nick and jakes posts should be must read material when the world of online poker is analyzed in universities down the road- both touch on some issues that are really only learned with time, perspective and maturity and i commend them for contributing

good post mike, miss seeing u around

 

Originally Posted by dmschec

It makes me sad when I see poker friends smoking weed all day and button-clicking their lives away, some of them are so smart and have so much potential. Flame me if you want, I don't really care. I couldn't see any of this when I played every day, my outlook was completely myopic I was beyond biased. But take it from me, there is more out there. Can you imagine what you could accomplish if you transferred your poker energy into something more productive for your professional life? Stay hungry.

Your post was excellent but really liked the above part, especially the last 3 sentences.

Some good stories itt, I guess ill share a condensed version of mine. I dropped out of school in the winter of 07 and have been playing for a living ever since. Had my ups and downs like everyone. Met some great people though poker, had some of the best experiences of my life from poker. Have 1 wsop final table which was prob the most fun actually playing poker ever.

Fast forward to black friday, my girlfriend was about 4 months pregnant, so I obviously wasn't moving anywhere. I have always been a saver for the most part. I eat out often, bought myself a new car in 09, buy my gf nice gifts here and there, but thats about it. Never just went out and blew money for no reason. So fortunately I have enough to be able to go back to school and graduate without working and go from there.

I honestly love life right now. In my 2nd semester since going back and my son is 5 months old. I go to school and most days come right home and hang out with my family. I am on track to graduate next May,and most likely will get a job instead of play poker. I loved all my poker trips around the country, but just don't think its fair to leave my family for weeks at a time, nor do i want to. on top of that itd be really hard to. I still grind on cake a little, and was on bodog before it switched. I still enjoy playin poker, but don't have any desire to move out of the country to play online, and grinding live is so brutal with travel/sleeping in hotels/14 hour days(mtts)

Like others have mentioned, there comes a time where your family is the most important thing and it is for me. If I have to work a 9-5 to do that, so be it. Ill evaluate in May when i graduate and asses the poker situation, but most likely it will be a hobby and not a living. Ever since being a kid, as wierd as it may be I have been looking forward to having a family and working everyday instead of school, so its prob more appealing to me than most. I also never had aspirations to play poker forever. I pretty much just wanted to make enough to buy a franchise or create my own restaurant.

Im still jealous of most of my friends who I see playin tournaments all the time or see people posting about grinding on sundays, but not near as jealous as id be of seeing pictures of someone else's baby if I saw it before i started a session.

im majoring in finance, and plan on getting a minor in accounting after i graduate while working. Im hoping to get into an investing/stock brokerage firm. Always been good with numbers and the stock market is interesting to me. Fortunately I know a few people who should be able to open doors into those fields so hopefully it works out.

First of all thanks to all it was amazing to read all those post !

I am nobody, but because you guys took the time to share with us i want to do so.

After having be working since im 15 years old( backery, supermarket, cellphone shops...) for 40k a year, wich is not a lot in Switzerland, I cashed 94k with some friends by playing my second time higher buy in than 100 dollars of my life. I took multiple holydays in Thailand. Crushing all my winnings in those travel with my friends.

Finally back to Switzerland with only 20K left we rented an office with my friends and started to believe in living from the poker. But, i wasn't ready to do so i had no experience of middle-high stackes and the cost of life in Switzerland is so f**kn high that it was a complete dream to be able to live out from those 20K.

Trying to survive ive been back to work again. And i can completely understand the feeling of dmschec.

 

Then I started work in March of 2010. I was fresh out of law school and being paid significantly more than what I was worth to the firm at the time. I felt incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity, it was great to use my brain and learn how to become a better attorney. I felt more plugged into the city and the world around me. I started reading the newspaper regularly again. I started reading the New Yorker and New York Magazine again. I coached a high school mock trial team from the Bronx as a pro bono project. I felt like a real person again, I was no longer some lonely ghost sitting in my boxer shorts all day clicking buttons on my laptop.

Because i felt like this too when started to work again... Anyway, i kept playing and cashed 36K in a live side event wpt Barcelona. So, rebuy to Thailand again !

This time i started to learn the languages and really felt in love with the country, the people, the food, the culture and the nature. I learned a lot from them about life and by the way on poker... back to Switzerland my only dream was to live in Thailand. But back to Switzerland the problem was the same not enough funds, not enough expérience and not enough discipline.

I was really lucky that my mom wanted to support me to make a course or a formation. I choosed Thai language ! So i learned Thai language in an intensive programme in Bangkok for 13 month and other 6 month made a Thai studies certificate. Between those 2 years of studies i had enough time to start grinding again. And build a raisonable bankroll for Thailand.

Now im playing full time in Thailand ! My dream became true ! I had to be patient, to be broke, to be drunk, to be in prison and to be in love before my dream can be true.But ive never been happy like this and i never played in so good conditions. I could not play in these conditions in Switzerland even with a 4 or 5k monthly salary...

So to the initial poster i will say, if you want/must go back to work it doesen't mean you will never be a pro-player again. Prepare your self again and try again ! Maybe some other countrys.... Or if you find your self more happy with a "normal" job, play poker for fun !

You say it was not succesful as you waited. You mean in terme of poker or your life in your new country ?

Anyway, thanks a lot for starting this thread !

And glglglglgllglglglglgllglglgl to all !

PS: Sory for my english and Youre welcome to Bangkok guys !!!

 

Originally Posted by CBorders

Since everyone is telling cool stories, I'll share mine.

I'm probably the only person who left a good job to play poker after Black Friday. I just looked at my W2 from last year and I made about $44k at a dental school, managing inventory, doing repairs/IT work and just being the guy people went to when they had problems. I got the job through my mother who works at the school. Prior to this job I was working in retail for $8.50/hr after working for my dad's cabinet sales/distribution company which got hit hard by the recession. Before that I dropped out of college at 18 to start a retail business which failed due to my inability to manage risk, but that's another story. I went from a horrible job to this cool new job where I'm surrounded by 18-28 year old girls (I have no game but I managed to get some during my tenure there!), everyone makes me feel important, I'm staying busy, etc. and all was good for a while. Unfortunately my boss was the type of the person who made everyone miserable. She came in late, left early, took extra days off, dealt out work to others that she should be doing, and her attitude had everyone intimidated and edgy. She also lied to her employees and attempted to steal about $15k worth of equipment from one of our suppliers.

Because my workload was so heavy I couldn't take more than a couple of days off at a time, and when I did take those vacation days my mind was always on work, wondering what messes I'd have to clean up when I returned. The students were progressing through the program and more cohorts of students were starting, and I had the responsibility of keeping the supplies stocked and managing the budget without any inventory tracking or accounting software. My coworkers were working just as hard, if not harder than I was and they also couldn't take time off. Tension in the office began to mount, and the drama never seemed to end. I ended up getting involved with one of the students and when things went south with her that pretty much killed my enthusiasm for the job.

Poker was going pretty well. Despite low volume I was going deep on a regular basis, final tabled a some good tournaments, and came really close to some real money. I was in over $30k makeup due to poor game selection, playing too many tables, and just not putting forth the effort, but then I hit a bit of a stride and really felt I'd get out soon if I kept at it. In January of 2011 I decided I was going to leave my job at the end of the year and go back to school while playing poker to support myself. This is my one obligatory whine sentence; I got 12th in the 105 super turbo during multi-entry week, KK<55 of sctrojans with about 50k for first, then that Sunday I got 10th in the Brawl where first was $388k and 14th in the early $162 where first was $132k, and then two weeks later Black Friday happened. My makeup was the lowest it had been in nearly a year, and had it not been for stupid live poker I would have been out! I went into a bit of a funk after BF. With poker and the girl gone and my job being how it was I basically woke up in time to shower and shave, got breakfast at McDonalds, worked, then came home where I'd get really stoned and watch TV until I went to bed. I did discover a new hobby in downhill skateboarding but it was so hot in Arizona that I'd only be able to skate at night, and I couldn't stay out too late because I had to be up at 6:00 the next morning. I managed to get away from work for one WSOP where I made a decent run, got to experience EDC and even tried DMT (trip report available upon request). I came home and knew I had to change something in my life, and soon. Towards the end of August I decided I was going to continue with my plan of quitting my job and playing poker, so I started selling my possessions and preparing for Mexico.

I left in early January. Prior to coming here I'd never left the USA before and despite living in Arizona where there is a healthy latino community I speak little to no Spanish. Cabo San Lucas can be expensive and surprisingly boring but it's a good change of pace. Poker has been fair to middling; my volume suffered due to MoneyBookers and pokerstars giving my all kinds of trouble making it difficult to move funds around, and I've had a bunch of close calls and final tables where I bust in stupid fashion and don't get the results I'm after. But I run hotter than the sun at 180s so the makeup-o-meter is staying fairly low. Despite having some decent results over the last couple weeks I've been tilty/over it especially after going deep in something big and coming up short. Tournament poker can be a mindfuck, and the effects are compounded by a lackluster work/life balance. Down here everyone I know is a poker player, the complex where I live is 55 units and probably 20% of them are occupied by poker players and I just never seem to get away from the game.

Despite the downsides and uncertainty, I'm happy I took a shot. Sometimes I ask myself if I made a good choice by coming here, and I think I did. I wake up in the morning and make myself a good/healthy breakfast before my session, some days after a walk around the marina. I get to cook lunch and dinner for myself too, and I don't mean sandwiches and Hot Pockets - I'm talking steak, bacon, man kinda food! I run the treadmill or lift weights at the gym daily. If I want to work early in the morning, I can do that. If I want to work a night session, I can do it. What if I want to work 16 hours a day, or no days at all? What if I want an easy day of volume grinding 180s, or picking out the 6-10 toughest tournaments I think I'm +EV in and just focusing hard on the action? Never in my life have I been able to do those things. Having time and flexibility to do things on your terms will do great things for your overall health and happiness, and I think it's something Americans either never experience or just take for granted. Being 23 years old and a malcontent who has no idea what he wants to do with his life is difficult, but this move has been a catalyst for change and personal growth and hopefully this will get me one step closer to finding my niche in life, whatever it may be.

I'm going home later this month for a couple of weeks because I'm kind of homesick; I'm a pussy and have never been away from friends and family this long. While I'm there I'm going to see an advisor at the community college by my house to see what steps I have to take to get back into school full time, and then I'm probably going to go somewhere else for a few more months of grinding. If it doesn't work out I'll go back to school and work for my grandparents' roofing business handling the accounting and streamlining their supply chain system. My dads business is doing pretty well too, so I've got some more work there if I need it. I also have a lot of experience and contacts in dentistry so there are probably a few opportunities available to me there as well, so if this poker thing doesn't work out I have a few hedges against busto.

I'm sure there are people who hear about what I did and think I'm a big idiot, but money isn't everything. Waking up in the morning and saying "God damn, I DON'T want to go to work today" five days a week, thinking about my job even when I'm not supposed to think about my job, and being depressed isn't worth $45k and some health benefits to me. Without a degree I had no advancement opportunities and I didn't receive a raise during my tenure so I'm not giving up too much as it is.

Consider signing up for online classes while at home to get in state tuition rates then take classes for costa rica. Its all by email and cost of living is cheaper there. Gl to you.