Poker Crossroads

So I began my poker career about five years ago in 1$ and 2$ sngs. I eventually learned the game very well and made a foray into micro stakes cash games, of which I played about 50k hands on FT and of course lost, bc at those stakes you cannot beat the rake.

Once I was confident enough in my skill level, I mixed it up between 10$ and 20$ sngs and some mid stakes cash games (NL).

With all the training sites and information out there today, its not nearly as easy to find a table full of fish as it was a few years ago.

225,000 hands combined between 50-1 and 1-2 full ring nl games has brought me a marginal profit. Maybe I'm not good enough, maybe the competition is that much better, its probably a combination of both.

Which brings me to my current state. I took a few days off from the cash game grind and played 50 sngs over two days, with a pretty decent roi and avg. profit per game.

There seem to be more fish in these sngs, and my edge was clearly big in just about every game I played.

The question now becomes, do I continue grinding out 70k hands a month in nl cash games and deal with the swings, which at the 1-2 level have become a little tough to handle.

Or do I grind out 40 sngs a day at the $40-$50 level ?

It feels great to have played a different game and see some different opponents for a few days, and of course consistently making it to 3-handed or heads up is fun !!

The third, and least desirable, option is to get a 'real job' to supplement my poker income. I feel like this would also take some pressure off and make poker much less stressful.

I also enjoy marching to the beat of my own drum and being my own boss. A real job is probably inevitable eventually, unless the poker sites start offering health insurance...I am open to any and all suggestions, comments etc..

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