I read this thread today whilst sitting in my uniform, looking at the clock and thinking "Ah, nearly time to go to work. Oh **** hang I've got to leave early because I want to grab some lunch."
On the way to work I got stuck behind some lorry which had backed a queue of cars up and no way past. Eventually via the supermarket, I made it work with like five minutes to spare, walked into the canteen only to see the usual people on lunch, one playing a game on their phone, the other staring out the window at nothing in particular, except maybe of a life leaking away.
I knocked back a drink declared as coffee on the machine, but actually it's closer to something that leaks from a drain and made my way to the anti happiness chamber (office).
The phones don't stop ringing, and no one wants to really answer them because it's never a nice or easy call to deal with. At which point the Manager walks in and proceeds to moan at the Supervisor, in front of everyone else because someone has been in his office, and they shouldn't have been. How could this happen (maybe locking the door would be some sort of deterant - not that you could ever suggest any negligence on his part for not turning the key, surely not?).
A **** afternoon blurs into a ****tier night. Lunch break is missed as you have to cover your work and the guy who's gone sick today. And before you know it your driving home, thinking about the beer you're going to drink. Not as a reward no, nor a simple luxury, but more as a necessity, to help you unwind, and to dream of the day in 8 days time when you're off for one of your 'authorised' weeks. Five in total out of 52 is your gift. These can be taken when you like, unless it conflicts with their plans, then they will decide when you can take one. Into bed, and off to sleep. Only 2 more days and you can have two days off.

*This is why I would chose to play Poker for a living*

Uses whilst and gets 5 weeks vacation and thinks that 5 weeks off out of 52 is a bad deal.

Suspected Brit ITT.

In a nutshell- To save my marriage. My wife hated me playing because I was heavily addicted to it. The money wasn't really a factor. It was nice making some extra cash but I'm not a young college kid living in the US where $20k makes a difference.

For someone making $450/hr I can see why its so attractive though you would have to be somewhere near the top 1% of the top 1% with that sort of winrate

I mean you're really out of touch with what most professional poker players are(assuming you actually make 450/hr)......im curious what stakes/games do you play? i mean this must be the highest stakes HU games - im not sure if there's players who are capable of making more per hour these days.

Fml. I dream of the day when I'll be able to say that 20 large doesn't make a difference for me.

I have to admit that working a full week, 40-50 hours, and playing for another 5-6 every day doesn't leave much room for anything else.

live poker = true poker

online poker = will always be dominated by scammers / data miners / bots / all kinds of system abusers.

Fail

Wow. How old are you? You don't have the slightest clue.

Who is the largest employer in America? Do they offer those "excellent benefits?"

*Whilst* your assumption on my origins is indeed correct my good man, when the other 47 weeks suck the life from your very soul, it IS, shall, and always will be, a bad deal.

Never judge another man until you've walked a mile in his shoes.....

The average American blue collar worker will never see 5 weeks vacation in their entire life. You're complaining about 5 weeks off a year.

Ariel Schneller and Vanessa Selbst are the only 2 poker pros I could think of that had legit career options. Everyone else has serious life leaks and isn't turning down McKinsey or medical school.

why the **** would you pay $400 a month for health insurance if you are a young healthy man? quit spending your money on frivolous things!

This is the reality of work right here, especially in call centres and admin roles. I found myself laughing my ass off at this post, not because i enjoy the suffering of others but because i have in the past found myself in these exact conditions.
To Gamblinsasin, why don't you chose to play poker for a living or head down a different path professionally? Life leaking away, spot on.

Bukowski wrote this, i think it ties in pretty well with the theme of this thread.


Hello John:

Thanks for the good letter. I don't think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don't get it right. They call it "9 to 5." It's never 9 to 5, there's no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don't take lunch. Then there's OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there's another sucker to take your place.

You know my old saying, "Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors."

And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don't want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.

As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: "Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don't you realize that?"

They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds.

Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:

"I put in 35 years..."

"It ain't right..."

"I don't know what to do..."

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn't they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?

I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the **** out of my system. And now that I'm here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I've found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.

I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: "I'll never be free!"

One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.

So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I'm gone) how I've come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.

To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

yr boy,

Hank

Love Buk, fantastic selection.

I play HU NLHE. In 2007-2009 you def didn't have to play the highest stakes to achieve that, I was doing mostly 3/6 and 5/10, with some 10/20 in there. I'm not that out of touch though, I'm aware that there's a lot of people that are making far less and struggling to get by, with a very stressful life, but that's more of an argument for taking a different route than poker. I've always believed that for the poker lifestyle to be worth it, to forgo a career plan with more long term security, health benefits, retirement matching, etc, that the bar is a lot higher than most people realize for what it takes to make poker the superior option.

Once you start making less or delving into live poker, the comparison in compensation and benefits between poker and a real job becomes much closer. I think with the deterioration of the games online, a lot of the live players (whose games are getting harder) and online guys are now dealing with that reality that there's more to account for when deciding if playing poker for a living is worth it.

Health, retirement matching, etc....these things just simply don't exist anymore and yet they keep getting mentioned in these comparisons.

They do exist. But maybe not in the US, I don't know.

But if I'd make $15/hour before taxes, with no health insurance or other benefits, I'd prolly leave that country and work somewhere else.

Unless you can beat 10/20 NL live or higher your better off getting a job. Thats just how it is. The 2/5 and 5/10 pros have to grind out long hours while saving almost no money for the future. Its just not a good deal below 10/20.

I don't agree with this. I've struggled to make a living playing poker, and I'm not discouraged at all. I couldn't have even taken the shot if my situation was different. My children are up and out. My wife has a good job and great benefits: retirement plan, corporate discounts, medical/dental/optical/perscription/life insurance, the whole nine yards.

I have played recreationally for years, and when I decided to go "all in" on poker, I started with a small bankroll, and it's been a tough grind. But I know that in the end I'll be much better off than a lot of players.

My wife and I are very agressively paying off all of our family debt, which doesn't leave a lot of free cash. We only have one car becuase we refuse to make car payments. We'll pay cash for another used car at some point.

I manage my poker bankroll the same way. I will play what I can afford, and for now, it's all going to my bankroll. Nothing comes out until I'm rolled to make a decent income.

When I win, it's all mine. I will never stake, be staked, or accept any backing deals, in fact, I turned down an unsolicited backing offer. So money is tight, and it's hard, but I'm not discouraged at all. My wife and I are doing things the right way. When I have a bad week or month I sulk for an hour or two, then I'm over it.

Going at is this way, I will probably never make the big time and win millions of dollars on TV. But when I win 5K in an online tournament, it will be all mine. I'm not impressed at all when someone on TV hits a big score and I know that more than half is probably going to backers. And I know all the stories about Gavin Smith and other poker "millionaires" who go broke. I will never be one of those guys.

I understand variance, I'm looking at the long term, and I understand that the people that make it in most professions, including poker, and the ones that work the hardest. I do a lot of studying. I even carry flash cards around so that when I have a free ten minutes I can memorize different chart or tables, so that I'll know the math in every sitauation.

I'm sure that a lot of people reading this won't think that my life is any fun at all. But I see the endgame. In high school I was a clarinet player in my number four high school band. It wasn't a real concert band at all, we were basically the pep band for the basketball games. I started practicing six hours a day, and eventually made it into the number one band, then into an army band as the 7th chair. When I retired I was the principal clarient in that band.

I know that success isn't easy. Playing and studying 40 or more hours a week can be boring--but so was practicing scales on my clarinet, and that worked out pretty well.

I don't care if it's boring, or if I have a downswing, or what anyone else thinks about my chosen profession. I enjoy poker, it's a fascinating intellectual challenge, and I have control of my life and my choices.

In NVG, I can never be sure if this is serious. Anyway, I'm not young.

Where do you work? All of my siblings and their spouses have amazing benefit packages, but they don't work at Sears.

Cliff,

Being that your wife has awesome benefits and a good job and you don't spend any of your winnings on living expenses, how do you consider yourself playing for a living?

The problem is it takes years to make even 50/hr working for someone.....Most salaried workers boast about 100k+ incomes, yet the amount of hours they work is atleast 50 a week......a big winner in a 5/10 game is going to have a tough time matching that kind of income unless your headed to law school/med school or become highly skilled in an industry....

Ok, if the choice for you is between making $8 an hour at McDonalds and poker, sure. But the avg person making $20 an hour has some meaningful benefits in the US that are generally worth at least $5/hr more, probably closer to $10/hr if they have family health insurance. That was the comparison I was discussing.

Basically anyone good enough to make $20 an hour+ at poker is probably smart enough/analytical enough to make that much in the real world.

If your only employment option is McDonald's at $8 an hour, you probably aren't a good poker player either.