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zach is very spot on with his post.also, no matter how much you want to believe it. playing poker for a living is not a dream. Infact, I dont think anyone ever thinks. " i want to be a professional poker player when i grow up"because it sucks. imagine if you played a sport for a living, but before everygame, you have to put up $2000.00 of your own money. lame potatoes.and thats poker.. lame potatoes. It beats a lot of jobs, and if you're good, it can make dreams come true. But it is in no way, a Dream in itself.it fuucking blows goat asss. and I actually run good. and it still blows.

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How many doctors are rich? Most of themHow many lawyers are rich? Many of themHow many Entrepreneurs are rich? A lot of us.How many poker players are rich? Very very very few.

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This has been a helluva good thread to read. Take Zach's and Acid Knight's posts very seriously. From the first post I ever saw from either of them, I knew it would be good to soak in every word they typed. This thread is no different.As far as going pro, I am not one. I'm a LONG ways from even thinking about it. I only get in about 4-5 hours of live play($1/2) every week. And in the past 3-4 months I've cleared $2,100 from it.If I were to go pro, I would want a year of money saved up for living expenses. Someone said 6 months, but I'd rather have a year. I would also want to live very close to a casino, within 20 minutes of it. Minimize driving time, or even walk there. Definitely extend your play to online as well. If you can do well at both, then you should do ok. I do better at live play than I do online. But, I've only been playing a year(a serious year at that).GL to you in the future if you do make this step.

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zach is very spot on with his post.also, no matter how much you want to believe it. playing poker for a living is not a dream. Infact, I dont think anyone ever thinks. " i want to be a professional poker player when i grow up"because it sucks. imagine if you played a sport for a living, but before everygame, you have to put up $2000.00 of your own money. lame potatoes.and thats poker.. lame potatoes. It beats a lot of jobs, and if you're good, it can make dreams come true. But it is in no way, a Dream in itself.it fuucking blows goat asss. and I actually run good. and it still blows.
Really? Why is it lame? Is it actually just a grind after a while? Do you have days and weeks where you wake up and don't want to play at all?
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How many doctors are rich? Most of themHow many lawyers are rich? Many of themHow many Entrepreneurs are rich? A lot of us.How many poker players are rich? Very very very few.
lol. I know some of each except for the pro poker player. Nobody I know is rich from what they are doing. Comfortable maybe but def. not Balloon Guy rich.
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fwiw, i would take acid knight over any regular 5/10 player i've ever met. that's how good i think he is. the fact that he doesn't want to go "pro" speaks considerably to his character as a person.i've lived solely on my poker income for about, jeez, almost a year now, that seems so crazy to me. anyway, about every few months we get a new poster asking about "going pro." in fact, the last one was in your situation where he had dependents. the advice this forum typically gives to these people is "DON'T DO IT." it's not that this forum is spiteful, it's that we have experience and we deal with the pitfalls of this game. some of us deal with them professionally, others are just witness to them but have seen them enough that they know to a very strong degree of what they speak. i doubt you would take anyone's advice that you probably shouldn't do it. it's just the way people are. they glamorize the idea of going pro, believe they can do it, ask the forum if they should, and then ignore it when people tell them they shouldn't. and the world turns on. knowing this i will give you my advice to the questions you asked.about 2/5 NL:my experience in this game was a 5/5 NL game i would beat up on at the bicycle casino through march, april and may of last year when the 20/40 limit game broke or wasn't very good. i doubt there was any regulars at that time who had a bigger edge on the game than i did. (there's people on here that can speak to my lack of ego, at least compared to most poker players :club: ) i would say that it would be near impossible for an average very good player (acid knight, nosup4u, etc.) to beat that game for about 5K a month consistently without putting in over 30 hours a week. the idea of beating it for 4K/week on average is totally laughable (at least from my experience). i'm assuming that the game doesn't have a buy-in over $500. i don't mean to call you a liar but from my own experience your results don't seems plausible so i'm reluctant to take them on your word at face vaule. it's totally possible that you have been running WAY better than expectation.5/10NL:my experience in this game is also from the same period at the bicycle casino. when the game was good and there were some rich fishes that were stuck around 4am or so i would take a shot at the game. i think through maybe 3 or 4 sessions i was stuck maybe $300 in total from the game. i have my records from that time, but don't really care to find them, but my memory about this stuff is pretty good. anyway, dollar for dollar, the 5/10 game was more profitable. it had an unlimited buy-in and that's where the rich fish played. i would say the average monthly salary for a great player in that game at 40 hours a week might be in the neighborhood of 9K. the 9K figure comes from people, whose game i really respected, that grinded that game day-in day-out. if i was supporting a family and was gonna quit my 70K a year job to become a professional poker player at a 5/5 game, i would probably want about $100K. this figure, while it may seem excessive, is just what my gut tells me. even some of the biggest names in the game have had break even years. lets say you quit your job tomorrow and had a bank account of 50K with and the cost to run your family is 4K a month. if you have 2 loosing months (2K a piece) your bank account would now have 38K in it. lets say your next two months you recover what you lost in the first two, now your bank account has 30K in it. 4 months of break even live play is SOOOO standard. of course eventually you'd run at a +expectation again and all that, but the stress of your family's wealth being chopped by 2/5ths in your first month as a pro i imagine would cause a lot of strain both mentally to you but would cause a strain in a marriage. even if you were to run at expectation (which i believe is 4K at a 2-5 game) month-in month-out, you're not increasing your wealth at all. my poker playing broke the one relationship i ever had. truth be told, i'd probably give up poker forever if i could have it back. this is your life and the lives of your family members, be honest with yourself and make sure you're not fucking them up.goodluck.

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Infact, I dont think anyone ever thinks. " i want to be a professional poker player when i grow up"
i did. i remember being really young and watching the year dan harrington won the wsop and the year scotty did. i remember thinking that's what i wanted to be. when i was 12 i would scan through the tv guide to see if there was gonna be any poker on that week.
because it sucks. it fuucking blows goat asss.
i disagree. i love my life. i don't ever have to be anywhere and don't really have a responsibility in the world. i like it that way. i still love studying and playing the game. there are times when i want a prolonged break, but as a whole it's still my passion.oh, a few more points to the OP. being at a casino 40 hours a week is gonna give you less time with your family. your co-workers are all gonna be sour and hate you. playing at a casino so much can be VERY VERY lonely. it takes the right kind of person. go sit in a stud game and see what kind of personality the regulars have. that's what you'll be when your 65.goodluck.
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One of the best posts I've ever read from navybuttons AINEC, possibly that I've ever read on FCP
Boomsauce.
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zach is very spot on with his post.also, no matter how much you want to believe it. playing poker for a living is not a dream. Infact, I dont think anyone ever thinks. " i want to be a professional poker player when i grow up"because it sucks. imagine if you played a sport for a living, but before everygame, you have to put up $2000.00 of your own money. lame potatoes.and thats poker.. lame potatoes. It beats a lot of jobs, and if you're good, it can make dreams come true. But it is in no way, a Dream in itself.it fuucking blows goat asss. and I actually run good. and it still blows.
Because now it is just a job and not for fun anymore? And OP i am the guy they are talking about last month that was "asking if i should go pro" which wasn't wwhat I was asking at all, I already play poker for a living I was just looking for advice on what would be the best place to move to with a family and be able to play full time, they all thought I was insane because I was talking about buying an RV and living in it instead of getting an apartment(which I still havent decided against) , I am going to play full time but the difference with me is I have nothing to lose, my life can only get better, it sounds like you already have a decent job and stuff going for you, I have never been one to tell somoene not to follow there dreams and aspirations, the basis of my love of poker is the freedom. That is why I thought moving to vegas in an RV might not b a bad idea, what If I want to go to LA and play for a while , I can just take my whole house and go. My advice do whatever the hell you want and don't let a bunch of anonymous pixels on a computer piss on your dream.
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Because now it is just a job and not for fun anymore? And OP i am the guy they are talking about last month that was "asking if i should go pro" which wasn't wwhat I was asking at all, I already play poker for a living I was just looking for advice on what would be the best place to move to with a family and be able to play full time, they all thought I was insane because I was talking about buying an RV and living in it instead of getting an apartment(which I still havent decided against) , I am going to play full time but the difference with me is I have nothing to lose, my life can only get better, it sounds like you already have a decent job and stuff going for you, I have never been one to tell somoene not to follow there dreams and aspirations, the basis of my love of poker is the freedom. That is why I thought moving to vegas in an RV might not b a bad idea, what If I want to go to LA and play for a while , I can just take my whole house and go. My advice do whatever the hell you want and don't let a bunch of anonymous pixels on a computer piss on your dream.
YOU HAVE MONEY! YOU GOT A SETTLEMENT! YOU HAVE YOUR DAUGHTER'S EDUCATION IN YOUR HANDS! YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO LOSE! HER FUTURE!zomg. i think i may be done with gen-pop forever.
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I've been here a long time and seen a lot of these. I just want to reiterate that Zach and navybuttons are both spot-on in their analysis of this decision. Those were two of the better responses over the years and should be pasted into every thread that's put up in the years to come.

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lol op doesn't know how blessed he was to get that good a response from zach. lmao zach, i didnt know u had it in ya. i guess op wasn't an idiot tho, so that prob helped. i kinda was hoping to read a flame thread, cuz they make me laugh, but this one did not deliver. oh well. still decent.i couldn't imagine playing live for a living...i think i'd die of boredom or the degeneracy of casinos would make me ruin my life. idk.play online. 2/4-5/10 nl hu be a good place to start.- Jordan

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FWIW, when I tp/mm'd, I thought I was better at poker then I was.
Everyone thinks they're better than they are. And then a few months down the road, they look at themselves and realize how bad they were.At least anyone that's improving at least and actually is a solid, winning player.
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Fwiw, winning percentage in sessions is meaningless.Focusing on this is a bit of a leak.A few reasons for this; you could be pressuring yourself to get even on days when you're losing, and thus playing poorly, resulting in bigger losses than you should have had; you could be quitting too early, when you get up a few hundred, or whatever it may be, in order to book a winning session, and that limits the time you spend playing your A game. It's a pretty common thing, for players to play more poker when they're losing, and to play less when you're winning, but that really limits your potential income. You'll tend to play worse poker when you're trying to get even, and you'll generally tend to play a lot sharper if you've been winning. So cutting the winning sessions short, and extending the losing sessions is a bad idea, although it's obviously not clear that you're doing this, I just don't want everyone to get hung up on these session win rates.It's certainly possible to have a winning percentage of 80%, and be down money, over a decent sample, although unlikely. This stat just doesn't tell the whole story.
Great thread. Very interesting to read the different perspectives. No aspirations to play for a living but Zach's points about not focusing on winning sessions will help my game. I tend to do this and my game suffers as a result. OP please keep us posted on your decision and GL.
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How many doctors are rich? Most of themHow many lawyers are rich? Many of themHow many Entrepreneurs are rich? A lot of us.How many poker players are rich? Very very very few.
Brag post, obviously. :club:
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everyday i think about yesterday and wonder how i won any money being as dumb as i was.
The thing about this is that if you are really looking at the game properly, this will never change. The only thing that will change is that you'll look at what you were doing last week and see what you're doing better now.I was crushing the 5/10 NL game at the Bellagio when I first arrived in Vegas about 2 years ago and I'm probably 10x better at poker than I was back then. Maybe I should put in some hours. Hmm....But yeah, cwik put it perfectly: Everyone thinks they're better than they are. This is especially true when they're winning.
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Because now it is just a job and not for fun anymore? And OP i am the guy they are talking about last month that was "asking if i should go pro" which wasn't wwhat I was asking at all, I already play poker for a living I was just looking for advice on what would be the best place to move to with a family and be able to play full time, they all thought I was insane because I was talking about buying an RV and living in it instead of getting an apartment(which I still havent decided against) , I am going to play full time but the difference with me is I have nothing to lose, my life can only get better, it sounds like you already have a decent job and stuff going for you, I have never been one to tell somoene not to follow there dreams and aspirations, the basis of my love of poker is the freedom.
Perhaps I'm being judgemental here but if you have a family, I would say that you have something to lose. You're not a single guy with no responsibilities. It just sounds a little crazy that you would think of having your family live in a RV. I'm not saying you made a mistake by being a pro poker player but perhaps you shouldn't move into an RV.
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