Quote Originally Posted by Trainer_jyms
I was thinking more along the lines of why does it need to be so much? I get that someone in your position isn't going to play for $50 /hr but why does someone with a part time $8/hr job or even $20/hr full time job need to make $100++ an hour playing poker? What circumstances are you looking at that requires that kind of earnings?
My point is it all depends on the opportunity cost of playing poker rather than doing something else.

Let's do it this way:

A potential pro makes $X/hr at his/her day job. They also get fringe benefits of $10,000/yr (maybe too much and maybe too little, but lets go with easy numbers). A typical work year is approximately 2000 hrs, so the fringe benefits add $5/hr. So, they make a total of $X+$5/hr. Now, using my variance number of .8 to account for the fact that the job is essentially riskless whereas poker isn't, we need to multiply the wage rate by 1/.8 or 1.25. So, what one would need to make at a job in order to break even by playing poker as a profession is 1.25*($X+$5). It is now trivial to solve for when this equals $100/hr. The solution is $75/hr at work.

So, if and only if your hourly rate is $75/hr will you need to make $100/hr at poker for it to be equal financially.

In the OP's case, he doesn't make anywhere near that, so he doesn't need to make $100/hr to be a "pro"). Rather, he needs to make $16.25/hr at poker to break even.