Wow, thanks for all the responses! I had no idea this site had such a lot of traffic. I'll address a couple of recurring responses.
A few of you think gambling is risky and silly, and that's perfectly understandable. I would have too if I wasn't able to do what I do. With sportsbetting I am not simply betting on things and trying to get lucky, I am mostly looking for positions where the bookies have made an error, in some cases betting on both sides of a possible outcome for a guaranteed profit (Called arbitrage betting). Almost every bookie has restricted or closed my accounts in the last couple of years. I currently use some friends accounts and give them a cut of profit for going to the trouble of opening the accounts for me. I could probably get more accounts opened in future if I was shut down and needed it to generate more income. So yeah, I don't want to rely on it because I don't know when technology might make the bookies better at their job or better at synching the markets up with each other, but in the short term it's likely I'll continue to make money. I have two friends who consistently make 6 figure incomes from this and have for years, they have a lot more skill than me though, I am mainly just looking for pricing discrepancies and taking advantage of promos. I was avoiding going into all of this as I know it can sound far fetched to people not exposed to it but I assure you I have no reason to exaggerate anything, I am here for advice so it would be counter-productive to make stuff up. I also have been profitable in my life time from poker, quite consistently and over a long period of time, and this is because in poker after the house takes their cut (rake) the remaining 90% or so of the money is in the pool for the players to compete to take a share, and frankly most people are terrible at poker and just there to gamble and play in ways that make no mathematical sense.
Someone mentioned that it makes no sense for me to have so little in retirement fund, assets etc, not entirely sure why that's relevant but I'll give a quick run down. In my 20's I worked for a few businesses that did not pay my superannuation (retirement contribution in Australia), I also took two years off work to play poker professionally in which time I made $50,000USD profit (a few hundred to a few thousand every month, didn't have my first losing month until almost two years in, I was playing low stakes 40-60 hours a week online) which kept up with the rent and bills etc but I didn't save anything, in fact I never had more than about $5,000 saved at any time in my life until my late 20's. In my late 20's I got engaged, bought a house, and a few years later ended that relationship because I was bored with her, sold the house and we split the money, and I went to work in Fiji for a couple of years. I had the best time over there socially, dated some amazing women, and had an absolute blast. After a few years of that I decided to come back to Australia with only about $20,000USD to my name. I came back with an aim to make money fast and buy a house. In that two years I worked hard and earned good money, I also made a lot on the side from sportsbetting and from poker and built my 4 bedroom home 3 months ago. I'm renting out the rooms while living there to keep my costs down. I actually quit my job 3 months ago as well because I didn't like some of the things happening there. In the last three months I have just been playing poker and going to the gym, I plan on spending the next 3 months doing the same. I have the money to do this without putting myself under too much pressure and I have decided that getting in the best shape of my life is an investment more important than the extra money I could be making. Hopefully this all makes sense, everything in this post and my opening post is 100% accurate, it would be a waste of everyone's time if I came on here to talk nonsense. The reason I only have 35k in retirement fund is because that's all I've earned there, the time I was playing poker I contributed nothing, the time I was in Fiji contributed nothing, and the times I worked for companies which illegally didn't pay any contributed nothing, the other times in my life contributed what's there.
Some people might now ask why I decided to come back from Fiji if I liked it there and can do all this, and that would be a fair question. Firstly, Fiji is a bit more expensive than Thailand for example, secondly, I really wasn't playing a lot of poker over there, was just doing my job for income and when I eventually quit and lost that income it never occurred to me to try and sustain myself through poker, I guess with only 20k to my name it would have been too much of a risk too as I would not ever let myself become completely broke, if I'd had 100k at the time I might have tried to make it work for a year before giving up, if I needed to. Thirdly, the sportsbetting is probably more lucrative and definitely more consistent than the poker, and this is something I have focused on in the last two years. Prior to that I actually did make a little profit from it, but I hadn't actually realized just how common crazy pricing errors were available and after talking to two friends who have been crushing it for years I spent more time on it and figured a lot of stuff out that I didn't know when I was in Fiji.
Appreciate everyone's feedback thus far. I know I'll probably have to continue working although I'd prefer not to. I'm going to weigh everything up and if anyone has anything new to contribute I would appreciate hearing it, whether I agree with it or not. Thanks.
