Originally uploaded by HolyokeHangover
The saying goes that grinding low-stakes poker will suck the life out of you, but playing poker for a living has its obvious benefits. And it doesn't matter if you 17-table $25 NL 40 hours a week or you bust a couple chumps a week at Ivey deathmatch.
Drawbacks are pretty much guaranteed, true, but the positives so outweigh the negatives that it's really no contest. Let's go over the positives, as they are the most fun.
Best of all, you work for yourself. There's nobody breathing down your neck telling you to get stuff done. You are your own boss. You have nobody to answer to but yourself.
This freedom is easily the best benefit by far. If you don't feel like playing one day, guess what? You don't have to. Which brings me to my next point:
You can take time off whenever you want. Oh, your friends are going to be heading out of town for the week and want you to join them? No problem; you can just play more leading up to that week and take the whole week off. No holiday problems; no nothing. You want the time off, you take it. Simple as that.
You set your own hours. Sure, playing poker is a job just like any other. If you don't put the time in, you're not going to get ahead. However, when playing poker you get to decide when you put those hours in.
If the games are no good then you can go for a run and come back or try again in the evening when the games are better. If you are going out at night then get your hours in earlier in the day. Flexibility my friend: it's the spice of life.
You can get up whenever you want. Obviously a huge bonus. Who likes getting up early? Nobody, unless they are sick and twisted. When you bend cards for a living you can get up whenever you want. Sleeping in till 1 p.m. never felt so good. I mean what else are you going to do when you are taking flops till 5 a.m.?
You can work from home. If you don't want to make a trip to the casino, any number of online sites are only a click away. Online poker has brought poker into our living rooms. And me and my 42-inch LCD TV and wireless mouse and keyboard are more than happy to welcome it in from the couch.
You can make serious money. Rarely are you going to be able to make the money that is out there to be made doing anything else for yourself. There are supernovas on Stars making 100k+ a year grinding microstakes.
How sick is that? You need no schooling for poker. Just the will to put in time to get better. Anyone can beat this game; it's just whether or not you want it bad enough.
So there you have it - even if you are just playing microstakes, you get to reap the rewards of the poker lifestyle. Contrast that with working every day in a cubicle getting blinded by fluorescent lights.
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