Need advise to start Poker career?

Hi every1! What do u guys think? Its $10k enough to pursue a Poker career? To do that i would have to abandon important things in my life, such as my family trust and their confidence, and do this on my own.. In other words, im risking all to do What i am passionate about.. Is it worth it? Pls advise!! I appreciate your kind words and comments..

Thanks so much!

rodmir29 said:

Hi every1! What do u guys think? Its $10k enough to pursue a Poker career? Yes, if you are good enough. To do that i would have to abandon important things in my life, such as my family trust and their confidence, I can not for the life of me figure out why this is even a question you ask strangers, and do this on my own.. In other words, im risking all to do What i am passionate about.. I am passionate about many things. So are many people. So what???? Are you good enough is the question you want to ask yourself, Pls advise!! OK, I advise you to not quit your family or your job till you can answer these questions on your own: AM I GOOD ENOUGH? CAN I HANDLE THE LIFESTYLE? CAN I DISCIPLINE MYSELF? AM I HONEST ABOUT MY ABILITY? I appreciate your kind words and comments..

Thanks so much!

Click to expand...

Comments above.

Seriously, from your post you are probably a beginner who has a dream. Dreams are great. Trying to make it come true, fine. But realistically.... How many hands do you play a week? How many bb/100 do you average? Over what sample size?

Sorry, I have no kind words.....

Well it depends. How good are you? Are you winning? If so you would be rolled to play 100 dollar buy ins very safely which gives u 100 buy ins. U can never be too safe with your money IMO. Start low. See if your a winner. See what stakes u can crush and go from there. Being a pro is a lot of work and just know that it will suck a lot of fun out of poker. My advice to u as a person is to for now leave it as a hobby. If you start making a steady income from the game, do it. I encourage u to go pro and good luck to u sir

Expertise is more important than a starting roll. I'd say start out small and then steadily move up over time as your skills improve, and become a pro once you actually can beat the game at a high enough level over a large sample.

Being a full-time pro isn't easy. You're comfortably rolled for 1/2 live (which a retarded monkey could beat), but you won't get a lot of hands live, so even beating live 1/2 for like 5BB/100 hands (the norm for a winning player at any given level) you will only be making about $4 an hour. To actually make a living from the game with that bankroll you need to beat online .5/1 and 1/2 over multiple tables, which is actually a very difficult thing to accomplish.

Plus you have to deal with variance. No matter how good you are you will have up-down swings, which will include losing months. So you need a very deep bankroll so you never go bust, plus money set aside to survive the down months.

Don't do it.

i say do it, then when the $10k is gone just go apologize to everyone

It is very hard to be a professional poker player in the us right now. You can always try to get better and move up in stakes but dont rely on poker as a source of income until you are a winning player over a large sample of hands.

credsfan03 said:

It is very hard to be a professional poker player anywhere right now. You can always try to get better and move up in stakes but dont rely on poker as a source of income until you are a winning player over a large sample of hands.

Click to expand...

FYP.
Online, Stars tables are much tougher than pre: black friday

OP, seriously if you're having to ask these questions then the answer would be 'NO'. But good luck to you sir.

Try it out. Would you be playing online or live? Or both? I think it would be a lot easier doing it live if there are some good casinos near you that get good action. I would just be cautious and have a back up plan if things do go well.

Oh yah I forgot to add something.
Not sure if it'd be +ev to quit family or not. Pretty sure 'it depends'. Might be -ev to quit family if you're talking 'long run' (ie. wills & stuff).

Good luck & keep us posted!

Need to have savings or some other source of income set aside to cover family and all other cost... You do not want that weighing on your poker decisions at the table to start out with. Its hard to bluff with money you cant risk loosing.

inflnlte said:

Try it out. Would you be playing online or live? Or both? I think it would be a lot easier doing it live if there are some good casinos near you that get good action. I would just be cautious and have a back up plan if things do go well.

Click to expand...

You have to beat NL500 to make any decent money live, and while that's not difficult it requires a 25k roll.

To make any nontrivial amount of money from live NL200 you have to lolcrush it. And even then you'll probably be making like $10 an hour.

All one has to do to call himself a poker pro is go to a casino, or online and play poker. But a career? That's different.

To be honest with you, $10k won't cut it. For starters, you have overhead like rent, food, transportation costs, health care, taxes.....and we haven't even made it past the crap table with the 3 young hotties making goo-goo eyes at you yet.

I suggest you get settled somewhere, find enough work to maintain your bills, and use what is left as a bank roll and use strict BRM. If I were to lose 2/3 of that BR (or even less), I'd re-evaluate my game.

hobonc said:

All one has to do to call himself a poker pro is go to a casino, or online and play poker. But a career? That's different.

To be honest with you, $10k won't cut it. For starters, you have overhead like rent, food, transportation costs, health care, taxes.....and we haven't even made it past the crap table with the 3 young hotties making goo-goo eyes at you yet.

I suggest you get settled somewhere, find enough work to maintain your bills, and use what is left as a bank roll and use strict BRM. If I were to lose 2/3 of that BR (or even less), I'd re-evaluate my game.

Click to expand...

OP, read this.

Read it again.

Rinse, repeat.

Why wouldn't it be smarter to start at the lowest level, see how quickly you work your way up as well as how you can handle grinding over the long term? If you find you are able to make your living from poker, you can make an informed choice as to whether you actually want to. Right now, it seems you're only guessing on both counts.

You need to get your priorities straight. A man without a family behind him does not have much. Prove to them that you can be successful at it then make a living from it because if you fail then what are you going to have. IMO

Here's an alternative.
Use the 10k to start at University - maybe do maths statistics because if you can bang the numbers about well enough to be a poker pro, you can probably Ace stats.

Play poker on the side:
If you make a profit and it funds u thru college great.
If it doesn't, be glad that your family will probably get behind you and do all they can to help fund you through, find a scholarship or go flip burgers to pay the bills like I did.
Then you can be glad u spent the capital sum on something that'll send you to a future in banking to gamble with other people's money

my two cents would be...be rich already. my favorite example of this is barry greenstein. he doesn't need the money, he just plays for fun and donates his winnings to charity. To me , this is the greatest guy in poker. Probably the only quick way to make enough to start a career is to get lucky through cheap satalites and lots of luck to cash out in main events.

studaddy420 said:

my two cents would be...be rich already. my favorite example of this is barry greenstein. he doesn't need the money, he just plays for fun and donates his winnings to charity. To me , this is the greatest guy in poker. Probably the only quick way to make enough to start a career is to get lucky through cheap satalites and lots of luck to cash out in main events.

Click to expand...

Naaah, you can't really even make a career out of playing MTTs unless you have a deep bankroll and are skilled enough to play 200k+ events regularly.

The quickest bankroll builders are probably HU hypers and cash games, assuming your play is solid.

It would be a mistake to break off with your family over poker, especially if you haven't yet shown that you can win significantly over the long term. It's easy to get sucked into desiring what seems to be the glamorous lifestyle of the poker pro (TV appearances, swanky casinos, international travel) but you have to realize that if you're on the road 300 days out of the year you will probably spend upwards of $250,000 a year just on meals, lodging, and airfare alone. Like Fred5198 said, if you don't make it, then you are broke and begging for forgiveness instead of just broke.

I watched the Big One for One Drop that Antonio Esfandiari took down for over $16m, and I remember the commentators saying that his family members were in solid disapproval of him playing poker in the beginning, especially since they have a very conservative background. However, since he showed that he wasn't just gambling, his family and in particular his father are now his biggest supporters. He also had another source of income, it wasn't just sink or swim to start out with.

In short, focus on some other way to make a living and study hard in the meantime. When you can consistently and over the long term make enough playing poker to support yourself, then consider making a career out of it. Until then, keep your day job and don't turn your back on your family.

You can buy back in to most games, you can buy in to the next upcoming tourney.

Can you buy back in to your family?

You can pick your nose, and you can pick your friends but you cant pick your family.

It all depends on you, but I put my family first. Of course, I have a family I love, and children, so I view things from all sides. As a father, as a son, as a sibling.

If your expectations about poker are unrealistic, you may not see that, whereas a family member who cares about you may. So if you get flak, it may be coming from someone caring about you.

I had a brother (he is still alive, but had is correct) who did some shit that cant be forgiven. He no longer has a family. I aint talking poker here. He is a sad human being.

Dont forsake your family, cause it may not be reversible.

If you play poker anyway against their wishes, I think that is absolutely ok if your have realistic expectations. Which I do not believe you do. If you lose, dont ask anyone to help you out financially. If you do this, its yours. You break it, you fix it.

If you have 10 grand get a full time job and play on days off/after work. With a roll that size id start at nl100 personally.

if I had 10k I'd use it as a liferoll and 4-table 50NL full time. But if you have to ask about this stuff, you probably just have no clue and no business playing for a living.

Abandoning family trust and confidence to put $10k into online poker is not advisable. First put $500 and if you are good (and lucky) you will be able to play poker with that money at the lower stakes which is advisable. Putting more money into it (which is easy to do) doesnt necessarily bring higher returns on your money. Its good to dream but keep reality in check, it can bite.