Originally Posted by Appst08

You're not "bagging" but you def don't understand. .......And this convo won't go longer because I don't think you WANT to understand nor to comprehend. The $ was real, the decisions were real and the dedication he had to grind day in, day out was real.

Kind of wish we didnt take so many shots the other night and could've talked about this subject more..or that I would've read your post before hand.

I think you had one of the more unique views in poker. You were very much on the cusp of the hsmtt world, correct me if im wrong here. For what I know you got to be involved in daily conversations with some of the games best up and coming (if not already there) online poker players. Yet at the same time like I said, you didnt get the same oppurtunities to play at the highest levels online.

Many people would and should be jealous and really take your post and read it more then once..

As for the post I quoted, people really need to understand what those badges mean..Jason touches on it but basically a 1M+ badge doesnt always mean huge profit. It does at the very least mean an absurd amount of time and energy spent playing this game. I don't know anyone who hasnt conceded that this simply "sucks", I think me and Appst said that word a few times..

A lot of lives were changed, some for the better. I will say this though, if you still get to play online don't take it for granted. Give it everything you have and play as much as you can while you still can.

That might be the one thing that keeps me up at night the most.

Who really knows if say I played more, studied more , not 4 bet this spot or that , would I still be sitting here working a full time job that I always despised. The unknown will always always haunt me

Thanks Appst for a great post and thanks Rock for the longest bad beat post ever (excluding threevens bad beats thread). I will go ahead and post my story/advice.

I quit my real job in late 2010 to play online full time. I had finally got the hang of mass multi tabling tourneys and was doing quite well. I made 10k+ profit in each of the 1st 3 months of 2011 leading up to BF without playing a tourney with a buyin higher than $55. BF hit me hard. I had 32k+ online between stars, FTP, and UB...but only had 1k in my bank account. I panicked and sold my Camaro and my motorcycle to have some money until I figured out what to do.

I decided to not move overseas because my gf was still in college and I wanted her to stay in school. We moved to New Orleans so I could play live cash. The first month was great. I profitted over 20k playing 2/5nl. After that I got bored. The play was so slow compared to online. I started playing every hand a was trying to bluff everybody. Over the next few months I slowly lost most of those profits and decided that I didn't want to play live for a living so I moved back to Texas with my gf to work a real job until online poker comes back to the states.

I was lucky to have a degree and some experience so I got a job quickly doing something similar to what I was doing before I quit to play online full time. I make 50k a year. My job is easy, no stress, my boss is nice and I make more than most of my friends who are also a few years out of college.

Here is the problem. I have to wake up at 5:30 everyday. I have to be at work for 9 hours 5 days a week. I don't get to choose the days I wanna work. There is not much room for growth here. I daydream every single day about playing online, winning tournaments, and being happy like I was. I feel like an moron for playing like an idiot in new orleans and taking for granted how easy I had it.

Watching all the legislation and seeing how slowly everything is moving, I think it will be quite awhile before online poker is legalized and worth playing. Probably only certain states will be allowed to play at first so there won't be enough players and guarantees for awhile to make it worth playing. The longer it takes FTP to make a deal, the less likely I think our chances are of getting repaid. If by some miracle FTP pays out, I will snap move to Costa Rica or Canada to play online.

My advice; don't move back and work a real job. Take some time off to rest your mind. If you're anything like me, you will regret giving up on your dream. Good luck with your decision OP.

Cliffs: awesome at poker, sucks at life

I felt compelled to post in this thread, despite the fact that I really dont read P5s much anymore. I know I'm not really known or relevant but here goes....

I started playing online poker seriously while I was attending law school in Chicago. For the first year I played I was a slightly losing player. In year 2 I was consistently beating midstakes. At some point a friend of a friend put me in touch with Govshark2 and we started a backing arrangement for HSMTTs. I crushed them for awhile, chopping a sunday 100r and winning the Mulligan etc. Then I went on a downswing and Govshark had to drop me. At that point, though, I had enough of a roll to play for myself. I was making consistent money and I was happy. I won a few LAPT packages on stars-- playing in those tournaments and traveling to South America was fun, despite the fact that I bricked them all.

But despite the fact that I had a comfortable roll, poker was taking a huge toll on my life. Classmates in law school viewed me as "the poker guy," and gradually I fell out of touch with them. By my final year it seemed like I had neglected those friendships to the point that they were irrevocably broken. When I finally graduated, I moved to NYC and started dating an ex from college. I treated her like shit because I was too absorbed in poker. There was always some excuse-- FTOPS, WCOOPS, re entries, sundays, etc. I had deferred my start date at my law firm until March so I had a few months to JUST play poker. I had been looking forward to it but I felt like such a gross degen sitting in my apartment every day in front of a computer screen. I felt like I was wasting my potential, that the opportunity cost for playing poker was way too high to justify the career choice.

In September of that year I won a WCOOP for 180k. I did a video of it for P5s training if you're interested. It was pretty crazy how reckless and insane I was, I had just become so desensitized to money that I didn't care. I guess that was one of the things that made me successful, but it's still bizarre looking back on the hh. I started taking shots in very high stakes NYC cash games and went on a gross downswing. The losses hurt so much more than the wins felt good. Whenever I lost a pot of $10k or more I would feel sick to my stomach. The people I was playing with at the time were annoying degens. guys in their 30s and 40s who were complete life burnouts. I remember thinking to myself that I didn't want to end up like them, that if I played poker full time I might be one of those guys. It scared me.

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. In an incredible stroke of luck, I decided to withdraw 95% of my online roll because I feared that Obama would raise taxes and I wanted to pay my share before my rate went up. so luckily BF didn't hit me hard at all. I found a good game to play in NYC, and now poker is just a hobby. I play every Thursday in a 10/25 game with friendly middle-aged guys who don't take themselves too seriously.

I know I am atypical. I know that lots of you dont' have good jobs to fall back on (Wandigo's story is particularly upsetting to me, I remember playing with him a lot and I respected his game). I know we all love the thrill of making a final table, the lack of defined schedule, the absence of superiors to whom we must report. I get it. I bill my time in 6 minute increments now and I recognize the benefits that the poker lifestyle afforded me. BUT I am sooooo much happier now than I was a few years ago, and it's really not even close. I feel like my life has a purpose again. I will always love poker, it's not going anywhere and it will always be a part of my life. But I strongly disagree with those who think that sitting around all day in front of a computer is the way to maximize lifetime ev in terms of either happiness or money. 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.

Me too. Post more dmschec!

Good post QW, what field are you going to get into after you graduate?

So that means no unbelievable dice rolls in Vegas this summer?

Congrats on the kid.