My thoughts on poker are more or less contained in my latest extremely TL;DR journal entry.

forum/viewtopic.php?t=2074&start=975

ALl this is obviously subject to change based on the ultimate result of the U.S. Poker Shakedown...

Poker is a hobby for me but it is the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last when I go to bed.
I got a real good job in the casino I work in and I work 3 days on and 3 days off. So a real relaxed life.
When I work the pokerpit I want to be on the tables desperatly. But when I see the A holes being a jerk I am glad I am not on that table.

So on one hand I want to play for a living on the other I am very happy with the life I lead now. If I can just keep on playing I should be fine.

Poker is my passion, my girls are my life.

In the ups and downs of my life, poker was the only thing I could always count on. Poker saved me over and over.

I played poker for my living from the time I was 16 to 26 and put myself through college. I had no parental support or student loans or job or bosses. Sometimes I had a ton of money, sometimes I went bust. When I went bust, I would open a smaller no limit Hold 'em game for college students and younger guys. I didn't like running a game. When it was going well, I played in really high games with some major talent. That was a lot better. When I got my first job and steady pay check, I realized how stressful poker was with being arrested, robbed, stiffed, and going broke ever so often. I hear some of you guys discussing burnout in the earlier posts. I was burned out on being a gambler full time when I was twenty-six. I would advise looking at poker as a serious part-time, life-long important job but a second job.

Any Internet players who move to Las Vegas are going to find it a very tough go. They don't call it "the graveyard of the local champs" for nothing.

I never worked a job that took over three or four hours a day. I played poker any afternoon I wanted to. However, I often played mostly in the Fall and Winter and then again In May before I went to the World Series. It probably came out to increasing my income by 15% per year, some years more.

I made all the good friends I have through poker. My travel is usually to play poker. I don't play so much poker now.

Poker means not having to work a menial job, where ability and intelligence mean nothing, which is the only type of job I could get right now.

Further, I would have to answer to people who I would consider to have less ability than me.

Im friends with the valedictorian of my grade. He has the highest GPA since the school was started in the early 1900's. He has gotten into Yale and will be accepted into Harvard/Stanford. His SAT/SATII are top notch.

He gets paid 7/hr and answers to some jerkoff who barely got a high school degree. The kid was a super senior, meaning it took him 5 years to get HS done.

Poker means I wont have to deal with that type of BS. Ever.(as long as their is online poker, lol)