Quitting my job and turning pro, is it even possible?

Hi the13thing,
Yes it is possible.

The real question is: How likely is it that a player who hasn't played regularly for 4 years will be able to play at that level within 6 months.?
What will you play?
NLHE? PLO?
Cash? Tournaments?
Spingo?

You'll need to play a volume and at a stake that will support a 400€ monthly withdrawal at your average winrate.

There are articles in the strategy section that discuss this topic. The material might be old, but the principles will be relevant.

I'll have a look and let you know what I find.
VS

Hi again...
Most of the relevant articles are in https://www.pokerstrategy.com/strategy/poker-psychology/
Most that would be useful to you are above bronze level.

others may have better ideas ...

Cheers,
VS

Thanks for the help I'll take a look at those articles! I'm planning to play cash (NLHE) starting NL2. Eventually I'd like to dive into some SNG and MTT but not so soon... 4 years is a long time, that's why I'd like to start at NL2 to get some of this rust out.

Don't go pro until you have a winning play on decent limit for a big sample. You don't know what it means to play 8h/day or even 4 for that matter considering you have to do it everyday no matter downswings, mentally taxing days, etc. so if I were you and didn't want this to end a dissaster I'd keep my job and play as much as I could besides it along with saving some more money and then only after being patient first go for it.

Sounds interesting Here are my thoughts:

First thing is that you are now playing NL2. I think it it is so low limit that it is very difficult to make that much money without huge volume.
Let's assume your winrate is 4.5bb/100. In NL5 you would need to play about 180k hands per month to get 400$.
20 days per month and 6 hours per day would be 1500 hands per hour = 5-6 zoom tables or something like 13-16 regular tables. That is difficult too imo.

In NL10 it would be more realistic when you would have to play only 750 hands per hour.

Then one thing you must realize is that poker needs a lot of focus and discipline. You can't just play 6 hours straight and expect to play your A game. You need to have some breaks. And if you plan on studying and improving yourself, you will be having very long working days.

You must also keep in mind that when you depend on the poker income and you are putting a lot of volume, it can be mentally challenging. Your mindset must be very strong. And since you haven't played for a long time, do you have any idea how do you handle variance and pressure?

I have like 15k sample with 4.6bb/100...Having said that I have no idea how the field is at NL5+.

This is also a problem. Because variance can be huge sometimes, your real winrate could be -10bb/100. You have now played 15k hands but to even bother looking at your winrate you should add one zero to that amount. And that is NL2. We already concluded that you should get one or two steps up in the limits for your goals to be realistic.

So, my point here is that playing poker professionally is very much possible and you don't even have to be a super good player. If 400$ in a month is enough for you, with decent playing skills and volume +rakeback deal and bonuses, you could easily do that in NL10. However, this might not be realistic for you at the moment because you just started out after 4 years, you are playing NL2 and you do not have the sample to back up your winrate.

My suggestion is that you take poker as a serious hobby for a while. Try to play a lot, participate in the hand discussion forums, watch poker coaching videos or take private coaching (could get you up faster), read poker books and so on. First try to get to NL5 or NL10 and after you have a decent sample size showing you have a positive winrate, then make plans to become professional.

Yeah it depends on how good you were back then and how much money you need to live in your country.

What must also be clear is that a 5 bb/100 winrate at NL2 is ridiculous. Your sample is not enough but I mean, if we assume it's your real winrate, it's not enough as of yet. I can't take seriously players that have less than say 15. I know players that have 25. And it's hard to know what even better people such as good pros would do as they don't often bother playing a real sample at NL2 of course.
But the point is, NL2 is a stake that must not only be crushed but really destroyed if you want to have a shot at higher, way harder stakes. I know a girl that has 20 at NL2 but struggle at NL10. Really. How much moving up a stake or two affect your winrate depends heavily on your playstyle, some are more resilient to change than others, and also on your mental.

Are you saying that I suck?

Come on la55i. You are saying it yourself. And no one takes you seriously anyway.
That's why you are so popular tough. Everyone likes a good comic relief.

@ the13thing:
I moved up from NL5 to NL50 in 7-8 month and I have also a normal job so its possible. If you win at NL10 then its also pretty likely that you win at NL25.
If you really need just 400€ per month then its pretty likely that you will reach your goal if you have the right mindset+work ethic.
You should also choose a pokersite with a soft player pool rake is not that important if the pool is soft enough.
You can send me also a private message if you want then I can help you to find the right site.

But dont quit your job. Keep working until you beat at least NL25.
I dont know where you live but for me it makes no sense to quit my job for NL50 for example. Because i earn enough in my normal job and that without variance and I dont hate my job enough.

Floxy, yea sure that was a small joke The EVBB there was 8.5 and I hid it and yea that was just 4k sample so doesn't mean a thing.

I agree with CptJoker, it is definitely possible to make this happen. If you work and study hard you could climb the limits fast. But just don't quit your job before you have done that

Grinding is not easy. It's a hard work. It a f**king pain more that half of the time (you don't often win, etc.). You need to understand that your mental side will be much worse, when playing without additional income.

Playing 6 hours per day at a good mindset level needs to be trained. It doesn't happen automatically. You need to know when to play, when not to. You need to know how long can your brain function without a brake. It is also possible that you might not be able to play even 4 hours a day with good mindset and discipline. It takes time and work.

You will get -20BI swings easily and will need to play through that, it also needs to be trained. Breaking even for 50k hands is also normal, so you would need some serious volume. Not playing when on a downswing is not gonna cut it. You will have to play through it.

The thing is, serious volume can be achieved my multi-tabling and that needs to be trained. When you start playing more tables, you get more auto-piloting. Guess, what? Yes, needs to be trained. How? You need to understand the moment, when you autopilot and quit (take a break, refresh). Then train those spots (with less tables) until your auto-piloting (unconscious decisions) makes good decisions.

My tip would be this. Don't gamble on this one. Make a good decision based on facts what you know you can do. Don't just guess that you can do it.

Good luck!

hi Yes it is possible the are up to you what you want to live on and if you have 6 months to 1 year fore rent and food why not but if you see the not work out you can always start to work normal work againe but be careful

@the13thing Almost anything is possible in life. Once said it depends on many variables.
Where do you live for instance because if you live in an expensive city where life isn't cheap it's gonna be 3 times harder if not more.What's your definition of living ? Did you save money to realize your goals including enough to pay your bills for few years , rent , food , internet , eventual medical expenses , electricity , water , eventual material upgrades for your computer or network plus a security margin for unknown possible reasons ...
How long where your sessions so far ? How many hours were you able to put in daily until now ? Did you already try to do it during months or did you just do it in your free time coz it will be pretty different ? Do you have gambling taxes to pay on your winnings because it also matters as well.
What's your BR and BR management ? How's your mental game ? Are you the kind to Tilt on Up/Downswings and try higher stake to get back desperately your losses ? Do you have other streams of incomes as a safety guard ? How good you are at your stakes on a medium / high sample etc ...
Now if you seriously plan to do then you can start by having a half-time job and grind regulary the other half time and see how you feel and if you are a winning player ...

Best of Skills & Luck @ Tables,
OldSchoolPapa.

My hard-learned lesson is: always have a positive surplus in the personal budget until you get a sample proving that you're earning enough with poker to quit the real job market. This includes paying all your debt off asap and cutting life expenses and injections into the poker bankroll if necessary. If your budget is in deficit, then downswings will be damaging your mental health and poker decision quality much harder than when your budget is in surplus.

Being a poker pro is indeed harsher than a lot of real jobs but probably not programming. (I actually find coding more tilting than grinding SNGs. Debugging may be more gruelling than finding poker leaks - the latter are seen quite quickly in a tracker database examination.)

But as you're capable of programming for 180 hours a month (I envy you), you're surely capable of grinding for 120 hours plus studying for 30 hours a month, maybe even more, but I'd start with a pessimistic estimate of 150 total hours - better safe than sorry.

As for which stakes to play, don't waste your time playing too low. Play the lowest of those stakes that allow you to earn >$4 per hour (>$480 a month) in EV, i.e. more than your life expenses, otherwise your poker grind won't be motivating enough. I guess it's NL10 (at 6 carefully selected softest tables), though I know almost nothing about cash games. If you bust the poker balance early, forget about poker until you get the salary, pay off all your bills and have spare money to reload the poker account.

Originally posted by tonypmm
My hard-learned lesson is: always have a positive surplus in the personal budget until you get a sample proving that you're earning enough with poker to quit the real job market. This includes paying all your debt off asap and cutting life expenses and injections into the poker bankroll if necessary. If your budget is in deficit, then downswings will be damaging your mental health and poker decision quality much harder than when your budget is in surplus.

I think the bold part stands on its own.
There is good debt, and bad debt.
Debt that is backed by assets (such as a house), or debt that provides income or the means to earn an income (a car, or a business perhaps) is OK.
Debt to purchase consumables, or toys is not OK, and if it accumulates it will kill you.

I was in debt trouble once. It took a year to get into trouble, 7 years to get out. Managed to avoid bankruptcy though.

Best wishes
VS

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
There is good debt, and bad debt.
Debt that is backed by assets (such as a house), or debt that provides income or the means to earn an income (a car, or a business perhaps) is OK.
Debt to purchase consumables, or toys is not OK, and if it accumulates it will kill you.

While backed loans are indeed good for someone who has stable income, it's hard to get one at a good rate as an 'unemployed' person, which has to be kept in mind when becoming a poker pro.

For example, here in Russia, the ballpark annual interest on mortgage for officially employed people is 8-12% (partly because of the inflation, partly because the law doesn't defend tenants as much as in the Western world, and renting is more painful) , whereas the ballpark interest on property backed loans for the self-employed is 24-36%.

Even though the growth rate of a poker pro's bankroll tends to be much higher, it's still a poor idea to take out a large loan to play poker, but that's because the microstakes are still so soft that the growth rate of a tiny bankroll is a ton higher than the one of a large BR, and it's less risky and more profitable to build a BR from scratch (starting from a few hundred $) than to take out a loan to play the higher stakes that one probably isn't even beating yet. It's more profitable due to the psychological ease of play that translates into a higher winrate as opposed to constantly worrying about making loan repayments.

Wow, thank you all so much for the help!!! It's a good Christmas gift to come and see all these helpful replies! I'm writing on my phone so I'll try to address most of the questions with brief overview of my plan. Irresponsibly, I haven't been thinking thoroughly about this:
So my current job has an awful leadership and I'm just tired of doing crappy code for crappy software for a crappy company. Sometimes I go through weeks of not doing anything, then a project's given to me without any brief or context and it needs to be finished in a couple of days. I haven't had any training at all for the whole year I've been here and I'm often working with private frameworks that only have an also crappy documentation. In short, you can say I'm not content.
I'm going to be real honest here and tell you my current income and expenses:
I have a regular monthly income of roughly 1150€. My monthly rent, food and house related stuff expenses, if I don't binge on sh*t food, beer and don't eat out, can round 300€. I have no credits at all and I'm not planning to, not soon, not ever. I'll go over this later.
You're probably wondering why I don't have more money to linger over poker and that's because I'm a consumerist, I have many hobbies and I've been gathering instruments, drones, photography stuff, sports stuff, etc... But guess what, I have no time to spare other than working and trying to relax blowing stress away.
I know I may be resembling a spoiled brat that's having a breakdown, and I might be, but the truth is I've never wanted this kind of lifestyle and I'm just trying to do what everyone is supposed to do, I'm trying to follow the rules of this game. Not poker, but the game of life.

I don't want consumption to be the path of my life. I value experiences and I've been chasing experiences with stuff. More and more stuff, all things I cherish and wish u could spend the day around it, but I don't. I have way more stuff then time, my mind is racing but the race must be Nascar cause it doesn't go far, sometimes it crashes awfully with a simple task and the pit stops are f*cking short. Way too short. I need to hire some lazy ass mechanicals. I've been hoping these mechanicals could be poker. Poker is attractive cause I'm my own boss and if I could reach a state of financial stability I could choose whether I gamble the hours of my life chasing the nuts (the determiner "the" is important here) or chasing experiences. I'd probably choose less nuts than experiences, as I would in every situation.

After all this mumbling, a fast background of my poker achievements:
I started playing real money poker at with a sign-up bonus of 50$ (good old times). I managed to loose a big chunk of it and over the course of 1/1.5 years I've managed to turn 12$ to maybe 1200$. I was playing 18 tables of NL25 by then if I'm not mistaken, I lost close to 500$ tilted and withdrew all the money. This happened at a very tender age (let's say 18 onwards) while I was studying. I'm 23 now.

It's late for me and I'm extending way too much, I'll take another look at this thread tomorrow morning and I'll see if I missed something or if this sleep deprived post isn't too awkward.

I remember reading something on 2+2 that said, "If you are asking yourself if you should go pro, don't go pro". I believe if you plan properly you can get there but you need to be making larger sum of money from poker compared to your salary. With all that said, play more than 30 min/day and dedicate to improving rather then playing and making profit.

Originally posted by the13thing
Sometimes I go through weeks of not doing anything, then a project's given to me without any brief or context and it needs to be finished in a couple of days.

Well, sounds like you can keep your job and enjoy its periods without work to grind and work on your game to begin with and see how it goes