Okay R0y, my mistake, I obviously inferred something from your post that wasn't there.

Personally, I could play poker for 10 hours per day, by not every day, and not for the rest of my life. In other words, I could not do it for a living.

Thanks o o o o o o o o. As it happens, I wasn't asking on my behalf, it was more a rhetorical question, and mainly to define the difference between "winnning cash" and "earning a living". I'm sticking to football betting :)

Well the way you showed me your knowledge of how to break down P60 details in terms of net, tax & ni would mean that i wld offer you a job running payrolls for my business if you go busto.

Im sure you wld be a valued asset to my company but maybe not quite worth a 100k a year salary.

lol jpj. If you say it it must be true.

I think the tax calc was pasted from an online calculator Joffy.

R0y, the boredom issue. yes a 9-5 job can be boring, but one one hand it is swings and roundabouts, you usually get to meet people socialise with work friends and have some "real life" experiences along the way. On the other hand the boredom over 8 hours can be forgotten whilst skiving/daydreaming, running on autopilot. When playing poker any of these traits is costly. So not exactly comparable in my book. I know, (as I'm sure you do), many an unhappy bored soles who grinds 8 ours in an office but in reality they do 4 or 5 hours of productive work. Playing online poker with this attitude is the fast road to the poorhouse.

As someone said above playing for a living requires a certain type of discipline and most people do not possess it imo. This becomes more so if the persons skills and or bankroll require him to play mutitables high volume repetitive type poker. If your rolled to high heaven and sit waiting for £10K fish to turn up once or twice per day then life is different to a grinder 10 tabling $0.50/$1.

I think the OP can answer his own question by acknowledging how much, what kind, and what stakes he would have to play to earn his desired living.

WORK ffs

my 2c on this is that to play poker full time i think you need to be really earning well above what you would in a normal full time job.
consider someone getting by on 25k a year playing poker. its only going to get harder, what happens in say 5 years time when your %'s have dropped and say you go through a bad patch.

If when you try and return to the workforce after 5 years its going to be tough unless you have a real solid background in something or are looking for a job in sports betting or similar. Chances are you won't find a well paying job and you are behind the 8 ball as won't have saved much from your poker playing days, so was there any benefit playing full time for that period?

Its a diff kettle of fish if you are earning 100k+ a year from poker. After 5 years you could easily have saved enough to buy a house, then you've gotten something out of it and can move forward. If it all goes tits up you at least have an asset and have something to fall back on.

Funnily enough when i was playing full time earlier this year I only tilted badly once, and i never strayed to diff stakes or games, something that can't be said for my part time game. I think playing full time concentrates your mind, at least it did for me, but i've not been in the position where i'm struggling and have bills to pay, that would suck.

Possibly your first sensible one too. Go lie down for ten ;-)

A lot of people here are saying it like £25k a year is no money... this is more than a hell of a lot of hard working people could dream of making in a year..... there are scaffolders etc that although in london can earn maybe 5-600 a week, in some areas of the country they are doing it for like £7 per hour....these guys are knocking there**out for maybe 2-300 a week.... i know what id rather be doing.....

thanks Jim, I've had a nice lie down. Now whats for dinner? :p

fair point soc.... u are obviously eaarning a good wage from whatever you do and so it would be pointless playing full time, what i was saying is that for a lot of people earning 20-30k a year from poker it is a v good income and more than they could possibly earn in the real world....

Marty Smyth is now on a milkman in Belfast.

I've had 2 jobs. One was working in Burger King of a weekend while in sixth form. The other was a factory job not long after leaving 6th form. Poker is far more enjoyable than those jobs!

There is a huge difference between 50K from full time work and 50K from poker (Probably in the region of 20-25k)

soap i've told you before as a giggolo/rent boy you'd get more business if you had a regular back, crack and sac wax!

Soap 23 Dec 18:35
There is a huge difference between 50K from full time work and 50K from poker (Probably in the region of 20-25k)

Its my belief this is lost on alot of people.

uni is great for dossers/poker players