This is so, so wrong.

Addiction is a destructive mental health issue. Being addicted to something doesn't mean you will excel at it because you put more time into it than others.

An addict is also prone to repeating the same patterns over and over again even if they see it is not working.

You can't win at poker long term if you are an addict.

Fortunately, the variance in this game can award addicts and keep their lifestyle going.

Erick lindgren, Chino Rheem, Tom Dwan , Grinder ... List goes on and on.
The main reasons are mis-management of money , drugs, and gambling addiction other then Poker.

Contrary to popular belief, I think poker is a major part of it as well.

I mean, I dont care how good you are, there's such a slim chance that you can sustain a life playing poker for a living.

When I wrote this post, I got so much crap from everybody, and now it's all proven to be true. There was even an article of other players (like Ivey) warning Mercier of the pitfalls of poker.

It's just a bad lifestyle from start to finish.

How is mid-five figures financially comfortable?

A bad-run of cards at even mid-stakes can wipe that out, not to mention living expenses.

Best story in the thread.

True. I'd say far less than 1% of people can make it with poker winnings as their only income. If you really want to "make it" in live tournament poker, you have to market yourself and get sponsorship deals or branch out and have other poker income, there's just no way around it. Galfond is a good example. He is a respected player and I assume a profitable player, but he started bluefirepoker and runitonce to supplement that.

Sometimes I think people, especially young players, who win a pretty big tournament would actually be better off had they not won it since they are often given a false sense of success and expect it to continue, so much so that the big tourney score is slowly (or sometimes quickly) redistributed back to other players.

More and more I am realizing that poker is all about bum hunting. Internet poker is far from what it used to be because a lot of the fish stopped playing and regs don't have any interest in playing other regs. Scott Palmer's interview at the main was pretty telling as he described how bad his opponents were back in the early days. It's not like he couldn't move someone and keep playing online, but he made his $ and is not interested in giving it back playing against people at or near his skill level. If a bunch of bums start playing high again, guys like him would gladly move wherever they'd have to to play high online, but the games are nowhere near as soft so it will never happen.

Galfond's high stakes winnings would be pretty mediocre had it not been for Guy Laliberte donking away millions in 2008. If you take away that, I would say he's had modest winnings at high stakes, pretty much breaking even for most of it (did he win much pre-2007 when high stakes online wasn't tracked?). Perhaps he's won a lot in mid stakes games (below 25/50)?

Galfond is one of those rare players that know how to handle their money well. I don't think he's the type that plays table games at the casino and goes prop betting at every tiny opportunity.

Though I thoroughly agree that most of his winnings (and Dwan's as well) came from Laliberte as was mentioned in original post of this thread.

One player that's working hard in maintaining a good poker business mind is Daniel Negreanu. I can bet you that with his horrendous cash game play, ad stupid golf bets, he would have gone completely broke without his sponsorship deals with Stars. Great great tournament player though.

I see you guys are talking about tournament poker players that go broke. The wealthy poker players are cash game players that fly under the radar. They never go broke!!
Of course all tourney players go broke that a given. Two plus two people do not realize the cash played in Bobby's room during the WSOP poker are the same guys that play in big billionaire cash games in NYC,LA,Dallas, and other cities all during the year that have nothing to do with tourneys.
Like, John Hennigan, John Hanson, Abe Mosseri, Yen,Will,Doyle,Billy,....they play few tourneys a year and the wealthiest that never go broke and have 100 million or more just saved.
Daniel is not broke but because he chooses to be Daniel Kardashian and be public so intense of being Daniel the average player thinks differently. Daniel plays in NO cash game at any time. On occasion he will FAKE play in Bobby's room for a hour get his photo and leave. he would never play with any of those guys throughout the year.
People on two plus two are twisted.

There are some very easy, self-administered tests (lol I know, humor me here) to see if you might be addicted.

One of them is hanging around the pit games when the waiting list for poker can take an hour or more. If you cave in and play a pit game, you might be an addict.

Another is breaking your own buy-in rules. If you drop your daily max number of buy-ins and feel like you need to dip in to get some more, you might be an addict.

And if ever, at any point, no matter what, you feel like you "need to get back to even," you might be an addict. Stay at home and jerk off. There, you're even.

There's also stealing, making false promises and not being able to pay back etc.

That's called being a lying, thieving, a-hole.

May or may not be addiction.

i have been playing poker for 6 or so years and i havent gone broke yet. i guess that says more about me than any of these so called 'card sharps'

There's a difference between comfortable and unbustable, obviously it's not unbustable. Living a low expense lifestyle with no debt and using good game selection and BRM most guys in their 20s (the average poker pro) would be able to live comfortably with a mid to upper mid 5 figure roll.

living a low expense lifestyle with no debt and using good game selection and BRM......................lol wow your life must be exhilarating. personally if you're going to be a poker pro, you got to live the poker lifestyle, like me. i have a have 2 p.a.'s and eat caviar every evening

I feel like if a post ever warranted a cool story bro your last one post was it

What games are you suggesting they play?

How much money is living "comfortably"?

So the average poker pro is in their 20s? What happens once they hit 30? Do they vanish and try to join the workforce? What happens if they get married and have kids?

You are also not taking in to account the opportunity cost of failure in poker. You don't just restart. Look at the scammer PSUMike. 39 years old and not just no job prospects. Negative job prospects and good luck realigning mentally to a 'normal' job.

I only have my own experience to go on and the experience of my friends who play for a living.

Personally w/ 50k i'd feel very comfortable grinding MTTs with an ABI of $45-50 and field selecting to play all of the high value stuff (my biggest downswing at double that ABI is ~45k over six years with no years worse than the average wage for a full time job in Australia where I live). MTTs are the highest variance form of poker so I can't imagine it would be any more difficult for cash/sng players. This is of course assuming said players have a sufficient true winrate to make the necessary amount of money per year to live comfortably, as anyone who cannot maintain said winrate will obviously go broke eventually.

I'd say the average poker pro is in their late 20s if I had to guess. I have a lot of friends who play for a living ranging from 18-35, 90% or so are male, 90% or so are in the 18-35 age range with most being 21-29 so I think it's fair to say the average professional poker player is a male in his 20s. Certainly that isn't everyone, but that is what you picture when you think 'professional poker player'. Due to black friday and the games getting tougher more pros are in their late 20s to early 30s these days compared to 5 years ago and i'd imagine over time the average age of a professional poker player will continue to increase.

Re: opportunity cost, if you network decently you can walk into an average paying full time job if poker doesn't work out if you live in a country with a decent economy and are willing to move to where the jobs are. I picked up a $30/hr writing job on the side completely unrelated to my university degree when I was having bankroll issues a few years ago until my bankroll was sufficient to play full-time again. If I went broke and coaching/getting staked/etc etc. wasn't an option I don't think i'd have any trouble getting a full time job. Sure, it may not be a perfect 'career' type job at first but it would get the bills paid until such time as I found a desirable 'career' job, or rebuilt a poker bankroll.

I would recommend getting a degree prior to playing poker for a living (which is what I did) or studying part time to complete one while playing full time so that you have a fallback plan. If poker doesn't work out for me, i'll land on my feet and be totally fine, but I don't imagine it's going to come to that unless the games become significantly tougher than they currently are.

Honestly even 50k is plenty unless you have a family, debt or have to pay for a significant other's expenses, assuming you play midstakes. If I was single and willing to live in a sharehouse, i'd be comfortable with 30 - which is around where my roll was for the first few years of my poker career. For MTTs at an ABI of $100-ish you probably want 100k to be safe, i've seen some regs hit 100k downswings but honestly most of them are not field selecting and have leaks. I'm only upper mid-tier for an MTT pro and I honestly do not think it is at all statistically likely for me to have a 100k downswing in my lifetime if i'm field selecting and not taking any shots unless I significantly raise my ABI at some point.

The things that get most people broke are lifestyle leaks (stuff like partying, pit games, hookers and blow, excessive shot-taking in high buyin stuff, excessive travel expenses in low EV spots, laziness/lack of grinding, partying, not studying and expecting to maintain the same winrate they used to have). If someone is an action junkie they WILL go broke. Same goes for almost all substance abusers or people who spend more than they earn. If you book into a $300/night hotel for a week to play a $2k main event and some smaller sides, then yeah, you're not going to make any money in the long term from your live shot taking. If you register the Super Tuesday and all of the 100rs and 215ts every week, then yeah you are going to have a 50k+ downswing at some stage. If you DBI into a pile of live 1-10ks a year without selling a bunch of action on a 50k roll then yeah, you're going to have a 50k+ downswing.

It all comes down to discipline really.

Anyway, TL;DR

Proper game selection and volume, basic financial common sense and you'll be fine if you're making 40k+ a year from poker probably unless you're a ****** with money or have life leaks. Try to base holidays around high expectation live poker tournament series and sightsee on off days. Get an education and network extensively both in and out of the poker community and you'll be fine.

For what it's worth I strongly disagree with the title of this thread, a more accurate title would be 'players who were making a decent but not amazing living pre-black friday and haven't improved since then are getting broke because the poker economy has contracted and the good but not elite regs have become breakeven/losing or not winning enough to cover living expenses'

I think it's all about game selection, and to me, game selection means bum hunting 100% of the time. Never play anyone the same skill level as you and don't even think about playing anyone who is better than you.

That's really hard to do live. I play in a small casino, and during the winter, a lot of tourists and retirees come in from out of town and the games are good. This time of year, there's only 1 or 2 NL tables going most of the time, and you are lucky if there is one fish at your table. MTTs are also reg filled, nit fests. I look at my numbers and every year I see a downswing that starts about May1, 3 years in a row. This summer I have cut my hours way down.

Switch to the tiles and airports for summer.

I value my reputation as a solid guy whose word is beyond reproach.

Why people have the mindset that being a pro means you must be loaded.
It's the same like in any other field of work, some support themselves better than others.

Nobody questions a random person making x ammount a year is he/she broke or w/e, but when a poker player makes the same ammount of $ he sucks and the well being of person is under the question. I don't get it.

+great post swoop

The difference is a regular job has a guaranteed income, while poker does not. You could win 100k one year as a poker pro and then break even the next year and then lose 30k the next year. Can you afford to make 70k last 3 years and still have $ to gamble with? Maybe, but far more often than not, the pro making 100k in year 1 will not plan for years 2 and 3 where he may not have the same success. How many jobs are there where you may end up having to borrow money just to be able to work?