Most of pro players end their pokerpro career before they reach 40 y/o, get money out and start business.

Anyone here trying to do opposite? Like start playing low stakes as they have a desk job and trying to reach at least mid-stakes while having 30yo?

Or is it complete nonsense, waste of time, etc?

I hope to work 5 more years and then grind part time in Vegas, but my grinding wouldn't pay 2 months of expenses for me right now.

I am not sure I could do it anymore, but after I have got enough rest and if I want to move in Spain, I will probably have to grind more or less to get the permit to stay for 5 years, but what I do after that is up to me.

I wonder the same. I'm 35, have a college degree, full-time job, and all of the bells and whistles that come with. Grind in my free time. I hate the 9-5 and just cant see myself in this desk job forever. Actually looking to move into playing full-time around Labor Day 2018.

The way I look at it, everything is a waste of time if you're not doing something that you love and I'd hate to look back and have regret that I never gave it a shot. I can always get back to my current position with some company.

the love you have for poker will die down after you start playing professionally. that being said the freedom is great obv. poker economy is going downhill though so imo not really a great time to be leaving a decent job to play poker.

Do you think that hold true for doing anything you love professionally, or just poker?

do not do it. if ur bored then find an interesting hobby that u can turn into a business or just switch fields, etc. do not want to play poker for a living, it is not worth it.

Why do you think it isn't worth it?

Switching fields of employment would be just as risky at my age.

If you want to do it and you have the work ethic, then go for it. Don't listen to anyone telling you what to do with your life.

Generally yeah. Anything when you are depending on it for your livelihood is going to be inherently more stressful and take a lot of the fun out of it. And then doing anything repetitively is also going to get boring after awhile and you naturally will become less passionate about it. But the thing with poker is that it comes with additional downsides that most other jobs don't. It also comes with some positives like the immense freedom in your day to day schedule (assuming you are grinding with a comfortable net worth and not depending on having good results constantly in order to get by). But with a declining poker economy idk if the positives outweigh the negatives for most people at this point other than those whose alternative is working a super ****ty job that doesn't pay well and has no advancement possibility. Ultimately it's up to you though to decide if the potential positives outweigh the likely negatives. There are a couple things that would make your life a lot easier if you decided to do it, the first one being having a spouse who's job can provide health insurance (self employed health insurance is grossly expensive) and the second one being already having a very healthy net worth. If your back is already against the wall financially poker is going to be extremely stressful and more difficult to succeed at.

Agree with this to an extent. Ultimately only you can decide what is right for you. It's good to gather information and experiences from people already doing it though because often times we will go into things with rose colored glasses and not think of the actual risks that come with our decisions. I think there's still money to be made for sure and there's definitely people who will be happier and succeed in today's environment. But most people would be better off sticking to a more standard path.

That's among the most important things I tell people when they ask me if they should go pro. I loved poker before I turned (semi-)pro and started loving it again after quitting. But didn't enjoy it for the years in between.
It's certainly true for everything that puts you under lots of pressure. If you love watching netflix and somebody is willing to pay you to sit 6 hours a day on the couch and watch whatever you like, that might be OK.

Personally, I want the freedom that would come with poker. I work 5-6 days a week, 55-65hrs doing cost estimation. Takes plenty of work and comes with built in stress. But my earnings in this field are not as directly correlated with the amount of work that I put in. Working hard in poker doesn't guarantee that you will always win, but I'd be willing to bet it correlates to your earning potential. Poker will obv have stress built in when I depend on winning to live.

My observation is that the live poker economy isn't in rapid decline. There is plenty of money to be made. Additionally, Im not looking to get filthy rich from poker. I look at it as a way to reclaim my time while earning a standard living. Not tryna ball out from poker.

because i have played for a living online for many years and i do regret it. it was fun for a while, but in the long run it was not worth it. I still play until i finish my masters next semester, but it surely isn't fun anymore. I also don't see any future for poker, on the one hand game is solved and everyone is running bots on sites that are non-stars and then there is stars which aims to turn poker into an unbeatable casino game. Seems like this game is either turning into a raked chess or into a slot which both suck. Also one more thing that prolly doesn't apply to you: my old school buddies are all more successful than me at this point in time, yes i was a baller and better off than them for a few years, but now im just a bum next to them.

How many people really have a job that they have fun with? It not being "fun anymore" is around the last reason to try to dissuade someone from attempting to be a pro poker player...assuming they have a reasonable back up plan.

I have a job that i LIKE not love and I play poker part time right now 1 day a week I also Vlog part time all about Vegas and poker it's for fun right now but I have some good ideas where I want it to go. But as far as working as I said I like my job but for me after working for a company for 5,6 or 7 years it's time for a change and that's what I do. I also play online when I get the chance to although if I am playing cash it's low stakes and I also play some tourneys and mostly Sit n Go's. Biggest reason for me having a job is Healthcare got to have if you don't then you're a ticking timebomb. Although I would love to become a full time pro I wouldn't be able to hack it without healthcare!

the "fun" for me is in direct correlation with my hourly. It was "fun" when i was crushing and the future wasnt so dark, it stopped being "fun" once games got tougher, amaya took a big **** on the vip program, my hourly dried up and variance skyrocketed.

I'm a poker player who has played live high stakes omaha for a long time. I would say nowadays that I'm playing the best poker of my career, I feel bar one or two very strong players I'm amazingly far apart from the general field I play 10/25+ with...


..I hate poker. I hate going in and grinding, I hate not caring whether I win or lose pots, I hate that I struggle to have normal conversations to people at the table (or to be honest off the table) because I've got used to treating all these conversations to be with people below me or not worth my time because they're inferior at PLO to me.

...I have severe mental issues with relation to stress and anxiety. I have forgot how to live and rarely enjoy anything. Sometimes I'll hear a tune that takes me back to my past and I'll smile briefly but that's about as good as it gets. I constantly think I'm on the cusp of a heart attack and worry about everything aspect of life. I can't enter a room or a shop or a gym without being intensely dizzy and panicked and I break down crying every few months.

...the best part of it, at least 5 times a day people tell me 'easy for you, you're living the dream'.

I'm 30 and I find all of the above too much, like I've lived a life and willing to end, if you have children, or a good job or a desire to remain healthy (physically and mentally) then I wouldn't think about or commit to being a grinder past 35+.

cliffs; bleak post from a bleak guy.

This is me exactly. I am about to turn 40 and looking for work. When I was in my thirties I was so successful at poker that I figured I'd retired by 40. Now nearly every one of my friends is more successful than me. I have 2 friends who I'm more successful than lol but only cause they knocked up girls and got into stupid situations. They are looking for work too. It's not a big deal, I am just reinventing myself, which I did when I first went fulltime anyway.

It was a great ride but I have seen my income decline every year minus a small spike in 2013 (which falsely gave me hope that the money would increase). Also, you have to play online, lol at playing live full time. You also will be spending a lot of time trying to get in your daily quota of 3k or whatever hands you are trying to play and recalculating your hourly to make sure it'd paying more than a job. And you could lose over to course of a month but it's rare especially if you have the will to play 60 hours a week (makes me puke but gotta do it especially when running bad)

The bad things everyone wrote are true but it is especially a cool job if you aren't married and don't have kids. Every monday morning I wake up when I want and I never had the oh no feeling on a sunday of having to go to work/school. I remember hating work before poker so much that my saturdays would be bad because I knew the next day was sunday which meant the next day I had to work.

If I were you I would try to get your hours down at your job because it seems you don't like it 'that' much. If you could get down to 40 hours a week then grind 20 hours and see if you can do that you will easily make more than working 55-60 at your job. Dual income. I plan to still grind 10-15hrs a week when employed so poker money is not going anywhere. But the days of knocking out 6 figure years playing like 45 hours a week online are unfortunately likely over.

The live poker economy isn't in rapid decline at 1/2-2/5 but it's definitely in decline higher than that. I expect decent 2/5 games will be around for a long time, maybe forever. So the question becomes how well can someone actually do grinding 2/5 per year. Obviously it depends on a lot of factors but let's assume you are a decent grinder, not top tier but a solid winner and let's assume you are going to put in 35 hours a week of play time. So if you're making an ev of around $35-$40/hr in the games you are gonna be making around 60k per year in ev. Nothing to scoff at obviously and a decent living. But that's like your top end upside and it doesn't even factor in the fact that you are going to have to pay a lot more for health insurance and not have any kind of retirement matching. And also importantly that doesn't factor in the costs and waste of time getting back and forth from the casino. Hopefully you will move and live close to the casino to mitigate this cost, but if you live say 30 min from the casino that's an hour of wasted travel time, plus any time wasted getting onto the table if there's waitlists and no paid break time so all of that will cut significantly into your hourly so your hourly will be much lower than your actual playing hourly. Whole picture gets worse fast also if you are not one of the top grinders and you are only making say $20-25 an hour in the games.

All that is not meant to discourage you. Just hope you have a realistic picture and make an informed decision as it's easy to just be hating the 9-5 and think everything will be great playing poker for a living. In reality poker will be stressful too and likely not quite as fun as you imagine after the novelty of it wears off.

The thing is, you can't dictate your working hours when you work for someone else.

Money is great, but time is better. I would gladly take less in earnings than I make now to have gain more freedom. I think this is a key separation for older people. Using my time in the way that I want is much more important to me than making boat loads of cash.

I grinded live PLO/DC aged 44 to 47.

Most of those things didn't happen to me but my social life and physical fitness went drastically backwards.

My key advice is:

a) 30 years old is so young. People in their 50s/60s now are often very fit and active. Any "loss of years" you may feel, you shouldn't.

b) Take 3 months off, do it now, not next month. Rest, get fit, eat well, and completely recalibrate your live grinding plan to include proper life happiness/poker balance. Also consider a part-time job alongside poker or starting a non poker business.

100% the same for me. Not only my friends from when I got my masters in business school are way past me (they are harder workers than me anyway) but almost all my good friends from high school, too. And those that don't, they spend most of their free time smoking pot.
That's a huge misconception. A beggar at a mall can make his own schedule, too. But if he isn't there during the busier shopping times like weekends and holidays, he won't make any money.

The vast majority of poker players have to play during busy hours, wether it's live or online. There are regions where you mostly play with retirees, but other than that, you are basically required to play in the evening and on the weekends because that's the time recreational players show up at the casino or play online.

Just think about what times you use for social acitivies with friends/family right now. Are they flexible enough to meet you on Wednesday morning instead of Friday night in the future?

This 100%.

If you want to be in the best and most profitable games, sitting and waiting for the drunk player to arrive, the player who's been out clubbing all night and arrives at 3 am to spin it up, the gangster types whose work is mainly nights and poker is how they decompress by blowing a few buy ins of money that means nothing to them, then forget any social life from Friday at 9 pm until Monday at 11 am and forget seeing much daylight for most of the week.

There are probably plenty of grinders out there who would love to swap places with you right now - steady career and you still have a giant passion for poker (which is something that goes away for most), but you always want what you don't have. Like someone said earlier, life sucks a lot less when you don't dread Monday mornings. I think a huge part of my original passion for poker was this exactly.

Just realize that profitable online poker is likely on its last leg, and even if it in fact does have many good years ahead, you should assume it doesn't. That leaves live poker. In my experience, people who are able to enjoyably grind live full time for the long term are really few and far between. Its just a miserable existence unless you just truly love the game, are very successful at it, and are extroverted.

So if you are one of those few and far between live poker guys, and you have a decent liferoll saved up, and have the ability to crush live, and are able to live somewhere with amazing games then go for it. Otherwise keep grinding on the side, save up, and enjoy an early retirement. Poker in general is pretty much the perfect side hobby or part time job.