You realize if you’re assigned a stock from a naked put you get actual shares of stock, right? In this case you’d get 100 shares at a basis of $163. It’s your stock and you can sell them back.

You don’t have a $17k cash outlay upfront, it simply earmarks $1750 of your buying power. Your method you have a $6k cash outlay up front. You only make money if the stock goes up in price within a finite time period. If you’re assigned shares, And you don’t have 50% of the cash required you will get a margin call to bring you back to 50% of the position value. The rest is covered with margin which you will pay interest on, this varies from broker to broker. In this case, if you get below $8500 in margin you will receive a call and will have to bring your buying power back in line with regulation T account requirements. Easiest way to do that? Sell the shares assigned back. A margin call is not a big deal assuming you didn’t take some stupidly large risk. This whole discussion ignores the possibility of rolling the put out in time and adjusting the strike to collect even more premium. This is a beginners level intro as to how margin works. Your interpretation of it is not complete or accurate. I suggest before you go further with options, you study how margin works more in depth.

Finally, let’s define something; Risk. The book you read beats into your head, permanent loss of capital is the ultimate risk and you seem to have adopted that mentality. Agree? There is no higher probability of 100% loss of capital than buying calls. Deep in the money is “least worst” depending on how deep you go and since the deeper you go, the more intrinsic value. The probabilities get worse the closer to the money and further out of the money you go. It’s a mathematical fact, there’s no greater probability of losing 100% of your money than buying calls. Much higher than owning the stock outright. The chances of losing SOME money are very high.

I say this all as someone who has plenty in the way of DITM and far OTM calls. But, I understand the risk and buy accordingly.

BTW I was looking at the wrong strikes; selling a Jan 2023 $170 put gets me $17 in premium and reduces buying power by $1700. So if assigned shares my break even is $153. If I buy the $170 call for $60 my BE is now $230.