is playing league of legends professionally a legitimate job? technically yes. but c'mon. if you want to get into a real career they're gonna count that as zero and start you at the bottom. or you might get unlucky and they'll count that as a negative, seeing you as a lazy pothead who couldn't get out of his parents' basement for years instead of working a 'real' career.

or the recruiter doesn't believe poker is beatable longterm for some reason and thinks you're lying and were a drug dealer or some kind of criminal for that time.
and if you try to preempt that with, "and if i'm lying and was actually a drug dealer for all this time, it would still say something about my intelligence and ingenuity to have never gotten a criminal record", that just makes it look worse.

You can say the exact same thing about many other professions. You also aren't in as much control over everything as you think with a more mainstream profession. Poker is undoubtedly more risky than most jobs but that's why you should have a backup plan.

Drug dealer would be better, at least they are providing a service

Lol. It's funny how people talk so much crap about poker players but frequent the POKER forum. I know it's been said many times about many people but it's hard to make sense of it.

Why is having a "career" and not a livelihood so important? All career usually means is you have to jump when your boss says so, you get a ton if artificial / manufactured / unnecessary stress and deadlines, you're making someone else rich while you bust your ass, if you invest your entire youth and sacrifice your loved ones someday you MiGHT have financial security (but you still may get **** on by economy. Company, health issues, etc). At the end, what does it matter how you paid your bills? Most people looking back just mention relationships. Poker doesn't preclude relationships, yes it can be solitary but it can also mean more , better, and diverse relationships too.

Go ahead hate poker and the professionals, but in the end it doesn't really matter. There's a good chance you'll feel your all important career won't be as satisfying as you think it will and your self importance and perceived importance in the world is likely very inflated.

I say this as a career person, with a "100 best companies to work". I'm in a top tier company with tons of earnings potential.... But the trade off isn't worth it. Maybe it is in your case, but I've found the people that accept it are those that accept mediocrity and afraid to take a risk. The most rewarding and satisfying thing I've ever done was co found a startup .... We ran out it cash to pay the founders (so I had to go corporate again) and it's still dragging along. But I desperately want to escape the corporate grind. At almost any cost.

How about the US Department of Labor? About a year ago they added "Professional Poker Player" to their list of occupations.

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And who gives a **** what other people think?

This is exactly right. There are some jobs that a lot of people won't take seriously unless you become a financial success, and maybe not even then. How many kids tell their parents that they want to be a writer, a musician or an artist only to have their parents tell them to do something more practical?

The median individual income in the US is about $26,000. If you're willing to put in your hours, get your studying in, and in other ways treat it as seriously as any other career it's not an unreasonable long-term goal as you grind your way up. Most people can't make it because they aren't intelligent enough or dedicated enough, but if you want it badly enough, it's attainable.

That said, if you want poker as a job, there are things you have to consider.

1. I already indicated that everyone won't understand, but it's worse then that. I recently had an interesting conversation with my brother-in-law. I told him that my job was playing poker.

He told me that he and his wife don't have a computer because his wife was addicted to online casino gambling. Ouch! Once someone has been involved with a gambling addiction, the last thing they want to hear is that you play cards for money.

2. You're self employed, and to make some serious money you have to play when the games are hot. That might mean an online tournament that goes until after midnight, or a hot cash game at your casino that you play for 12 hours. You have to accept having irregular hours, and so do the important people in your life. I've had family ask me to do something because everyone else was "at work."

Homey don't play that. I work 50 hours a week, with at least 25 hours playing and 15 studying.

Youre not trying hard enough? Poker is a game enjoyed best recreationally and the scumminess of the pro poker players is plain to see by those playing for fun. Also see OP as someone who needs to have the dark side of being pro explained to him

lol at that clown worried

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You sound like a moron micro stakes grinder homey. I hope you don't justify your job because your beating the median income in the US.

Totally, and like, those Jets players are total scum for trying to win that game tonight vs the colts too. That's why football is a game best enjoyed recreationally. Those damn scummy professional football players always trying to ruin the game!!!!@@@!!@@!

smart play

lol ok that analogy is so bad

♫Nothing's gonna bring us down♫
♫Nothing's gonna bring us down♫

Get outta nvg and unto twitch.

It isn't so much the activity itself as the source of the income. The professional soccer player's income comes from fans/spectators/advertisers, not from other unsuccessful soccer players as part of a less-than-zero-sum system.

So literally every job that is related to gambling is in fact not a legitimate one? What about the guy who owns a liquor store? Liquor is bad for you and the owner is profiting from providing you this negative addition to your life.

I don't understand what the liquor store owner has to do with anything, unless you misunderstood my comment as some sort of moral objection, which it wasn't.

But there is a difference between a stadium of spectators paying to watch that soccer player (or customers paying for a haircut), and a game in which it's guaranteed that more money will be lost by players than won.

The liquor store owner should be illegitimate for the same reason you view poker as illegitimate. Moral objection or not. You are saying poker is illegitimate because the poker pro is gaining $ from another person losing $ right? (which doesn't matter anyways because that is how that person is choosing to spend their money to entertain themselves, but let's assume it matters) So by that logic the liquor store owner is illegitimate because they are gaining $ from the customers choice to purchase poison from them to drink.

as a poker professional, i've hated professional poker players for years. slowroll them, verbally abuse them, play at them extra hard for no other reason than they're scum who are ruining a nice game.

**** poker pros

You don't want a legitimate job. I don't have one. I just do stuff to get money. When someone wants to learn English (I live abroad) I teach them, when a translation comes in I do it. i am still learning the online poker but finally I withdrew a bit of money in the summer, which is traditionally slow for my other income streams, though not this year for some reason.

The outside world defines me as CEO of a small but well-reputed private language school, my highest hourly is translating but most of my income is from teaching.

This idea of defining oneself by ones job sounds like asking 10 year old's what they want to do when they grow up. I support my at-home wife and my two kids and nothing else really matters.

To answer the question, if both were variance free I would put the ratio needed at about 1:1, but it depends a lot on the other job. If you have a regular job and family pretty much all of your time and movements are pre-set so that's a big minus if you value your freedom. Real world jobs can be high variance too - you can lose them. Best is to have several income streams.

Agreed, but what if they want to bang those people?

In professional sport more money will be spent by the fans than paid to the players. People are happy to watch soccer even though it's financially -EV.

Playing -EV poker is the same.

What are the requirements for a job to be legitimate?

I guess it would be something like:

- makes you able to provide for yourself and optionally for a family

- is regulated by your governement and legal in your country

- ???


Optional (not actually related to "legitimate" imo):

- Serves value to society *

- Is something you enjoy doing and are skilled at


So I guess answer those questions for yourself and find out if it's "legitimate" in your case.


* - I don't remember who argued this but someone said that being a pokerplayer serves a role as being available as entertainment for those who want to play poker, which makes it valuable not for society as a whole but for a smaller community. Imo it's not much different from an owner of a skatestore only serving those interested in skateboarding

3x expected income from a regular job. Maybe 2x if your other option is a low skilled job with little opportunity for advancement. Several reasons.

-The resume gap is going to have a negative impact if you try to get a regular job at some point.
-A regular job has advancement opportunities. If you're lucky it also includes a pension. There's a ton of future value you miss out on.
-Very few players make it longer than 10 years and there's not many opportunities that come from poker career.
-The longer you live the poker life style the harder it is to work a regular job.
-With few exceptions a poker career will lower your social standing.

For all those reasons you need to make significantly more money for full time poker to be a good full time occupation.

Follow a budget and don't fall into the trap of run good spending (luxury purchases after an upswing). Having a decent six figure life bankroll will make life post poker much, much easier.

If you are smart enough to make significant money playing poker, you are probably smart enough to make as much money in something else but with far more security, benefits and opportunity to learn new skills. This is certainly true in most Western countries at any rate.