The thing about poker is most of the guys who have been very successful at it are fairly intelligent and would have been successful at a lot of different things

The thing about poker is most of the guys who have been very successful at it are fairly intelligent and would have been successful at a lot of different things. In 2004-2010 it was a little different as a really good player could expect to make 200-300k a year fairly easily. As poker gets tougher, win rates decrease and a really strong player's expected yearly winnings might be reduced to 100k a year without any real applicable real-world connections or skills. 5 years from now, with the game losing popularity, that expectation might be 50k. Whereas, if the player had entered the real world, their expected career earnings would increase over time. It'd be hard for me to recommend poker as a career to anyone with the state of today's games. 4 or 5 years ago, it would have been tough for me to convince someone otherwise - especially with the freedom it afforded.