[Hotel Detect]

For me this is almost entirely a question of what you want in life...

If you want to accumulate a large net worth then poker simply is not the path. I know that a lot of ppl on this site do not agree with me on this one, but virtually no poker player out there is what I consider to be trully wealthy. So if you are interested in one day being in the 50 million $ range, then you best start busting your ass in the business world, because it ain't gonna happen in poker. (unless somehow you magically became the next Phil Hellmuth, who might be the only one that is even close to this level) If you want to be in this category then i think wasting any time playing poker will do you more harm than good.

If you want to have a moderate to small net worth 10 or 15 years from now then perhaps you can take a stab at this dream, as long as you follow it up in a couple years with further education and a legitimate career path. There are going to be holes in your resume as others have stated but this should not preclude you entirely from successfully reentering the job market imo, you just aren't going to be the guy that is rocketing up the corporate ladder.

If you have low aspirations and are aiming for a stagnant, low net worth than you could employ a strategy of grinding 2/5 nl, working as a bartender, and avoiding the pitfalls of towns like vegas. (pit games, partying excessively, etc)

Since you seem like the type of person that is aiming to land in one of the first two categories, then I do not see how grinding it out at poker is going to help you very much, but it also might not hurt you irreversibly either.

Also, there is more to life than money, trust me, this is very true. Even with large sums of money, someone needs to find a mental balance that allows them to be happy. I have struggled with this quite a bit myself and I have family members that worked so hard to make it to the point of hundreds of millions that they forgot to notice that their life was passing them by. No one can make this choice for you since it has to do with what you are most interested in at your core as a person.

GL, my inclination is to go ahead with a plan of playing poker (so you don't regret what could have been), while either taking a light grad school courseload or pursuing an internship as others have suggested. I think you will tire of the poker side of things fairily quickly and begin your path to bigger aspirations.

Finally, I just want to say that having lived in vegas for so long and having grown up with various intelligent people that have no desire whatsoever to have a real job and are seduced by the faux ease of the poker world, I have seen many many people try and fail at what you are intending on doing. It is in no way easy, and it is only sustainable by people with very specific personality traits. Most of the people that I have known that have tried were people that wanted more monetarily from life than your average person and they certainly didn't find it grinding low limit NL.

once again, gl

ps - I was under the impression that Foxwoods games were softer than vegas games, anyone know?