KiwiGTI

I just read this and thought "mid-life crisis"

LG John

Too young

Drunken Bungle Whore

An interesting and well timed thread. I'm just in the middle of making a decision that could involve a big risk (I won't hijack the thread with the details - but suffice to say it doesn't involve poker! )

It's a real toughie - one day I'm full of "Yay, go for it - you only live once" and the next it's "Hmmm- what about paying the mortgage - I love my house and would never want to risk losing it."

Where my head is at the moment is that the only way I can see to reduce the risk is to know everything I can about all of my options - and that's what I'm spending my time doing right now. Market research, lots and lots of sums, meetings with people who have taken the same sort of risk, exploring ways of taking a similar but lesser risk etc.

I don't know what you do for a livivng - but is there a way that your job would allow you to work on a consultancy basis? That way you could potentialy earn more in "normal" employment and still devote more time to the poker as a stepping stone to the full blown commitment.

Just a thought - good luck with it all - I know what a dilemma it can be!

LG John

I’m enjoying this thread but I’d appreciate more accounts of your own attitudes to risk rather than debate over mines. I admit I put my own views and circumstances out there which invites cross-examination but the real purpose of my thread was to see what other people feel about risk and to find out other people experiences of tackling risk in their own lives. There must be some of you that have jacked in a good job for a risky venture or have left a life in GB to run a burger bar in the Costa Del Sol, etc

r32

Do people make good regular money from playing cards?

LG John

If you are otherwise willing to post them it would make for interesting reading. I'm keen to see other peoples experiences, attitudes and critically thought processes.

I also find my attitude can swing from day to day. Like you say I sometimes feel silly for questioning it and think I should just dive in see what life dishes up. Other days though I do sit and worry about mortgage payments and what it would be like to not have access to a quick car and nice home, etc.

I'd love to be able to talk to others that have walked the path and I have to a degree but there is a lot of ego stroking and BS claims in poker and those that have truely masterminded success aren't quick (and rightly so) to explain step-by-step how they did it! I know of two scottish online poker millionnaires (one of them personally, albeit not very well)(He's 19 and has a new 911 turbo, I should probably msn him a bit more ). They are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of style!

Player A is a risk taker and pushes very small edges in the game exceptionally hard. He can be quite emotional, very aggressive but oooozes tones of natural talent and feel. He is now regarded as one of the best online poker players in the world! His break was when he went to uni as he spent his free time playing poker as opposed to drinking and having sex

Player B is much more of a methodical, mathematical player with ultra-discipline and is always controlled no matter the crisis that the cards may be dishing up. His progress has probably been slower but more consistent and whilst he is less well known he's probably just as well off and formidable (but in a different way). From what I know of this guy he's not a big risk taker (in his playing style) but he seems the sort to take a plunge as he starting playing full-time a number of years ago with $500 borrowed on a credit card! He did have back up though as he was (is) regarded as the best none-asian World of Warcraft player in the world and he used to play games for a living.

As an interesting aside a lot of the best online poker players in the world are ex-gamers! There must be a transferable skill set between these two activities. My guess would be discapline and the ability to effectively multi-task when under a lot of stress (or fire in the case of gaming)

andythejock01wrx

Dunno about you Kenny, but I'm certainly risk averse.

I went to Vegas as part of my RTW trip last year, just for a few days. I reckoned I gambled, ooooh, let's see, some $50 ! Actually I was "up" by the end of the weekend. did that make me want to gamble more ? Nope - I just blew it on firing an Uzi 9mm !!

Problem is, as a result I know I'm always likely to be an "employee" and therefore not especially wealthy.

Andy

LG John

As the post above suggests, yeah

Thanks to the cut that Tony bLiar takes in tax and NI its not too difficult to match or exceed normal job income from poker even at the lower limits. A typical winning No-limit player should expect to make around 5bb per 100 hands played. BB is big-bets for the level you are playing so if you were playing a game with a small bind of $1 and a big-blind of $2 you'd make $2x5 = $10 every 100 hands you are dealt (NOTE: on average (very important)). If you can handle multi-tabling then playing 4 tables will yeild around 350 hands per hour short-handed (6 at a table) and thus your average hourly rate would be $10x3.5 = $35. You could easily make another $15 on average in rakeback and other site bonuses taking your income to around $50 an hour or £25.

25 hours a week for say 45 weeks of the year that's a tax free income of around £2350 a month - double if you can stick poker for 50h a week! If you consider that $1/2 is low-limit poker and that there is $2/4, $2/6, $5/10, $20/40 and higher above it, you can see that there is money making potential.

Unfortunately being a consistent winning player isn't easy. The house rakes 5% from each pot up to a limit. That is to say you might win a big double up in a NL $1/2 game earning you a pot of $400 from which you'd probably lose $4 in rake. It might not sound like much but you'd be amazed how quickly that rake mounts up - so much so that many players that can beat the majority of other players at the table cannot also beat the rake and therefore are losing or break even players.

You probably don't want to get me started on this - I could type for hours

Brendan Hughes

Not sure I can help. I took two big "risks" in my life, one was selling my car (£2k, woo-hoo) and using all my savings to buy a one-way ticket to Russia in 1993, the other was to leave the high-paying job I eventually got as a result (because I hated it) to go back to a full-time Masters degree and hope I could get a career change at the end of it. Both paid off wonderfully, partly planning, partly being in the right place in the right time, partly carpe diem. But I don't think they were comparable to your situation as both times I was single with no house - and the second I had a very healthy bank account.

I now have a house, a mortgage, a wife and a baby. I don't believe I'd do it again - but I don't really think I need to (though I wonder occasionally), and I'm not sure where I'd go anyway. One thing's for sure - I'll do a hell of a lot of thinking and planning before anything happens.

daiscooby

Change is a unique agent as it's 'risk' is tangential to subject matter.

I.E.

How many pyscho-analysts does it take to change a lightbulb ?.

Only one, but the lightbulb really has to want to change.

HtH

hail-hail

Partially reading through this thread I would say go for it! You have nothing to lose and someone to love.
House car etc can all be replaced and what would happen if you were made redundant tomorrow, may not be likely but always a possability.

I have been a risk taker albeit within a limited range. I have chopped and changed jobs, asked for pay rises that borderline on the ridiculous and been prepared to walk out of I didn't get them. I was surprised where I got myself.

Family however changes things, and I found myself taking risks for family stability rather than finincial gain, I walked out on a 100k plus salary so that my family could move back to Scotland, my wife needed the support of family after our daughter was born, it was a no brainer for me. I had to change to be a contractor and took the risk of being out of work for long periods of time.
I now make more money than every, work one week in London and one week from home, giving me time with my family (and away from them ).

Sounds like this will be a step you will not take if you start a family, so take the step now. Do it! Why not! You don't have to stretch your imagination too much to see the company you work for now going bankrupt tomorrow. You could be made redundant next week. You could get hit by a bus.

Now that I have made your mind up for you, have you considered sponsorship? Considered talking to local small business advisors, Ok, so they will tell you to **** off, but if you can set down your figures and work it through in your own mind, you will end up convincing yourself.

I can just see it.......

"Are here we are in Las Vegas, final table of the 10million dollar winner takes all classic, down to our last two players and one appears to be dressed like a Rally Driver, covered head to toe in car sponsorships,ranging from the boy racer Saxo to the worlds greatest ever production car, the Subaru...................

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

One of the dads at the kids school is apparently a pro poker player, who makes a good living from it, will find out a bit more off the missus.

B9GLY

i would cosider myself to be a risk taker, however, it is in the majority of life but not regarding money now! back when i lived at home with my parents i took loans out, got fast cars when i was only 19 etc, i spent about £3000 in one weekend on clothes, car mods and just partying!!! i was only earning approx £10K a year then! I have payed it all back now and now that i have bought a house i just cannot justify taking risks financially as i cant afford to loose my house and i have always said one way or another i would never miss a bill!!!

i just dont earn enough money to take financial risks with! i think it is somthing to do with the way this country operates, money IS everything!

LG John

This is the other great appeal of pro-poker for me. Being the sort of dad that has time to take their kids to school and mingle with the milfs...er....other mums

There seems to be recurring opinion that putting it all on the line like this really is much easier without the ties of children. I've spent most of my 20s just dicking around trying to fuel my interest for cars. I was actually quite career focused until I had a shock relationship split up in 2001 with sparked a number of years drifting through life. I think my fairly recent engagement has brought a lot of stuff into focus - this is real now!! In the not too distant future I will have a wife and hopefully children to worry about as well so I best be sure that I'm happy, settled and able to provide for them.

The thought of being an office drone for the next 40 years makes me almost sick to my stomach so I guess the conclusion is that I'll have to make changes sooner rather than later or else those changes will become increasingly hard to make.

As I said in post 1 I'm bogged down with the house renovation but I think I'll need to have a long hard think this year when I'm on my summer holidays

SiPie

Does not apply ...he works for the council

Kenny

To me an important issue is if Laura is fully supportive of your move into full time Poker. If she is behind you and is prepared to carry on her full time job to enable you both to pay the mortgage just in case you fail to bring in enough money to keep a roof over your head, then you have nothing to fear.

However, as touched on by others earlier in the thread, turning your hobby into your job can be a disaster. My experience of this is that when I was a mountain bike 'fanatic', my employer was having days out and one of the options for staff was mountain biking. I was an obvious choice to plan and set up the routes with arrows etc and prepare maps. I was out of the office for a good few days doing what I loved ........and I hated it This was accompanied by an offer from a mountain bike hire company to act as a guide for them. Hated that too.

The reason my brain reacted like this was that it simply became a demand. Rather than 'Think I'll head out on my bike and choose whatever route I fancy', it was turned into 'Must go and signpost route X then take pain in the *** toursists around that other damn route again' during these specific hours....

Just be careful how your brain works under 'demands' as opposed to it being 'your choice'....you choose when you go and play Poker at present but you'd loose that choice if full-time.

I was pretty shocked as to just how much of a petulant 'Kevin the teenager' I had inside my head.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do

LG John

Good advice Simon I think you maybe missed an earlier post though where I said I don’t particularly choose to play poker at the moment. I could honestly quit the game tonight and never see another flop for as long as I live quite happily. I’ve seen it all and played pretty much every hand scenario so there is no undiscovered country within the game itself.

When I sit down to play I enjoy the challenge of playing it (i.e. adapting to the players I’m up against), the table banter you sometimes get and having my brain worked as I think my way in and out of situations but its not exciting and relaxing in the way a hobby is. I consider it to be part-time work just now so I wouldn’t expect there to be a difference in the way I feel about it if I went full-time. There would be some more added pressure to play though – or I don’t eat!!

Laura is supportive as I’ve consistently talked about this throughout the whole of our relationship. She is naturally fearful but she would support my decision if I went for it. Unfortunately she does not earn enough to support us if it really didn’t work out. Her job circumstance will probably change for the better in the next year or so but right now the mortgage would be around 75% of her take-home pay meaning that losing my regular income is losing the ability to sustain ourselves.

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

you think too much IMHO

SJ_Skyline

Kenny,

What you're saying doesn't seem to make much sense to me. On one hand you are saying that you enjoy playing poker and are considering it as a full-time job whilst on the other hand you are saying that it's not a hobby and you can take it or leave it...

It does sound like you want a job that gives you a challenge rather than the sameold, same old day-to-day you currently have. Is there any middle ground you might consider such as a sideways move into something else more conventional or is your heart set on the poker thing? I guess what I'm saying is, have you asked yourself the really soul-searching questions you need to before making such a massive change of direction?

To me, I'm thankful that I have a job that I enjoy which offers me new challenges all the time. 3 years after joining my company I'm still getting in each morning with some zest which I guess is a good thing.

Whatever you are looking for, I hope you find it mate

carl

Could you stick being inside the house for 8 hours a day playing poker though? Don't underestimate the social interaction of "going to work".

RB5_245

I'm pretty easy going when it comes to risks and changes. I've chucked good paying jobs for something exciting. Last year took a pay cut and a job I didn't want so I could do a season rallying. Soon I'll be heading off round the world for a year with this job.

It's all been based on taking risks. I quit a good paying job with lots of benifits, for one with 2/3 the wage and no benifits. It opened my eyes that the grass was greener and no regrets.

I quit that to spend more time at home, big mistake, dead end job and got stuck there for a bit. Packed that in with little more than the change in my pocket and no guarantee's of anything, walked straight into a top knotch job. A couple of jobs later and a couple of years down the line things are only getting better.

The hardest thing to do was resigning from the first job mentioned to go and do all this. I spent a morning considering it, stood up to go and tell my boss, sat back down again.. Took me ages to finally bite the bullet.

I can tell you that the once I'd resigned I've never felt so free from anything. Like a lottery win. I've always kept my doors open to go back the way I came but never have needed or wanted to.

Therfor, if there are jobs like yours advertised every week just get in there and do what you want to. What will you loose if you have to go back?

I lost 5 years seniority bonus, stock plan and an imminent promotion if i'd had to go go back. I figured it probably wasn't worth the risk, and the grass probably wasn't greener on the other side but if I didn't go then I never would. So went. Not a seconds regret.

Dave

Hoppy

The irony of it - a thread about risk taking and professional poker

B, for chrissakes man, B, B, B. If you don't realise the madness of your plan, many on here who have read your posts over the years, must do it for you.

Man, you're a dreamer and need to get serious before, well, it gets serious. Wise up. Fast.

Richard.

LG John

I do think a lot but then I have a mate that just doesn’t think at all and does whatever he wants when he wants. You simply would not believe the trouble he gets himself into from time to time!!

I can see how you’d think that. It’s sort of hard to describe really: There is a saying in poker that it takes a day to learn and a lifetime to master and this is so true. I remember the first time I saw a quads or a royal flush and how exciting it was, I remember the despair the first time I ran KK into AA preflop and I remember watching some thrilling pots being played out. I’ve ran KK into AA loads of time, seen plenty of Royal flushes and seen some of the sickest beats in poker. I’ve played hundreds of thousands of hands and made millions of individual betting decisions. I guess like a policeman once you’ve seen one mangled wreck or beaten up prostitute you’ve seen them all. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have job satisfaction from what each day throws at you.

Whilst the game itself is built around fixed rules that in many ways stifle its interest there are so many variances, challenges and nuances within the game to keep it interesting most of the time. I’ve seen times where the tables are running dry for hours on end with no good cards, no action, no banter and no interesting hands but then this is the same of most jobs really (dull days). There are other times though when things can really kick off and it’s great to be involved.

There are few jobs IMHO where you really wake up itching to go because it’s so much fun but I don’t think I’d wake up loathing poker and that’s an improvement. There is plenty of scope within my management of the game to continually push and challenge myself. Probably not enough to last 40 years but then as I said above I’d almost certainly be broke or a multi-millionnaire by then but not ‘in-between’.

LG John

Carl raises a very valid point. When I used to number crunch going pro in the past I always assumed working 35-45 hours a week. I then sat back and thought about it (there’s the thinking again) and realised that it’s very unlikely I could sustain that rate of hours on my own, in the spare room, playing poker (in my boxer shorts)! I’d go mad!

These days I always assume between 25-30 hours a week and I envisage a 30 hour week being broken down into 2 hour sessions usually. For example get up at 10am weekdays and play 11-1 then have lunch, go to the gym/run/drive/whatever and play 3-5pm and an hour in the evening. That’s 25 hours during the week days with the other 5 to be picked up over the weekend. Manageable I feel and plenty of other time to socially interact

Cracking post Dave – I’m pretty sure the job back up is there. Also if I was going to fail it would almost certainly occur in the first 6-12 months and therefore I could explain my career gap as ‘travelling’ and shouldn’t be too far out of touch to demonstrate up to date knowledge. I can even keep up to date by reading my weekly planning magazine on the bog each Friday

Hoppy I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on why professional poker is a mad plan. I assume you have an expert level of understanding of the game, how it’s played and how money is invested and returned in it? I’m assuming with such a strongly worded post that you are not subscribing to a narrow and misguided view that poker is the same as all other casino games and that everyone will lose in the long term (i.e. the sort of view your granny might have)?

Brendan Hughes

Kenny, what happened to this?

https://www.scoobynet.com/non-scooby...ng-future.html

Assuming you never made that change, I find it odd that you apparently wouldn't risk going from one job fairly easily to another (private sector), to see if life was better - but here you're talking about a complete career change to an income that is absolutely not guaranteed.

Split you half-way - apply for a planning consultant post to the entertainment industry? (I suspect you could make a fortune, though you'd meet some pretty dodgy characters on the way!)

Seriously, factor in your car. If it all went wrong and you decided to give up, how many months' income would selling your car get you? 3? It's a buffer zone of sorts.

///\oo/\\\

Kenny, are you sure you're not just a lazy bugger and fancy a lie in every day

///\oo/\\\

Actually, Brendan has a great point.

Try the private sector first, and see if that gives you more satisfaction.

It should certainly give you more money if you are half way good at what you do.

LG John

I won't like the very flexible working hours are appealing

///\oo/\\\

fixed it ^^^

Don't blame you

Work to live, don't live to work.

Brendan Hughes

No, it should have been this:

LG John

I suffered that particular job for nearly another two years before I finally managed to escape. I was at the stage of applying for any other planning job and another post within a different type of planning roll came up at a different Local Authority. I made the change quite enthusiastic that I could carve out a career for myself in planning but I quickly realised that I find it dull and boring. It’s just not me: I don’t care where houses or industry goes, I don’t care about Mrs Miggin’s 1.8m high fence or UPVC windows in a Conservation Area and I’ve made my views on the environment and global warming fairly obvious in the past. I’m not stressed now which is a major change and allows me a little more freedom to see the wood despite the trees.

I suspect that I’ll take the plunge sometime in September/October this year and the car will be my ultimate back up. I’d probably start with a poker specific £10-15,000 bankroll and I need to make at least £1500 a month to sustain my current living standard. Assuming I started losing month after month it would probably take 2-3 months at least to wipe out that bankroll at the levels I’d play (probably a lot longer). During this time I could react and move to sell the car if I felt it was really going to get that bad. At a quick sale price the car should buy me 4-4-5 months of job hunting time. Worst case scenario then is that a year from now I’ve got no money in poker, don’t play it any more, don’t have the Impreza and I’m still working a planning job somewhere in Central Scotland(ish). Not that bad I guess

Best case scenario is that I can put aside £20,000 reserves in the bank, a beefy poker bankroll and I’m hassling John Banks to remap my MR340