I agree that many poker pros share the issue of staying structured in an unstructured environment. But my overall point is that it is not really an issue between professional poker versus "a real job". Rather, it is the difference between being an entrepreneur and being an employee.

Many people (probably most, in fact) are more comfortable being employees. The get a steady income, the have a relatively fixed schedule, and while they have the pressure of performing at a level needed to keep their job, they generally do not face a day to day pressure to make money.

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, accept the risk of complete failure. They usually commit all their money, and borrow up the butt, to start their business, with the odds stacked against them. After they do that, there is no one to kick them in the butt, make them work long hours, make them learn about business, and no guarantees of making enough revenue to cover business expenses, much less living expenses.

Most people cannot take that kind of pressure. Most people are not disciplined enough to do all the things needed to succeed with no one forcing them to. Of course, for taking these risks, entrepreneurs are the ones who potentially will make tremendously more money than their employees. Risk and reward always are tied together.

So I just believe that there is nothing special or peculiar about poker as a business that puts any additional or unique demands on someone than any other business where you decide to work for yourself. Issues of risk of financial ruin, and an unhealthy and unbalanced life are problems for all business owners.

However, I do think it is a rather weak rationale to imply that the reasons that poker players cannot exercise or eat healthy or do social activities is because they have too much free time. That just doesn't make sense at all. All of the examples of people claiming to be "burned out" and "having no personal life" were saying they were playing between 10-30 hours a week. It would be another thing if someone said "in order to be successful in poker, you have to grind it out 60-80 hours a week". that certainly makes sense. But to say "it's a grind" when someone only "grinds" on average 2-3 hours a day, 5 days a week is lame.

There's a huge difference between you and the OP. No one cares when an $800/week player quits poker for a real world job. You can pretty easily find a real world replacement job that pays that much guaranteed + benefits.

But OP is making $250K per year which is something he will never be able to acheive with a real world job. He is making 6x the amount he will be making in his real world job. Just playing poker for 4 years is going to net him more than he will make in his next 20 years of a real world job. What a stupid ****ing tradeoff.

Graphs, please?

what is so gullible about quitting when making 250k+yr??

i make alot more then that playing poker and im 99% sure im going to bow out end of this year and finish my business degree/start my own business

People want fulfillment in their lives, and a lot of that comes from achievement and creating things. Poker doesn't offer much in the way of creation or achievement. Sure you can hit the 1mil mark, or the 100k mark or w/e, but those marks don't help you feel accomplished in life. Plenty of people will use poker as a tool for making money and then want to move on with their lives. This is also perfectly acceptable.

nothing...never said there was. I think it is good and plan on doing it someday. Did you click?

@ icracknuts: No offense taken. I am always interested in hearing other people's views on things, especially when they're meant for the benefit of discussion rather than insults. Nothing you said was meant as a personal attack and I did not take it as such. That said, kudos to you on staying motivated and succeeding admirably. I can't argue the fact that people who find the poker profession appealing, but falter in maintaining a healthy lifestyle, probably share a lot of similar characteristics that predispose them to degenerate into their negative conditions. It is pretty easy to fall off the wagon unless you are motivated by something with intrinsic value (family, fame, etc.) because it takes a rare person to be solely motivated by money.

@ Bowser: I definitely see your comparison point between poker players and entrepreneurs. However, I also feel that a startup venture can also fall into the intrinsic value category. People who start their own businesses generally take a lot of pride in what they are working towards (sort of a "look what I built" mentality). That may be presumptuous considering everyone has their own motivations, but I would take a ton of pride in starting my own company and succeeding. With poker, I'm proud of my success, but aside from a gold star on sharkscope and a decently sized bank account for someone my age, I don't have much to show for it. I can't say, "I built this" and marvel at my achievement. If I could, I think I would look upon poker more fondly.

@BradleyT: Making $800/week is my choosing. When I first went pro, I was playing 2x as much as I do now. If I were truly motivated to grind, I'd be making $100-$150k/yr, which is 2-3x what I'd be making at a regular job. Money is something that brings happiness to those who do not have it. However, if you have enough to sustain the lifestyle you want and accumulate some savings for a rainy day, access money is not a massive motivator to most people. That said, I would happily take a job that paid 50k/yr right now if it was something I could take pride in even though it would mean sacrificing a lot of freedom.

good level sir

I left this thread when the trolling got too out of hand. But the discussion seems to of come full circle back to the issue I wanted to discuss ITT.

SayGN, this post is basically the nuts dude. I couldnt agree with ( or relate to) what you have posted any more!

I understand the "Pro Poker camp" point of view.

A huge reason I quit was because I knew I would want to get a job eventually and enter the "real world" (poker player for life = no thanks - have you seen these guys in the casinos?). I got to the point where I was closing in on 3 years of nothing productive on my cv/resume, and so I felt that it was time to get out of poker (that and the fact that I began to HATE poker).

Happiness>money.

^^ Ok, we might finally agree on one thing. Casinos/cardrooms are degen infested and full of smelly, begging and overall annoying players.

But the online career is no comparison and should not be thrown into the "Quitting poker for a living was the best decision I ever made" argument/thread.

Happiness=Money

Anybody that said grinding for money will make you happy hasn't played for a living long enough. You will eventually burn out and money soon becomes unimportant. It is much smarter to invest some of your time in learning ways to make your money work for you. Grinding long term is not a sustainable way to live without properly investing and doing other business ventures on the side. It is also not a healthy way to live playing full time and makes it very hard to balance your life. The online poker industry is fairly new and not much research has been done to determine the effects it has on people but I'm fairly certain it has a very detrimental impact on both physical and mental health. If you can learn how to do a few other things on the side and only play a couple days a week then its not a bad way to supplement income but believe me you don't want to try and make this your only source of income. Even when you have money saved up you don't even feel comfortable spending it on things because you don't have any security knowing how the next week, month, or upcoming years are going to go.

I got supernova elite last year and I realized grinding is not enjoyable and gives no satisfaction and am looking towards other business ventures while playing poker on the side. For any full time players or ppl looking to do this full time I would highly suggest not doing so. There is such a good chance with how tough the games are now that you will have a hard time making a good living first off and even if you make a good living it still isn't a satisfying or healthy way to live. Keep it a profitable hobby and spend your efforts learning real estate or other things that give you a long term money stream. I remember ppl telling me this same thing when I first started playing full time in 08 but I didn't believe that was the case for me, however after 3 years I now believe them lol. With anything in life remember balance is key along with staying healthy, maintaining relationships with friends and family, and overall focusing on things that make you happy....and no money shouldn't be your main focus.

You are going to start a business and he is going to flip burgers.

+1

Life is like your fantasy football team...very few people really care about yours...so enjoy it the best you can, but quit boring the rest of us with the details

When I first started playing poker online it was because I had just lost my job. I did well in college playing internet poker - though now I can see that it was because the competition was so easy back then, not that I was good at the game. So I set out on the path to becoming competitive in the modern games. I was making next to nothing at first but I was playing 24/7. It wasn't even about the money - I just had this drive in me to learn as much as possible about the game. It was so fresh and I genuinely enjoyed grinding long hours, watching a ton of videos, read 2+2 constantly, talked to people about hands and reviewed my database daily. I really loved everything about it for the first 3 months. During this time I also continued to lift weights, drink/smoke friend friends and neighbors and still had what I consider a good life balance. I was also able to maintain this balance, even working 60 hours a week at my old account job. I enjoyed both the poker and "real work" lifestyles quite a bit.

And then something happened with poker. I went from getting by grinding out 10 dollars an hour at really low limits to beating NL100/200 in just a few months. All of that hard work and love for the game paid off. I was winning with a really solid win rate over a biggish sample. I played a lot the first couple of months and I had money coming out of my ears. But soon I noticed something else... that there wasn't *that* much more to learn about the game. Once this happened I stopped putting in any decent amount of hours. But since my hourly rate was so good I still had a good deal of money. I played some 2/4 6 max on my final month of playing anything remotely close to seriously and won about 15 buy ins in the matter of a couple days. Then I just cold turkey quit poker for the most part. Yeah, that was about the most irrational thing anyone could conclude doing. The funniest thing is back when I was watching vids of mid stakes regulars I told myself, "Man if I ever started making that much money I'd just play all day and make millions." Well that sure didn't happen.

Soon I found that I was the unhappiest I've been in my adult life. I stopped going to the gym. I stopped hanging out with any friends or doing anything considered close to normal. I'd go eat fast food/Chipotle every day. I pretty much just did nothing. So I decided to change something and moved to Thailand - same story, grinding extremely lazily, played games a lot and managed to save up ~50k while doing this. This has really started to make me question "What is next?"

The good thing is that I am only 25 and still figuring life out and what I really want to do. It is kind of funny because this period of self reflection is something that many people never really get when they are my age - they are so damn busy with all of their obligations in life. One time an old friend told me that the unhappiest people are the ones that have too much time to sit around and think about everything... well I am finding that that is certainly true. But this past year and a half has been rather bittersweet... while I think right now I might be mildly depressed because of it, I think ultimately it will have been the most important point of my life. It is right now that I am finally starting to come to grips with who I really am and what I want to do with the rest of my life. And I am very grateful that poker has given me the opportunity to get this all sorted out.

SIck post.

I relate to all of this. You could be talking about my experience (except the finer details like thailand!).

Playing poker is so different from working poker. Working poker sucks major ass!

so i kinda skimmed through the thread so i could have missed it but.... where the fk is the graph? or SN?

Yes because I made sure I saved all my poker graphs just to show haters on 2p2. Fail

u ignored the SN part

As someone that has worked from home for 10 years (not playing poker, just a tech job) this made me laugh pretty hard (probably because it's true).

Obv he was break even at best. If he had a spiffy Giraph he would have posted it and his SN in the OP.

yeah let me go claim i won 500k in 2 years and not post a SN or Graph and see how many ppl believe me.

Poker isn't perfect but I am very grateful to make more money than 90% of people and have more freedom than anyone I know.

I am 34 and I worked a job for 10 years... To me it's not even close. Poker is the best career I could ask for.