clifp
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2006
- Messages
- 7,733
Well you guys have worked hard, or at the very least lived well below your means to have saved that much. So I by all means I encourage you two to take some time off and find out what you what to do and where you want to live. Better to retire in your 50s working at satisfying job/location than in your 40s being miserable. Plus with Illinois's pension troubles you seem like a prime candidate to help bail out the states fiscal irresponsibility .
I go to Vegas several times a year, and being retired typically spend almost a week there. The last couple years buying rental properties, and while I've stopped buying properties temporarily is still one of the most affordable places in the country.
I've also being playing poker almost all my life. I'm good enough to have a cashed at WSOP event, and from Aug 2008 to Dec 2011 never went to an ATM, because poker provided me with more than enough cash. I still put plenty of stuff on credit cards so it wasn't enough to live on in Hawaii and 2012 was a losing year.
I've also watched around 8 guys who I played with move to Vegas to become professional poker players. The couple of guys who were better than me did very well indeed, a bracelet and final table for one, and cashed in 5 out of 8 events for the second guy (a great tourney player). The guys worse than me didn't last the summer. The rest of the guys who were about my level did manage to grind out a living for respectable periods of time. But in talking to them both when the come back to Hawaii as well as running into them on the tables in Vegas, the one common theme is this. Playing the game professionally is much less fun than playing it a few times a week, with a couple of trips to Vegas a year. It becomes a job, a pretty good job, but job never the less.
Could you make 5 big blinds a hour playing, probably, but that is only $15-$25 at the 1-3, 2-5 game taking money from the tourist, certainly possible to make a 2K/month doing that. Could you make that at $5-10, I couldn't, but I guess you could find out. I find after playing poker a lot for a week or two I get bored and play worse.
Still plenty of guys who are good at trading are also very good at playing poker. Plus unlike all of my poker acquaintances, you have a hefty bankroll, and you don't have to worry about making the rent. Which is a big psychological advantage. But you'd have to be great I think to make enough money playing poker to build up your nest egg to 2.5 million.
I think that is exactly the right question to ask. I don't believe there is a definitive answer, but my gut level tells me a year is cool, three years I'd be worried about your skills being too rusty. Or at least I would have been when I ran Intel's website.
I go to Vegas several times a year, and being retired typically spend almost a week there. The last couple years buying rental properties, and while I've stopped buying properties temporarily is still one of the most affordable places in the country.
I've also being playing poker almost all my life. I'm good enough to have a cashed at WSOP event, and from Aug 2008 to Dec 2011 never went to an ATM, because poker provided me with more than enough cash. I still put plenty of stuff on credit cards so it wasn't enough to live on in Hawaii and 2012 was a losing year.
I've also watched around 8 guys who I played with move to Vegas to become professional poker players. The couple of guys who were better than me did very well indeed, a bracelet and final table for one, and cashed in 5 out of 8 events for the second guy (a great tourney player). The guys worse than me didn't last the summer. The rest of the guys who were about my level did manage to grind out a living for respectable periods of time. But in talking to them both when the come back to Hawaii as well as running into them on the tables in Vegas, the one common theme is this. Playing the game professionally is much less fun than playing it a few times a week, with a couple of trips to Vegas a year. It becomes a job, a pretty good job, but job never the less.
Could you make 5 big blinds a hour playing, probably, but that is only $15-$25 at the 1-3, 2-5 game taking money from the tourist, certainly possible to make a 2K/month doing that. Could you make that at $5-10, I couldn't, but I guess you could find out. I find after playing poker a lot for a week or two I get bored and play worse.
Still plenty of guys who are good at trading are also very good at playing poker. Plus unlike all of my poker acquaintances, you have a hefty bankroll, and you don't have to worry about making the rent. Which is a big psychological advantage. But you'd have to be great I think to make enough money playing poker to build up your nest egg to 2.5 million.
One of the main concerns that would be nice to have answered is how much a multi-year sabbatical would hurt my employment prospects at future jobs. If I took 3 years off to travel the world and then looked for a job again, how much does that 3 years hurt me? Would limiting it to 1 year make a significant difference?
I think that is exactly the right question to ask. I don't believe there is a definitive answer, but my gut level tells me a year is cool, three years I'd be worried about your skills being too rusty. Or at least I would have been when I ran Intel's website.