A DOG'S LIFE

[The Baron]

To the Snoop Dog....

Mate I'm glad you chose the right path. I haven't regretted one minute of it and nor will you. Keep those PM's coming. You cant stop just coz you've decided now! This is where the real fun begins.

All the best mate.

[thetank]

Good luck,
I'm in the same boat as you with no dependants and youth on my side, decided to quit work 6 months ago and take the plunge.

I ain't making any money live yet though the internet keeps me in buisness.

Stay within your bankroll, keep your volume of play up and you'll be grand.

[AdamM]

I think you're dead right to give it a go. It's a big risk when you have dependants but if you're only responsible for yourself why not. The whole point of me setting up the T-shirt business was so I could try being semi pro. I'll get there but I need to get past the stage where everything I win in a week is spent on food and bills. thats the advantage you have. you can live on a shoe string and almost every penny earned is your bankroll grown. Have you thought about ways you could go semi pro, ie are there any other ways you can make money away from the tables that'd mean the pressure way completely off at the tables?

[yt]

Good luck! With no dependants and the savings I'd give it a go myself just to see if I could do it.
I'm sure you have seen this before but I copy it here if you haven't -

The size of your bankroll has a lot of elements to it. Generally, players learn to live with about 300x their table limt bet (for $3/$6, that would be $1800). This takes for granted the idea that you are a proven, winning player, and make over 1.5 big bets per 100 hands. This should give you an element of ruin of less than 5% (your chance of going broke - baring poor play and tilt).

Personally,I prefer to have 25 times my standard deviation as a minimum. My SD is about 16 units. If I was playing $3/$6, that would mean for any 100 hands, my standard + or - would be $96. 25x that gives me $2400 for my "comfortable" bankroll.

Next, consider the aspect of "savings" - not playing bankroll, but the actual money you socked away to pay all of your possible expenses for at least three months. Again, I prefer six months of savings. This will allow you to weather any storm of poor/unlucky play and still pay your bills without touching your "playing bankroll."

So, If you are going to play $3/$6 and have a monthly nut of $2500 (your mandatory expenses), then you need at least $7500 in savings, and a bankroll of at least $1800. If you win 1.5 big bets or $9 per 100 hands, and play 60 hands per hour, you need to log 278 table hours of play to pay your bills. If your log 300 table hours, you can expect to add $207 to your bankroll each month.

If you play 3 tables at one time, and still make 1.5BB per 100 hands, you need to work 100 hours per month to do the above.

[matt674]

Good luck Snoopy - being young (ish) free and single with no dependants i too have decided that i am hopefully going to take a full year out of work to see if i can play poker for a living. However rather than just giving up the job and going for it having to rely on my winnings week in and week out to pay the bills i want to build my online bankroll upto a level that can sustain my living expenses for a full year and leave me enough to play poker with as well. My quest for the $60000 bankroll has already begun, hopefully will see you in the promised land fairly soon

[Robert HM]

 

Get a proper job

[matt674]

Hmmm:

Choice 1) Poker Player - praying on the weak and the innocent trying to extract as much money out of them as possible without them realizing

or

Choice 2) Lawyer - praying on the weak and the innocent trying to extract as much money out of them as possible without them realizing

 

[julian]

good choice snoop,
it's good to recognise the signs early on, i'd been slowly drying up at work for over ten years wondering what else i could do that would pay the bills. i'd never have dreamt that poker might be the substitute, but i'm glad something fell into my lap.
you only live once, whats the worst that can happen.
now fetch boy!

[Dingdell]

Hmmm:

Choice 1) Poker Player - praying on the weak and the innocent trying to extract as much money out of them as possible without them realizing

or

Choice 2) Lawyer - praying on the weak and the innocent trying to extract as much money out of them as possible without them realizing

 

 

[Robert HM]

Oi Lega Aid lawyer here. The government pays my fees, well some of them, the rest I write off as a bad debt. So there. 

[yt]

and let's not forget that as a Pro poker player you can legally sign on the dole!
let the good times roll.

[matt674]

No you cant - its now called Job Seekers Allowance and as a full time poker player you are not actively seeking a job and therefore not entitled to it.

I know about 90% of the current claimants aren't either - but two wrongs dont make a right.........

[yt]

and do you have any idea how 'hard' it is to pretend to be looking for work?
or go to the quacks and claim you are depressed get a bit of incapacity benifit thrown in...

ps I work. Just stating the fact that it is far to easy to claim in this country. My dad did this for years before he died. He would even down a few nips of whisky before meetings with them so they would smell his breath, stamp their forms and get rid of him. Shocking but incredibly easy to do.

[AdamM]

lost my job end of feb. was easy to get signed on, very helpful. quaterly progress meeting was straight forward, check I wasn't in need of extra assistance. half year review was a much more stringant review of my job seeking strategies. a short while after I signed off and declared myself self employed (though I'm not earning any real money from it yet. When you go in to sign on you are asked what you've been doing to find work and the person signing you will go through curent jobs that match your job seekers agreement. It's not simply a case of walking in and signing your name. after a year that's it, the benefit stops. sure there are other benefits that take it's place which I'm sure have conditions to them but I thankfuly never got that far.

Poker players signing on for job seekers allowance is dishonest and deplorable. We pay no tax after all.

[matt674]

I know how easy it is but it still doesnt make it right - the fact that our countries welfare system is so easy to "fraud" makes us an easy target for anyone wishing to sponge off the taxpayers. This then means that many genuine claimants (of which i have been one at various times of my life) usually end up being tarred with the same brush.

I think it's a sad state of affairs when teenagers think that claiming job seekers allowance and/or family credit is actually a career option when leaving school!!