Great thread and after reading so many posts I wish to contribute with my perspective as well.
I have been playing for about 9 years now, some years I have played many hours every day and some years just a few hours per weekend. I feel that I have been a winning playing for so long now that I could probably make it as a pro if I really wanted and dared to.
Now I’m 32 years old, I have a girlfriend, family in the making, mortgage on a nice apartment and I have made a nice career for myself.
My job is within the gambling industry which I love, I make descent amounts of money, great colleague’s and flexible hours. Now this is an office job, I have a boss (albeit a great one) and I need to put on a suite ever day even the days I don’t want to. Sometimes I feel that I work to long hours and wish I had more freedom to do whatever I wanted, usually that is playing more poker.
For me being a professional poker player has been a dream for many years. Many nights after a successful session I lay in bed thinking that maybe I need to risk a little to live your dream, the old “you only live once”. Doing something I love for a living every day for potentially huge amounts of money would be something.
I should say that I live in Sweden so playing online is not an issue for me.
But I don’t know, as I said I have great colleague’s which I hang out with on my spare time. There is a huge security in knowing that there is a monthly paycheck that covers all my needs coming every month. Of course I wish I had more money and there are things I wish I could buy and things I could afford, but for the most part money is not something that I think of.
I think that by making poker your only source of income this might change. I always feel really bad after a losing session as it is now, how would I feel if this could jeopardize my ability to make rent this month? Would I turn in to a loner with huge mood swings? I don’t want that.
This is really a question that I struggle with, I badly want to try the pro poker life and I think I could make it. I don’t even think it would be particularly bad for my CV in case I didn’t make and wanted to go back to my current career. But even though playing poker for a living sounds fantastic when I say it to myself. I feel that there are just too many downsides and I’m worried how going pro would affect me as a person, It already affects my mood when I have great session or even more when I have a really bad one.
Perhaps many of the posters here are really young and I think some of you might have the wrong perception of what “working for the boss” means. Most bosses and most companies are really cool and want you to enjoy your job. Doing the old 9 to 5 for the boss is not all that bad, there is a lot of good things coming with it.
For me I will continue to struggle with this question and maybe in a few years’ time I will feel that the time is right and make the move to playing pro or perhaps that will never happen for me, but until then I would like to read more stories from the other side, from those of you who are actually living my dream
Cheers and thanks for all the stories.