I disagree.

Please give an example of a live player's deductions that you think make your statement 100% accurate.

Few things to consider: A home office doesn't apply to live poker. Tips could be deducted, but in order to deduct them you need to acknowledge them as income. (So $104k would be around $114k). Travel and meals could be deducted, but let's say you spend $20k on travel and meals. That means you now only profited $84k. You could possibly deduct vehicle expenses, but they are prorated for personal vs business and hardly meaningful.

Then add in self employment tax of 15.3%.

Add in cost of benefits. Add in cost of paid vacation and sick time.

Now consider the probability of an audit if you declare yourself a professional gambler with deductions.

Now all that said I think the percentage of poker "pros" that even pay taxes on 100% of their winnings (with or without deductions) is very small. $104k with tax 'evasion' would make your statement more accurate.

Op stay at your job.

You would need to be a very good player to make $105k playing poker. You would need to become very elite to have the potential of $250-300k /yr in 5 years.

Working for an employer you pay 9.1% of the 15.3 so it is deceiving the way you stated. Meals, travel(auto is easy), health insurance, internet, all I can tell you is that with equal salaries my take home in poker is more.

I was commenting on particular aspect, not the overall package so don't turn it into something I wasn't saying

As a live poker pro, you often have to pay for overpriced casino food, while lots of tech companies provide their employees with free food & beverages.
I doubt you are better off by being able to deduct health insurance compared to getting it (and a gazillion other benefits) for free through your employer.
Benefits for somebody with a $100k salary at a larger tech company are worth around $20k/year, totally tax free. OTOH, those expenses for you as a poker pro might be $20k, turning your $100k winnings into $80k. Pretty impressive if you can make up that $40k gap.

You are debating against points I never tried to make

Source, please?

If you play online all the time and you have an office set up for it, why wouldn't that count?

I said "live" poker, which I believe what OP was asking about. To deduct office at least 50% of your business needs to occur there....which I don't see as possible if you only play in casinos. Online poker...different

OP, invest time and energy in your job and professional skill set. Your potential comp going that route far exceeds that of poker. Play recreationally and enjoy the supplemental income. You make on the ballpark of $400/day pretax. Why would you trade that for poker?

Poker can be very lucrative, but you'll need playing games where $10-$20k downswings are common.

Basically the way deductions are supposed to work are to find out how much net income you generated. If you're claiming a bunch of deductions for expenditures not directly related to your business you're probably doing it wrong. If you are claiming $105k before any deductions, you didn't really generate that much income from the business. You still had operating costs. A lot of the deductions work out to be higher than the expenses they're meant to cover, though, which is nice. For example when I deducted my mileage for my vehicle it was much greater than the cost to operate, fuel and repair my vehicle.

Where I play my comps from poker are high enough to get free meal every ~5 hours of play. Most non-alcoholic drinks are provided for free by the casino.

I don't know how you got all the way up to $40k from $20k.

Been playing live for over 10 years, it really depends on your personality, if you can drown out all the bull**** and don't get burned up too easily it's definitely fun sometimes. Different tables have different dynamics and personalities, some tables are loud and social, some are dead quiet and it's all about the business. Sometimes I'd dread going to the casino and ask myself is it even worth it especially on downswings, but once you get there and feel the action it gets better. Sooner or later you'll start to notice the degeneracy, don't get sucked into it, at times it can feel like it's sucking all your positive energy, even make you feel depressed, just gotta remember why you're there and try to have some fun, poker is a game after all.

Yes, my mistake. Apologies.

To those saying that I won't make more money in poker - How much do winning regs playing regularly at 5/10 and 10/20 make? I would assume they make substantially more than my salary.

you know what they say about the word "ASSUME"


I left a job as a computer network engineer 100k+ , stock options, bonuses health ins. , 4 weeks vac.

I LEFT FOR EVERY OTHER REASON
money was not the factor.
if it is ; then stay put you will do far better.

Why would you assume that?

Probably because he hasn't played poker since Black Friday?

My assumption is that most "winning regs" in 5/10 or 10/20 are actually pretty deeply in debt.

Well, let's take a step back. What are the games generally like in live poker at 5/10 and 10/20 or above? What is the ratio of recreational players to regs who know what they're doing? It's sounding like it's quite rare for 5/10 and above games to have good tables?

I mean, in high stakes there are plenty of fish billionaires who don't mind losing a bit of money for fun. Surely at 5/10 and 10/20, there are plenty of fish millionaires with the same mentality?

Maybe you should take another step back and take a look what card rooms in the US offer games 10/20+ on an everyday basis. Sounds like you might vastly overestimate that number.

In which casinos do you see "plenty of fish billionaires" lose their hard earned millions? There are 5xx billionaires in the US, how many of them are regulars in card rooms?

A significant percentage of rich people (especially "celebrities") who like to play poker won't do that in public for obvious reasons. So the question might be if you know the right people who can get you into good high stakes private games and what you have to offer to keep getting invited back.

This is good advice. Out of curiousity, I just checked the games listed on Bravo across the east coast running right now (5pm Saturday evening). Ranging from Quebec to Florida, there were 22 casinos running at least 10 tables, and ZERO were spreading 10/20 NL or higher.

The largest room was Foxwoods, which despite spreading 53 tables and 8 2/5 NL games, wasn't even spreading a single table of 5/10 NL.

if you play in vegas at the right times you can play very high stakes the problem is you will have people at your table like Jungleman, Tom Dwan, Phil Hellmuth, and good luck taking all their money bighitter.

Don't forget Mike Matusow, Jennifer Harmon and Phil Gordon!

Keep in mind Twin River Casino in Lincoln, RI, has a sizeable poker room. 24 tables after the recent expansion. It has killed 5/10 NL at FW. There is typically a table running around the clock, frequently 2 even on weekdays. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 3 running when Nick checked. And I promise you, the games are good. Often 2-3 major spots per table and more bad regs than you can imagine. Primary downside is dealers are shoddy and floors even worse, but it's totally getting all the players coming from north of Rhode Island.

Just because high stakes recreational players can afford to lose money, doesn't mean they like to lose money. No one does. Yes, you're being naive if you think the bigger games are filled with rich donators.

AFAIK the only no limit games bigger than 5-10 that runs somewhat regularly is M8trix and Graton (Fridays). There could be people making substantially more than you playing poker but they will probably be limited by the number of hours said game runs.

I've found this to be true not only from a fun perspective but also for game improvement. I played poker as a sole source of income 2009-10 and never got better, got a real job, got back into poker as a hobby in 2015 and have found it so much easier to improve. I never tilt after bad beats. I tilt a little when I make a bad decision, but eons less than I did when I was playing full time (and thus, poker was more tied to my identity). I can try new things (MTTs, PLO, whatever). I can study Upswing videos rather than playing because I don't give a **** about volume.

I play a lot at Lucky Chances/M8trix/Oaks too. GL and hope to see you out there OP.

And if they have their way it will be high stakes mixed limit games. Or with some it might be PLO. But playing 10/20 nlhe ten hours a day four time a week? Slim chance

I would assume that private cash games is where OP would have the best chance to make his dreams come true ( if at all) and not at public casinos and card rooms.