Balancing a Job and Poker

I wrote this in response to a thread posted on DeucesCracked earlier today. I got some good feedback and feel it's worthy to contribute to my blog.

So basically the guy is getting to finish college and is wondering how to balance work and poker.

"I graduate next year, and I'm trying to come up with a solution to balance life and poker. I still want to have poker in my life to some degree, but at the same time, I'd like to advance my career either through grad school, or move up the ranks in the job market.

I know many of you guys are pros who play poker full time, but how many people out there have some sort of schedule where they work maybe ~30 hours a week while still pulling another ~25 hours playing poker, or some situation similar to that?

Any life advice, or recommendations from the pros, or semi-pros out there?"


My response:


Hey, I work a full time 40 hour a week job and I consider myself semi pro since I consider poker my part time job. Anyway, I think I was kind of like you when I was in college. I was ready to get out, get a real job, and move up the working ladder. At the time I didn't look at poker as something that I wanted to achieve full time. This wasn't until I started working and saw what "working" is like. I think some people are wired for this 8-5 mon-fri stuff and some people aren't. I happen to be one of those people who aren't. It isn't that I'm lazy and don't like working, it's that I see the opportunity cost side of it and that drives me. Like for the amount of time I put into this job, I could put the same amount in poker and one day be making more than I could ever imagine at my job. And that includes if I made it to the highest position available at work. Which I probably have a good chance because I'm a competitive person and if I really wanted it, I would do what it takes to achieve. And don't get me wrong it's easily 6 figures but the way I see it, there is a limit to how much I can achieve and it's always waiting on someone else. Like will I get that raise or promotion? No matter how hard you work, it may not come and work isn't like they show in the text books. Office politics and some people are so lame especially if they see you becoming a threat and sometimes this comes with success. Anyway, I've always been the type that doesn't just settle. Like I see all of these people here way older than me and it makes me think that I couldn't possibly just say "well this is it. This is who I am and where I will be for the next 30 years." I feel like it's such a waste of life sitting here 9 hours every day. There has to be a better way. I guess also the way I see it is to get wealthy you have to learn how to make your money work for you eventually and not always working for your money.

The reason I am telling you this is because I think when you are attempting to balance your poker and work, being that you sound like a smart guy, you will probably start having these feelings once the whole initial newness of working wears off and you find yourself years later in this broken record routine of going to sleep early, waking up, waiting for 5, going home, going to sleep and doing it all over. And you end up living for each weekend. Time starts to fly because it's all about getting to the next weekend fast. And like I said, you may find that you enjoy this life and it's for you. This "normal" life of a secure job and being content.

Assuming you continue playing poker and start to feel this you will have to balance it because it becomes easy to not care about your real job anymore especially when you see guys like Krantz, Tom and Ivey at the nosebleeds betting your salary and making more in one night than you could probably achieve in 5 years of working your butt off. Like you will lose your desire so you really have to keep yourself grounded in the event poker doesn’t work out once you start feeling this. Personally, I was the guy who came into my job looking to be ceo one day and now I have completely lost my desire. In my mind, I've already quit. Like I don't care anymore and am focused 100% on making this poker thing work out because this is what I want to do with my life. Some and most normal people who don't understand would probably be like man, that’s horrible. Doing what you are trying to achieve is so far out of reach and just isn't very likely. Well that’s people putting limits on you and I guarantee these people have put limits on their ability to achieve in their life. So expand and don't let yourself or other people put limits on your life. I personally have been searching for this since I've been a little kid, but only realized within the last year that poker is what I've been searching for. It is my means to achieving what I want in life and it's who I am. But still I have to balance because I'm still working my job and not to a point where I could even consider going full time with poker. YET. Thinking like this can really get you in trouble if you let it affect your performance at work. So always maintain the performance even if you lose your desire and if you are like me, in about 3-4 years of doing this every day, you will. Use your job as a motivational tool to fuel your poker. So anyway, just preparing you for a dilemma you may face when balancing poker and life/ real job etc. And if you turn out to be one of those people who enjoys working and see yourself doing it for years to come then more power to you and that's just who you are.

Working, I'm in a similar situation as sounded simple where I start playing after working a 9 hour day. My job is pretty tough mentally and can be very high paced at times. Doing both work and poker can be tough at times, but very possible. I think one important thing is getting enough sleep at night. It's hard to work all day and come home and get to work on your poker job if you didn’t get much sleep the night before. I'm not even going to go into it because I think we are all advanced enough to know why playing tired isn't the greatest. So don't just dive in head first, build yourself up to handling two jobs. It can take some time.

Also you have to balance your time of say studying and playing. To improve you still have to find time to study with working these two jobs and that can become a job all in itself when time is limited. You can go for months at a time of playing every day/studying after work, but balance so you don't get burnt out. Take days off where you don’t even think about poker or "work". And if you want to take poker serious you may have to give up a lot of your weekends. This may or may not become a problem depending on your social life but since you can't put in the hours as much during the week you have to make them up on the weekends. And probably the most profitable time during the weekends is at night when all the drunk people are on the tables. I think this all depends on your aspirations and how serious you take it. And you may find that playing during the day on the weekends and partying at night is fine. I personally feel like I have to make it up and there is so much money that I'm missing if I go out and party. Although, I'm 28 now and had lots of years of partying so skipping out on the partying isn't such a big deal to me anymore. In fact, I'd rather just chill then go out the bars and clubs now. While some of my friends are out partying, blowing money, getting wasted, I'm at home making money and staying out of trouble and in turn saving money outside of poker. (I 100% keep my poker money separate from my other money) And not to mention, when I accomplish my goal of going full time with poker one day, I will have plenty of time to make up the "partying" and it's worth it because I will have achieved my own personal "dream job". It's not about completely shutting yourself off to the world forever, it's just in a sense, temporarily sacrificing some things for hard work. This isn't anything crazy.

Something else worth mentioning that sounded simple touched on especially during the economic times, is that it's nice to have two sources of money coming in. One side, it's nice to know that if something crazy did happen and I lost my job, I wouldn't be totally screwed and could probably make this poker thing work if it came down to it. Would be tough but I think possible especially considering its amazing at what your brain can do when put in a situation like that and being that I sort of did it while I was in college. So basically, I'm not scared if the worst happens. And on the other side, having a full time job helps take a ton of pressure away from poker because you aren't relying on the money to survive. You can have a downswing and be perfectly fine. And since you don't have to cash out your roll, you can continue to let it grow and keep it separate from all other money you may have.

So anyway, maybe I got a little ot from maybe what you were looking for, but I think before you can decide exactly how you will balance poker and life or work I think you will need to figure out who you are and if poker still means the same thing to you in a year or two of working as it does now. You may think you know, but you won't truly know until you get out in the real world and start working for a little bit. probably at least a year tbh. Once you figure it out, it will be pretty easy to figure out how to balance the two if it is even an issue anymore.