urrgh. Don't you guys get that 30+ buyin downswings happen at cash? Hundreds of buyin downswings happen at tourneys?

These are the reason that 100/hour rule is tossed around. I don't care how good you are at poker, or how big your bankroll is, the risk of ruin in this game is VERY real. Ergo you can't consider a poker income to be the same parameters as a non-poker one.

Case A: You work for an engineering firm, making 20 dollars an hour, you work a standard 40 hour a week, have benefits, sick days etc, and therefore drag ~40k a year. Pretty easy to live off of this.

Case B: Well, since you can live off of 40k pretty easily, then thats all we should shoot for. 20/hour can be done at 50nl quite easily. Let's do that. OH WAITAMINIT, its a lot harder to do this 40 hour a week thing because every time i play longer than 2 hours i go on autotilt and start playing like a bag of asses.

Oh well, I can make 50 an hour at 100nl, lets do that instead. OH FUCK, 20 buyin downswing, weak. Guess i gotta move down to where I only make 20/hour for a while, bummer.

etc.