Both of them called. Too bad I lost them when a 9 of Spades came on the turn.
Anyway, here is an excerpt of some stuff I posted on Hitman's board:
"One good thing about this thread is that it got me into online poker. I started exactly 10 months ago, with $300. I started at the lowest limits, and worked my way up, turning the $300 into over $10K, playing only a few hours each night after work, and never once going into the red. For the last two months I have been making almost as much as at my job, but in half the hours. Last Saturday I moved up to a new limit, and had my first $1000 day.
One problem with trading is that there is no easy way to start small and learn in easier games, like you can in poker. No matter how small you play, you are in the same game as everyone else, including the professionals, and market makers/specialists with their built in advantages, and the commissions are much harder to overcome."
"[With trading] you have to risk a lot more money up front before you have any idea whether you can succeed at all. In poker you can wade in the kiddee pool of micro-limit games. The rake is higher in proportion there of course, but the opposition is so bad that you can make much more in the lower limits in bet size terms.
Try to start with $300 and no experience in the market and see where you get. Think you will have developed the skills and the bankroll in one year to trade for a living? I started poker with that much and one book. Now I have enough to play in games where I can average $50-$100 per hour, and there is still room to move up.
I'm not quitting my job just yet, but I don't have to. I don't have to adhere to narrow market hours - I can play a little here and there and double my income. Of course that is not all there is to it, I spent a solid year studying the game. I read dozens of books and spent thousands of hours on poker strategy message boards. And like trading you also have to be prepared to handle a high variance in your results, even to the point of having losing months."
