I stop playing for a living 9 months ago because I was given a great opportunity to get into the career I've wanted to do for a long time. Career-wise leaving poker was the second best decisions of my life (behind becoming a "pro"). If I never played for a living I would have always regretted not going after my dream and I really did learn a lot about myself, investing, and life in general while playing.

Balancing poker with the rest of your life is tough though and I respect people that grind it out everyday a lot more.

Sure they do. I am doing a similar thing right now (not poker related though) for lifestyle/family/burnout reasons.

for 99% of players trying to play poker for a living is the worse decision they have ever made..you just fixed a mistake you made 2 1/2 years ago..

I guess it is possible a person would quit a $200,00/year job playing a game but I am sure your records look something like this
2009 +$300,00
2010 + $300,000
2011 to date -$100,000 - oh no, a downswing, I hate my life I hate poker, I quit..

oh yeah, for got to mention
you'll be back

No, it isnt. Alot of jobs are very rewarding actually. Poker isnt.

Heck, even serving in mcdonalds could be rewarding. If you do well and serve people well you can make them happy. There is scope for promotion also. And thats the bottom of the barrell too....most other jobs are far more rewarding to the average person.

Also poker is the most repetitive job imaginable. Just sitting and playing the same game for 5 years is crazy. How can that be anyones plan. As already stated, its hard to stay interested in poker after a while unless you are basically a degen (even if you dont admit it). In the end the game will bore you and you will be left with the gamble, the buzz, the feeling when you bink that big hand, the dream of playing durr one day. You will be playing for that feeling at the end of a hard day when you have logged 10k hands and are up $5k.

Poker is really a negative long term impact for the huge majority of people who do it profesionally.

cool story, now sn or gtfo

Might that not depend on the person in question?

I mean, some might say that playing a game -- like soccer or basketball -- isn't rewarding either. I mean, it's just a game, and it's physically demanding, it is injury-prone... and it's just a game.

Yet some people find it incredibly satisfying to have a career playing a game.

I know a number of people who have high paying desk jobs... and they do not find them rewarding. Others would kill for a job that paid that much, with those kinds of benefits.

Different strokes for different folks.

OP it really sounds like poker doesn't work for you and you are generalizing a bit. Every job has a certain amount of repetition/drudgery to it, partly because it's a job and that means you are doing it because you have to.

Poker is not the most repetitive job, though. I have worked in a sheet metal factory grinding welds on the same metal box all day long, all week long, all month long. Each one had to come out exactly the same. At the beginning of the day there was a long row of hundreds of boxes to be done. At the end of the day the line of boxes was longer than at the beginning. I'm sure most people can tell a similar story.

Bottom line, you are hating poker right now. Fair enough.

omfg.



If you're really a massive winner, although the lack of graph makes that debatable, you could play maybe 4hours a day at pretty set times, and spend the rest of your time doing extremely rewarding things.... why do you think playing poker for your money means it's POKER that needs to be rewarding?

Heck, with 500K profit in 2years, you could take a huge break and see the world..... do you realize how lucky you would be to be able to do that? while people work their arse off 8-12 hours a day in ****ty jobs 5-7 days a week?

You have a very skewed view on the working world my friend, and your definition of ''rewarding'' is just ****** stupid.

+1,000,000

Seriously, I wonder if people who say "you just need to balance your life in poker, if you cant then you are stupid" have ever player poker for a living for a long peroid of time or if they are just degens.

The thing is this: when your not a degen the swings (up and down) build on you and depress you. Throw in anti social hours, and hours a day in front of a pc (which you need to do to win unless you luckbox a shot/mtt) and its basically impossible to not get depressed by poker unless you are a sicko degen who lives the gamble.

These factors arent a huge deal when poker is fresh and interesting. But once you have played 2mil hands it pretty hard to regard poker as fresh or interesting. That is unless you are playing higher and higher and getting your degen buzz to keep things interesting that way (which has its own dangers).

The truth is poker is fun, but its becomes a drag on your life very quickly when you go pro. I would say after 2 yrs I had had enough of it utterly. It varies for different people but most people I know have had negative issues arising from playing this game for a living.

Starting smoking weed is your solution? In an already lazy lifestyle you wat to introduce this drug? You would never get out of poker if you followed this advice.

This is probably true for most blue-collar workers.

wp

That's way off. I am the anti-degen and I enjoy playing poker for a living. Why? Because I am very competitive and to me it's like a sport. I like improving and sometimes beating people and also teaching to people. I spend my extra time doing non-poker related things and I use my money to help others through charity.

All you said really depends on your perspective and actions, nothing else. Just because you play poker for a living doesn't mean you can't be balanced, happy and contributing to society. You just chose not to. I have a feeling those who say it's "too hard" to play poker and be happy just gave up because they don't want to man up and put the work into it.

You are making the mistake, a fallacy of sorts, of taking your subjective experiences and assuming they are objective facts. I was going to cut and paste such statements, but decided to bold them instead, realizing with lolz that pretty much your whole post suffers from this poor logic.

I applaud you for quitting something you found un-fulfilling for you (it doesn't matter to me whether it is poker, or medicine, law, HVAC installation, whatever), but your arguments in the objective have so far been unpersuasive.

I will reiterate what others itt have said, at the risk of psycho-analyzing, and suggest to you it might be that your are not a happy person, not that playing poker for a living is without happiness.

show or graph or smth.


Olivier 'livb112' Busquet
To be quite honest, if poker is my main focus five years from now, I’ll be genuinely disappointed. I hope that I can make enough money to provide for my kids and get them the best possible education, but I’ve come to realize that there is more to life than making money. As long as my family and I are happy, that’s all I can really ask for.”

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...ivb112-busquet

ive been playing fulltime for 7 years and I still find poker very enjoyable, with the important caveat that I have to continue moving up in stakes. I think if I ever stayed at the same level in poker for too long I would become bored and disinterested in the game.

Fair point.

I meant this thread to inspire and help people who want to quit but cant see a way out. I didnt mean it to degenerate into an arguement it has become

never thought of this, but i kinda like this view

I am a recreational microStakes grinder and I think anybody who's not a kid or has a certain amout of empathy can understand OP.

Nevermind

I would like to know if OP was primarily playing live or online. He just said 'cash games'. I think playing live can potentially be a bigger downer than playing online and I'd like to hear OP's opinions on that (assuming he's legit).

sounds like OP is a spoiled brat-500K in 2.5 years? I would make and digest pistachio ice cream from *&^&* for this amount of dough , must have never had to worry about supporting a family or paying any serious bills-not oh im late on my prius payment. I call total BS, graphs, SN or go outside and play hide and GFY

Cool ... now listen, I have a good job as a civil servant and two small kids (youngest is 4mo), so I'm not likely to go full monty on the poker trap. So if making people happy makes it worth while for you, then teach me how to win more than 50$/hour playing poker and I'll reward you with the joy making me and my kids happy (+ I'll play you whatever hourly is appropriate at mcdonalds )