How big independence, wealth and lifestyle can poker give you

Hey Willy411,

This depends on the individual. To become a pro poker player, you need to be fully committed.

I have lost count of the number of people who have come onto our forum saying things like

"I'm going to be a pro. How hard could it be?"

We never hear from those people again. They are unaware of the huge amount of time and effort involved in becoming a solid winning reg being able to withdraw a regular wage.

I used to have visions of being a pro MTT grinder, but ultimately I was unable (or unwilling) to make the necessary commitment to improve to that level.

Now I am satisfied being a solid rec who plays for the love of the game and the challenge of beating other players. The money doesn't matter anymore.

If i bink a nice score, that would be cool. If I don't, then it won't worry me.

If you do decide to make poker your major source of income, you will need to make that total commitment to play, study, review that many of us can't.

Good Luck

Laz

You didnt want, or it was so hard?

Originally posted by Willy411
You didnt want, or it was so hard?

Still don't know the answer.

Poker =/= Holdem
The same goes for PLO.

I've seen countless times people on this site recommend sticking to a single game. I find that advice to be pretty harmful both for the individual players and for the less popular games. You should NOT wire your brain into thinking "I am an NLH cash game player thus I should not play this PLO8 tournament or this 2-7 triple draw table"

Try different games, get excited about the game, stay fresh! This is a big part of playing for a living. Should you focus on the game you like the most and feel you are the best in? Yes. Should you exclude yourself from playing other games? Hell no.

I spend a lot of time studying the various types of poker, and a considerable time playing it.

I do NOT want to ever become pro -- it would take over my life.

Cheers,
VS

At some point I wished I could play poker professionally. Now I have pretty much forgot about that and I'm happy being a serious hobbyist who makes nice side income with poker.
But who know what will happen. I'll graduate in 2 years and maybe if working isn't as fun as I thought it would be, I might give full time poker career a try

It really depends on your personality. As someone who hates teamwork, who does not fit into a regular 9 to 5 job, I can say: Okay, it is worth to be self-employed, but I´m not a pro poker player. I am writer and an ambitious recreational player. When you are self-employed as whatever, you carry the whole responsibility for your projects (poker or anything else), you gotta be able to organize your stuff well, you gotta have a lot of self-discipline, everything is up to you. I personally love to be independent and doing everything myself: akquisition, business development, paper work, accounting, business plans, agenda setting, the productive work itself, paying for the material you need, cleaning your office, whatever. You´re manager, accountant, worker, secretary and cleaning man/woman all in one. If you like that and if you have no problems to work alone in your (home) office than beeing self-employed could be something for you. Besides poker or whatever skills you need a bunch of other skills to be able to manage your own business properly. You need a lot more skills than as employee!

Please note, that there is no "safety" like you won´t get your "safe and fix" salary every month. So plan ahead! Please note, that there will be times when you won´t earn a single penny - days, months - How well can you handle downswings? Do you have enough money saved to make a living during a downie? What are you going to do during this time?

How are you going to plan your days off, your vacation? Plan ahead with your winnings! Can you afford a 2 week vacation? Plan ahead!

I think the most difficult part of poker is handling downswings (to my personal opinion). Because I know that I cannot handle them well and because I love the work I do, I know that I´m not going pro. I´m glad that I have some nice work besides poker and even though I wanna grind up and see what happens, I will never be a pro due to the reasons I mentioned.

I hope this helps you a bit to think over your project and plans properly and make the right decision? Or that this can help answering your questions.

I read in an article that many good poker players even though they have the skills quit poker because they can´t handle downswings. Think about.

Part II (for technical reasons )

You gotta ask yourself those questions and those:

* What is my business plan and how saturated is the market? For poker: Which variant I´m gonna focus on (as Nsavov perfectly described)? How good is the traffic in this variant, how many donkeys are there and thus: How profitable is this variant?

* How much starting money do I have and how can I make a living during the start-up-period? How can I make a living during start-up when I don´t win/earn enough money yet?

* How important is a regular salary to me? How important are regular working times for me? Am I ready to work more than regular?

* How can I find starting money/investors/stakers?

* What are my skills? What can I do best and where are my weak spots? How can I integrate this into the current "market"? How well can I "sell my products"? In poker: variants.

* How am I gonna plan my working time, how am I gonna plan my work-life-balance?

* What could be an alternative if I find out that this is not the right thing for me? Whan am I gonna do then?

* How is my daily schedule gonna look like?

* Do I need social contacts at work or am I the type of person who loves to work alone?

* How am I gonna handle the responsibility? How am I gonna plan my paper work (accounting, taxes, calculations.....bla bla)?

* How can I handle times with no earning/winning: financially and mentally? In poker: downswings!!!

* What are my plans for the future like: next 5 or 10 years?

..............

This is just a little checklist from my experience as self-employer/freelancer ----> same goes for poker pros ..... ♠_thumbsup:

Many poker players come with the attitude: "Work/school sucks, I´m gonna be a poker pro, I wanna be independent and earn a lot of money" This attitude is very very wrong!!!

Beeing a poker pro or self-employed has nothing to do with this attitude, you gotta love what you do, you gotta love the responsibility, you gotta LOVE to be self-employed and you gotta be ready to work very hard for it, otherwise you will go under, quicker than "Titanic".

Many people think "Aw, nice, I can do with my time what I want, I´m independent in time" ---> NO WAY! I gotta be there for my clients even though it´s Saturday, Sunday or vacation. You have to play at times when the most donkeys are at the tables, when you make the most profit. If you get staked, you gotta be there for your backer, you gotta report, you gotta play as much as required! So, no "tralala free time whenever I want".

I would love it to be a poker pro. It's not my endgame, however, since I want to attain more than just living on poker. But as a part-time job, or as something I do only to get rich; why not?