for it with my roll being just under 2K. With that amount I wasn't even properly rolled for 1/2, but with no other options I dived in. Got hammered the first month but I'm glad I stuck to it. Once I got a handle on most of the players I started to crush it. Came home with a 15k BR and more importantly, enough money in my savings (not part of my roll) to pay my bills for 2 years.

This was back in Feb. Plan at the time was to take some time off and reconnect with the family and spend as much time with the kid as I can. Also started playing a lot more in underground poker rooms around NYC.

After a few weeks I had a long talk with the misses. We both agreed it wouldn't be worth it to return to my old security job. The way we figured, factor in the hours I'm actually out of the house cus of travel time, lunch hour I didn't get paid for and daycare we would have to get since she works also, I would be earning less than min wage. Just wasn't worth it.

My wife is a professional in her field (higher education Adminstration), she loves her job and has a chance at a good promotion. Her chances of this promotion improves if she is able to concentrate on the job and stay late when she needs to. This is something she couldn't do before because of our kid and with me being either out of the country or at a job in the city. That is where I come in. Now I'm a stay at home Dad. I take care of the kid, and do some chores around the house. We save on daycare and she gets a break from having to do it all herself. More importantly, she can now concentrate on her job when she needs to.

This is where poker comes in. In order for us to be able to make this work, I just have to make enough at the tables to cover my bills, with isn't a whole lot actually. Easy right?

I figured I could step into these card rooms and play 2/5 with no problem considering my success at 5/5. Yeah right. Had some pretty good nights at 2/5 but had more sessions where I was crushed. Now my roll is just under 12k.
I'm still sure I could make this work but I think my biggest problem when I started this is the fact that I want this to work so badly. I love playing poker but I love taking care of my kid even more. I really want to keep being a stay at home dad/wannabe-semi pro. So afraid of failing I started playing scared, and we all know that is not good.

Since I step back down to 1/2, been playing more relaxed and had a winning month for May after a break even in March and April bring a loser.

For the rest of the summer I'm gonna use my savings to cover my bills and concentrate on building my roll but with the amount of time I'm able to play, about 18-24 hours of playing time a week(Monday, Weds, Fri nights usually), I have to have a win rate of about $15hr at the min, so I don't have to dip in to my savings.

By the end of the summer I should have a clear idea if I could pull this off.

Good luck bro..I hope you can make it work..

Cheers

Good luck. I reccomend recording hands you have questions about and posting them in the LLSNL forum. $15/hr is definitely achievable for the right personality at 1/2.