Finishing up my Master's degree in Cybersecurity and Cybersecurity Management and I'm able to successfully play a few sessions a month. I'm not a professional in any way or form. I currently have a great job, wife, no kids, and a home with little work that needs done. I usually play smaller sessions because I go to the WSOP every year as my vacation for 2 weeks and play anything I feel during that time. Is it realistic to find any time what so ever during my doctorate program? I just don't want to become rusty by completely not playing. Any advice for me?

Play online.

He wrote he was in cyber security. He knows better.

I would say either play cash games or switch to online play if you have some viable options for online in your country.

If you play MTTs it can really affect your sleep schedule which would be probably very bad for your PhD so I guess playing shorter CG sessions when you have some more free time would be the way to go.

Why would it be worse for the PhD than for a regular job?

When my wife got her PhD her schedule was way more flexible and she had much more free time than now in a "real" job. Those were among the pro-arguments when I was considering getting a PhD.

Probably heavily depends what university/country you are in.

I finished my Master's degree in May and I ended up signing up and getting accepted for a PhD program in the IT security field, and the reason why I did not end up enrolling was because of the ridiculous time requirements they presented me with. I would have to spend north of 7 hours a day in my university office, either doing research on my thesis or teaching younger students for their classes. Outside of these hours, I would even have to attend some university occasions like exams where I would have to watch over the students to avoid cheating (with other PhD students and regular teachers).

Some of my close friends from Uni did enroll though, and recently just started, so I might get an update from them on their time requirements. I also heard in my university it depends on who is your "responsible teacher" (not sure how to translate this properly - the teacher who leads you and oversights you during your PhD) because apparently some of them allow much more leeway for the students, while others demand daily attendance in the office.

Even if it's really 35 hours/week plus a couple classes, that's still way less than what most people do in their first grown-up job?

The 5 days/week in the office requirement would be a non-starter for me though. Especially in the IT field that's something you won't find many people for these days.

Definitely not trying to discredit PhD programs as "not real work" but for most people I know it was basically a paid extension of grad school.

Where I live a typical work week is 40 hours, this would be 35.

I agree that especially with IT it is very unattractive for most people, since pretty much everybody I know from IT works remotely and they like it.

But on the other hand,if they work a real job remotely then they can stay at the university office without problems, probably. No idea though, I didn't really care past that time requirement.

Another thing to mention is that the amount of money you get paid is extremely different based on which country you live in. Where I live, the PhD students get paid about 1000 EUR per month which is not bad here, but in other countries it would probably be a joke.

You can always find time if you want to play. For a PhD, you can more or less dictate how dedicated you are depending on your goals, and you'll see a lot of variance in the work culture between groups.

For me, the issue I ran into was poker and grad school ate into the same intellectual/competitive energy budget. So I tended to gravitate towards less taxing hobbies in my off time.

Yeah that's a really good point, most people probably don't want to spend so much time inside/sitting at the desk, which you probably have to do at school as well as when you play poker (unless you play live, but that is sitting as well, just in a different environment). For me for example, when I am finished with my session I just want to go outside for a run, or to the gym, or just do something where I don't have to use my brain. Otherwise I would be mentally overloaded.

So I guess it really depends on the person, because I have friends who finish their session and start playing some video games and just sit at the computer the whole day and they are happy that way.

Please do not divert attention away from your doctorate towards poker. Poker will always be here.