Re: Going pro
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Its not just about maximising income, the alternative is a day job and that sucks for some of us (I left a lot more than $50,0000 and wouldn't go back and I'm not even any good).
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I understand that there are some downsides to day jobs and one of the most appealing aspects of online poker is the freedom that comes with being able to play whenever you feel like it. That said, that freedom is going to be increasingly diminished to the extent that it becomes harder and harder to find a nicely profitable game at any time in the day. Second, if the games become sufficiently tough that it becomes difficult to maintain a winrate above a few tenths of a BB/100, then the danger of going broke is going to be severe. Imagine a 1000+ BB downswing that takes place over several months of play. That means losing 1000 BB in cash + whatever your living expsenses for that time period are.
Are the games *that* bad yet? No, I don't think so, but the poker ecosystem is in a very fragile state. The number of weak fish that support the winning players is much lower than it has been in the past. With tougher games all over the place, the fish are going broke at a faster rate and are not being replenished. There's a real danger that games will slowly become worse and that eventually the players who are mediocre winners and/or run bad over a long stretch will go effectively bankrupt.
Is this preordained to happen? No, and there's a lot of people who have a major incentive to keep a poker economy going. But it does mean that deciding at this point in time to go pro -- instead of say, working a day job for the time being while playing on the side and feeling out how the poker ecosystem evolves over the next few months -- is probably a poor decision.
I hope it works out for people who are relying on poker as their sole source of income, but I fear that it will not end well for everybody in this situation.
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