Originally posted by ghaleon
To play poker as living one should always have nice "buffer" for living expenses (for both expected and unexpected). That will make mental pressure way way smaller. Playing poker, because its fun is much more enjoyable compared to situation where you have to play to get butter on your bread. That will likely keep you more on A game and so on.Personally I like to mix game formats and buyins quite a lot. In pokerstars 30$+ limits table selection becomes mandatory and wider selection gives more freedom for it. My style has really never been to play just one buyin level. E.g. these days I could play 200$ games from bankroll view, but in reality I am playing games from 15$ to 100$. Smaller swings and nice profit with decent volume.
For low salary/cost countries living with poker is not that big challenge in long run. But living off is not only important factor. One thing to remember with poker is that there will be no adding to retirement moneys. So for longer period one should have some sort of goals and backup plans. E.g. how one will use poker profits? Investment plans? Plans if poker is not an option for some reason after couple years?
Personally I have been quite lazy volume wise. Goal is to hit 300k vpp this year which will be done. Just have to put bigger goal for next year
But yeah for me it has always been easier to play poker with some longer period volume goal in mind.
Thank you for this great response. I absolutely agree with everything you said including extra money, back up plans and investments.
Good news for me is that I can always get USA visa, go there and teach in schools perform get like 3k$+ a month and live decent life. I can also do that in other countries in the world with my music CV.
Another thing that I can do is play on cruise ships but there you make 1.6k euro a month and maximum that you are away a year is 10 months so not really a lot of money there tbh.
As far as investments go, I have in my mind 200k in next 5 years (40k per year) and I plan to pay off credit for my parents 70 square meter apartment (15k euro left) , record my 1st instrumental jazz album (3k euro) , open up a caffee place in my town for quality live music (4k-6k), invest in teaching and coaching , get a car + life things (travel, enjoying life, seeing places etc). So it doesn't take too much money but its important like you said to have long term goal , for me its to do all those things but its important to keep immediate goals and short terms one in check (working on a game daily, doing reviews, fixing leaks, finding edge vs every opponent, keeping grinding as serious as possible, improve mental game more - very big thing, reach 150k SN, have enough money to play on my own from January etc).
