Fun one spoon. Here's my take.

Hero needs to plan only making about $5 an hour to cover expenses, so assuming 70 hours of poker per week, $350 can be life expense. The other $15 an hour goes to downswings, building bankroll, paying taxes, etc.

The other consideration is whether, if times get rough, hero can play 90 or 100 hours in a week at his best level - all while running bad. If he's running bad, he will have to keep playing well and play more hands to make ends meet.

Of course, there are safer ways, like earning $600 bucks a week for a month playing poker 30 hours while keeping the job and launching the pro career 4 weeks late. But that wasn't the question.

So X = $350 / week. Which is less than he's making now with the day job, although it appears we're assuming $9 an hour is take home pay.