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Quitting the full-time poker scene

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Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#141

Post by monero-xmr »

sarchertech wrote: post #140
monero-xmr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I play poker because it’s fun. I’m decent, I have won a few 100+ NL tournaments in Vegas and finish in the money as often as not. But I’m gambling well within my means, which is different for everyone. I have no idea if I take $1000 from someone if that’s their rent for the month or if it’s budgeted for entertainment. Gambling is ancient and wired deep in the human psyche. It’s neither morally right nor morally wrong…

People who get addicted to the news don’t tend to lose their houses as a result. Historically most societies have restricted gambling to one extent or the other because it’s clear that there is a subset of the population who can’t self moderate, and this results in a significant cost to everyone else. We’re currently in a period of loosening regulations and we’ll see how that goes. Early results aren’t great.

We let people put their houses up as collateral in order to get a small business loan to start a restaurant. Statistically speaking those restaurants will be losers 80% of the time. They would be better off playing roulette and putting their house on black

https://home.binwise.com/blog/restaurant-failure-rate#:~:tex....

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#142

Post by saiya-jin »

jjxw wrote: post #22

As a part time live tournament grinder who has a full time job it's always sobering to hear from full time grinders who end up quitting due to how tough the grind is. A couple of observations to add: 1) There is absolutely a huge edge to be had playing live tournaments, even for buy ins in the $1k - $5k range. If you are playing outside of Vegas it is very common to end up at a table where at least half the table are…

It also sounds like an overall horrible, consistently highly amoral way of life. Plus some form of an addiction. All the details in this discussion point pretty clearly to this. You need to be a proper a-hole to be fine doing this long term.

If one had only choice between being poor homeless or do this I could accept that relativity, but not like this. I can't have any possible respect for smart capable human living like that by choice, sucking desperate horribly sick people of their possessions, ever.

Sure, there are still few humans around worse than that, just look at the news, but its still pretty much the moral bottom. And all I've seen in this discussion just proves that (I don't judge this activity from my experience since I don't play cards, I get my happiness from mountains and extreme sports and that's more than enough, and salary is enough too).

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#143

Post by mtremsal »

bluecalm wrote: post #100

I was involved in poker for most of my adult life - first as pro player and then as a poker software developer. I was very lucky to be able live off poker winnings as a player and then become financially independent thanks to the success of my software (I am PioSOLVER founder and one of the two original programmers along with my close friend). I agree with about everything the author of the post said. It's a lonely a…

Thank you for sharing! I was just wondering what kind of devs work on solvers as a day job.

Would you say that building a “toy solver” for hold em could be a fun way to learn or improve with a language? I’d be curious to see how much work is needed to approximate the shape of the real GTO charts and common bet sizes.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#144

Post by vintermann »

jjxw wrote: post #115
vintermann wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look down on? I think gambling is harmful. That's quite independent on whether I "look down on" it or not. I do suspect that poker can't be as inherently fun as most other card and board games of chance and skill, because if it was it shouldn't need high stakes to be exciting. But that's just a suspicion. I have a philosophy of life, that I'd like to explain. Picture there's an immigrant. He comes from some far-off c…

The vast majority of people who play poker do not play it for the "high stakes, smoky rooms, and martinis". Speaking for myself, I regularly play for very low stakes with friends in my own place of residence and we enjoy it as both as an intellectual pursuit and something to socialize over. Obviously your viewpoint is perfectly valid - there are plenty of people who have been irreparably harmed by gambling culture an…

Are you sure about that? If it was just for the intellectual pursuit and socialization, why are you playing poker and not, say, Catan?

Obviously not everyone plays poker in a smoky room with gangsters, or even with real money, but I think maybe that cultural context is part of the explanation. You absolutely can divorce it from that cultural context, if you like poker but hate gambling - but is that worth holding onto, when there are so many options to get similar intellectual and social pleasures?

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#145

Post by saiya-jin »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #37

I have to say I can't see how $200k a year is a bad idea. I would do it if only I could make half of that. Is the grind boring? So are many jobs. At the end of the day, if I am going to be making six figures I can spend some money for enjoyment

For some, moral aspects prevent them from doing similar stuff. For others, seemingly there are no moral aspects to consider

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#146

Post by matwood »

97s wrote: post #15

I played back during the glory days of 2000-2004 and through the net-teller shutdown for America. Back then the money was absolutely absurd, because the game was very new online and very few people understood basics. This combined with the massive amount of marketing that was going on for television, tons of people were addicted to the thrill of the game. Every single year the game became more difficult as more peopl…

I played a lot in person around the same time frame, and did pretty well. It was hugely popular with a lot of dumb money floating around. When I would travel for work, I would find nearby reservation casinos which always seems to have tons of easy money.

Like you said, winning poker is a grind, and for me, extremely boring. I rarely play anymore, and if I do it's with friends. But, I have memories of some big hands in Vegas that I'm happy to have experienced. I also learned a ton about risk management, my personal risk tolerance, and controlling my emotions.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#147

Post by somenameforme »

munksbeer wrote: post #139
somenameforme wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a rabbit hole that makes you want to pull out of it real fast. For instance consider how many tech jobs right now basically devolve into trying to make people see ads that they don't want to watch. Not only are you not adding value to the world, you're actively making it worse. Of course people can convince themselves with all sorts of rationalizations, like claiming you're introducing people to thing…

> I think this is a rabbit hole that makes you want to pull out of it real fast. For instance consider how many tech jobs right now basically devolve into trying to make people see ads that they don't want to watch. Not only are you not adding value to the world, you're actively making it worse. I don't see this as the same thing at all. Advertisers exist because of demand for them by companies who want to sell their…

By the same logic casinos, gamblers, and professional players all exist because there's demand from other players to play. If there were no 'fish' then there'd be no 'pros.' It's just all rationalizations. Look at the impact on society. Professional gamblers (or casinos for that matter) aren't truly making society better for anybody except themselves. It's the same thing for companies spending inordinate amount of efforts trying to force people to watch ads they don't want to see. That's not a benefit for society in any way, shape, or fashion.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#149

Post by whoami_nr »

97s wrote: post #15

I played back during the glory days of 2000-2004 and through the net-teller shutdown for America. Back then the money was absolutely absurd, because the game was very new online and very few people understood basics. This combined with the massive amount of marketing that was going on for television, tons of people were addicted to the thrill of the game. Every single year the game became more difficult as more peopl…

Author here. Yes, the grind is something like that. I used to watch couple hours of theory videos and maybe have a hand review session before 4pm. The grind starts around 6PM and I play on-off till 5-6am. Rinse repeat for all 7 days of the week.

Every couple months I used to travel for some juicy tournament series to try my hand at live games.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#150

Post by whoami_nr »

waprin wrote: post #43
97s wrote: post #15

I played back during the glory days of 2000-2004 and through the net-teller shutdown for America. Back then the money was absolutely absurd, because the game was very new online and very few people understood basics. This combined with the massive amount of marketing that was going on for television, tons of people were addicted to the thrill of the game. Every single year the game became more difficult as more peopl…

Live poker is still quite soft. While you do have to be better compared to years past, it's also far easier to get better because you can study solvers. I used to be a "good but not great" online player, but the extent to which you could truly understand hands was limited due to the limitations of the software at the time (mostly equity calculators that could not truly calculate EV). That changed with the release of…

Author here. Live poker is soft but getting enough hands/hour is a pain. Rake is insanely high in Indian casinos that the overall winrate drops hard.
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