?

yes. they could do quite well.

Maybe. It would be an unusual person for whom it would be an optimal choice though.

Sure. Some kind of living certainly. Grinders are everywhere. This subject has been beat to death on these forums so check out the various threads for lots of good insight.

This this this. If you're capable of grinding a barely above minimum wage living from poker, you can almost certainly make a more comfortable amount of money working somewhere with the added bonus of knowing you'll get paid no matter what happens.

"worked hard enough" opens the can o' worms imo.

To be a professional poker player, will you work as hard as a professional accountant, a professional nurse, a professional farmer....banker, lawyer, doctor? Or are of a mindset that you are done with "schooling" and just want to play cards for a living. Being a professional anything....... beats being a professional poker player by a HUGE margin in my books.

Adding..... Fresh out of school you decide to be a poker pro, read a few books, play some hands online then go to the local casino and sit down saying "I'm a poker pro". Top moderator on this page is famous for asking the same of would-be surgeons. Yeah, read a few books, practice on a neighborhood cat....then show up an an ER and say "I'm a surgeon". Can you make it with less work that it takes to become a surgeon? Sure...but how successful will you be? Wanna be a commercial pilot?

One more thing...."average intelligence" tells me that poker (at the toppest levels) is unattainable in today's environment. Remember George Carlin's line: There goes an average idiot doing [something]. Then stop and think.....if he's average, than half the world is more idiotic that that schmuck"

Sure. The dream is if you work hard enough at anything you will be successful. Einstein failed at many many things before his famous discoveries.

Just think of all the graduates from every college, in every field, there will always be the top scholar and the person who just made it with a 'C' average or passing grade, but hey, they both graduated, right?

That's not really how it works in poker because in other fields workers can co-exist adding value to the company in a small or big way. In poker the people that are on the bottom don't just get a lower wage, they lose their money. That means that in poker you either become really good or you won't profit.

So would it be possible to get a living wage from poker by playing average? If you put in a lot of study, maybe you could. Is it likely to fail? Yes. Are there things that aren't 9-5 boring that you could do besides poker? Absolutely.

If you enjoy poker as a hobby that's great. Having to put in that many hours might ruin that.

It is less about intelligence than other attributes. Many successful poker players in a Myers-Briggs test as INTJ. INTP are also successful, but they are a smaller % of the population. Their strengths match up with what you need in poker. That isn't to say that some who isn't one of those personality can't succeed. However, they have to work much harder at it. Things are immediately understood by INT people can take years for others to finally accept.

The second factor is coming to a conclusion and acting rapidly. People who need to take their time to figure out things just don't make it in poker. Their money runs out before they can pick it up. Even in a game, they feel pressured to move too quickly and don't think things through.

Finally, it comes down to will power. If you are person who's tendency is to take a break from things because they would like to do something else or can't adhere to a schedule if you don't feel like it, you won't make it in poker no matter how intelligent you are.

^^^

That, plus Einstein is a pretty awful subject case when we're discussing people of 'average intelligence'.

I also think 'average intelligence' plus 'hard work' is likely not enough to make a living at poker, depending on how you define 'living', I mean if you sleep in your parents' basement and can eat out of their fridge, sure.

Actually pulling down enough money to support rent + bills, you also need patience, discipline and the ability to deal with tilt. Developing an A-game which can smash live 1/2 and beat 2/5 is one thing, actually playing that A-game day-in, day-out is quite another. You need anger-management skills, belief in yourself, a buoyant attitude, enough gambool to want to gambool for a living but not enough to get hooked on pit games...the list goes on.

Ask any pro on this site, I mean any person who went pro or still is pro and supported themselves playing poker for a period of 2 years or more and I'm sure most if not all them will tell you that playing for a living sucked the joy of the game from them. There is a huge difference between getting up on the weekend and playing an 8 hour session which is a total break from your own daily grind and then actually having to do that for 40 hours a week, never mind if you are currently getting your head kicked in by variance.

Not to mention, if you want to make a career out of it, you need to be doing a lot better than OK. Routinely making $20 an hour when you are one guy paying cheap rent is one thing. That's not going to cut it if you have a wife and kids.

I agree with many of your points, but not this one. If you can't adhere to a schedule if you don't feel like it, almost any other kind of job will be worse for you than poker, because you will immediately get fired. In poker if you don't adhere to your schedule, you just end up working fewer hours.

It's much easier to adhere to a schedule which is forced upon you than one which you design yourself because a big part of not following one's own schedule is convincing yourself that you'll do it later.

Edit: also, @ OP, no if online, yes if live IMO.

Maybe for you it is...I was always late or calling in sick for my otherwise cushy government job. I can't stick to a schedule for anything, but part time poker pro, playing whenever I feel like it, works fine.