Why did you quit playing online? - Page 2

Nice thread, just the other day I was Googling "life after poker".

2 years ago I stopped playing, since then I've been living of my BR, now that I'm back.. it's really tough, and I'm running low on money. I don't know what to do, this game really makes me feel miserable at times. With no work experience, and no college education, the thought of joining the real world feels overwhelming to me. Working at a brainless 9-5 job, or going to College for 3 years for an entry level job don't feel like valid options to me. Reading comments like the one Byrnesam made always make me feel depressed, because it's true. I can still make a living off this game, but its for a fraction of what I use to make, while requiring atleast 2x the work.

Like Midian, i'm a lazy guy. If you want to be making a decent living off this game nowadays, you have to be putting in a lot of hours, the game becomes a dreadful grind. Every time I log in, I see the same people playing, and it's really discouraging.

play less now just because of black friday being in usa. live in las vegas though so still play a decent amount between live and wsop's online site and the games are good. enjoy live more than i thought i would so thats kept me playing too. when i do quit it will be to go to grad school.

On November 12 2014 18:59 k4ir0s wrote: Nice thread, just the other day I was Googling "life after poker". 2 years ago I stopped playing, since then I've been living of my BR, now that I'm back.. it's really tough, and I'm running low on money. I don't know what to do, this game really makes me feel miserable at times. With no work experience, and no college education, the thought of joining the real world feels overwhelming to me. Working at a brainless 9-5 job, or going to College for 3 years for an entry level job don't feel like valid options to me. Reading comments like the one Byrnesam made always make me feel depressed, because it's true. I can still make a living off this game, but its for a fraction of what I use to make, while requiring atleast 2x the work. Like Midian, i'm a lazy guy. If you want to be making a decent living off this game nowadays, you have to be putting in a lot of hours, the game becomes a dreadful grind. Every time I log in, I see the same people playing, and it's really discouraging.

i don't know if it's something you're interested in, but a decent amount of people have or are currently transitioning from poker to programming. it can pay pretty well, you don't need a degree to get a job (although for big companies, HR departments tend to filter you out before you can get an interview if you don't have one), and there's a lot of great (and not-so-great) resources available online. there's also a bunch of coding bootcamps like App Academy, Hack Reactor, etc. that last around 2-3 months and the good ones have very high job placement rates.

former poker pro's blog who was part of the first App Academy group: http://krisallenfields.tumblr.com/
overview of a bunch of bootcamps: http://www.bootcamps.in/

On November 12 2014 12:55 Nazgul wrote: Poker is fucking tough.

Any random reg from 5/10 online would be by far the best player in the world in 2008....

So Naz summed it up perfectly, poker is mother fucking tough.

On November 12 2014 21:18 bigredhoss wrote: Show nested quote + On November 12 2014 18:59 k4ir0s wrote: Nice thread, just the other day I was Googling "life after poker". 2 years ago I stopped playing, since then I've been living of my BR, now that I'm back.. it's really tough, and I'm running low on money. I don't know what to do, this game really makes me feel miserable at times. With no work experience, and no college education, the thought of joining the real world feels overwhelming to me. Working at a brainless 9-5 job, or going to College for 3 years for an entry level job don't feel like valid options to me. Reading comments like the one Byrnesam made always make me feel depressed, because it's true. I can still make a living off this game, but its for a fraction of what I use to make, while requiring atleast 2x the work. Like Midian, i'm a lazy guy. If you want to be making a decent living off this game nowadays, you have to be putting in a lot of hours, the game becomes a dreadful grind. Every time I log in, I see the same people playing, and it's really discouraging. i don't know if it's something you're interested in, but a decent amount of people have or are currently transitioning from poker to programming. it can pay pretty well, you don't need a degree to get a job (although for big companies, HR departments tend to filter you out before you can get an interview if you don't have one), and there's a lot of great (and not-so-great) resources available online. there's also a bunch of coding bootcamps like App Academy, Hack Reactor, etc. that last around 2-3 months and the good ones have very high job placement rates. former poker pro's blog who was part of the first App Academy group: http://krisallenfields.tumblr.com/ overview of a bunch of bootcamps: http://www.bootcamps.in/

Agree, programming is the way forward. as long as you can do what is needed no one cares what your past work experience was. Being a programmer is, in a way, being professionally lazy: your job is to get rid of repetitive tasks and make things easier.

On November 12 2014 15:52 NotSorry wrote: Game got stale, lost enjoyment and realized I could make enough money to live off of botting games like wow while I went out and did whatever I wanted.

hah, this sounds awesome.

I quit after realizing that I had a really toxic strategy for playing poker; never study and major tilt issues. If you remember I'd break monitors and shit, put a hole in the wall once. It was never the money, it was just the principle of losing. I'd rage over bad sessions at NL2. My motivation for playing was all wrong, I just wanted out of a normal 9-5 and to "do what I want" with a poker income. Now that my salary is sufficient to let me take vacations and have nice things I dont really have a desire to play anymore. I still fantasize about playing professionally one day but I know that'll probably never happen now. (Probably? lol, ok lets be real it will NEVER happen).

On November 12 2014 07:42 Romm3l wrote: everyone has a different 'reservation wage' below which they no longer think playing poker is the best use of their time. it's a function of how much money you have already, what other prospects you think you might have and your motivation to explore them. i quit because - the prospect of making $100k/yr (modest guess of what I can expect today) by doing something i no longer enjoy feels miserable and pointless when it's a lot less than i used to make - my nw is well over 1mm from having made the most of the easier days of online poker, and additional money past a certain point feels pointless when happiness has a clearly nonlinear relation with money. - i was afraid it would be too hard and too late to get into other things if i left it too long. it already doesn't feel nice starting from square one at age 30. i think leaving it until you're much older to quit poker closes a lot of potential doors in terms of what else you can do.

are you fisheye84? I can't think of any germans that can say 100k/yr as a modest estimate besides fisheye who stopped playing

^ schnibl0r made a lot too, and I'm sure there are others

It feels like starting off playing poker in the early days (2004-2008 golden age) was kind of a curse because it took so little effort to make so much money. Most of the player's who started in this era have very poor study habits and work ethic so as the games got harder they did not have the skill set to keep up

Meanwhile if you started in 2009-2012, you started in a much more competitive environment where there are resources out there that enabled you catch up to the current player pool very quickly. So these guys got just as good as the old school players in no time but had much better work ethic and were still hungry for more. They were also not tainted by memories of the golden age where your hourly was 2-3x larger than it is now.

For me personally this has been very true, poker was a 0 effort money tree for the first few years but got increasingly harder. By the time black friday hit I went almost completely busto and was forced to rework my approach to learning and playing to stay competitive and I'm glad I did. Now that I put effort into working on my game and look for ways to perform better while playing, I find poker much more intellectually stimulating and overall rewarding - even though I'm making less money.

I'm also sure the poker skills I've worked on post black friday will help me no matter what I end up doing in the future; game theory, quantitative analysis, performance psychology (mental game), and general work ethic. These were all subjects I barely knew existed before black friday so overall I'm quite grateful for the way things have turned out so far.

Relevant longple post that made me LOL a lot in reference to modern poker climate.

On August 31 2014 02:16 longple wrote: Now its all about haveing everything figured out down to every single combo, and GTO/CRev/seatscripting and gameselection and doing fucking yoga inbetween sessions to increase ur edge for the next session like its just insane.

On November 12 2014 07:53 ToT)MidiaN( wrote:GTORB

ot but what is it? i havent heard of it and google didnt help

On November 13 2014 07:17 dogmeat wrote: Show nested quote + On November 12 2014 07:53 ToT)MidiaN( wrote:GTORB ot but what is it? i havent heard of it and google didnt help

GTO Range Builder I belive:
http://gtorangebuilder.com/#home

It's for Hold'em games only right?

You're definitely right in my case Smuft. That's not to say I didn't study hard in the beginning but I did so on my own terms (i.e. playing a lot and challenging myself). Those terms weren't good enough later on.

On November 12 2014 21:18 bigredhoss wrote: Show nested quote + On November 12 2014 18:59 k4ir0s wrote: Nice thread, just the other day I was Googling "life after poker". 2 years ago I stopped playing, since then I've been living of my BR, now that I'm back.. it's really tough, and I'm running low on money. I don't know what to do, this game really makes me feel miserable at times. With no work experience, and no college education, the thought of joining the real world feels overwhelming to me. Working at a brainless 9-5 job, or going to College for 3 years for an entry level job don't feel like valid options to me. Reading comments like the one Byrnesam made always make me feel depressed, because it's true. I can still make a living off this game, but its for a fraction of what I use to make, while requiring atleast 2x the work. Like Midian, i'm a lazy guy. If you want to be making a decent living off this game nowadays, you have to be putting in a lot of hours, the game becomes a dreadful grind. Every time I log in, I see the same people playing, and it's really discouraging. i don't know if it's something you're interested in, but a decent amount of people have or are currently transitioning from poker to programming. it can pay pretty well, you don't need a degree to get a job (although for big companies, HR departments tend to filter you out before you can get an interview if you don't have one), and there's a lot of great (and not-so-great) resources available online. there's also a bunch of coding bootcamps like App Academy, Hack Reactor, etc. that last around 2-3 months and the good ones have very high job placement rates. former poker pro's blog who was part of the first App Academy group: http://krisallenfields.tumblr.com/ overview of a bunch of bootcamps: http://www.bootcamps.in/

Hmm I had no idea bootcamps like that existed. Thanks. I suppose It's something to consider..tho i don't know how the ones in Canada compare. It seems like most of the programming opportunities are San Francisco. Is this something youre pursuing?

I don't know if i'm not cut out for real life, it's so exhausting. I feel like one day I'm going to be like, fuck it, drop everything, and join a monastery.

On November 13 2014 07:51 TianYuan wrote: Show nested quote + On November 13 2014 07:17 dogmeat wrote:   On November 12 2014 07:53 ToT)MidiaN( wrote:GTORB ot but what is it? i havent heard of it and google didnt help GTO Range Builder I belive: http://gtorangebuilder.com/#home It's for Hold'em games only right?

It's ridiculous what people charge for poker programs these days. $479..

Not too horrible, I think I like it better than the PokerJuice model (pay per month).

Anyway, 479$ aint nothing... there's a PLO program that's like 2 or 3k, I forget how much exactly. Made by someone on LP actually. Sauce uses it, among others.

I sort of want to buy it but I can't justify it to my brain

It's weird. In some emo-moment in my life in 2009 I decided to quit only to come back 2 months later. But this was when I was still playing 400NL-2KNL. After that I kept playing for years until now when I'm really looking forward to quitting at the end of the year (just getting that last PS milestone). I probably won't quit fully, but I will definitely try to establish a different source of major income whether that be a 9-5 job or my own company or something. I 'only' started earning good money in 2008 so I missed most of the golden age, but still did very well. Right now I don't have a lot of expenses but I earn almost nothing compared to what it was. Plus enjoyment just isn't really there anymore. I think this might also be a matter of getting older. You want to get more out of life than playing a card game at some point.

Curious where I'd be if I did quit in 2009. Probably grinding out a job. I don't know if I'd be happier than I am now.

Cant win

I learned a lot from my poker career. I learned how to put hours hours hours into something to become an expert at it. I learned how to come to a community like this for advice/news/networking on a topic. I learned how to start my own business ( created a coaching poker site) I learned how to use the interent to talk to people all over the world. I believe these are valuable skills.

I used those skills to become an expert at nutrition and health. I lost well over 100 pounds and went from not beign able to run a block to running in the Fargo Half Marathon last year.

There's only so many hours in the day to use your focus, and for an American, it's not worth it to try and go through all the backdoors on Bovada. ANd I don't want to move.

But I'll use what I learned here to become successful in whatever want to do. Poker gave me confidence and a path. Love the game.

I played becauae of easy money like so many other warstar 2 strategy game players. Games got too hard and now im thinking about going back to korea to play warstar 2 proffesionally.

still doing okay, don't know how much longer I want to keep playing poker though, I'm still enjoying myself for the moment and making more than enough money to support my family, but like twisted said, I think I'd like to get more out of life than playing a card game eventually