Crazywest,
I have been playing poker on a daily basis for the last 5 years. I am 24, graduated from an ivy league school with a business degree. I have profited over 100k online and over 30k live. Here are my answers to your questions:
1. Don't let anyone fool you. Playing poker everyday and for a living is a full time job. What most people don't understand is how much work they have to put in at becoming a better poker player. Poker is like most things in life. Real success doesn't come easily. You have to be willing to put in endless hours of work to become very good at the game. You can start with the training sites online (bluefire, deucescracked, cardrunners) . Putting in that much work will get you good at the game, and then going to 'work' everyday will be fun more than anything else, because you are better than most players and will win more than you lose. Losing days will be very frustrating, but its all about the long run. You have to cope with and become good at restraining yourself when you are having a bad day. Also, you should only play when you feel good. You shouldn't play when you are tired, drunk , etc. Having a fresh mind is so important, I can't stress it enough. Taking a day or two off when you don't feel great is always better than playing through a tiredness or something like that.
2. This depends on what kind of poker you are playing and at what limits. IMO, even low stakes grinders (grinding .10/.25 or .25/50 or low stakes MTTs ($20 Buyins etc) you can make 2-3k in any given month. The higher the stakes you play the more $$ you can make obv. Grinding out 1/2 NL online you can make a solid 7-10k/month. But these days, the 1/2 grinders are on the verge of going pro, if not already pros. They are REALLY good. There isn't a big leap in skill level these days from 1/2 to 5/10, or from 5/10 to 25/50. I consider myself one of those players on the verge of going pro.
3. I think NL Hold em and Pot Limit Omaha are the two most profitable games today. As I said, even playing low stakes, you can still make a decent living playing 6 handed, full ring and heads up. Heads up is by far my favorite form out of these there. It is the purest form of poker and if you can get good at it, it will help you become a better all around player.
4. The lowest point in my journey was building up a roll of about 50-60k in college and the year after and then blowing it on bad bankroll mgmt and awful spending habits. This is the one thing most people don't understand and never grasp. You see ppl like Chino Rheem, Jamie Gold and Charles Barkley who have extremely sizeable
gambling debts after they have won or made tons of money. They never really grew up. To become a pro, a true pro, you have to become an adult first. You have to understand that gambling for a living requires extreme discipline. I learned it the hard way, but fortunately for me I learned it at an early age. That was my lowest point for sure.
5. My greatest moment is tough to narrow down. When I was 18 I won my first big tournament for $25k. I thought I was invincible. It was only then and after losing a lot of that roll that I realized how much I had to learn and how far I had to go to become a pro. But my greatest moments were far after that. I had a 20k win at the
wsop, and have also had a few other 5 figure wins online. It is proving to yourself and everyone else that you can do it again and again that makes it all worth it. It's not the first time you do it, its every time thereafter.
6. Realize that poker requires extreme discipline. You have to practice good Bankroll mgmt. Good rule of thumb: Pros recommend 100 buy ins for the given level you are playing (i.e. 1/2 NL = 20,000) .. I believe that you can get away with 50-60 buy ins at the lower levels if you really know what you are doing. The higher up you go the more buy ins you need to deal with variance.
Hope that helps.
