This thread is 99% comprised of people refusing to acknowledge that other people have different opinions from their own.

Different valid opinions, yes. 😛

fyp

Cya soon Bob!!

Letting anything become your sole obsession is going to lead to burnout/depression, whether it's poker or something else. 20-40 hrs of poker a week balanced with a healthy lifestyle gives somebody the freedom to make their own hours while playing a game for a living. Somebody else might find more satisfaction and less stress from the variance free money of a 9-5 with 10hrs of poker recreationally on the weekend. It just comes down to balance and personal preference.

I mean if you’re smart and lack ambition or can remain content that’s a different conversation. You don’t have to be a poker player to wake up at 3 and wear sweatpants. That sounds so depressing...

i got a 9 to 5 i am typing this from my station wearing sweatpants. Working for the man is not that bad.....actually It's f@cking awesome .

Just skimmed this interesting thread for the first time (~2 hours lol) and here are my thoughts:

1) I got a good education and worked for the man for ~15 years, until age 35. Some of those years were great, but in the end, after reaching an annual gross income close to $200k, I got thoroughly screwed-over by a terrible boss (who eventually fired me after 3 years of hell), and decided to become an independent contractor/consultant.

2) That worked fine for a few years, making ~$200k/yr, until someone with a grudge lied about me to sully my reputation, my immediate livelihood was gone and I had to find an alternative.

3) Fortunately, I'd discovered poker ~2005 and had some talent for the game. So I became a "pro" in mid-2006, moved to the South of Spain, had a great lifestyle and made decent money for around 2.5 years. At that time, I felt like being a poker pro was a much better choice than working for the man.

4) Then in early 2009 I hit the worst downswing of my poker career. I took one last shot at WSOP 2009 with my remaining bankroll, but bricked 29/30 tourneys (and min-cashed the other). Either I was finished with poker or poker was finished with me!

5) Somehow, at around the same time, a head-hunter had found me, and I got offered a great job in Montreal working for the man. I took it and enjoyed it for several years, even though the money was not as much as I used to earn. Little-by-little, however, things began to annoy me: HR issues, expense claims, travel policy restrictions, misguided bosses. Nothing as bad as what I'd experienced before, but enough to convince me that corporate life wasn't likely to be the answer for me.

6) Meanwhile, I'd re-discovered poker, this time mostly the live variety at Playground Poker Club. I knew I couldn't make enough money grinding live poker full-time, but what I could do, now that I'd re-established my reputation and gained some good experience, was go back to being an independent consultant part-time, while playing poker part-time.

7) This has been my life for the past 3-years or so and it is a satisfying situation for me. I mostly work from home for clients who respect me, around 1000 hours last year, including some fancy trips for client meetings, plus I seriously grind live poker (including long trips to Las Vegas, shorter trips to Bahamas/Florida/Aruba).

8) I made close to $200k combined poker/consulting last year, which is fine for me (I don't really aspire to making much more than that per year, although the chance of one big live poker bink is always tantalising). I do aspire to living better (really got fit & healthy these past couple of years, had lots of great vacations/meals/etc.). I also took savings/investments more seriously for the past 5 years, which has enabled me to build a cushion for any "life downswings" we may face in the future.

Sorry tl;dr but bottom-line I've learned after 30-years in the rat race is that its best to balance poker, lifestyle and work.

You're doing what I tell most people who ask me about going pro should do-make it a profitable side hobby.you won't burn out and you can play the good hours .

Nice story. Do you mind answering a few questions?

How much of the 200k was poker vs job?
How many hours of poker do you play a week?
How did you get clients for the consulting gig to start?
What would it take you to go poker full time?

Cheers

180k consulting vs 20k poker in 2018, but in my defence I played a lot of MTTs and ran below EV last year, especially in higher buy-in events. Also I was learning to play live cash and was only a small winner at 2/5-5/10 NL cash in my first year at the game. I'm targeting $75k poker profits this year.

I played 1740 hours of poker last year (1060 hours MTTs and 680 hours cash), so my poker hourly really sucked, but as I said it was MTT negative variance and cash game learning from scratch last year (having always been an MTT player).

I get consulting clients because I'm a recognised expert in a specialized high-technology field (space technology).

I wouldn't go full-time poker, but when I think about "retirement" it may be something like 80% poker / 20% consulting.

I cannot fathom trying to make the same money I make in my current job as a professional poker player. So I've just made poker a side hobby where I make a few bucks and have fun without freaking out about how to pay the rent if I go on a downswing. From what I can gather the idea of being a poker pro is far more appealing than the reality.

Think that's the case with most things though. People don't really think about the full picture of things often and will romanticize the idea of something. Rarely does it actually line up with the reality. Like anything else it comes down to how you weight the pros and cons. If you are actually good enough to make a good hourly and smart enough to save as much money as possible than imo the flexibility and other perks is a pretty nice life. If you're barely scraping by I'd imagine it's an extremely stressful life and very poor choice for your long term well being.

That’s what I am going to do..40-50 hours of poker a week, balanced with running my own Herbalife business. Helping people live a healthy and active lifestyle..#LetsDoThis

Figured i'd make a post since why not

I played full time from 2008-2015 and was very happy playing poker for a living - I went 0/4 converting 100k equity stacks to 50k+ scores, but I grinded out my 40-100k a year each year and had a fantastic time grinding through my 20s

The games started to pass me by and I was lazy with my study habits, especially once PIO because a thing, because studying PIO is boring

Transitioned out of playing full time in 2015, worked part time for a poker site for a year while working on my sports betting then have been sports betting since 2016ish. I'm making more EV per year in sportsbetting than I was either working or playing poker, and i'm also happy doing this - and i'm really enjoying playing poker occasionally as a rec player as well. That said, quitting poker full time isn't the right move for everyone; it is for people who are in the process of becoming 'bad regs' like I was, but I could still play professionally if I enjoyed that more than what i'm doing now if I fixed my study habits.

There isn't a correct answer or anything, like one of my friends Michael Addamo only turned pro post-boom missing all of the easy glory days and now he's one of the best players in the world and making piles and that's because he studies hard and grinds hard. A lot of the guys in my old stable (the BBZ group) are still crushing it because they study hard and grind hard. Some of the guys who were good when I stopped playing full time have gone broke since, because they stopped putting the work in or because their edge eroded due to games getting tougher or a combination of the two. I know a combination of the two is what helped me reach the decision it was time to transition out of full time play.

At the end of the day you get out of poker what you put into it. Game selection and study habits and work ethic are everything, the difference is when I was coming up through the stakes from 2007 until black friday, playing poker for a living was easy and any terrible player (I had horrible fundamentals by modern standards and was basically an abc reg at the time even) could print over 50k a year - the poker economy isn't what it was, but it isn't irreparably broken or anything, you just have to actually treat poker like a job now to succeed and that makes it less fun - which led to me personally transitioning out, but for people who genuinely still love the game it's still fine to play full time and a lot of them can make more money than they could do doing anything else - if I didn't have other options, I probably would fix my poker game and have continued playing, but I found something else I enjoy more personally, but if the alternative was working 9-5 in some job I dislike i'd pass - there are plenty of jobs out there that are great, and plenty that suck.

Anyway, that's the perspective of a 33yo who worked for a living from 14-21, played poker from 22-29, worked again at 30 and then transitioned into sports betting which is fairly similar to poker in terms of your day to day life from 31-33.

I don't regret playing full time at all, I had a great time and I transitioned out at about the right time (maybe six months earlier would have been optimal). There's a non-zero chance i'll play poker full time at some point in the future, but it's unlikely to ever be my main thing again - but anyone blanket telling people they should/shouldn't turn pro or still be playing poker for a living is overgeneralising.

More of my peers from the time I played pro have transitioned out or gone broke in the past few years but that's because the games are harder - four of five of the aussies who were 'about as good' as me when I stopped playing full time have made a mil or more since, maybe a dozen have gone broke, and a bunch are still grinding along paying the bills without getting rich. Poker is still a meritocracy, it's just not an easy way to pay the bills playing a game the way it used to be since you actually have to be 'good' now to make 50k+ a year in ev.

The days of playing professionally with zero study, regging everything and playing on autopilot and succeeding easily are gone but people who want to put the work in can still do it for a living.

Great post ^^^

SwoopAe

You mentioned not wanting to put the work in for poker to stay ahead of the curve
What did you do to be able to beat sports betting?

I know that's gotten a lot harder as well.
I never uses any models algorithms etc but I beat baseball 8 out of 9 years ending about 5 years ago but know that I can't beat it these days

Think I know you from plo at Aria

Interesting read but if I learned anything is there are a lot of cynical people in this world lol.

If you can do it and it makes you happy, great. Do it. I love it myself.

If you don't want to/or don't believe its possible. Then don't.


No need to try and convince someone who has a completely different mindset/background/goals etc of something they can or cant do.

Keep on keeping on all.

Hope you all find happiness.

Think it makes more sense to work a job during the year and live frugally then try to bink the WSOP. As opposed to playing 95 hours of Cash a month where you have a minimal edge in 2019. Like, live in your car and grind a job to save up then try to hit. Some of these guys I see grinding cash or promo hunting just seem so miserable.

Good post SwoopAE, thanks for your perspective. Not a lot of posts from former full-time pros who have said they've been happy with their decision. Also you're self-aware enough to admit your study habits just weren't there. I think a lot of former pros who have quit and say it was a wise decision just can't admit they couldn't hack it anymore.

We also never see the good side of things posted. How many high stakes crushers ever post about their sick life and how good of a decision it was for them to go pro? We only hear from the mediocre regs who could never make it.

Definitely when I quit as an online MTT pro in 2009 my study habits sucked and my peers were getting way ahead of me (some of whom have gone on to be High-Roller crushers), but in the past year or so I've really got into serious study grind (both for MTTs and Cash Games) and I feel capable of playing well in any MTT field except the Super High-Rollers.

For example, last summer I FT'd a Wynn $1k event with Charder as the massive CL. He's one of my peers from the earlier era who's continued as a pro to the present day. With the study I'd done (RYE Tourney Masterclass), I didn't feel intimidated or outmatched by him and outlasted him to finish 2nd.

I think part-time grinders can put in enough study + playing hours to match full-time pros, plus we have less financial pressure because we don't need to win to make a living.

Combination of having a ton of soft outs to beat closing lines on mainstream sport picking off soft lines (not willing to get into specifics really but its very doable) and being one of the best handicappers in the world in a niche-but-not-too-niche-to-get-down-on sport (Rugby 7s) and handicapping a few other semi-mainstream sports to a lesser extent - stuff like the Australian rugby codes, MMA props, etc - it's not scaleable the way people who are handicapping/modelling mainstream sport can scale up to get high 5 or 6 figures down per bet, but I have no issue getting mid 4 figures down per bet on the stuff I do and low five on the right spots when the chance arises. Remember, in sports betting, your edge doesn't decline as your 'stakes' increase, and you're only limited by your ability to get money down - learning to get constant outs to get decent turnover down is harder than identifying profitable bets once you know what you're doing. If in a year you can turn over say 6 million at a 3% ROI which is about average ROI wise for a decent sports bettor, that's 180k in EV. To make that sort of EV in online poker in 2019, you need to be really, really good. Both are doable, it's just the skillset is more suitable for me in 2019 than playing online poker is.

In one sentence if you as a random person want to beat sports betting 'beat the sharpest books/exchanges no vig closing line' is the 'entry level' version of sports betting; obviously I do a bit more than that now, but that's all I did when I started out. It can be a ton more profitable networking to get soft outs where you can bet large numbers on stuff other than mainstream US sport and euro soccer than spending time trying to develop a model that beats a mainstream sport for a lowish ROI. I do a lot of that.

I don't mind studying poker in a traditional sense with a coach doing HH reviews and so on but staring at PIO simulations to learn GTO play is boring as hell and if you don't implement it correctly (most people are incapable of implementing it correctly probably including me) it can lead to disastrous outcomes. I've always played a very exploitative rather than GTO style both live and online - I probably have a bigger edge at say Crown Casino (where I know the tendencies of most of the recreational players) than a player who is far, far better than me but playing there for the first time, or someone who is playing flawless GTO but not deviating from it to exploit weak players in live MTTs - online, you're basically not deviating from your best attempt at GTO play these days at anything above low stakes, since such a high percentage of the field is pros (or was as of 2015 which was the last year I put in serious volume on a tough site like Stars). It's only gotten tougher since as soft countries like Australia exit the pool taking away one of the last sources of bad rec players from rich countries.

Online poker is always going to be beatable by the best players who exploit other regs or play perfect GTO etc, but I don't think i'm capable of doing that at a level where my hourly online would surpass what I can make sports betting. In live series it can be worthwhile, but only particularly soft tournament series where I have a big edge and the buyins are of a decent size, eg. Aussie Millions.

A lot of them tend to want to keep their successes more private - for a few reasons, one as you get more successful in life financially you tend to have less ego and care less about whether people think you're good at what you do - maybe just a part of getting older. I know I was a bit of a try-hard when I was coming up through the stakes and cared a lot more about whether people thought I was good at poker and so on. Also, if you're known to be wealthy you'll get tons of annoying hangers-on trying to get staked or leechy people in general. I can only imagine how many unsolicited attempts to make 'prop bets' someone like Bill Perkins gets when it's known he's a billionaire and makes hugely -EV prop bets for fun with his friends that get written about or how many people are begging for coaching or a stake or whatever from any poker player who is known to be successful and have a decent net worth, not to mention scam attempts and so on, plus possible tax minimisation issues for some higher net worth people who do not walk to talk up their wealth publicly and flag possible audits etc even if they've done nothing illegal.

At the end of the day for some people it's the right decision to play poker professionally and for other people it isn't. I personally made the right decision to turn pro in 2008 (even though I wasn't ready until 2009ish skillset and bankroll wise, it worked out because any idiot who didn't run way below EV could turn pro in the 2008 ecosystem) and I made the right decision to transition out in 2015, although in hindsight 2014-ish was about the right time for me to transition out although that's only with the benefit of hindsight.

About to reach the one-year mark after quitting poker, my experience is very similar to SwoopAE's. After 10 years of playing for a living I thought transitioning to "normal life" would be difficult, but it was actually really easy. I was always so afraid of giving up the freedom that poker provides etc, but in many ways I feel much more free now. Poker really is an all or nothing type of occupation, and to be successful (especially nowadays) it needs to take over your life in many ways -- you can't just go to your grind office for 8 hours every day and be done with it. It's been so incredibly relaxing to actually have working hours and then just be done with work for the day. With poker you're never "done", it's always there lurking, I genuinely feel like I've been given 96 hours a week of free time that didn't exist when I played for a living. I've been to 11 different countries during my first year in a full-time job and I've gotten more stuff done in my off time during this year than I managed to do in the previous 10 playing poker. I feel much more present when I'm with people and in every way like a more healthy, normal person.

I think your experience will also vary a lot based on how old you are, what your overall attitude is and how you quit (on your own terms or not). When I was 20-25 poker was *everything*, I wanted nothing more but to succeed at it, I loved grinding sims for 8 hours in the middle of the night after an 8-hour session, truly genuinely loved the grind now matter how enduring it was, all my friends were poker players and quite frankly I didn't have many interests outside of poker. But as I grew a bit older I got interested in all kinds of things outside of poker (art history, reading, psychology, writing...) and always found myself thinking along the lines of "when I'm done with poker I'm going to dedicate time for this, it'd be too time-consuming now and hurt my poker studies". So suddenly I had a ton of things I wanted to do but that poker was stopping me from doing. When I quit poker, it felt like the world opened itself up to me in a new way and all of a sudden I had time and energy to do many things I couldn't have done before, which made quitting feel like a reward. If I had been forced to quit at 23 years old for some reason I would have had a miserable time I'm sure.

I wouldn't go on to say quitting poker was THE best decision I've ever made, but I'm 100.0% sure it was the correct one and I haven't regretted it for one second. I did luck out on finding a nice, rewarding job though, and having tons of interests that keep me busy and bring additional lifeEV now that I have the time. I think I'd be happier still grinding than I'd be working a horrible job, but having a job that feels rewarding and challenging in all the right ways definitely makes me happier than grinding would do.

Having that said, poker was an amazing job for a young dude in his 20s and I wouldn't trade that time period and the memories for anything. It can still offer great opportunities, both $-wise and life experience -wise. Probably takes more talent and dedication than it did 5 or 10 years ago to make it, and for an increasing number of people it will end up being a very disappointing career path, but there's no reason why it couldn't also be a great idea to go pro for many years.

I think one aspect that's often very overlooked in these topics is your expected income level working in a "normal" job. I've never cared much about money and never played for the money itself, but so many common dreams that people have still require money and savings (may it be traveling around the world, starting a business, taking a year off to do volunteer work with endangered animals, you name it) that it's worth considering how big of an economic boost poker (potentially) offers you. In my home country the average monthly wage is ~$2800 which I think is roughly on par with what you can earn by playing pleb to midstakes MTTs without being very very good and grinding sims around the clock. It wouldn't make any sense for me or anyone in this country to grind poker for that monthly wage (assuming we aren't likely to get a lot better, and people always overestimate their future potential), because any normal job would be much less stressful and would provide a steadier source of income (and likely better future prospects). But if I lived in a country where the average monthly wage is $600... we are now talking a ridiculous boost in income which in turn will provide so many opportunities in life.

10 years ago you could easily make 5-10k tax free (depending on your country obv) without being particularly much ahead of the competition, so it made a lot of sense for people from rich countries to pursue that career. I think the treshold of how much you can make with somewhat little variance and reasonable working hours will only keep going lower, and thus more and more people from rich countries will quit while poker can still boom in countries like India.

I wrote about my quitting and about career-affecting personality traits here (UpswingPoker) if anyone's interested.

I guess if I had to give one advice to anyone pondering these things, aside from the income boost issue mentioned above it would be to ask yourself what you really want from life. Assuming you have no responsibilities in life (say, a family to provide for) and you're a young person and ALL you want is to crush at teh pokers and become a WSOP champ, go for it (as long as you can do it in a financially safe way). If it doesn't work out, get out. I think you should know within a year of going pro whether it's going anywhere or not. And if you're a pro thinking about quitting... more than anything it comes down to what you actually want to do and achieve in life. Don't be afraid of the x-year CV gap, things will work themselves out as long as you have the drive to get **** done. There are so many awesome jobs nowadays, so many ways to put yourself out there and snatch an actually rewarding job even if you have no education. Want to become a photographer? I assume that 20, 30 years ago you had to have some sort of education and it would take years to get noticed even if you were really talented, but nowadays all it takes is a well-though out Instagram profile. Same with writing and most creative jobs. Of course it doesn't work that easily with all occupations, but in general the world is sooooo much more open than it used to be, and if there's something you really want to achieve all you need to do is to go ahead and ****ing do it. Just stop making excuses and man up.

It only gets really hard if poker's not working out anymore but you don't really have other prospects or interests either. I think a lot of people will find themselves in precisely that situation in the future, and that's a tough one to handle for sure. Would love to hear experiences from people who were forced to quit and didn't have any idea what to do next.

GL to everyone out there.

Great post, thanks.

Please forgive me but what does PIO stand for?