Had to leave chess for poker...

Not even close?

I've never played poker and I sometimes wonder why I play chess. I'm writing a crime thriller at the moment, or trying to. 

4 * C(47/2)/C(52/7), am i incorrect?

Of course, this doesn't take into account hands which you won't see the full seven cards (or however many cards it takes to know that you won't get a royal flush).  Just the probability of getting a royal flush in ANY hand.

EDIT: Standard odds is insufficient.

You are correct assuming all cards are seen, sorry.

The real chances however are a lot lower, because you wont see the hand through all betting rounds. And you will sometimes fold preflop.

guys in which site do you play, can I know

Why? Do you want a heads up game? Skypoker/888 mainly. No particular reason for that though.

no, i just wanted to know if 888 is better than pokerstars for finding fish

The low stakes SnG/HU tables seem pretty weak to me, but I haven't played on PokerStars in years for comparison. I don't play cash games often.

No.

Yes.

As an NM put it on those forums quite some times ago, though it is true that poker is a better way of winning money than chess, it is also a much better way of losing it.

And yeah of course you can have positive expectation if you have a bit of strategy and blah blah blah but I don't expect the average troll on chess.com to have it.

It would if you were playing chess for money.  

1 poker player suicides every time a smartass gives his opinion without having any idea of what we talking about:)

My cousin is a poker player.  He's also a poker author.  He ponied up his $10K for the WSOP and never made it to the second round...which is what happens to the majority of people that consider themselves really good at poker...

If you were a software development manager, and your $10K monthly paycheck was tied to a clause that said "every time we print out a paycheck for you, we're going to draw a random card, and if it's a spade, we're going to shred your check, and if it's an ace of spades, we're going to fire you"...would you consider that a good career choice?

Plenty of sales people have commission based jobs.

Comparing earnt salary with potential winnings is ridiculous however.

The average person is going to think, "Oh cool, you're good at poker" if you chose poker. Whereas that same person will probably think, "Oh wow, you must be smart" if you choose chess. Either way I feel like you're going to need to supplement your income outside of this hobby. 

At the end of the day it all depends on how much stock you put into other peoples words in comparison to your own happiness. I personally require other peoples respect, or the potential  therein, to be happy with myself which is why I'm a born-again chess player.

Opposite situation for me, I had to leave poker for chess. 

In poker you can't justify playing a game half-concentrated. As I have two small kids, I want to be able to drop everything I'm doing and take care of them when needed. When I'm playing a $100 heads-up poker match, that's pretty annoying. So I made my kids priority and chose for a hobby I can drop at every point without losing any money. So correspondance chess is great. One day I'll return to poker though - and not only for the extra income.

It's not ridiculous at all.  At the macro level we are talking about, a budding professional poker player is attempting to turn winnings into a consistent cash income, i.e. a salary.  The problem is, even if you are as good as you think, random luck will still make your income spotty and, if you play aggressively, you are bound to put your bankroll all-in on pocket aces, or after flopping a straight, having a 90%+ chance to win...then still lose your whole bankroll anyway to a set of deuces or a flush even though you played perfectly.

People will say they have the discipline not to put their entire bankroll at risk that way, but that's a pipe dream for most poker players.  Keeping a nice chunk of change in reserve is a luxury a player won't have in the beginning when they are still learning the difference between poker for fun and poker for food/shelter.  The choice becomes "bet it all here, or go back to working at dairy queen with an intact savings account", and there goes the all-in...

You're talking about a player who doesn't manage his bankroll well.

Staking all of your bankroll on a single tournament when you need it to pay the rent is idiotic.

All you've said is that a salary is guaranteed. You just have to decide whether a guaranteed £X is more valuable than a potential £Y.

You can say the exact same thing about the lottery, so it's not really much of a supporting argument.

As for bankroll, I already covered that.  Starting out, a player will not have the luxury of protecting their bankroll that way.  It's just as easy to starve yourself out of the profession by betting less and less and winning less and less in proportion until you are effectively a casual player...it's just less common for a player to have that amount of discipline, so the all-in busts are the more likely result.

Are you a professional poker player?  If you believe what you're spouting, then why wouldn't you be?