No. There are so many we should discourage.
Good idea. When you get your next job can I have relish with mine please?

lol 100$ is a better hourly wage than 95% of people working in first world countries get and that is a conservative estimate. It isn't rich by any means but its nothing to turn your nose up at

Er..................was that not my point?

Well not quite because most working people would be fu&ing THRILLED to earn half of that/hour.

But I think thats already been covered itt

Partial grunch:

$100/h min is not unreasonable imo.

There are so many other considerations; you don't have a guaranteed steady flow of income, no company pension/other benefits, you need to keep a lot of your money as readily available cash, it's likely to be harder to get a loan/mortgage if you should need one, not all of your working hours will be spent actually playing, unlikely to work as many hours as an office job, could well retire from poker/cut back hours well earlier that avg retirement age, ...

I would want a significantly higher hourly rate in order to play poker over another job because of the factors that make it a less stable job/quite an antisocial job. Ideally I would like to be able to play relatively few hours and basically not have to worry about money after a few years, I guess that's kinda hard to do though lol.

There was me thinking I said it was a decent wage. Oh well

Agreed obv. I think the real debate lies in the growth rate question
(if someone has a reasonable belief that they can get to those higher levels.)

The best situation to "go pro" would have to include some moving higher consideration, i.e. in the sense that I might increase my hourly winrate. E.G. A $100/hr job is a steady salary but it MIGHT not often get a pay bump as opposed to a player who makes $100/hr and can set aside enough to take shots at a higher level. Or maybe he works on his game and makes an extra 1bb/100 hands.

The tipping point for me was that my job will realistically never make more than $70k a year plus benefits in the real world, while poker I can make that next year.

This is just a belief so level me if you will, but if someone had a decent aptitude for the game, worked on it for 10 years he/she would be a very very profitable player.

College kids who think that after 4 years they will get a 50K a year job handed to them and riches are just around the corner are gonna get a swift kick in the nuts. Same thing with aspiring poker players who think money will just fall on their lap, you are not special nor are you intelligent, you will have to bust your balls no matter which way you decide to go. This is life, prepare for disappointment and dashed dreams in the poker world and in the corporate.

as in online, with the amount of game selection etc that is required to beat it for a good win rate. im not talking about how long the game has been around in the sense of rules being written etc. if fish stop playing in abundant numbers, theres suddenly no where near as much money to be made from playing any more.

I went pro because

- I got total freedom and 100% control of my work
- I started at a decent 'wage' of around $25/hr, but more importantly, I had gigantic potential to improve on that. What real job is going to give you a 5% raise every month over the course of several years, with virtually no ceiling?
- What real job pays you exactly proportionally to the amount of work and effort you put in?
- It's a constant challenge, and it's directly improved many other areas of my life. It's motivated me to put 100% effort into everything else I do, and I've enjoyed success in lots of other activities.

I think it's pretty crazy for people to think it's easy to land a job that pays anywhere close to $100/hour, especially entry-level. That's why I feel a need, more and more, to squeeze poker for every penny now, while it's good, now that I've put in all the work to get to my level. When and if this business loses its profitability, I'm really going to have to be creative in finding a new 'job'. I hope by that point, I will have saved up enough money to move into some kind of investing. I think it's very important to develop other skills, while playing poker for income, in order to be able to survive without it.

Lol, I was sitting in economics class today mulling over this exact line of thinking!

I'll agree w/ the riches not being around the corner sentiment, but $50k/yr. out of college isn't unrealistic. I already gave teaching ($40k/yr. plus a lot of overtime for 180 work days) as an example of something in that ballpark; schools are hiring teachers every year. In talking to a friend who's a poker dealer, he's been able to clear about $30k/yr working 16 hrs./wk. for the past three years of school- I'll bet that 40 hour weeks would get him up to $50k. There are a number of other jobs that pay in the 40-60k range that are available to above-average students. 40 hrs./wk for 50 wks. is 2k hours. It only takes $25/hr. to get to $50k.

There's a major flaw in the "earns money from outside the country" line of thinking- a lot of that money originated in the US. In live poker, all of it comes from the US- if it weren't for the winning player, someone else would win and spend the money in the same way.

I feel compelled to defend attorneys and real estate agents in that they are more than transaction costs (as you can opt out in a lot of cases); real estate agents help match buyers to sellers, promoting efficiency. Attorneys are efficient too in that a person who wants access to the courts doesn't have to go learn the law of his own particular situation. Also, when an attorney or a real estate agent gets paid, he spends the money in the same stores as the winning poker players.

On a bare level, the most you could say that a grinder provides is entertainment. I guess grinders are kind of the "house" in that gamblers can win money but probably won't; however the games would exist without the grinders, and would probably be more fun.

No they wouldn't, most grinders start games.

I guess what I'm saying is if there's a binary label for everyone (donkey or pro), if all of the pros left the donkeys could still play and probably have an even better time. It's hard to see what a professional brings to the table (pardon the pun). He makes the game less fun for others and leaves with their money.

That was very enlightening. I will keep that in mind.

Yes, we know that you're paid to do that =P

Uh, no. You may not be special or intelligent, but I am, as are quite a few poker players that I am friends with or know of and respect highly.

I don't get this YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL, or ZOMG TOOL OF SOCIETY bs. Special? Yes, we are. I mean, most of us are like .5%, and at the very least top 2% of the entire world's population in terms of IQ. How are we not special or intelligent?

People who think they are special or intelligent not necessarily think otherwise.

Well, they make them believe that they, too, can make a consistent profit, but I see your point, of course. There will always be idiots.

As such, I don't believe that poker will dry up. People exploit each other in all walks of life, and in poker we exploit people who give up their money by playing subpar poker. I don't see how this will change.

I don't understand, Raze, is this really a concern? Surely the game below 5/10 aren't really drying up much, and surely you can still make a very goodly amount playing MSNL?

-You should NOT turn pro if you're a total coward (90% of the posters in the thread... sorry)

-You should NOT turn pro if you don't have a clue about economics (umm... the less said the better)

-You should NOT turn pro if you're so privileged that you think playing a game you love and earning more than 99.8% of the U.S population (and 99.99% of the world population) would be a step DOWN in the quality of your life, or you think such a prospect is nothing to be excited about.

-You should NOT turn pro if you think the saying "There's a sucker born every minute" is compatible with the notion that poker can become unprofitable AT ANY TIME in our lifetime!

LOL it's not a flaw in my argument as I'm a UK player!!!

And I am an attorney (and have been for 20 years), and knowing as many as I do I'm still inclined to think that poker players are about as socially useful! There aren't many lawyers working with the primary aiming of helping people any more (at least outside criminal law) - these days it's all about maximising revenue from the client base.
Estate Agents matching buyers to sellers efficiently? I think we'll find that's what the internet (ebay/craigslist etc) is for. Estate Agents are almost purely unecessary transaction cost nowadays.

I think there are actually some things quite admirable about a poker pro's job in many ways. There is an argument that he exploits others but then so are most people who employ people (in an economic sense in making a profit from the labor of others).
He isn't making money from the sweat of others and he is risking his personal capital every bit as much (in fact far more) than most bosses.
The job is far harder than many and requires concentration and discipline far in excess of most office jobs, combined with an entrepeneurial spirit and willingness to take risks that would make most accountants and lawyers blanch.

Now I'm aware that this is overly romanticising the lives both of the sleazy card shark live pro and spotty internet wiz kid in Malmo a bit, but it's far from clear than a poker pro's life is automatically less worthwhile than many professions. Most of the moral worth of a person depends on what they do outside work anyway.

Obv. compared to directly socially useful vocations like teachers and nurses it is a 'fail', but recently many of the jobs in which bright kids get overpaid for shuffling paper have turned out to be not as good for society as their owners claimed or haven't you noticed ?

As for not going pro unless you understand ecomonic theory, LOLcat...the last 30 years of economic theory has just been shown to be a version of the emperor's new clothes. I bet Doyle has a better grasp of real world economics than a lot of 'invisible hand' economics professors...

I don't have an issue with your first two points (and will fully concede that I, personally, am a poker coward and have no intention of turning pro). I do have an issue with the second two statements.

-I'm not sure what number we're using (100 or 200k), but 15% and 2.5% of US households made at least that amount in 2006. (households could include more than one earner, so if you were basing it on 200k that 99.8 could be in the ballpark) 100k jobs aren't that rare, especially for people w/ the intelligence to make a 100k living at poker.

-Of course there is a sucker born every minute (maybe even two or three). However, I don't think that you will argue the point that internet poker and poker in general saw a boom in the last decade, w/ rounders and espn and moneymaker casting a huge fishing net out there. I also don't think that you can argue that the leading faces in poker are less charismatic than those in other sports. Phil Helmuth is socially ******ed, Dwan seems cool enough but he's not what you'd call charismatic, my wife thinks David Williams is hot but he hasn't been on TV very much recently, and Phil Ivey is boring when he's not reacting to Tilly, and so on.

Also, the internet is becoming a scary place, between (false) stories of rigged sites and actual advantages (huds, sharkscope, etc.) that serious players have. I just don't think that the poker tables will continue to be the place that suckers choose to leave their money unless something new can be injected into the game (a great movie, a defense of the WSOP main event title, sudden interest in Phil Helmuth by Anna Kournakova). If all of the suckers leave, then all that's left is you grinders paying a rake to full tilt while you play perfectly and call each other donkeys.

First of all, I would guess that most of the money at pokerstars finds its way back to roughly its originating country. There is probably a losing US player for every losing UK player.

Secondly, although attorney might not be the noblest profession, I would like to think that attorneys, at the very least, produce something in exchange for the money that is paid to them. (I just earned my JD three days ago so I'm probably a bit naive) A poker pro just takes money from other people. From society's point of view, an attorney-client transaction has a transfer of money (which is a wash) and the creation of a will, or a contract, or something (which is a plus). A poker pro's day at work is just a transfer of money; it's an inarguable waste of human capital.

Yes but we are discussing winning players here. If I am a winning UK poker pro, I am taking money out of the US and European economies and importing that into the UK. From the perspective of the UK I am helping its balance of payments and that is of positive benefit. Poker overall may not be of much benefit to the UK economy but my 'job' certainly is.

As for lawyers usefulness well we'll see how you think after 20 years of pratice. Most lawyers are commecial ones. A commercial lawyer is mainly involved in shuffling paper around and documenting things. He is a bureaurocrat. You are A wishing to transact with B (or sue B). You have to spend money on a lawyer to do it because the rules are so complex and/or the risk of proceeding undocumented is too high. That is a transaction cost. The paper generated has no inherent value as such. It just helps you navigate rules or risks that are ancillary to doing business.
The lawyer may offer ancillary business advice that does incidentally improve the efficiency of a business but that is a not their focus. Modern law firms are almost without exception set up not to minimise the transaction cost but to attempt to maximise it.

I think the original point was made tongue-in-cheek so I hesitate to continue to respond to it, but the idea that a poker player in country x is doing something good by winning only makes sense from country x's point of view, and then only on an extremely minimal level. From the point of view of country y, the winning player is actually a drain. Globally, it's a wash.

Also, I'm not sure what exactly most lawyers do, but even assuming that they are commercial lawyers, rules are probably complicated for some reason other than keeping lawyers employed. If you want to enter into a complicated contract, you can either sit down and spend tens of hours learning something that you're probably never going to use again or pay an attorney to work on your behalf. It is a cost of proceeding with the transaction, but the fact that many people and corporations choose to use attorneys rather than wade through the process themselves means that the attorney is providing something.

Finally, even if I were to concede that attorneys add very little to society (and are even despised by a large chunk of the population), I have an experiment for you: Meet two different girls and tell one that you're an attorney and the other that you're a poker player. See how that goes.

Didn't you hear that terrorists launder money through online poker? It only takes one step further before an army of terrorists start actually playing poker and take all of the money of Americans!

Meh, you make an obvious point but with a silly example.

I mean, I am going to guess the actual answer to this radically depends on the actual girl...? Obviously your point is that poker players aren't as well respected socially, which is true, but whether a girl would find that exotic or exciting is a totally different business. In fact if you contrast it with an accountant, we might actually see it differently especially if said poker player is good enough to frame poker as something more like a sport along the ESPN's [bs] line about tournament poker and so on. I'm sure any person with charisma can turn poker into something exciting, the staring into your soul business and all.

I do not speak out of experience of course, I'm newish to poker, and do not plan on ever mentioning it to random girls.

As for online poker, meh, suckers are suckers. Do you not think that poker players playing LIVE also have means of realizing the dangers there, of losing money, hustled, even robbed after a big winning session possibly? The "dangers" of online poker is like the "dangers" of talking to people online, of making transactions with your credit card on online stores, and so on... it was something people worried about and do to an extent cause a concern...

... it did not and does not stop everyone from flocking to it. Online poker is so much convenient. Does it replace live poker? No, but it's strong enough that it will, imho, continue to flourish.

Lol at $500/hr. I have a degree, and I'm currently making $17/hr in a highly qualified job. If I could get my hourly to $40-$50 playing poker, I'd consider it.

Funny that the average wage in Britain is < £20k/annum mate, and people seem to survive. £25k is easily enough to live on, just not to live on massively well.

I'm starting to earn a small amount of money playing poker in my spare time, and one day may look at doing nothing but this, but I'd need a year's savings, plus I'd need to earn consistently about £30/h to make me feel comfortable. One day though when I've proved I can do it, not just taking a shot when I have zero evidence I can make money at it like the OP.