Hey OP, when you asked for advice, you should have specified that you don't want any feedback that fails to conform to your pre-conceived notions of what a killer you're going to be one day.

That way posters (such as dgiharris) who have been there, done that and got the T-shirt, wouldn't waste their time typing out important information that you choose to ignore.

what should our response be when every week some noobs comes on here and says,

When someone posts something like that, they basically display their ignorance. We get that post between 2 and 5 times per week in this forum.

Occasionally though, once in a blue moon we get a post of this variety.

Now, on the super rare occasion we get the above kind of post (we probably get said post just a few times per year), you will notice a much different kind of response from the 2+2 community. Said poster actually gave us concrete facts and data we can analyze and correlate with our experiences. We have a much better sense of his skill level and ability.

But if you look at your post, what facts did you give us initially? No info on your winrate, no graphs, just the typical, "Hey guys, I'm awesome, how much money should I plan on winning???"

So yeah, don't be surprised when our reaction is going to be the typical doom and gloom.

I'm sure you think you can make tons of money via online poker, and I hope that you do. But until you give us some more concrete facts and data, why should we think you will be successful? Being smart and having a good work ethic is just not enough to successfully grind online. Sure, it helps. But it doesn't mean you will automatically be successful. Generate some data, post some graphs, and you will get a much better response from us.

GL

*** The 'Should I Be A Pro Poker Player Thread' ***

Dgiharris 10k Pooh-bah post: On Turning Pro


Cliff notes: Poker and unrealistic expectations go together like kittens and motivational posters.

I didn't set out to play for a living. I quit my job once I couldn't afford to keep working. Most I know did it the same way.

What stakes are you playing, what is your win rate and standard deviation, and over how many hands?

The [negative] psychological effects of playing poker for a living can & do crush even the strongest personalities. Granted, its a neat dream and maybe even a certain type of "fun" for awhile. But make no mistake, living the daily/weekly/monthly emotional roller-coaster ride of being a pro poker player takes a toll.

Kindly keep in mind that a only small percentage of people can actually beat the game. However in many ways just being able to beat the game is the easy part.
The lifestyle of working all the time -many times when friends and family are doing normal things, having some run-good and beating the lowest stakes for awhile is cool....however its not enough $ to live on and the quality of life is terrible. The temptations and vices common to being a player include, but not limited to; fancy living, spending beyond your means, drugs, alcohol, gamboling, girls, and the list goes on......

A pattern of associated traits that I've noticed with soon to be "poker pro's" include unrealistic thoughts of grandeur, poor and/or no business skills, and lack of true motivation and old-fashion work ethic.

My intention is not to be a dream crusher, but to maybe open your thought process to everything it takes to be a full time card player. And lastly two important questions, you need to ask yourself.

1) Why do you wanna be a poker pro?

2) What are my expectations of being a pro?

Read the peoples posts.

If you just played micros a little , 1 year, if you want to do this, you must very fast get up to n50\100 and study. If you get stuck grinding micros for actual living its pretty sick, i know that from some experience.

You need cash for like 1 year to live....

If you are on school you need to study for school too...

It that goes wrong what will happen is that u will forget school and get stuck on a room playing and playing and playing and in bad times or if you don't become good , you will pass throw sick variance and will, at the end of all this, show 0 profit.

You will not enjoy nice times in school, go out, meet girls, parties, that good stuff.

It´s possible to make it i guess, but u need a lot of things: time, study, intelligence, comprehension of the nature of the game, patience, technical ability, ... a lot of stuff, and, in the short run ( that is big) you can go broke anytime... quit school, and destroy your life.

Think that.

Play it as a hobby til you make enough to think working a job seems illogical.

I'm currently not at my computer so I can't reply to everyone atm but I have read all your posts and some of you are offering some good thoughts like 00001. And I have taken most these things into consideration, but some of you are thinking too deeply on this. I will be going to school 4 days a week and yes I will need to be studying and whatnot but I think I could still get in some good volume regardless of that and if I happen to go bust for some reason its not the end of the world, I could just go back to my part time job (and with 6 months of expenses saved it'll take a pretty big downsing for that to happen). Also I would maybe even continue working like once every 2 weeks just for some solid income and play poker as my main income. I don't find any of my goals unrealistic, I only need not even 15k a year to live off (I have other sources of income). Also I want to point out I have a friend who started playing at the beginning of 2011 and makes well over what my expectations are. I don't wanna get ahead of myself now but I am mentioning this because some of you are acting as if I said I want to be some nosebleed poker pro.

As for the person who said I shouldn't ask this if I can't handle the responses I want to point out I never asked if you guys think I can go pro. I was asking for tips from actual pros on how they made it. Seeing as a lot of you aren't pros you shouldn't be offering your advice anyways.

Also for dgi I never said I was going to pay through my school through online poker. I'm not that ******ed to risk such a thing.

For those of you who gave good advice thank you I will use this to reevaluate a couple of things, but some of you should be more focused on answering the persons question who opened the thread rather than turning it into some dick measuring contest.

This serves more than just a purely financial purpose. If someone is unable to cope with working a job plus playing on the side plus studying poker on the side then they are going to really struggle with the pressure of playing as a main source of income. If you can handle work + poker it's a much stronger sign you at least have the determination and work ethic required. Everyone believes they have what it takes to make decent $ in poker, few have the work ethic required to achieve this goal.

another thing I wanna add is I was working 7 days a week 8-10 hours a day (sometimes more) for 7 months, I'm not saying this to be like "look how cool I am" but I would take the stress of playing professionally over that any day.

You get defensive pretty easily and then react offensively. You haven't even been to uni yet, so how do you know how much studying you'll need to do? I know when I was getting my degree it was far more work than I thought it would be (and that was far, far less work than beating poker to support a family, meh).

If you want my tips, then read my posts in the I wanna be a pro thread that cmar linked. I'm not going to write it all out again.

yeah thanks I'm going to check all these links you guys gave me tomorrow. and lol I'm not getting offended but some of the people who posted here are acting as if I asked something absurd and are giving me advice I have heard 1000+ times on these forums after all it is my thread, I am entitled to my opinion. And you're right I don't know how much studying I will be doing but I'm just going off assumption that I will have enough time seeing as many of my friends who go to uni have time for part time jobs and partying so I'm sure I can squeeze in enough poker to achieve my expectations.

It's very hard to take you seriously when you post something like this.

He's 18-yrs old.

And no one is smarter than a 18-yr old male.

If I asked a question and got a 1000+ responses that all said the same thing... methinks I might need to heed the advice I've received 1000 times over.

Unless of course i was 18 yrs old, then in that case obviously I would know best and could just disregard those 1000 responses and laugh them off.

OP expects to print 15k a year when he's just been casually playing 25nl.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha h........

OP, you seem to be confused about a few things.

Your goal is going to be surprisingly difficult and if you succeed, you will do so despite being smashed in the face by reality several times. No, everyone understand you are not talking about crushing the nosebleeds. Yes, it's still going to be harder than you think. Everyone who told you that is spot on and it's not because they didn't understand your post.

You don't own this thread and you don't get to tell people who can and can't post in it. That's down to the mods, not you. You get the advice you are offered, not what you want to hear and you hear it from whoever feels like posting in this public forum.

Your posts reek of entitlement issues and tiltiness, which is frankly, a bad sign. Even if you had the skills that you seem to think you are just going to acquire - with no evidence to back that up BTW - you would find it tough to do what you want to do. With the mentality that you currently display, it's going to be....tougher.

You may wonder why you're hearing all this, is it because everyone ITT is a heartless dick who is secretly scared of the young up-and-coming shark you represent? Or is it because everyone ITT has heard it all before and guess what, there's no reason to think you're the exception?

OP it´s possible. But like i said you have the university and you must study for that too and university for me its +EV. And some courses require studding hard ( like my per example ) was impossible do anything else than study and parties. If you finish course with the minimum grades it´s worthless.

Imagine u split poker\uni and u end uni with BAD Grades and u get stuck in poker, and still a virgin... it was pretty bad outcome.

You get no good at anything. And it could happen u go broke in poker 100 times, and get off school because you reproved all years because partys and poker - that was sicker, but it happens to a lot of good souls.

And you must if you want to become a normal human being, have balance in life and go out,have friends, go to a party, have a girfriend, etc.

And, a normal job 9-5, even a bad pay one, its ofc less stress-full than playing poker for living. Just try that. An hour on a job, most of jobs even in constrution it´s never an hour, u talk, smoke a cigarr, go to bathoom , go to facebook etc, an hour on poker its an hour full of 100% attention.

Try it. Start now if your doing nothing, and have work ethic, because if you are a poker player , even a winning one, you could just not play cos u go out, facebook, skype foruns, and cashout some upswings and when the downer hit, u just deposit and go broke, and that circle repets itself.

It requires a lot, not just the technical play, the mental, etc Lots of stuff. I belive the time some grinders put in poker studing they could easly take almost any course at university and have a secure future.

You are on the age of take the shot, so take it.

BTW you said because most of us are not really pros cant coment, dont think that its true. I know some pros real life all sorts of limits, know what is like, and read the foruns... the PGC etc.

It´s like you saying that because i never smoked heroin i really dont know if it´s good or bad...

But i know that is bad , have a close friend addicted to that ****, and.. i never try it.

It´s called learn by other mistakes, and it´s very useful in poker. If you really want poker, when you post a hand or something, get all information and forget your ego.

I don't know why people feel the need to educate when OP doesn't want advice. The poker economy needs fish, remember.

OP, don't listen to all these guys, poker is easy money. Make sure to tell all your friends and family about it too, get them involved.

lol ^

News just in: OP is an ungrateful little punk

What a surprise

To be fair to OP you can probably make 15k/year playing 50NL, and if OP actually beats 25NL (which I doubt a little), it's not a giant step up.

Grinding out $15k a year at 50nl sounds like one of the most depressing things ever though.

Let's see, a 4bb/100 winrate, needing 300 buyins profit in a year...

2500 hands per buyin.

2500*300 = 750,000 hands of 50nl to reach this goal.

If you play zoom that's not too bad but 4bb/100 on zoom would be absolutely killing it. 4bb/100 on reg tables would be easier but 750k hands at reg speed would be a ****ing long ass grind.

Yeah but let's be honest about it if we're dedicating time to poker then we really shouldn't be grinding 50nl all our life.

You're also not factoring in the rakeback that we would receive which would be significant. 100k VPP at supernova already is an extra 3.5*$1600 in FPP alone and we also get some other bonuses along the way.

I dunno what 750k hands at 50nl is but I assume it's easily SN.

well I would say working 7 days a week day in and out can get pretty stressful which is why I mentioned this. I know the stress is different in poker but since I've been taking it seriously I didn't let tilt effect my mindset too much and I know that once more $ + life bucks are involved its more stressful but I feel confident that I could handle it knowing I have 6 months of expenses saved up

I wrote earlier that I actually just turned 20, just letting you know and don't be like omg 20 big differnce lol