Why not? Are you still in school?

already have a degree, soon to be 25 y/o, don't feel like moving out of the country to play internet poker. I don't want to leave my family/friends/everything I love.

I understand, but you might want to reconsider.
See it as an opportunity to travel the world. If you're under 25 and American, chances are, statistically speaking, that you've seen very little of the world outside of the US (apologies if this isn't the case).

I'm not telling you to leave for good, but why not take a big laptop (can by an extra screen anywhere you go), pack up a few clothes and live it up by renting some sick villas in Asian countries or cheaper parts of EU 3-4 months at a time?

You only have one life, and if you truly end up working some 9 to 5, no matter how well-paying, you might not have the opportunity later in life that you have now at that age given your skill at poker.

Edit: Personally, the main reason I started playing online poker was because of the freedom of movement and of schedule it allows. BF was the perfect opportunity to take advantage of that.

It's not easy, my GF and closest friends are all in the US, but sometimes doing your thing is alright too...

I appreciate your sincerity in wanting me to do it, but I would have been traveling/living it up a long time ago if I really wanted to do that. It just doesn't interest me to live in Thailand. You are right, I only have one life, but living in Thailand/other countries for a few years isn't something I crave.

same I think, still kind of undecided it was pretty nice to make a pile of money working 500 hours a year : ).... i've traveled just enough to know that, at least for me, you can only enjoy a place if you enjoy the company and money isn't great company.

Thailand, huh?

To be honest, I wasn't even talking about Thailand. There are many amazing places in Asia, EU, etc...
But if you're not feeling it, you're not feeling it and that's it.

I can relate. I'm a bit older than you (30 yo) and at your age I actually didn't care about travelling at all unless it was to go to Amsterdam to get completely smashed out of my mind.

Hopefully poker will come back in decent shape and I wish you to be able to travel later in life if the craving were to make itself felt.

Don't let you skills go to ****, you never know...

GL

lol 500hrs/yr. If I'm moving to another country to be a professional poker player I would be grinding my ass off while having fun. 10hrs/week is a joke.

Yeah, fortunately for him though 4CardGrind plays 10 hours per week and still wins more $ than everyone. Sick life

i'm just lazy, just took it for granted before Black Friday and played very little since the game is so miserable ya know, for sure would log the hours if leaving the country to play.

hard to compare happiness and money, no common terms, was much easier when I thought money = happiness and so everything was in the same units if that makes any sense.

Yeah it def makes sense. It's kinda weird, if I was able to make as much as you in a short time I'd probably like poker a lot less, but since I was/am forced to grind hard I did all I could to make myself enjoy it. I'm not passionate about the game but I managed to create some form of competition in my head, like I'm trying to prove to myself that I can make it, so I get a lot of satisfaction from beating people at the game now.

Probably pretty sad that I make my living in an activity like that lol, but it's fun for me

no disrespect bro, but here's more realistic way of looking at things.

1. you are right poker is infact depressing.but so is every other job. not many people are at peace with their jobs.

2.nothing else is more important than money,maybe family....

3.well, if beating regs on a daily basis doesn't give you satisfaction, nothing else can.

4. that is so true, not so sure about the selfish part though.

5. nobody quits poker after making that much money in 2.5 years, unless
you are f'd by DOJ.

never really understood the people who play poker for a living and say it makes them miserable. if you're miserable, quit. but I still believe in the saying that if you're miserable playing poker for a living you're either doing the "living" or the "poker" part wrong.

dumbest thing said itt

Poker is great as long as there's no painful downswing, but the downswing is just too much pain.

I recently wrote a blog post about this topic here at www.kenthecow.com
it's definitely a TLDR, so sorry if I'm trolling here. many of you might not know me very well, but i've been lurking since i was 16 and am 24 now and am friends and have talked strat with many well known HSNL pros who respect my game.

The one point I want to make is that quitting poker isn't failing. Many poker players view that quitting poker is the worst thing that can happen, but making money isn't necessarily the most important thing. Life EV is way more important. Balance in life is so important and I see so many people becoming obsessed with poker - it is the nature of the business. I'd rather be comfortable and be happy with my life than be rich and feel like a ****ty degenerate...really though, different things make different people happy so to each his own.

Many poker players feel like poker is the best option and that there is no way out to do other things, but there are definitely other ways of making money that are more lucrative than poker...poker pros just aren't motivated enough to take the steps necessary to do those things. it's not that you can't do anything else it's really that you aren't motivated to do what it takes to move onto something different.

GL OP, i wish you the best.

KTC

I'd respect OP's post more if he was some well known solid grinder at stars but without evidence that he did indeed make 200k a year I find the whole post bitter and unbelievable.
I myself have always hated poker even when I first started and just kept playing coz i was making "some" money and had no other choice, once I started losing/breaking even and felt games and competition got so tough then the desire to quit had grown greater. Before that happened though I didn't give a **** and just kept buying stuff and going out to cover the depression. It's definitely not for everyone but I can't discount the fact that some might have genuine love for the trade and the poker lifestyle can work out for them.

noticed some posts related to entrepreneurship- fyi my poker society claims over 65 percent of the players who have a won a tournament of champions tournament have gone on to run a successful business- im sceptical as to whether the correlation could possibly be that high!

lol. Who would've thought that life would be the hardest range a poker player has to balance.

Don't want to spambot, but I read this guy on one of the sports forums and it seems relevant to the conversation. Looks like hes a donk quitter here.

He didn't seem to quit gambling overall, just moved to sports. can't ever see myself doing that, but to each their own. I bet sports myself, but I'm not very good at it betting mostly tv games. nothing beats going deep in a MTT and winning with A high.

I get the general thread consensus of balancing life though. If poker is your life, that cant be good.

Poker's just like everything else in life, some people are cut out for it, and some aren't.

If it was easy, and everyone had what it took to succeed, every douche bag out there would play(profitably).

mostly all a waste of time. most players never beat rake at best. few do succeed but majority dont make a living. sites getting more and more desperate. so called stars living off the rest of us paying rake, most tv games no different to ameican wrestling. poker "names" playing with sites (our) money and not their own. all a bit of a con really . dont give up a good education for this. probably fade quite dramatically away in next two years- just like american dream and space program lol.

Way to ramble on. I picture you talking to the wall in Rainman's voice.

wow super solid post

+1

BobBlank's next job:
poker/life coaching, only 800usd an hour.