Its all very nice deciding that we should all just have a jolly old time and not work too hard but the games have only got tougher in the last 5 years, pretty hard to find reasons why that won't continue. Probably not at the pace that it has in the last 5 years, but the games will get tougher.
Personally I would much rather be in the position where I played a ton and owned a house by 30 and could do whatever I wanted than be the 30 year old that had a great time but has fallen behind the curve, isn't a winner any more and has a 10 year gap in his CV.
Trust me when your 30 all you want to do is be 20! Obv you can't just bum around but you have your whole life to make moneyz and anybody smart enough to win at online poker will never struggle to make money one way or another.
As the uni-economics nerd I am I feel it is my duty to inform people about my calculations on this issue that a lot of poker players are concerned with.
Before I decided to quit online poker in late 2010 I tried to build some kind of "life-payoff model" with some of my poker buddies from the coaching site and we came up with the following: (needless to say its not a good model...since everything is quite obviou...but when you put it into numbers its more understandable)
1. ANYONE beating NL50 online is smart enough to make a decent living as a skilled professional (engineer, doctor...whatever)
2.There is a big difference between being a poker pro with no additional qualifications (Degree etc...) since the marginal opporunity cost of NOT acquiring that knowledge/degree in your 18-25 is definitely a lotttt higher than if you become a pro after the education investment has been done.
3.being 20 yo and going to uni not worrying about anything is definitely worth a lot.
4. How much money would it take for you to quit poker right away? or do you play poker out of love for the game?
5. Are there aspects of poker that influence your life in a negative way?
This actually helped me a lot with my decision (im just writing this in order to help someone tht is struggling with the same decision problem) .
Poker had made my grades on my undergrad shait and taken a lot of my time during over 4 years. I played 2006-2010 striaght...every single day. And I think I stopped "loving" by 2009. It all depends on how you feel about the game really, but I think it helps to ask yourself these questions above... Being quite a risk averse person myself I found that 16 tabling NL100/200 with a 200 BI liquid rule for 6 hours a day and 10 on the Weekends was definitely not a life plan that seemed all that well thought through.
I estimated that I would need 500k to quit poker for ever but then I also thought that if you have a decent BR.. you can actually make quite a nice % for sums of 100k= if you have a good financial advisor. Bottom line is,I dont think it is LiveEV= to spend your 20s grinding for less that 5x(the potential salary you could have being (ex) an engineering graduate). The decision is relatively easier when you put factors like "pension fund" Social security contribution,etc on the equation. The risk premium of devoting your life to poker is probably as high as 500% (specially online poker, because of regulation and learing curve of opponents and long run equilibrium of the Online regulars) so, assuming you can make (a very very very conservative) 30k/year with a reasonable degree... and with a 0%risk factor and increasing returns with age, it would probably be EE- to play poker professionally for less than 140-150k/year on average. I found that putting your money away for a rainy day and getting 50% of the montly interest payments for your personal expenses is actually quite ok. Plus you get to have a normal job/aeducation.
I hope it hels someone that is having this same problem that I used to have! Plus you get to play poker for fun and enjoy it more i think!
This all sounded too serious...now the funny stoy about "when you realise that 100k hand s amonth nare too many": Back in 2009 my and my youger brother (he is much better than me at poker and he still plays) we were always grinding...really ALL DAY LONG and we never bought anything with the money we made, so one day we decided to buy a car together and tell our parents what we were doing the poker thing professionally. So we bought this vey cool brand new golf GTI but... with our brilliant poker minds, we knew that insurance was a ripoff, so we confidently decided to get just the basic coverage. Well 3 days after we got the car, we wrecked it trying to avoid running over a small fox that was crossing the road in the snow (this was german winter). We were so embarrassed we had to "rebuy" and get the exact same car twice from the same dealership just for our parents not to think that we were absolute idiots 3 days after telling them we were big shot poker players.
that was the day I started thinking about quitting poker. haha
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