Quote:
Originally Posted by bobboufl11
I'm an actuary/data analyst. After a few busto years finishing the degree and a few years making more like decent EL money I'm finally around that $100k mark as well. Definitely took longer to get there than it could with poker and I wasn't patient in my early 20s. But I think the floor is very high now that I'm there and the ceiling for me is definitely higher compared to poker also. It also seems much easier mentally. Just have to be willing to put up with some standard dumb Dilbert-ish situations.
I don't think the flexibility is so much worse than poker now. I have to be fairly available between most of the hours of 9-5 and get my work. But I have the option to work from home or in the office. I have to live in one of two cities now, but could probably ask to move after a year or so id I really needed to. Moving up into management I'd probably lose some of that flexibility, but I think the same would be true of bigger games. You'd become a slave of whenever they run if you want to make the bigger salary. The ability to work part time or take longer breaks to travel is nice, if you can save enough to afford to as a poker pro. Wish I would have read a book like "I Will Teach You to Be Rich" by Ramit Sethi and figured out a way to do a zero based budget with some kind of savings plan 10 years earlier.
Definitely wouldn't do MTTs full time like I tried. What even is the annual expectation of an MTT pro? Just about everyone just fires everything they/their backer can afford and hopes for the heater, lol(or at least they did in my day). Cash game grind with a mix of online and live for diversification/sanity seems like the way to go. Maybe like 10 high value live MTTs per year and 10 online MTTs per month to scratch that itch and have the chance to bink.
As a 9-5er I'd probably do the occasional live MTT or soft cash game if I lived near a casino but I'm a few hours away from any casino and don't know of any home games.
That's cool. For sure with a degree/field like that your upside is definitely way higher than poker, especially long term. As long as you are reasonably happy with the job you are doing a 9-5 really isn't that bad imo. It's just hard to find something you enjoy with a good group of coworkers/bosses.
Sounds like your job is pretty flexible which is great. Unfortunately a lot aren't but especially nowadays there's starting to be more and more jobs where companies are allowing people to work from home. I'd say the ultimate flexibility/nice part of poker is that no one is depending on you to be there. If you can't work for whatever reason you aren't inconveniencing anyone or causing any issues. No other job will ever have that level of freedom but other jobs will also have a lot of other perks that poker doesn't have. Always tradeoffs with everything.
Def smart to know where your money is going and to have a plan for how much you are saving each year and what your goals are. I think it's something everyone always wishes they started learning about earlier but can't change the past, just gotta make the best choices you can going forward. Important to still remember to have fun/enjoy life though.
Seems like most mtt pros these days don't have higher than 40-50k expectation and have to deal with some pretty sick variance. There's def people who have much higher expectation than that though still, but getting tougher and tougher. Idk how people deal with being tied to their computer/live poker table all day though with no flexibility. And the insane variance on top of it. I'd much rather be in a 9-5 than do that tbh, but to each their own.
There's still some good sunday big guarantee decently soft tourneys online if you ever get the itch to fire off a tourney or two every once and awhile.