[baltostar]

I specifically titled the thread re online tourney pros.

I don't think my questions are unreasonable. It's extraordinarily difficult to be a consistent winner in online tournies. There's enough data points on the tracking sites to show that. You can't look at the 5000% ROI guys, with relatively few data points. You have to look at the 125% ROI guys, with lots of data points. There's a recent article on PocketFives about tournies v. cash and what a relatively raw deal tournies are.

Re sw dev -- I don't see a huge difference in the glamour factor in reality. Either way you're involved in what can easily become a very anti-social profession, staring at a screen by yourself all day and night.

A lot of these young online players who stay up all night by themselves will get impossibly sick of it in a few years. Right now there's an illusion of glamour because of all the television coverage and overnight multi-millionaires.

Live tournies are even more difficult to make a living at than online. The house take is much higher, like 20% (or even higher -- talk about comparisons with horses !) versus 7.5%. You've got travel expenses and the time lost travelling, games are slow and you can't multi-table, no sophisticated sw tools at your disposal, you can't do other things at the same time, like watch the kids, etc.

This seems to happens whenever a certain area of gambling gets hot, like day trading in the late 90s. People concentrate on a few outliers (like the WSOP winners past 4 years) and think the life is way way better than it really is.

I don't think someone like Bax would be miffed at all by reading my post. You should never be afraid to re-analyze and re-consider where you are in your profession, and where your profession is at.

The absolute best in the business can only make about $300K per year from online tournies ? That really opened my eyes.