PocketFives is a beneficial community to be a part of, if I may offer an unbiased opinion. Most people are fairly friendly. Some are really funny, across the range of definitions of the term – punsters, Photoshop masters, storytellers, or deranged loons beyond the conventions of any known society. And sprinkled in amongst the masses are many of the best poker players in the world, online or otherwise. You can communicate with WSOP bracelet winners, WPT final tablists, and professionals who have dominated the game since the first time they touched a chip (or so it seems).

Easy access to great players, learning how they approach the game and live their lives, is a good thing. And yet, we’re too close. A little bit of familiarity goes a long way in hiding their brilliance. Steve gboro780 Gross and Annette Annette_15 Obrestad are engaging and friendly. Scott SCTrojans Freeman and shaundeeb are funny and honest. Jared TheWacoKidd Hamby and Aaron GambleAB Bartley are the same cool people I remember before they were on WPT television and received highlighted names on Full Tilt.

It’s easy to picture yourself as any one of them, or dozens of other ranked and successful players who are regularly active on PocketFives. There’s only one small problem; you aren’t, and in all likelihood, never will you be. If it were easy to be that good, everyone would be.

Amongst all the money, notoriety, and quasi-celebrity, maintaining perspective on where poker fits into your life can be difficult. I am both blessed and cursed by responsibilities: job, wife, kids, mortgage, yardwork, soccer coach, Cub Scout leader. I have a lot going on in my life, every single day. And yet, poker’s siren song is always alluring, especially when you’re clear-headed and running well at the table. Doing what’s needed around the house, rather than firing up a couple tables, takes a great deal of discipline.

I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for today’s collegiate to maintain discipline and successfully prioritize poker in their lives. A student has less required of them, and their demands simpler to blow off from time to time – easier to cut class than skip a day at work. Twenty years ago, I knew guys who flunked out of college spending too much time in front of a Super NES. Poker is far more seductive a temptress. Online poker is cooler, challenging…and you can make more, easy money.

“Easy money” is at the heart of the collegian’s fallacy with regard to playing poker instead of going to school and doing homework. Jobs available to a college student suck…almost always mindless, sometimes bordering on demeaning, and you don’t make a lot of money. Grinding turbo SNGs or low-stakes cash games, a good player can make twice the money (or more) than at a minimum-wage job. During the time in your life when poker is fresh, new and exciting, it seems like a no-brainer choice to spend every waking hour in the game.

Once you graduate from college, however, jobs don’t have any of the “suck” factors. After you gain a little experience, you will most likely have some control over what you do, and how you approach doing it. Most bosses don’t live over your shoulder. You’ll have some degree of flexibility in the hours you work. Better money, benefits, and vacation accrues into a regular paycheck, even when you get out of town for a while. It’s much easier to move up the corporate payscale than to keep beating tougher and tougher opponents at the poker table, for ever-increasing stakes.

The college dropout, or the recent grad disappointed in his first six months in the corporate world...they never get to see any of the career improvement. They bailed before the going got good. They cast their lot in life as a regular, professional (sometimes this phrase is tossed around pretty loosely) poker player. They have to put their time in at the tables. MTT pros have a regular schedule tying them to a desk for a set period of hours. SNG grinders know when the softer games run, and need to play at those times to maximize their ROI. Cash game players grind out sessions with no set end, logging as many hours as necessary waiting for the fish to come.

So don’t tell me the average working man is a slave compared to the glorious poker pro. The pro is a slave to a similar grind.

Poker doesn’t come with a lot of added benefits either…not like a traditional job. You pay your own insurance and self-employed FICA taxes. You may have a difficult time establishing credit or negotiating a loan. Budgeting your money and paying bills is harder when you deal in cash, and have the temptation of dipping into your savings to carry your bankroll through the lean times.

Your enthusiasm for the game may wane as well. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t like playing as much as I did 3-4 years ago, and I don’t put in anywhere near burnout-inducing volume. But if poker is your job, with no backup plan…you’re stuck doing something you don’t like as much as you used to. Just like the guy who decides he doesn’t want to be an accountant or an engineer or an insurance salesman after a decade on the job.

If you don’t think it can happen to you, spend some time watching people in the big card rooms in Vegas, Los Angeles or Atlantic City…anywhere there are grinders marking time until the next big score or hot card rush. The players at “pro” stakes are often the most morose people in the room. They look like they’d rather be anywhere else, but they can’t leave. It’s always been this way – 30 years ago, Eric Drache said, “If you told me I had to spend the next two days playing at the Horseshoe, I’d wonder what I did to deserve such punishment.” At the time, Drache was a regular in the biggest stud games around, and de facto director of the World Series of Poker.

If Eric Drache ended up bemoaning his fate…what chance would most of the rest of us have? The next time the “I’m gonna go pro!” bug bites, take a step back, have a nice, hot bowl of well-seasoned perspective, and understand where poker fits in your life.