How one guy turned his C&C skills into millions with online poker
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Re: How one guy turned his C&C skills into millions with online poker
#2The prob with..every..mainstream story on (e)poker is the unflinching marketing élan of the writers, and necessity to give a (stil truly) sub-terranean slice of life immediate resonance to the audience.
Not too encroach upon anyone's character or existence, let alone the actual people in the article...
Poker is an inexorable gambit; both in lifestyle (subjectively define by 'sanity', and career (objectively define buy debt and financial bottoming out.
Poker is a fairly pure, distilled hologram of the caprice/randomness, and skill/will that resides over living and life itself, and a stripped bare interplay of emotional and psychological alchemy that everyone has, and lives with.
The greatest poker success carries little to not weight, in terms of posterity. IMO, greatest difference between poker and "other jobs".
Even aject fail in other occupational pursuits almost always carries over some tangible good productive benefit for you and your career. Whether it's contacts, savings, reputation, experience itself.
Contra poker; even after enormous success, the above benefits are a double edged sword at best, where your experience and connections (ability to get back in) are as likely to be the underpinnings of cyclical, fixed failure.
At best, it's a totoal unknown; emoyrically, it's pretty obvious.
And either way, poker is devoid of true metrics...in the same way -- IMHO -- other businesses get/should be hinged upon.
Ironic, since poker is all about a scoreboard and 'statistics'. But the living and breathing reality of metrics is a seperate (undomesticated) species from standard business metrics.
One more thing, hopefully more concrete (I'm reticent to be too specific since I know/knew a lot of the actual ppl involved),
The luck of poker, applied to people otherwise talented and able, is most profound in the beginnings of their poker experience, most often at adolescent ages where an underlying emotional caprice and aversion (or tolerance..) to risk is extremely strong.
Majority of the "long"term winners, had remarkably pain-free beginnings, when their emotional and psychological poker fortress got created. Still, many dropped out of school after losing/borrowings appreciable sums, to persevere.
Pointedly, of the latter...most were in financial umbrella's of school and family, and insulated from the psycholigical tumult n emotional traumas that define any poker career.
This got too long n fumbling, but personal experience/a vacuum of time on the treadmill/and a general interest necessitated.
Re: How one guy turned his C&C skills into millions with online poker
#3ps...check out the mathematic models/programs that play out and distill "variance", the "long term", and 'luck' in poker..It's remarkable stuff.
Re: How one guy turned his C&C skills into millions with online poker
#4The prob with..every..mainstream story on (e)poker is the unflinching marketing élan of the writers, and necessity to give a (stil truly) sub-terranean slice of life immediate resonance to the audience. Not too encroach upon anyone's character or existence, let alone the actual people in the article... Poker is an inexorable gambit; both in lifestyle (subjectively define by 'sanity', and career (objectively define bu…
Let's sum this up more clearly and succinctly.
People who win at high stakes poker count in wins/losses, not in value of money earned. Poker has become a lifestyle game. It's about the prestige, not the money.
Re: How one guy turned his C&C skills into millions with online poker
#5If he a.) plays at stakes where he can lose over a million in a couple days and b.) bases his decision to play someone (especially another pro) on emotion and recent short term variance, it's pretty much guaranteed he will end up broke eventually unless he actually has many many millions (like possibly in the hundreds if we're talking about enough to cover the swings of heads up PLO games at those stakes with Gus Hansen).
It's hard to fathom how much variance really exists in poker. Lucky and unlucky streaks can and do last months to years for people who play thousands of hands per day. Statistics dictates that there will always be a number of outliers who, due to a combination of moving up aggressively and running hot at the right times, become millionaires in a short time and draw a lot of attention, but unless they're the real deal and sufficiently bankrolled to cover the swings, it will all go back, often as quickly as it came. Most of the famous players on TV actually fit this mold, go broke constantly, and only make consistent money due to endorsements. Among real high stakes pros (mostly math-oriented, highly self-disciplined nerds you've never heard of), a large portion of the TV stars are considered fish. I've always found it interesting how distorted the general perceptions are versus reality.
Re: How one guy turned his C&C skills into millions with online poker
#6I recently started blogging at http://www.rationalpoker.com, there's an intro post at http://lesswrong.com/lw/4yk/verifying_rationality_via_ration..., if you're curious.
Re: How one guy turned his C&C skills into millions with online poker
#7The prob with..every..mainstream story on (e)poker is the unflinching marketing élan of the writers, and necessity to give a (stil truly) sub-terranean slice of life immediate resonance to the audience. Not too encroach upon anyone's character or existence, let alone the actual people in the article... Poker is an inexorable gambit; both in lifestyle (subjectively define by 'sanity', and career (objectively define bu…
Let's sum this up more clearly and succinctly. People who win at high stakes poker count in wins/losses, not in value of money earned. Poker has become a lifestyle game. It's about the prestige, not the money.
Yes. But no,
It's always about the money; the lifestyle is the way poker players show it off to the world, that is otherwise disconnected from their success...or occupation.
It's still not even about the money then. But ceaseless acquisition. Of what? The question and answer is virtually irrelevant, despite it being obviously money/chips, and the money/chips being important.
The "lifestyle game" perception is a facade. It's easy to digest, and it's what most articles that get written support as the reality.
Money is the prestige. And if there is a top, it's apocryphal.
Re: How one guy turned his C&C skills into millions with online poker
#8If he a.) plays at stakes where he can lose over a million in a couple days and b.) bases his decision to play someone (especially another pro) on emotion and recent short term variance, it's pretty much guaranteed he will end up broke eventually unless he actually has many many millions (like possibly in the hundreds if we're talking about enough to cover the swings of heads up PLO games at those stakes with Gus Han…
Exactly,
And like i said, likely pretty poorly:
It's about the metrics, or lack there of. And what a critical distinction that makes in pro poker vs most any other business endeavor.
The irony, tho, is even within the "reality" you mention...of those we deem or see as "quiet and disciplined nerds" who look down on the "famous tv pros"...
An equally false sense of success and financial gains define them.
Empirically....and logically it makes the most sense too...the truest of winners in poker are those who come closest to treating it like a normal/more traditional business, with real metrics...and act and think as legitimate entrepreneurs running a business.
Re: How one guy turned his C&C skills into millions with online poker
#9I recently started blogging at http://www.rationalpoker.com , there's an intro post at http://lesswrong.com/lw/4yk/verifying_rationality_via_ration... , if you're curious.
I have several self-recognized cognitive biases that make me a terrible poker player.
I hate to give up on something once I start. If I start reading a terrible book, it burns me because I feel obligated to finish. This also means its pretty tough for me to fold a hand after I've been had.
Given this bias, I've predicted that my highest EV move in poker is not to play.
(By the way, take out the extra periods from your links)
Re: How one guy turned his C&C skills into millions with online poker
#10The prob with..every..mainstream story on (e)poker is the unflinching marketing élan of the writers, and necessity to give a (stil truly) sub-terranean slice of life immediate resonance to the audience. Not too encroach upon anyone's character or existence, let alone the actual people in the article... Poker is an inexorable gambit; both in lifestyle (subjectively define by 'sanity', and career (objectively define bu…
The most important point that you made is that poker brings nothing to the table for a player except money. You learn little that can be monetized away from the table, and spend your time building a bankroll instead of building a business that has value other than the money it brings in.
Poker doesn't scale. The goal is to increase your hourly rate. Spend your time coding.