[Stasis5001]

When you say tech industry pays more, I'm assuming the effective long-run hourly earnings of poker players is way less glamorous than it looks from an outsider seeing highlights? Doing a basic google search led me to https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/ranking/6737/, which seems to suggest that 81 players earned over 1mm USD in 2021. But presumably those players don't earn that YoY, and even if they did, plenty more software engineers earn > 1mm USD per annum, so this seems to support your conclusion. OTOH, I have no insight to the home games or whatever sources are not included in these rankings, so I'd love to hear a little more.

[splonk]

FanaHOVA mentioned the main thing you missed. One other thing I'd mention is that a lot of pros have staking arrangements (the article briefly mentions some versions of them). For example, I know one pro (who's won one of the more prestigious WSOP bracelets) who gets 30% of his tournament winnings in exchange for having all his entry fees paid by his backer. I suspect he's traded off more upside in favor of stability than most, but there's a lot of deals out there where the players aren't taking home anywhere close to 100% of their public winnings.

[FanaHOVA]

Those aren’t net of buy ins. Negreanu for example won $3.1M, but spent $2.56M in buy ins, so net profit was around $600k (doesn’t account for all his content ofc, but that’s not every player)

[ramoz]

The other commenters said it for tourneys. I can’t stand tournaments.

For cash games, I was only playing on the casino. For the 1/3 (1$/3$ blinds) the earnings rate seems absolutely abysmal and you have to account for rake. There are grinders who play these games, along with 2/5. My assumption is any grinder playing here is down under or not making enough to compete with a professional career in the tech industry.

Next is 2/5. Here I could’ve sustained a decent salary. A pro at these stakes showed me his past year earnings which was 180k.

It’s hard to tell with the 10/25, 25/50 pros. There were definitely dudes sitting on 500k+, maybe way more, chips that they kept in the casino and I assume similar amounts of cash at home. There were guys leaving with big nights but still losing 90k in a night. I’d hear about some being down under 200K at any point. There were probably some money launders. There was the occasional private investment fund guy that came in, was short with slick back hair, very loud mouth, would brag and show off one of his 17M personal banking account. Then there were the very quiet, calculated guys. It seemed that they were operating on some formula I never cared to figure out. They’d avoid big hands for the most part. Some form of grind I didn’t have the discipline for. I also didn’t have the discipline to handle large swings at those stakes, nor the bankroll, or desire to play lower stakes to build a bankroll.