a lot to talk about

[Shaun]

[ QUOTE ]
Read most of what you wrote. With a new child coming (and even without one coming) my number one concern would be health insurance, not on going legality of poker.

I would keep the job if it is enjoyable. If you could drop to part time, even at the expense of some benefits (e.g. you having to pay the entire insurance cost vice the subsidized cost), that would be ideal. Alternately, going back for a PhD might be worth looking into. Were I you, I would be focussed on keeping my options open and my health insurance with a group. (The PhD route is particularly appealing to me personally, and I think you can swing the insurance through a university group, but I have not investigated this fully yet.)

If your wife is working, has health benefits, and will be going back to work after the baby arrives, then I would say go for it BUT wait until she has been back at work for at least a month. (Maybe you could take a leave of absense if she goes back to work; maternity (and paternity) can change your outlook a lot, and even if she is planning on returning to work, that may be something she decides she would rather not do).

[/ QUOTE ]

For someone like me who makes peanuts compared to this guy health insurance with a stay at home wife and a baby is a pain, but doable. This guy will have no problem paying for health insurance. Also, one doesn't have to live in a 2 million dollar home.

[tomdemaine]

[ QUOTE ]
ninja, I'll wait until I make a decision about turning pro to answer that. hope you don't mind ...

[/ QUOTE ]

You've made $6M and you're only thinking about turning pro? I'd have turned pro retired and bought an island by now. I hope you don't turn pro I want there to be some money left for when I get there.

[EmpireMaker2]

Whats ur name on party so I can stay away from u?

[Shaun]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
fnord, you are giving me a lot to think about. If I obtain insurance out of pocket, am I liable to have it dropped? what causes one to get dropped or rates to raise? do you know how self-employed people handle this? do you have a rough idea about how much it would cost on a monthly basis to support a family? ... I don't think I would be willing to undergo this endeavor if it meant the potential loss of health insurance. Any chance you could expand on this?

[/ QUOTE ]

I do not have a lot of answers here. I don't know what health insurers can/can't do, nor what they actually do/don't do in practice. I am probably overly cautious on the issue, but you should be able to get good advice on this. (In fact, if and when you do, please post it.)

Edit - for me, (on COBRA right now, which my new employer is picking up) I think it is about 1200/month, but I don't know if that is high or low.

[/ QUOTE ]

My first response was before reading your other posts fnord. A major medical condition would make our sitaution much worse. You are definitely right about health insurance being sickly expensive.

When my wife quit her job after we had our baby, we lost her health insurance and were offerred COBRA at the ridiculous price of 1065/month and like I said we have a healthy history. Obviously this sucked and so we looked into private insurance. I'm not sure how often they drop people but I certainly don't expect much from these companies because the whole business is a racket.

Maybe those of us who play poker should look into getting some kind of group started for health insurance purposes.

That said, with that kind of income Samoleus I don't think you should be too worried about it, but this depends on your age and health.

[IHateCats]

I think some PT's #'s will give other posters some context to your winrate in the 10/20. My #'s since July of last year have Punketty/Samoleous at <65k hands, winrate of 3.45PTBB/100 for just shy of 90k. Anyone else with a larger sample feel free to contribute.

Obviously this isn't a sufficient sample, it's only those hands I have on you and with your style large flucations are a given so a much larger sample would give a better idea but that is limited as well since both your winrate and the games evolve. That said, I'd be very, very surprised if these aren't over 80% of the hands you've played at Party 10/20 NL.

[Prevaricator]

how many hands do you think you've played?

[El Diablo]

sam,

What was/is your screenname on UB? I'll happily go through the thread and answer all of your questions (while I am not a pro poker player, I am 34 and have been a self-employed businessman for most of my adult life, so I'm very familiar with most of your issues - and I've also done a lot of research into the legality of various online gambling related activities), but I like to know who I'm speaking with first, since I'm sure we've played together a fair amount.

[aggie]

[ QUOTE ]
and I've also done a lot of research into the legality of various online gambling related activities

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey Diablo,

I'm very curious what you found out. Have you ever posted anything on this? Unfortunately, I'm too lazy to do research myself. Everything that i've ever read leads me to believe that the online poker is currently very much in a grey area.

[ledfoot]

I am a low limit player aspiring to become a reasonably solid player. Additionally, I also enjoy no limit, so samoleus' OP was particularly intriquing to me.

I don't mean to speak out of place since I am not in the same category of everyone else in this post yet I find what appears to be a significant contradiction among your posts:

OP - First, I have an outstanding engineering job (one of the best in the country at a premier think tank). I am loathe to give that up because if I do poker full-time for more than a couple of years, it will be nearly impossible for me to go back to this job - and to any cutting edge engineering job for that matter.

Later - The inherent difference between you and me might be that I do not obtain a tremendous amount of pleasure from my professional career. It is a job that is at times interesting, at times rewarding, at times frustrating, but never one that gets me excited.

Based upon the latter, unless you're concerned about losing your engineering knowledge and skills by leaving your full-time job, I gather you're not satisfied and therefore should do what seems to make you happy: poker.

Again, excuse me if I'm out-of-line.

[Equal]

Yeah this story makes no sense. $6 million and you are still wondering whether you should keep your job (which probably doesnt pay more than 300k a year. Sam if you are as risk-adverse as you seem by this post, your big mistake was buying a 2-million home. There's certainly more to this story. Are there other reasons than money that you want to keep your job? Why would you spend 1/3 of your winnings on a house you dont need?