Good to hear a happy ending on one of these threads for once

Grunching.

lol @ someone posting questions in Beginners forrum walking away from $100K/year to play poker. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make $100k/year at poker? (Obviously not).

(Obviously we get this thread every couple weeks, but it still mystifies why anyone thinking of going pro selects the Beginners forum as the appropriate place for themselves).

Would you trust a Beginner brain surgeon?

In a slightly unrelated note, whats the tax situation in Australia regarding poker? In the UK if you can pay up to 50% in tax so making 30k at poker is similar to 60k at work. I know this doesn't account for health insurance, pension and all the other work related benefits but I do ponder it sometimes...

Gambling winnings are tax exempt in Australia. I think there are grey areas if it is your only source of income but otherwise you don't pay a cent.

Rake is too high unless you beat 5/5+, and preferably at least 5/10 live.

I have six figures profit online and five figures live over 1m+ cashes online and a few hundred k live and even with a decent amount of live experience and my skillset I wouldn't even attempt to play cash games at Crown for a living. Sure the play is awful but you'll end up giving 75%+ of your paycheck to crown in rake, you're paying $25/hr just to play there and unless you're THE best reg in your game, you won't be making much more than that after the rake until 5/5+ at 30 hands/hr

If you had no other options maybe, but I doubt you'll want to be working for under $10/hr

2/4 and 5/5 at crown IMO are soft enough to justify playing full time as a profession, though as others have stated, you've not provided nearly enough poker credentials to convince us this is a good idea.

If you want to give playing professionally a crack, I'd strongly suggest taking one of these 100k jobs in Perth or Brisbane, saving the required bankroll (whilst playing the odd session in your spare time) and then moving back to Melbourne to do it.
Also - with no savings or job, how do you plan on securing a 20k loan? Do you have assets?

You have 4yrs work experience but no savings? Huh?

Why do you chose poker over a 100k job?

Best plan imo:
- take the 100k job
- play on the weekends & online

Man has already said he is going to be working with his brother and not taking out a loan - why are people still on his case? Being from Noo Zooland is a good reason I guess

Hey guys,
Few more clarifications to your questions.
No tax in Australia/NZ and grey area for full time income from Poker. denks has sumarrised beautifully.

The reason i put it here in beginners was i saw couple of similar posts in this section and i have gotten **** before by putting a post it in the wrong section. I couldn't find a section for my post so i decided to put it here as i thought i couldn't go wrong in beginners section. I guess its hard to impress everyone

Not sure how someone else would rank me but no i dont consider myself as a beginner.

The reason i choose poker over 100k jobs is that my job is boring. Engineering is boring. I love playing poker and love playing live as i think i am pretty ok at reading people. I love the psychology factor. Just the other day i called someone with Q high on the river. Although he won as he had the bottom pair, but i was still right in the sense that he thought he was bluffing me. I should have raised him, which is my mistake.

I was gonna take out a loan based on my current income. The bank doesnt need to know i wont have a job in couple of weeks. They just see the income coming into the account or current pay slip. I know its wrong. I guess the whole idea was wrong.

I will have a lot of free time once i start working with my brother from home. I will definitely get into 6max grinding. I have been reading a lot of posts and strategies and stickies on the matter. I guess i need to do my yards online. As i have said before i know that, just never had the time or patience for it. Winning 20/30 bux doesnt excite me. But you gotta start small to win big.

denks has played poker between decent paying jobs. denks would still strongly advise against leaving work to play poker full time. denks also likes talking in the third person

Can you claim 'rake' and especially 'time charge' on your tax?

Its work expenditure, like a taxi driver paying tolls.

If you are not taxed on your gambling winnings then I don't fancy your chances of claming deducations on your expenses.

thisssss

Otherwise every pub degen would be claiming beer and bus fare as expenses while pissing their wages away on the pokies.

Hang on...

0 - $18,200 Nil

$18,201 - $37,000 19c for each $1 over $18,200

So if you made $37000 in poker winnings you would be taxed around $3500 but claim much more through rake and time charge?

*sigh* Gambling winnings are not taxed. Not taxed means you pay nothing. Or $0 or 0% depending on which way you want to look at it. You don't claim any rebates or deducations because, and sorry if I have not mentioned this yet, gambling winnings are not taxed in Australia

Edit: Apologies for being a bit vague above, what this means is that you do not have to declare poker winnings for tax purposes because money won from gambling is not taxed in Australia

Sorry to trouble you

I thought if you classify your profession as 'Professional Gambler' than they are taxed?

The easiest way to get around that is to have an income, any income, from any other source and you don't have to declare. The only time I have heard of someone being taxed was that sports betting syndicate that made multi-multi-multi millions and the ATO decided they retrospectively wanted a piece of the pie even though they had let them pay nothing for several years.

Disclaimer: I am neither an accountant nor a lawyer so treat this opinion as worth the amount you paid for it

youre educated for gods sake! if u can easily get job with a 100k-140k annual salary stick to what ure good at , forget boat the whole poker thing, or maybe just play it as a hobby but definitely not a profession.

Apart from all of the flaws in your plan mentioned above, I don't think you can transfer a personal loan to a credit card. Unless you do a cash advance, which almost never qualifies for the low interest rate, so your budget gets blown out.

I recommend playing everyday for a week or two at Crown, then coming back and reviewing your plan.

Out of curiosity, how many engineering jobs have you tried? Did you pick the one you had based on potential enjoyment, or based on maximizing something else? As a long time engineer, some jobs are better than others. Personally, I've had several amazing jobs and wouldn't trade the profession for anything for much of it. Maybe your problem is working in big companies, and trying a startup or smaller outfit would help. Maybe engineering isn't for you, but doing something related would be fun -- FAE jobs let you meet lots of people, the work is different every day, and you get to help people out without getting bogged down in day-to-day grinding. It could be easier to find a job you enjoy than to start a new profession.
Like Denks, I've played for income when consulting work was slow. Making your hobby into your job tends to kill off the parts that excite you about it. Even in NL, small stakes games don't require expert reading skills and psychology -- you need good poker fundamentals, tilt control, and money management >>>> soul reads. After playing 40 hours a week for two months, your excitement of the expert calldown will be replaced by anger at not having rent after that idiot accidentally value bet bottom pair into you. Then you go home cursing that you didn't bluff him off his bluff with your too-weak bluff catcher.

It just seems like your trading a decent job that tons of people enjoy for a pretty meh one that many people who have it hate. I know this is a limit blog, but just translate it into someone playing 5/10NL for a living. Read it, especially for the pain. Here's my poker buddy Jesse and his shot at giving up the 9 to 5 life. Start from the beginning and read the painful parts carefully.

If anyone has a small/mid stakes NL version of this, I'd love to see the link. Jesse's blog is great b/c it is so raw and shows off the hard parts of the life well.

I'm looking to start playing poker for a 2nd income and was wondering if online is the way to go to make money. I live in the U.S. and I play on carbon. I have a part time job and I'm done by noon so I have the whole day to play online and then go to some live tourney somewhere. I was thinking about playing live tourneys like twice a week and grind online like 8-12 hours a day doing dons, sngs, mtts. I usually do a couple mtts during my session and the rest is dons or sngs. So how many hours a day or week do you play online poker? I know players that put in 12 hours every day and they have a job. They just really like the game.

Is it better to be a dentist or a lawyer?

How can people keep posting about playing for a living with no history of results? It may be time for rage-tilt induced ranting in the near future. There are actual successful pros who post around here, and none of them ever said, "I have no idea my WR because I don't play that much, however, I'm thinking of taking a shot".

I second that...in fact I will go further. It should be a yellow card for anybody posting in BQ statements like...

I win blah blah
I crush blah blah

...who don't follow up with some sort of stats/graph.

F54.... Low volume player...not crushing anything....126964/ +0.66bb/100 and proud of it!

Since I hope to win one day...can someone post the link that tells me how to upload a graph, thanks

Well guess that's why they are low post beginners, but it is a bit tiresome I agree. Maybe just the nature of BQ forum.