Same here. A lot of them are bitter too.

From my perspective as someone who would never want to play professionally ever, there is a lot of pressure from people in poker to play professionally or at least very seriously.

I don't like to play often. I am not very good. I like it when i play when I feel like it and only for as long as a feel like. I don't like spending too much money on this hobby.

There is pressure to take it seriously. I don't want to. People have even said to me 'Oh you will enjoy winning money if you find fishy tables'. It's this 'Oh You WILL enjoy it'.

I enjoy it now because i don't play often. It's just fun there is no pressure. And even now i can get bored playing for two long.

It's almost inconceivable to people that you could just enjoy poker as a hobby and have no further aspirations with it. I even find people don't understand why i dont want higher buy ins or to play higher stakes.

It's a fun game to play for micro stakes or low buy ins or no money at all. I am not a gambler. Never will be.

Can't say I regret. There was some very valuable lessons learned.
I don't get upset by bad luck in life. If I lose material things like my wallet/phone or other expensive items - which has happened several times. It's taught me a more realistic perspective.
Dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer, there was no "Why did this happen, God?" or "He'll probably make it anyway, he's so strong" and what not, more easily coming to terms with the facts and accepting the situation.

My biggest problem with poker was, the lack of meaningfulness, the feeling of serving only myself. Not contributing to other people's well being, excluding perhaps my own family or friends.
The game was lots of fun, especially crazy heaters where you feel like you're the best player in the room/online. But the stress of the grind was difficult to handle, much more so than any other "job" I've had including military deployment and living in the desert.
I realized at some point I can never feel truly good about myself being a poker player. Even if I were to for example donate to charities/organizations to compensate, there still would be "victims" from whom I earned the funds.

Yes I have stopped playing and moved on to "working" in health care and helping people in their homes. Say it like that because it doesn't even feel like a job, hanging out exchanging life experiences and offering help to those who need it. I would do it for free if I otherwise had the means to support my family. I make less than I would from poker but truly love what I do, almost all aspects have meaning and value.
Can't say the poker years were in vain because I wouldn't be the same person without the experiences the game and lifestyle has given.

Whether or not they ever play a hand of poker in their lives, every college/university student should read this part of this post. No, it's not necessary to have an internship or job while in school, but boy, it sure as hell makes things easier -- even if your chosen profession has little to do with your student job. (And if it does, like mine, it's even easier.)

As for the topic at hand, interesting stuff in here already. Obviously, there have been many threads of the "should I turn pro" variety, which often tread into similar terrain, but I enjoy reading from those who can specifically pause and take a look back on their career decisions.

I'm 29 and never worked a day in my life. Unlike uhhh... most people my age, I have absolutely 0 debt. I don't use credit cards. My parents never give me anything, in fact they actually OWE me money, like 40k+ and 22k respectively. Even though ive moved more to sports betting a lot of my income still comes from poker. I don't think i could be any happier? maybe if i was winning more consistantly, like every winner wants.

I'm 100% sure if i couldnt sleep til noon and enjoy doing things ALWAYS on my own schedule id be infinitely more unhappy/depressed. Sure you get downswings and get frustrated but its a part of the game. Does an NHL player crawl into a ball and go wahh wahh life is hard im sad when they dont win the stanley cup? No they go work at their game and get better so next year they can crush. Limitations are only as high as you set them. If you dont at least TRY to have an optimistic lifestyle then you won't push yourself to the next level. Even if results say otherwise.

I went pro 5-6 months ago and don't regret it at all. The biggest worries are obviously post-poker career and getting a mortgage or whatever but I graduated with an accountancy/finance degree in 2014, spent 4 years working for various companies that all treated me like **** then spent my evenings working towards my ACCA (professional exams). I earned £35k/yr by the end and if I worked my balls off for the next 5 years I'd probably be at £60k/yr or similar. Big woop, something like £35k after tax.

Now I'm my own boss, I work whenever I want to or don't want to. I don't have to worry about being 5 minutes late for work because of the traffic only for someone to tell me it's not good enough (despite me staying an hour late the evening before, for free). The swings are tough but I'm making double the money (if not more) and if I need to get out in 2-3 years I should at least have the capital to start my own business.

Every single day that my girlfriend comes home from work she moans about the pettiest **** from her job and it just reminds me that mine used to be exactly the same & I never want to return to that.

Edit: Tax free winnings in the UK as well <3

Tax free winnings def makes it a lot easier to match a more normal careers earning power. It's pretty crazy that you job was paying so little in those fields. Is that normal pay in the UK for being an accountant? I do think 5-6mo isn't really long enough to know whether you will end up regretting it. But I def think as long as you are making enough money that your happiness levels will def be higher than working in your old job.

I would imagine within the top accounting firms you could be earning considerably more but I was within industry working as an accountant for businesses. After becoming fully qualified you could be a finance manager/controller on £50-60k within 2-3 years then eventually finance director getting into 6 figures but as you mention tax has a big impact. Anything over £45k is taxed at 40% meaning someone on £100k/yr is bringing home around £5,500 per month before voluntary deductibles such as pension. It's not inconceivable for me to be earning that playing the mid-stakes and I know that I don't have to brown nose my way around a company for the next 10-15 years to get it.

Do you think you will go back to your accountancy job ever again? I've heard ACCA exams in the UK are extremely tough, so to work for all those years to pass them and leave the field entirely seems a bit depressing

I am a couple of exams away from being fully qualified but it's something I could do from home while playing poker if I wanted to I guess. They are tough but the toughest part for most people I think is balancing them alongside a 40-50 hour per week job. I know from personal experience that when I get home at 6pm, make food and eat, the last thing I want to do is get stuck into books for 2-3 hours, especially when you're wanting to play poker as well.

I like to think that I'll never go back but I'm hoping the experience/qualification is a good backup were I to need it. Working for the man just made me so unhappy and I used to think aged 18-25 that money was everything but as I'm getting older and more tired of bull**** in the workplace, I'm starting to shift my opinion over to £50k + happy >>>>> £200k + miserable.

Why do you need to “work for the man”’. Why not help a few small medium businesses with their tax obligations. It’s strange to me how poker pros always seem to only have the option to work for large companies

On that subject. Celebrating avoiding income tax is questionable. Why shouldn’t poker pros pay for societies/cities infrastructure/ utilities like everyone else?

Because I'm not a tax accountant. I've generally worked on the financial side of projects or ensuring that companies have accurate accounts to comply with regulation. In my last role I was a financial advisor for the local council. There's a misconception with the word accountant that some bloke is going to turn up at a sole trader's business and tell them how to save X on their tax bill. Obviously there are accountants that specialise in that but it's like thinking all poker players only play 6 max cash games for example.

In terms of income tax, that's for the government to change. We get taxed on almost everything, we (generally) pay income tax, national insurance, we get taxed when we die, we can't transfer assets without paying capital gains tax, the list goes on. The more I earn through poker the more I will indirectly pay in taxes through purchases as well. It is not my obligation to pay tax I do not need to, nor do I criticise the wealthy who use legal tax avoidance schemes to minimise theirs. The responsibility lies with the gov.

Do those who live their whole life on benefits pay their share of income tax?

No. No one has ever regretted becoming a professional poker player. Except for maybe the people who have played me.

You are opening a whole other can of worms with that question.

Perfect poker isn’t s real thing yet.
Nobody knows what it looks like and claiming games will be beatable until everybody plays perfectly is silly.
That won’t happen in the next 100 years.
First poker has to be completely solved , and then everyone has to spend their life studying every spot.
Games will die way before this happens.

I love not paying for income tax. i live in canada and even after hitting a $200k BBJP ive never paid 1 cent of "income" tax my entire life. 100% of all cash i earn is mine since i started earning $ in 2008 and will remain so for the rest of my life.

Seeing how others contribute so much and watching as its sunk into such a cesspool of government....wasted and dumped into some fat white old bastards pocket to retire on is something i cannot stand for. so i dont and am extremely happy about it.

The first few posts of this thread actually pretty interesting and better than what I expect for threads like these.

I live 10 minutes away from 2 of the biggest card rooms in the area. I used to go to them pretty much everyday and would spend hours gambling my money away. Totally agree that the environment is toxic.

I was able to make money playing poker, but the hours and the time that I put in to grind totally isolated my family and love ones. It was so bad to a point that I would tell my closest friends that I couldn't make it to their birthday/parties/baby shower or whatnot just so that I could spend the time to play poker. It was toxic.

At no point I would call myself a professional because I always work a 9-5 after college. In my 20s, the thought of quitting my job and live the lifestyle of a full time poker player was something that I seriously considered. But as I get older, I realized all the time I wasted at the tables grinding, a lot of time being miserable and unhappy because I botched a hand, or got hit with a 1 outer or whatnot. It was totally not worth it to go through.

Long story short. I think poker is a beautiful game. But the old cliche of "pick a job you love, and you don't have to work a single day of yourself" is full of BS. Especially poker.

Hi Icydragon542,

I haven't gone through this thread yet, but wanted to reply to your post.

I made my first online poker deposit in late 2004, and "turned pro" in mid-2005. I grinded low-stakes SNGs and then transitioned over to low-stakes MTTs, until I found myself grinding teh pokerz in a 1-Star hotel in Acapulco (huge bankroll nit) in December 2007 a few days after finalizing a divorce. (LOL, the hotel room had a "window" but no curtain, or glass/pane. The opening was large enough that anyone over 4 ft. tall could stick their head in and ask WTF is up while walking through the lobby).

Sitting on one of three (the other two were unoccupied, thankfully) individual mattresses in the room, I asked myself "WTF-is-up-with-my-life" (o sea, Que pedo con mi vida?), and was fortunate enough to have someone in the industry (PocketFives) who believed in my skills enough to give me a chance at writing/podcasting/moderating/editing.

That turned out to be a lifeline b/c by the time I took that coastal vacation, my "pro" days were OVER, and I had already known this for a few months. The English/Spanish translation skills I had honed from 1997-2004 had meaningfully eroded as a result of my 100% focus on playing poker for a living, my health had deteriorated following a horrible recovery period from gall bladder removal... so I was extremely fortunate not to have to go back to ESL/voice-overs/marketing strategy/corporate arbitration projects for ad agencies, banks, etc. I say this because I had most definitely beat my chest and YALPED for at least a little while during my "pro" career thinking I had figured it all out, before coming to a humble realization that online poker's entry barrier to profitable play would soon pass me by (if it hadn't by that time already).

So close to 3 years playing professionally, on my own dime. Peaking at about $15,000 roll on Stars in late 2007, playing $50+5 MTTs and below.

In all, I would say that total profit was approx. $70,000 over this time. So keep in mind I was just a low-stakes, mass-tabling grinder, primarily on PokerStars, who was destined to quickly become extinct, relying on "fold to win" strategies for SNGs and then evolving that into "fold to cash, skeet to win" when playing MTTs.

In other words, I wasn't very "good," per-se... I just happened to have a large enough edge over many of the players that online poker sites spent massive amounts of money to acquire in the "early days" of big-time online poker.

One of the smartest moves I made I believe was getting a gig in the industry instead of seeking backing to continue pursuing a "poker dream" that I already knew I was going to be either unwilling/incapable of legitimately achieving from the "playing poker" side of things. And one of the biggest "breaks" I ever got as a pro was never winning a "big one," because that would've probably set me and my silly ideas about for-profit poker back a few years.
---

To answer your questions directly...

"Did you enjoy it?"

I did until my surgery on Nov 1st, 2006. I got home (to a newly-rented house with no furniture) a few days after surgery, was in NO shape to play online poker... but that's what I did. I went through about $4,000 (of my $8,500 bankroll) in about 4 hours playing $100 Turbo SNGs. I think I busted OOM 43/45 or something like that. So LOL.... so much for SNGs, that's when I moved down in stakes and over to MTTs.

I spent 2007 so sick that I was scared I wasn't going to make it, and of course that's when my then-wife had figured out it was time to split the sheets and the kids... maybe being married to an "online poker pro" (particularly one who was working more hours to make less money) sucked ass. So FUN times there!

I have FOND memories of the good-hearted nature and ribbing that existed back when I started playing online poker. Of the "community" element that existed, the goodwill, the easy money, the mystery of not knowing who was great and who wasn't, the helping colleagues out if they wanted to enter some small-stakes stuff, and then just telling them to "keep" the $100 or w/e they won, because that's the type of favor somebody did for me way back in the day.

But even then, there was a TON of entitlement floating around the pro-grinder scene. Not everybody, not the majority, but there were a LOT of online poker players already getting burned out on the "grind," and complaining incessantly about BBV stuff or just becoming bitter overall. I noticed myself getting this way in 2007. And that was back when making money playing online poker was VERY EASY compared to post-UIGEA and Black Friday.

For me, the online poker "dream" was getting a few years of experience taking on revenue-generation responsibilities, managing those modest resources, getting to travel to places I would have never gotten the opportunity otherwise, learning I didn't want to gamble "for a living," and then applying some of that experience into performing tasks on the industry side. It's not something I enjoyed by the time I stopped doing it, and it's not something I would have the stomach (or skill) to pursue nowadays.
---

Was there any regret...?

Absolutely none. But I say that only now, that I've had ample time to lick my wounds and figure it all out again, LOL.

TL;DR: I've had some f***ed up ideas about life; about how the world goes 'round, and so on. Online poker, the industry, and the community involvement tied to that has provided me with years to gather professional experience and skill sets -- often at my own leisure and scheduling discretion. These skill sets are what have carried me through times when my f***ed up ideas about how the cookie crumbles in something get waffle-crushed. So zero regrets.
---

-David

Hello David,

Thanks for your post. Similar to your story my regret level is rather low to non existent. Very thankful and fortunate for all that poker has given. However, plenty of bumps and bruises along the way and the journey is what its all about not some end financial goal. It certainly leads one to question - if we did not get immersed in poker at an early age, what would our life be like now? Very hard to answer that question and comprehend the opportunity cost nonetheless.

Its easy to view the poker forums, specifically 2+2, and see a few vocal angry posters who simply look at poker so negatively. Without naming any posters, you can just see some are frustrated with their life and are looking to spread negativity among the community. Its worth mentioning these forum members do not speak on behalf of the poker community alone but often are trolling or just frustrated with their life. For every bad poster you have plenty of highly intelligent and well reasoned people in the poker industry to counter balance any of the sour apples. For example, you have world crushers like Garret on the recent joe ingram podcast, who praise poker and realize they are blessed to have it be on their life despite the journey being rocky times. And on the other side, forgive me as I did admit that I didn't want to call anyone out per se, you have posters like +rep_lol, just constantly berating other posters and spreading his poison thru 15k litter filled rage post and it begs the question, for some people regarding poker, not just specifically the aforementioned poster, if you are that unhappy with life or poker why not move onto another profession or give something else a chance? Many of these people are due for a future mid life crisis by living unfilled lives, until one day they wake up and realize its all a facade and panic sets in.

With age comes maturity and its understandable when looking at the newer generation of poker players coming in their mental maturity may be lacking, which can certainly will change in due time for many as life tends to humble you a bit. However, its always a bit surprising, and quite sad, speaking for those of us that have been around poker for awhile, that some players just have not matured in any regard .

Thank you for the kind words about my post, ICrushDreams.

As far as the call-out stuff, that all sounds great if I (or anyone else) weren't guilty of expressing views that others disagree with, or object to just like the next person. That stuff might be better suited for the Mod Thread stickied at the top of this forum. Or maybe via PM, but admittedly I haven't looked through the replies of this thread -- so my apologies in advance if I'm missing something.

Holy crap, are you me? 29, no debt, paid off my own house with poker money, currently planning a bycicle world travel. Could NOT be happier.

Only difference is, instead of sportsbetting, I got into crypto and non NLHE poker. I've been playing poker for 13 years.

For some perspective: There is a lot of survivor bias going on in this thread. Those who are still committed/happy about being a pro will generally not tell you about it but do their thing. But those who suffer from what I call "washed up player syndrome" will tell you about it as a symptom.

Symptoms are:

- They will constantly whine about "not getting out when I had the chance".
- They will constantly tell you how much better the "Golden times" were in poker and how bad it is now (spoiler: It isn't, just have to adapt)
- They will be super paranoid about bots, collusion, cheating and other stuff.

Basically, if you need a graphic example, watch this from Joey Ingram, he is a prime example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnob7dxoIn8


There are still profitable grinders out there, they just lay low, adapted to other niches and do their thing.

good post. burnout is real. ive seen hundreds in my town after black friday give up the game/go broke

they get used to a lifestyle and their mind cant handle making less than they used to. i used to make X , its Ys fault. rakeback/bots/variance/solvers.

the secret to life is to have low monthly expenses and dont work too hard.

I mean it certainly is worse than it used to be online, I've been around for 13 years too and although I still make a very comfortable living it used to be much more ridiculous how easy the money was

.......Maybe you're the toxic one. You should probably work on yourself cuz this will just manifest in other ways to mess with you life.

Go to f'ing school. The worth ethic, discipline, brain exercise, etc from a good uni degree will vastly improve yourself and anything you do in the future - including poker.

There is no reason to think about it in terms of either poker vs school/real world. You can do both and have the benefits of both.