Umm because I wasn’t

You are one weird little guy following me around from forum to forum

Correct, he just follows me around saying stuff that makes no sense

This sentence started this thread. Significantly more difficult making 100k at poker than 300k at several job? No way. Or this is cherry picking the careers. I have a wide range of friends from manual labor to career professionals. There is no way 300k is easier. I'm surprised this thread got to 100 posts. Well, not really surprised with the insurance stuff. But the only friends I know at 300k+ are specialty cases like getting a security clearance that greatly increased their salary or making partner and getting a bigger piece of the pie. But a 100k versus 300k is absurd, 100k versus 200k would have been something to talk about.

Yeh I don't see how this is even a discussion. Making 300k for most career paths is unattainable - plenty of white collar careers out there that cap out around 150 maybe 200. Really for a company to pay you 300k a year you have to be making them probably 900k a year to justify paying you that kind of money - insanely hard to make a company 900k/yr. 100k/yr in poker is not that hard in my opinion especially in the live scene - a 2/5 grinder can get there and doesn't have to be elite, or a marginal 5/10 winner. A more interesting discussion would be 200k at poker vs 300k in another career - that is much closer imo.

From what I’ve heard there is a lot of money in Mass so you’re probably right about here in Philly. For parx definitely Less than 1%. I could name the small handful, not sure what percentage it would equate to but I’m positive it’s less than 1

This is actually quite easy to prove:

Do a higher percentage of people earn 100k at poker or 300k in other careers/life situations/concomitant career investments (like a business owner with a liquidity event)?

Approximately 4-5% of people make 300k annually. Not families. Individuals. Some states are represented higher, and I actually think this number is higher because there are so many retirees/others collecting significant amounts of tax free income that don't show up in tax forms like certain MLPs, etc or they are overly creative with taxes as a business entity. Do 4-5% of poker players/standard losing reg who plays 5 days a week, etc... make more than 100k?

That is how you think about the issue. You don't say, "well my brother who went to state college can't do it, or I can't." Well you don't have the necessary skillset, soft or hard, but that really is irrelevant. If they didn't go to a good law school, a good undergrad, didn't pick the right majors, etc... yes, they probably are capped.

I doubt that more than 2% of poker players clear six figures. Starks Pizzeria agrees. And there you go. Sure there are caveats, but those really aren't going to change the overall dataset.

Nah most Americans who make 300k a year has had extensive education, deep connections, years of experience, and sometimes hustling skills.

If you want to make an equivalent comparison between poker players who make 100k vs those who make 300k in other jobs you have to look at poker players who also had extensive training, deep connections to the juiciest games, years of experience and hustling skills. I’m pretty sure poker player who has all the above can clear 100k

the population of people picking poker as a career is skewed towards, maybe not the bottom of the barrell, but somewhere slightly above so comparing the percentages is not apples to apples

less nepotism in poker, in the real world its very easy to make six figures a year. You only need a rich father

Where do you get 4-5%? When I google I get about 2.5-2.8% of household income, not individual, so would think that number is below 2%.

This is the answer. The idea that lucrative careers are distributed meritocratically is not one that ought to be taken seriously - particularly in the USA & UK, social class enormously influences access to premium education (both further & higher), valuable networks and the kinds of soft social skills necessary to be able to integrate into elite circles. Add to the fact that upper class people often have access to funds which facilitate aggressive shot-taking in life and I don't think the topic can be meaningfully discussed in a class-blind way.

Poker, OTOH, is the closest thing to a genuinely meritocratic game I've ever come across - variance is brutal but bad beats do not discriminate by socioeconomic status.

Being born with advantage makes poker infinitely less attractive, but for many normal people (and indeed those without access to time machines to retake their high school exams and alter their college + early career path) 100k in poker is probably much more accessible than 300k elsewhere.

I think you ended up googling the AI page and misunderstood my points about equity, MLPs, small business owners and non-taxable forms of income. What I think you don't realize is that legal accounting helps mitigate taxable income a lot so what you see is not what you get. But whatever. I'm just telling you how things are, being one of said group. You are free to disagree and holdfast with the 2%, but I think that won't do anyone any good to underestimate the amount of successful people in the US. Better to strive higher than to make excuses, and not-surprisingly there's a correlation.

Having said way too much, you think that 2% of poker players clear 100k?

LOL, is this your first community college SJW class?

Get A's and stop wasting time on this forum making excuses for your poor grades and lack of ambition.

imo, the only thing dumber than blaming your own failures solely on forces outside of your own control is refusing to acknowledge the role those forces play for a lot of successful people

This discussion reminds me of one of my favorite articles.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politic...-harvard-0800/

It is very long. But it catches up with a Harvard Law class 10 years later. These people are, obviously, the NBA All Stars of getting good grades and stuff that people are advocating.

A surprising number aren't in law anymore. Many of those who are, are miserable.

I'm not as smart as these people, but kinda smart. One of the worst things about this path has to be exhausting your intellect on stuff like malpractice suits or tax issues.

I read/study some stuff about gambling, but mostly history, philosophy, etc. That's worth a lot to me.

Most ppl I know who are successful always talk about how lucky they are. Of course it is a bit litote-ish.

Yeah I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone refuse to acknowledge things, except maybe this trust fund couple, each heirs of family offices, each with a sinecure, that I was golfing with the other month.

Fortunately your fear is moot and said bugaboo doesn’t exist often, except in the rarest of circumstances. That is unless you’re the type that loves and trusts politicians or cherry picks data from tmz.

But yeah, it’s dumber.

These estimates don't take into account many things, so the 4-5% range should be about spot on and possibly a little higher. The vast majority of self-employed people make considerably more then what they show on paper (tax returns) due to write-offs, not claiming some income, etc. This also does not take into account that your primary job is not always, and never should be, your only source of income. I am not sure where the baseline would be, but a high percentage of people making over say 100K or so a year are also putting their money to work for them in other investments, basic retirement plans, stocks, real estate, etc. of which a lot of this does not always show as actual yearly income but is still income being generated.

I am very surprised so many people claim is it easier to make 100K per year in poker over 300K in the regular work world. For one single year, sure I can see that but certainly not on a consistent basis over time. The small percentage of elite crushers and rake makes this impossible for a large majority of players.

Once you stabilize and are financially secure in the job market, that usually continues to grow and increase your earnings for the vast majority of people. There is no real 'variance' per say other then on the investment side and high commission jobs. Once you get to making 300K/yr, you usually do not go backwards for the most part.

In poker however, to make 100K/yr on a consistent basis year over year is very hard for 99% of poker players. Sure, you can bink a tourney or run hot in cash games for a year, but that almost always doesn't correlate to you making 100K+ the next year. Variance can kill you at any time no matter how long you have been playing and a large majority of poker players may claim they have good bankroll management and never play over their head, but in reality that is only a small handful that actually do that. 95% of poker players are also not investing their money, they are just trying to move up in stakes, or play bigger tourneys, etc. They rarely have their money working for them. The few select pros that are sponsored and/or those making additional income off of coaching, streaming, etc. are the exception, not the rule.

To me, this is not even close, making 100K+ per year on a consistent basis over time playing poker is infinitely harder then making 300K/yr outside of poker. I would preface that by saying that the ability to make 300K+/yr over 100K/yr in poker is much easier, but certainly not everyone takes advantage of that ability for sure.

I've done both in my life, earning 75-100K a year playing mid stakes (10-20 to 40-80 Limit Hold'em in the 1990's and early 2,000's) and doing well as an owner of rental properties in Los Angeles after that. My income during the 2010's and onward has been around 300K a year, and yes I paid taxes on all of it! I have the tax returns to prove it. To be honest, neither one was the hardest job in the world. I typically played 20-25 hours a week at Hold'em, picking my times and games carefully. I liked to play on Thursday thru Sunday in the evenings and usually only played 3-5 hours per session. A typical day would result in a $500-1,000 win. Not big money, but steady income that I could rely on. My best run was 33 straight winning sessions and 39 out of 40 in the same run. That equated to a 25K profit in two months. I was a well known face in SoCal cardrooms at that time, and made sure to always tip the floormen well. Hollywood Park was my main room and the Bike second.

Managing my rentals probably required about 15-20 hours per week. At the most I had 42 individual units to take care of. I managed them myself. I did not want to pay a management company 6% to do a job that I could do better. I'm basically retired now and enjoying my senior years. I rarely play any more, only taking a fling at the WSOP each year (played three events last year and got 28th in the 3K LHE). The multiple buy-in tourneys in SoCal suck!

How many people reading and commenting here do you think are still in school?

I went to probably the most elite university in my country, which is how I know the power of class as a mediating factor when it comes to success. Nearly half of my contemporaries were from private schools, vs a 7% national figure. Rich kids born smarter?

As others have also pointed out, you should consider the possibility that probably nobody on this thread is <21. I am not denying that hard work is often critical for success in any field; I am just denying that is it remotely close to sufficient, plenty of unsuccessful people work, and have worked, incredibly hard.

poker is all about money and making profit, nothing else! if you think otherwise then you are very very delusional about poker and life
so given statement above obv 300k doing a job is far superior than doing 100k from poker
as someone said in this thread poker is a career for someone from a very poor country, exactly like in my case from Moldova
for people living in a country that offers jobs that pay 300k a year you REALLY REALLY have to be an IDIOT to play poker for a living
work is all about money till you reach a certain level that can offer you the freedom to what you actually love, until then you are slave of money and rake

What is this mess of a response - you claimed 4-5% make over 300k and I said more like 1.5-2%. We're talking about pre tax gross income - very clear.

Good response I'll bet you've got some good stories in both areas
...

Yes, I understand that you don't understand what I'm referring to and why. It boils down to this: you’re fixated on w-2 type income. And most high earners have other methods, some of which I referred to that are treated differently than what you’d see reflected in agi tables. Namely investments.

High income poker players could make the same kinds of investments.