Going "pro"

Most of my friends have, since I've told them about what I'm doing, expressed a degree of skepticism regarding my latest career venture that has ranged from thinly veiled incredulousness to outright hostility. Part of that is that I can't help but be a little flippant. I just tell them that "'Professional Poker Player' is bound to get me more chicks than 'Unemployed Engineer'." I've even made an approximation of that into my MSN comment for the time being.

The truth is, though, it's not a decision that can possibly be made lightly, and is still a source of great internal anxiety. It can be described as a leap of faith, and I am expressedly not a person of faith. After all, I have only just barely been a winning poker player online for the past several years; what makes me think I can possibly eke out a living?

Thing is, it's not so much blind faith as it is a reasonable hypothesis that simply hadn't been tested. I've played enough of the NLHE cash games to know that they're populated with idiots even a great deal up the food chain. The only faith part, really, was that I could train myself not to be one of them.

And the fact is, there's no way to test the hypothesis out without jumping in. Can't learn to swim if you're not willing to get a little wet.

And I'm limiting the recklessness of it as much as I can. I've always been a bit of a Life Bankroll Nit, and money around me has a way of accumulating in my bank accounts without ever being touched. I've never limited my purchases, and am notoriously hard to shop for for Christmas (everyone in my family is, really; we've never been big into self-denial), but my hobbies have never really been that extravagant and I've always had profitable employment. When you're single and raking in $70k, it's not hard to save up.

Additionally, I just transferred from owning to renting, and the selling of my house meant for a sizable dump into my bank account. I've lived somewhat frugally for the past few months, and estimate that I have enough scratch saved up for 20 months or so before I would start to get desperate. Additionally, I have awesome, supportive parents (the ultimate pride-swallowing safety net), good friends with mostly unused basements (a more palatable safety net), and a 401k from my Kimberly-Clark job still worth 6-figures. I wouldn't dip into that except as a last resort, but hey, it beats the hell out of starving.

More important than any of that, though, was the psychological feeling towards my engineering career, best summed up in the phrase "burnt out" (though it doesn't seem nearly strong enough). I fucking dreaded going into work day in and day out, lived for the weekends, despised Mondays with a passion. No salary is worth that. No number justifies day-in, day-out misery.

It's only been three weeks or so, but I already feel tangibly freer. I'm looking to go visit my brother and sister-in-law over Christmas, and don't even know how long I'm going to stay - I only know that I'm bringing my laptop and plan on putting in at least 1000 hands a day, when I'm not being assaulted by my four-year-old niece or bugged by my parents.

I think I've wanted to do something along these lines since sometime in 2005 when I read a post by TillerMaN on his blog: Poker Timeline. It charts his meteoric rise from NL25 (having borrowed $500 from his Mom's credit card) to NL5000 over the course of just a few months. Perhaps the most encouraging part of it was his trip to Vegas, which turned to a trip to visit with a gaming buddy in Seattle for the period of a few months. There, he didn't have a computer, so he just ordered a cheap desktop and proceeded to crush the games at Stars.

At the time I read it I was working 90 hour weeks doing a job I was quickly coming to despise. And so that little anecdote really stuck with me. It represented - freedom, in a sense, I guess, but without the sense of pennilessness that that sort of freedom is usually paired with. It's unbelievably refreshing to think that a means of making money will come with me wherever I can tote my laptop. And you'd best believe that that sucker is coming with me anywhere!