I used hours only to show you that players earn their money not only by winning a tournament, but by every hour they put in the game. Nothing else. Imagine practicing for a bo1 for $10.000 in 1 year. You practice 10h every day. So in total around 3650h. You win the bo1. And you get $2000. People now say that you earned $2000 in 1 hour (duration of the bo1). Thats because they don't know or understand what amount of work goes into this. Also every hour you put in, you gain experience which is value for the future in itself. That's the money/time argument. You are not wrong when talking about factors we can't control (birth, parents, etc.). Not everyone has the same chance of becoming a pro player, but this does not mean it's based only on luck. It's hard to put into numbers, but I think of it in this way (simplyfied) when you want to become pro (highly simplyfied): - always play the game to your maximum potential -> chance of becoming pro +10% - try to look for opportunities to further your game (either playing with better players or learn better stuff) -> chance of becoming pro +10% . other pillars of becoming pro (ingame and outside of it) . . - factors like native language -> depends on the scene, but most likely very low % Let's assume you do everything right and you have a 99% chance of becoming a pro player. Someone doing the same things who is from smaller region (e.g. Asia) without english skills might only have a 98% chance because of their place of residence/native language. I'm not denying the existence of luck, but I don't think it's a big factor either. edit: Also, thanks for your reasonable responses. Not very often do people just have a normal conversation on here.