OP try working for minimum wage and waking up at 7 am everyday then see how much you like it. i long for the day that i can make a living playing poker.

I quit my job after losing fifty buy-ins at the microstakes...

+ 1.

being depressed playing a "game" for a living on your own time & making 500k in 2.5 years... umm i say stop blaming people & things around you for your own unhappiness

Quit being a puss and follow your dreams for once

lol Isn't this like 99.9% of all jobs.

So you quit poker but you continue to read and reply in the poker forums? Why?

A lot of 9 to 5 people stare at a monitor, click a mouse all day and are not making anything close to online pros fwiw.

maybe try making over 5.5k posts on an internet forum in 12 months like this c**t. happiness just around the corner.

Once again Pokerbob has fooled us all.

I'm not a professional poker player: I play micro stakes on-line, and the equivalent of 1-2 at a local club. But I love to play poker, and overall I've won more than I've lost. But I'm glad poker for me is strictly recreational. It's fun, it's a game, it's a diversion, it's social. But it really does seem like a very hard way to make an easy living....

By the way, having a "real" job does not have to mean a 9-5 grind, with a jerk boss and no fun. You just have to be creative and refuse to settle for less. You can have lots of freedom and money at work if you're smart and have good social skills, and most poker players I know are smart.

In fact, at the club I play at in Prague, I'm always impressed with some of the young pros playing there. But I'm always thinking they could be making so much more in other fields. Perhaps that's what they will eventually do.

I am an independent contractor, mainly working for one large, American IT company. They pay me a lot of money to fly around the world and sell software, stay in great hotels, eat in great restaurants, meet interesting people, and generally have a blast. I'm careful to make sure I always have other options, should this gig end abruptly. I work from home when I'm not traveling. I never wear a suit or tie, unless I'm meeting with customers (and often not even then). When I do travel, I always make sure I have time to enjoy myself: half day of skiing, or seeing the sites, or playing poker in the local casino, or just lounging by the pool. All on the company's dime, of course (except the casino, which is hard to expense).

Poker players are some of the smartest people I know. There are many other options out there. Quitting poker does not have to mean working at Taco Bell. You were smart enough to beat a very difficult game, just make sure you use that intelligence in the real world to find a job that gives you the cash you need, the freedom you crave.

Oh, and then play poker as a hobby, in your free time. Without the pressure of having to win to pay the rent, I'm sure it's a lot more fun.

On the other hand, I'll admit I'd trade my job for Phil Ivey's, any day.... But how many Iveys are out there? For every Ivey, there are 999 Jean-Robert Bellandes* (no offense)....

If poker's your thing, you're making good cash and having a blast, ride the wave. I'm just saying, don't think the alternative is selling shoes at the local mall....

*Actually, Bellande seems to have learned that poker isn't his thing, but being a celebrity is. So he's wisely trying to leverage his poker problems (his main problem being he apparently can't win at the game at the stakes he believes he should play) into something more lucrative. Good luck to him, he seems like a great guy.

Glad is working out for you OP

It's the complete opposite for me, I've been playing poker for a living for over 10 years, both live and online, and I love it and would not trade it for any job (I have a degree in business management and have owned/managed two family restaurants plus I've had a few other different jobs).

I will never trade the freedom poker gives me, plus I've been settled (married) for 4 years now with a nice house, an apartment for vacations, nice cars and everything else I could need...the poker lifestyle is perfect for us.

My wife and I love going out a few times a week together to different restaurants or just to have fun at the movies, theme parks, whatever, and we also really like having some time alone to hang out with our friends, things we would certainty could not do if we had 9-5 jobs.

graph

Very well said.

/thread

Stopped reading after this, says it all. Some people will find balancing with poker impossible, others won't. Either way it's not poker that's making you depressed it's the fact that you're unable to find enough things to make you happy and stick to actually doing them in a situation where you have almost complete freedom and no obligation to uphold commitments. Nothing wrong with that, a lot of people would probably suffer the same problems if they were able to play professionally.

Unless you actually hate the game of poker, obviously.

Good for you, some people enjoy it some don't. You obviously didn't. Best of luck with your future endeavours sir.

+1

what these guys usually mean in these "i need a life" threads is that poker is too much hard work, so they're quitting in hopes of finding an easy job.

the variance and uncertainty is rough, but is the poker grind is worse than a bad job? forget the 9-5, try working 6-8, or join the military. where as soon as you get home, you eat, drink, and go to sleep to get ready for the next day (and if you chose the latter option, you sometimes don't even get to go home). those are difficult, soul-crushing jobs, tons of people have them, and they hate their job every day and want to get away. there is nothing romantic about this.

as a poker pro you may have failed to balance life and poker. imo, get better at balancing. there are tons of people who don't have a nice balance and unlike poker players, they don't have any choice.

I give op a week b4 hes bak at it

page 14 and still no graph?

good post. I was in same boat as OP. never had a job. played poker since 03'
now I got a part time job( 3-4 days per week) and it has helped me focus when i do play poker + nice with having a routine to follow.

There are more important things in life than money. That's why everybody that has money keeps trading it for those things that make them happy. That's why everybody is out there trying to make as much money as they can!

Usually when someone is turning pro and has not completed their education, the advice is to keep some money available to go back to school. In your case, I would recommend keeping some money back for a BR so you don't have to start from scratch.

I don't get why people is always about the ALL or NOTHING when it comes to poker, balance ur life with some poker involved ($$$$ flows in) and u will probably feel pretty good about urself ... gl in life tho

+1 It just sounds like OP needed to start smoking weed (or find some other hobby) and find some cool people to hang with. Of course you cant just sit in front of a screen and play poker all ur life, that would just be depressing but so would doing that with a lot of other jobs.

I'm still in page 1 / [ ] Great 2p2 settings.

Anyway, OP, you started this thread but have not cared to tell us about your life-style while you were pro. That might have been the main issue, lack of exercise, bad sleeping patterns & diet, poor social life, no sex, no love, etc.

life suckage ITT. makin over 200k a year and getting no satisfaction and saying life sucks, i call BS, you are 75% FOS, 15% Quasimodo and 10% loser. No, actually you are 100% loser. Sorry.