depends what you mean by living. Do I think I could make a living wage from the game?
absolutely I know this for a fact and have statistically significant results to back this up.
Do I think I could do it for a living in terms of a career? probably not. and thats not a reflection of me specifically its the circumstances.
online poker is under big threat from multiple sources
1. a lot of
poker sites seem to be moving away from offering beatable games to offering scratch card luck based games its questionable whether beatable games will even exist in the future online.
2. tax changes and law changes may affect the reliability of this in the future, certain tax changes could make the game unbeatable and whilst not immediately likely we have to acknowledge this as a threat.
3. bots are a major threat and what we have seen so far is nothing compared to what we are likely going to see in coming years.
4 whilst i like to emphasize my mathematical ability maths is becoming much less useful in poker as time goes on. this is not because poker is not mathematical there is a huge amount of maths for poker. the problem is many very highly astute mathematicians have broken down the math and simplified the results. so that now people with little to no mathematical ability can play a highly precise mathematical game due to what they learned from software programmed by the maths guys or simple rules taught to them which involved very complicated maths to find.
of course one can adapt and use new math to find an edge but that potential edge keeps getting smaller and smaller.
sure I can make a living wage from poker today, the question should be will I be able to make a living wage from the game in ten years time? and the answer there is a lot more doubtful.
now so far My talk has all been about internet poker. Life poker is more interesting I think its an area the bots will likely never come to, and there will always be a lot more casuals who did not learn all the finer points.
the drawback to this is if we want to be a tournament player there is a lot of traveling and hotel bills etc that will eat into our earnings a lot and may even make the whole thing loss making.
we could play cash games but normally its hard to find live cash games that can provide a decent income. the best cash games I know of in the uk are in London and yes you actually can make a decent wage there with the right table selecting if your a decent player.
the problem is london is a very expensive place to live so your take home pay will likely be hit hard by traveling expenses and food etc, or by your rent.
I think with hard work and a lot of effort I could probably take a nice comfortable income from live poker, however with the same hard work and effort I could probably get a more reliable career that payed more anyway.
Poker has always been a source of income to me that no one can say to me with. that will always offer me those additional outs.
But its not something id want to stake my life on.