New spot!

well IMO 35-38k is just not going to cut it imo, esp when it's likely you won't be getting raises and promotions like earlier in your career.

at your age you need 50k minimum imo and even that won't be very comfortable.

I think vegas is the best place for poker despite it being considered "tough" it really doesn't matter all that much. Best run games probably, and your surrounded by positive energy and people really into what you want to do, sometimes at a very high level. That's something nowhere else has. I think that's very underrated...I just really like the energy there. I don't think it's a coincidence the NHL team did so well there their first year. I also think the quality of people you can meet in Vegas >> other cities, at least at the casino. Probably my biggest Vegas mistake was not making many friends.

Despite all of this I don't think you should go to Vegas strictly because you want to make it in poker. I think wherever you go you should just go because you are trying to rebuild your life. I think vegas is a town that gives people second chances. People go there and reinvent themselves all the time. Practically half the town is from somewhere else as far as locals go. It's also a town where you can just pick up random jobs with a work ethic and a heartbeat. ex. Pretty sure blackjack/poker/craps dealers make way more than 38k at least after 1 year experience.

tldr I think vegas is a great place.

38k/year will afford you a standard "luxury" apartment (i.e. safe neighborhood, clean appearance), reasonable car payment, and pay all the bills with not much left over. I'm ok with that. As far as career advancement goes, without a degree I've had to use the "out vs up" strategy, whereby I can only advance by moving to the next company rather than moving to the next department. I think thats still an option for anybody really. Will I ever get back to 60k? Not likely, not without a degree and several certifications which I have no interest any more in pursuing. But I think I could get into the 40k range with a few years of rebuilding at a single firm.

It's funny, when I took my trip out to vegas I still remember sitting in my hotel room on the 20th floor at the Aria looking out over the Veer towers and saying "do it man, just quit your job right now, dont even go back, just stay here literally as of right now, this is you, this is what you want". Sometimes I wonder if I should have.

I'll definitely consider it, especially if the vegas culture is more accepting of people on career pivot.

I don't know man. The option of $40k at a non-harming livelihood seems like the best option. Don't listen to guys like hiems who are seduced by money and the glitz, glamour, and prostitutes of Las Vegas.

I was going to give my opinion of small stakes in Las Vegas but I don't want to encourage you. I always found Vegas to be a soulless and manipulative town.

My wife and I moved to Vegas about 9 months ago and my only regret is that we didn't do it sooner. Once you get used to that summer heat (somehow a plus for my wife) it's not a bad place to live.

Access to games/rakeback is amazing, cost of living is a good bit lower, and there is a lot of great hiking if your into that sort of thing.

I agree with hiems, move to Vegas.

Hey just coming in to say I told you so lol

On August 06 2018 19:11 LemOn[5thF] wrote: Hey just coming in to say I told you so lol

Which part!

BTW I am seriously considering the trek to vegas now. I did some more digging on the houston poker games and continue to run into what appears to be games running much larger than advertised. If you're good and have the BR then i'm sure it's heaven, but if I walk up and sit down with $300 and the stack on my left is 10k pretty sure I wont last too long.

^pretty sure he's talking about how he said your not going to make it in online poker. Thing is tho lemon you were the one saying how greatttt an idea it was when newb wanted to quit his job to play live poker when it was super obvious to pretty much everyone that it was a terrible idea, lol.

honestly dude, at the end of the day the REAL best thing to do is to give up this thing altogether and try to salvage your IT job. If that doesn't make sense anymore, work on your second career.

On August 08 2018 23:59 hiems wrote: honestly dude, at the end of the day the REAL best thing to do is to give up this thing altogether and try to salvage your IT job. If that doesn't make sense anymore, work on your second career.

Yeah I just cant do that anymore. Go to bed at 1am, wake up at 6am, eyes burning, skip breakfast, drive 30 minutes in rush hour traffic, walk in front door, sit in cubicle, login to PC, check for tickets, see 5 complaints waiting that morning, go get coffee, walk over to person #1, fix issue, go back to desk, see next issue, go to next employee, it's 12pm, go get lunch, try to take power nap in car, 1pm, take shit, try to get in 10 minute nap while shitting, suck up to boss, try to argue with stupid new rule implemented by idiotic senior management in unrelated department who doesnt understand technology, get lots of compliments throughout the year, complete most tickets in shortest period of time, streamline a dozen practices, ask for raise, get told it's not in the budget, get series of objectives to complete clearly designed to just be an unending series of obstacles to reset the goal line for another raise, etc etc etc.

I was wondering why you didnt like LA? Just bad rake and buyin limits at the commerce? I used to live in LA so I'm still familiar with the city

dunno. I haven't been in LA much. If I could live anywhere it'd probably be San Diego.

You actually like LA NewbS?

Commerce is a scumhole.

The only thing to do in LA is sit in a hot tub and smoke fat blunts full of excellent marijuana and go get bomb ass Korean BBQ in Koreatown.

well i lived in a cool little area called Los Feliz so I just hung out around the nice places, hollywood/sunset/santa monica/beverly hills/glendale. Wasnt into poker back then so didnt even know about commerce. If I ever moved back i'd 100% go back to Los Feliz.

From what I've read about commerce they have 2 types of games, bizzaro shortstack games where everyone just flips until they're sufficiently deep and then play "normal", and your standard 100BB games that are probably more reg infested but also play more standard.

I don't know what any of you guys are talking about. If you have any even remotely decent office skills you can get a job anywhere making $18/hr as an office assistant/admin assistant in less than 18 months. I do Talent Acquisition for a living and to get to $40k a year isn't difficult if you work for any company for 18 months and earn a promotion. I would advise working on both though. Get a part time office job for a dentist or some small company for $14-15/hr that willl build your resume and not take up a ton of time i.e. 20 hours a week and do whatever else you want on the rest. Then if it doesn't pan out you can do it full time for a larger amount of money... It's not rocket science. Good luck either way.

Well here goes, you'll probably take it with a grain of salt but I'd like to offer a suggestion.. First a quick back drop to offer some encouragement. Back about 10-12 years ago I played a lot of online poker and had a job paying mid $40k as a Route Sales Rep. Things got crazy and that job ended, poker was taken away by Black Friday etc.. Then the life went in the fast lane in that same period, got married and wife had two children. One thing I had always wanted was a 8-430 job as IT making decent money. Goal was actually a Network Administrator. So I had mediocre jobs as route reps, working 10+ hours for the same pay always.. Between 650-850 week. Where I live in Northern NY it's actually very livable money. Anyways, after studying for Cisco Certs and meeting with a local IT company I realized that path was long and a lot of boring study. So I started looking for something similar, BANG!! It hit me.. Electric Utilities.. I applied as an entry level meter reader. It was a union shop so I instantly began making more per hour with all sorts of perks. I used them to obtain a two yr electrical degree online from Bismarck State College. Lots of my credits transferred. Finished that degree in just over a year and a position opened up as a System Protection and Control Technician, aka Relay Tech. SCADA, Switchman, etc. Now I'm finishing up a 3 yr apprenticeship and my base pay working 7-330 M-F, is just under $100k. That doesn't include overtime during storm events where you basically make a paycheck a day during the storm event. This isn't even the highest side of the spectrum, Line men make the same hourly but have tremendous more amounts of overtime. These guys are already over $150k this year. Anyways, my point is I work M-F 40 hours a week during regular business hours. I take trips and vacation time when I want to visit local casino's and could sit down play and not have any worries. Want to know another perk and reason why I'm sharing this, you finish an apprenticeship and you can go ANYWHERE! You'll be in high demand and make a great base living wherever you want. Then you can play hard on the weekends and while using your 3-4 weeks of paid vacation a year. IT background will get you with a travel utility company as a Relay tech or SCADA tech. Get a nice stable job and play higher stakes on the side. It'll be more enjoyable in the long run. Good luck!

On August 25 2018 15:49 NighTLesS15 wrote: I don't know what any of you guys are talking about. If you have any even remotely decent office skills you can get a job anywhere making $18/hr as an office assistant/admin assistant in less than 18 months. I do Talent Acquisition for a living and to get to $40k a year isn't difficult if you work for any company for 18 months and earn a promotion. I would advise working on both though. Get a part time office job for a dentist or some small company for $14-15/hr that willl build your resume and not take up a ton of time i.e. 20 hours a week and do whatever else you want on the rest. Then if it doesn't pan out you can do it full time for a larger amount of money... It's not rocket science. Good luck either way.

$18/hr. The dream we're all after.

If I could make $18/hr working say 20 hours or so a week of flexible hours at something seemingly worthwhile that might actually be my dream. I am actually pretty certain that I could achieve this with poker come to think of it but I've renounced poker and gambling.

On September 01 2018 16:40 RiKD wrote: If I could make $18/hr working say 20 hours or so a week of flexible hours at something seemingly worthwhile that might actually be my dream. I am actually pretty certain that I could achieve this with poker come to think of it but I've renounced poker and gambling.

you forgot to mention the part where your parents pay for rent and transportation.

Because, I am poor but then I am fake poor because my parents pay for rent and transportation. Yeah, we get it. My parents paying for rent and transportation is also a misleading statement but this is all useless chatter so I don't care to go into it.

I understand k4ir0s comment. $18/hr @ 40 hours/week doesn't go very far as far as the ordinary life is concerned. Pretty much puts you at the bottom which is kind of a hellish place for someone concerned with money and status. I remember wanting the penthouse or at least the nice 2 bedroom apartment in or near the happening areas. I wanted the "appropriate" wardrobe. I really wanted a Porsche. I could go on. That might be like $300k-$500k/yr? What a hellish place to be in to be craving these things.

I am more at peace and more content now even though I am living with my parents. I get judged for it quite a lot. It is a practice but I have come to the point that anyone judging me for living with my parents I don't really care if they are in my life. People trying to live an ordinary life or more I obviously wouldn't recommend it for very long. Get the money right and move out and consume! Fuck bitches, get money! It's existence. I actually enjoy spending time with my parents before they get sick and die. I enjoy helping them out where I can. I am abstinent from sex: there are no concerns about a date judging me or concerns about where we are going to have sex. That's really the kicker. You really stop giving a fuck about a lot of things when you aren't trying to get your dick wet.

But, anyways, I think it is more important for NewbSaibot to figure out what he is willing to do, where he wants to do it, and reasonable expenses vs. an income. Obviously, when I said flexible $18/hr @ 20 hours/week would be a dream for me it is exactly that a dream. I could maybe pull that off living in a hut in some village in Asia begging for alms but at that point why not just ordain? $1,000/month is clearly not going very far in New York City or San Fransisco. Might as well just be homeless or move to Randoville, Iowa and do the spend life working thing or live with your parents and live a very simple life. I don't think NewbSaibot wants to do that so he either needs to get diligent with the IT path or he needs to take a large risk and play poker or figure something else to do entirely.

lol...

What's your dream hiems? Trolling me on liquidpoker.net? Going to Vegas, dressing up in trendy, chic clothing, doing a bunch of cocaine, fucking a prostitute, and lying awake alone in your king size bed in your trendy, chic suite?