I don't know what I'd do.

As long as your career choice is literally anything other than this...

...you’ll be fine.

Lol

I know this has been brought up a couple times in this thread, so I apologise if I'm just echoing someone else's prior post, but... if you really hate your job that much, could you not at least give yourself a chance at going pro with Poker? you are clearly more than capable of it, and whilst it is stressful, it must be better than pulling 86hr weeks in an environment you deem "toxic and terrible"?

not trying to educate andor force my opinion on this btw, it just seems a bit perplexing to me, and I'm sure a few others, too!

I wasn't in a position to try that due to bills and lack of savings.

Op is way too intelligent to play poker for a living. Do not do it.

You have a good head on your shoulders for being so young (much more conservative than most 24 year olds that can beat 200NL), so I think Im preaching to the choir, but dont.

Your opportunities are limitless with a degree and a career. Poker is finite, and the nut nut nut low.

Use it as passive income to save an extra $15-$25k a year, and you will be in the 1% of 30 year olds in 5 years. Its soooo simple and no one wants to do it.

Having a degree and a career is not some sort of magical key to your opportunities being "limitless". IMO just do whatever tf you love to do.

If the degree is engineering then it is a fairly magical key in the united states, especially when combined with passive income at an early age.. I agree people should do what they love, but most do not know what that is and the game becomes wealth accumulation and that game is not won by playing poker professionally.

Also, no one loves poker. Literally no one.

As an American who went to one of the top engineering schools in the country (go bucky) i'd have to respectively disagree. Sure a bach degree in engineering (or business/maths/some sciences) can get you a solid job after graduation where you'll make anywhere from 45-90k a year (pre tax), some finance sickos will make 6 figs but will work 90 hour weeks. Where you land on that interval will be completely dependent on your ability to land solid internships over the 4-5 years you spend getting that degree, networking abilities, etc. But anything past that threshold takes another degree and some solid politicking within organizations, and alot of people don't truly love that ****, and end up in their mid 40's ****ing miserable.

My argument is just don't play the wealth accumulation game, and if you do definitely don't go to ****ing college to do it unless you are going to play that game via finance or need a specific degree that'll teach you to build something you envision. If you don't know what you want to do, I would suggest blindly going to college isn't your best option.

also I can't tell if the no one loves poker comment is sarcasm.

For someone whos miserable playing poker you sure spend alotta time here. Just because you're miserable or would be doesn't mean everyone else is/would be. Its quite obvious you never did nor were ever on track to make 6 figs a year playing live cash.........after all you play 25nl online

I don't know what I want to do. What you doing currently, age/degree? Any suggestions for me?

This is going to be my goal. I just want enough money for a down payment on a house in 1-4 yrs (idk timeframe really depends on other things), and the other vast majority of my extra income is going to go into 401k and stocks I pick. The money I have in btc atm is likely going to be my house down payment.

I definitely think there is good advice in this post, although the "limitless" is a bit of an exaggeration. I think saving money early and a lot is a way to get way ahead and really capitalize on the future.

with regards to other posts, I feel strongly that I need to find a job I enjoy or some sort of income-gaining that I enjoy and I just don't have any idea what that is going to be. When I went to college for engineering I did the first two semesters as an "undeclared" engineer, basically just taking the basic courses. When I could essentially no longer continue as "undeclared" I essentially picked "materials engineering" because it "sounded cool". That's it... Nothing more to it than that and I'm finding it difficult to decide which job path I want to go down.

I know for a fact I don't want to work 80+ hrs a work to earn X$ no matter what. Anything more than 60hrs/week on average is frankly too much for me. I don't mind having "side jobs" that I enjoy (like poker), but as a specific career path I'm as lost now as I was when I was 10 yrs old. Simply no idea what I want to be doing.

hit my dms we can chat there.

dms?

private messages

Yeah you can make 6 figs per year or close to it playing poker on the side. And not even playing the highest stakes available online... no need to give up working to build wealth from poker...

If we weren’t using text I think you’d realize we are more on the same page than you realize.

Also, I am a finance sicko.

This post is just wrong.

I’m shot taking $25NL.

Lol

People making 6 figs on the side? Less than 1% of full time pros are making 6 figs a year

^^

Im guessing he means with a regular career

"Easy" is relative but if you have a stem degree (or finance, accounting, lol) and dont suck you should be anywhere from 60-90k 3-5 years out of college. Part time poker at that point makes it pretty easy to clip the 6 figs or get near to it at least.

Your quote about less than 1% of full time pros making 6 figs is my exact point however, and I'm glad you said that. There are more players in the NFL than there are 6 figure pro poker players (I've confirmed this after thinking about it), which is incredible to think about. It is easier to become a professional NFL player than a pro poker player clearing 6 figures in this country.

Will come back to the "follow your dreams" after christmas. Cliffs are that there is a very real problem in the US in the education system where the intelligent ones have a percieved choice between law, medicine, engineering and business and little else and not one single thought is put into the individual. I was 25 before I started truly thinking about what I wanted out of life, by then you have a degree and are well into a career.

Similar to op, I was undecided going into college and basically checked a box when I had to. You need guidance from very wise people at that age, instead you have most middle aged society telling you to follow the same hell hole they followed (engineering, business, law) bc they have full-on guzzled the flouride and are taking you with them.

Do you really believe this? From all available sites world wide you believe less than 1% of full time pros are making $100k a year or more? Source for that statistic?

I have a hard time believing there aren’t plenty of pros right here in the states making that kinda of money on Bodog and/or Global alone... maybe 1% making $1m+. Or 1% of ALL poker players world wide. But 1% of all full time pros?

Edit: I didn’t say it was easy or that anyone can do it...

With all sources of income this year I'll be over 6 figs. (big deal for me).

I don't think I can make 6 figs in poker unless I am grinding all year (and even then).

LOL just stop

Can't help but chime in on a few things here...

OP is also way too smart to be grinding 60+ hours a week in a job he doesn't like. I'm curious as to why you seem to have this personal vendetta against playing poker professionally... OP could verrrrrry easily make 6 figures playing 5/10 full time in Vegas. And when I say "easily" - that refers to 40 hours per week, practically up to him when he works/doesn't work. Mas said he has cleared 6 figs this year which is very wp but a lot of that has come from crypto/trading and he has still worked silly silly hours all year to get there.

BTW I'm not saying go play 5/10 or that it's infinitely better than a job and a career, obviously it's very subjective. I'm just saying Ava that you talk in an absolutist tone a lot and so when you say poker is the nut nut low, it might not be for a lot of different people.

Mason I've said it ITT before and I'll say it again, you're too smart to be working so much AND be unhappy with it. Realistically, you should be able to figure something out where you either work a ton and make a ton of money or, and the better approach, "work" less and have enough $ to survive and be happy. More about wealth accumulation later though...

+1

I'm very very antiestablishment in my views on this but having a degree and a 9-5 just seems like the nut low to me unless you really really enjoy your grind. Fact is, most people simply don't.

This is likely why so many people in the world are miserable. So many smart people think that just because they have brains, they need to earn a lot of money because having brains affords you the ability to have money. But just because you have that opportunity, doesn't mean you need to take it.

I've worked with a bunch of virtually brain dead people who will never have the opportunity to earn 6 figures. They're literally just too dumb. But just because you're smart and CAN make money, doesn't mean that your life should be oriented around acquiring money.

I'll preface this by saying I know absolutely nothing about wealth acquisition and that these are merely my observations of a pretty sick society. There's a point of diminishing returns in the wealth accumulation game. For most people getting more money means working harder, as in more hours. But at some point, the amount of hours you put in severely impacts your ability to be happy.

Some people will say that you should work hard while you're young because you're physically capable of it and also to set yourself up for later in life and because your investments will compound. But it's important to remember that these are your golden years of youth. I pretty strongly think it would be a pity to waste these years working 50+ hour weeks just to get ahead. I think it's possible you wake up at 40 and wonder what tf happened. Fact is, you have your whole life to work but youthfulness is fleeting and I think you should consider that.

Huge +1

There's more to life than getting money. As I said before, just because you're smart, doesn't mean you're a failure unless you have a good job or earn lots of money.

@OP You've probably heard this spiel a hundred times before but, what excites you? What are your passions? You've said you don't know what you want to do but I think you need to sort that out immediately, before you plan to put down payments on houses. Why is it you even want a house?

I used to work with a guy who reminds me of you. He's a year younger than me, works probably 50 hours a week without being paid overtime and wants nothing more than to own a house. That's his goal in life, is to buy a house. I never understood that.

Elaborate on this a bit? Why have you chosen this as your goal? What happens when you own a house? What if you're still miserable in a toxic work environment but now own a house?

Absolutely it is. But be aware of the trade off I mentioned earlier.

That is absolutely mind blowing to me. Pretty incredible you could stick it out to the end without really being particularly passionate about what you were doing. I loved what I learnt at uni but still struggled to rly give a fk about doing the assessment.

IMO before worrying about what job path you want to go down, you should think about what you want from life, what is it you're willing to get passionate about? Hate sounding like some hippy life coach when in reality I'm just a 22 yr old kid who's as clueless as anyone else but if I can give you some ideas to think about that you might benefit from then it's prob +EV.

From the outside looking in, I see someone who has grown up, gone to college, and got a job because society says that's what you should do. That's fine and it's +EV for sure, but imo going your whole life having a career in a field you don't really care about, working a job (i.e. spending most of your life) doing tasks that you aren't really bothered with - doing this just to be financially secure seems like a pretty piss weak trade-off to me.

You got that right, at least. No one should work 80+ hours a week for any amount of money. We for some reason make work such a large part of our lives and I quite resent that about western capitalist societies.

I find it so strange when I hear people say they don't know what they want to do. All through my senior year in high school people were freaking out because they didn't know what they wanted to do afterwards. For me the struggle was narrowing down all the things I was super into and excited about to just one. I feel like I could have gone any of 10 different ways after high school. And I ended up going with the one that wasn't even on my list (poker)!

IMO if I was you I'd take some time off work and do a bit of soul searching. Have a think about a few different options. Visualise how you'd like your life to play out. Do DMT. Idk, I think the sooner you figure out what you wanna do in life, the better.

Obviously that's a pretty ridiculous statement. Just because there's more NFL players than poker pros doing well does not mean it's easier to be a professional athlete than a poker pro. Playing sport at the high end for a living is possibly one of the hardest career paths you can follow. I used to play volleyball internationally at the youth level and that was in every way a tougher grind than anything I've done before. Poker is ***** easy. You literally just sit on your ass at a table for 8 hours and then go home. Going to the gym twice a day 7 days a week, force feeding yourself, etc - that ****'s tough.

Lmao biggest +1 of my life?

The fact is that no one ***** knows how to play the game of life. Taking life advice from your parents or from your teachers is like taking poker advice from a LLSNL forum...

Big ups on that. But remember you were literally grinding all year @ work no?

Yeah, I really do. In the current poker climate, there are so few guys bringing in 100k a year, imo. The majority of 'regs' play small micro-small stakes. If you're to look at the mid-high stakes regulars, it would be very rare to see someone you don't know, who then turns out to be a reg. Player pools are becoming smaller, more saturated which results in lowered winrates.

I'd be surprised if it was even 1% of players who solely play poker with no other income. There'll be sooo many guys making 40-70k, but breaking that 100k is pretty tough in this day and age.

Just my 2 cents, would be curious to hear what some others say