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Quitting the full-time poker scene

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Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#171

Post by Obscurity4340 »

whoami_nr wrote: post #152
Applejinx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, if you're fixing to earn serious money off playing poker, your job is to SEEK OUT irrational addicts fighting personal demons, and personify said demons. You're basically looking to find prey and eat them. The wounded will be less capable of running away from you. You could lurk outside the door and hit them with a rock or stab them with a knife, but that would be illegal. Functionally you're playing a…

Author here. I agree. We call it bum-hunting and its part and parcel of the game. I stopped live games mainly because I found it depressing to win from a guy who is obviously drunk or has a gambling problem.

I could never do that. Heck, I'm basically more or less always with a foot in that cesspool, so to speak. I can'timagine the horror at the end of the ride where you're out of house/home and resources and your dopaminergic system's still all fucked.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#172

Post by whoami_nr »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #171
whoami_nr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I agree. We call it bum-hunting and its part and parcel of the game. I stopped live games mainly because I found it depressing to win from a guy who is obviously drunk or has a gambling problem.

I could never do that. Heck, I'm basically more or less always with a foot in that cesspool, so to speak. I can'timagine the horror at the end of the ride where you're out of house/home and resources and your dopaminergic system's still all fucked.

Yes. Its as you describe it. One of my first coaches and probably the best MTT player in India (Danish Shaikh) quit poker for the exact same reason. He got so good at the game that he pitied the people he won money from. After a point, he just gave up on the game.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#173

Post by Obscurity4340 »

whoami_nr wrote: post #172
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could never do that. Heck, I'm basically more or less always with a foot in that cesspool, so to speak. I can'timagine the horror at the end of the ride where you're out of house/home and resources and your dopaminergic system's still all fucked.

Yes. Its as you describe it. One of my first coaches and probably the best MTT player in India (Danish Shaikh) quit poker for the exact same reason. He got so good at the game that he pitied the people he won money from. After a point, he just gave up on the game.

I honestly wish I could Capitalism better but I'm just so bad at seperating out from the fact that its zero-sum and nobodies truly profiting even if there is an uneven distribrution of "winners" and that I might do harm where it might not have otherwise existed, although I sense the naïvety by realizing someone else would literally take your spot. I feel like thesepros are no different than professional addicts as well.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#174

Post by alberth »

stewx wrote: post #134
alberth wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my main complaint about playing Poker as a living: it's a zero sum game This isn’t unique to Poker. This applies to all Gambling.

My impression is that poker has been professionalized to a degree other forms of gambling have not.

Presumably why people view Poker different is, instead of trying to beat the Casino (Black Jack, etc), with Poker you're trying to beat another person.

But regardless of it being the casino or another person, it's still a zero-sum game.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#175

Post by sneak »

Tarsul wrote: post #21

I find interesting that no one (yet) in OP or in the comments has talked about my main complaint about playing Poker as a living: it's a zero sum game where you basically only take money from other people. It's not productive. For me, that in itself is as depressing as the grind. But it appears most players don't really care about this, maybe because life oftentimes is not fair and thus being productive is not seen a…

It’s not front and center, and frequently overlooked.

I do have some issues spending so much time on a zero-sum game, as you mentioned, but ultimately it’s better that I have the money than people who are going to gamble it away; I’ll do something useful with it, and they probably won’t.

"As Canada Bill Jones said, 'it's immoral to let a sucker keep his money.'"

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#176

Post by sneak »

vintermann wrote: post #104
jjxw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, if you look down on games of skill which involve chance and wagering money then there's not much I can do to change your mind.

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…

Poker has taught me so many things about life that I probably never would have learned otherwise. Yes, it’s gambling and there is a random element, but it’s a strategy game played in the currency of the world in which it is set. This has wide philosophical implications far beyond the poker table.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Put it on my tombstone: “he got it in good”.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#177

Post by sneak »

saiya-jin wrote: post #142
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…

There is absolutely nothing amoral about engaging directly in a fair game with consenting adults.

Nobody can lose anything they don’t choose to play. Consent matters.

We sell cigarettes on every streetcorner (to say nothing of bars), which is evidence that society has reached widespread consensus on the fact that addicts are allowed to choose to be addicted (or not) to things. (The vast, vast majority of people who play poker are not addicted to playing poker.)

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#178

Post by Kranar »

saucymew wrote: post #59
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…

Not much has changed in the current live poker meta. Yes, the average player may be better, but if you put in the consistent time to study/solvers/hand reviews, IMHO that puts you in the top 20 percentile. It's getting to the top 5-10 percentile that is killer. Ultimately, like life, the only true edge you can control is game selection. Hence, that Rounders quote that rings eternal: "Listen, here's the thing. If you…

I don't have the greatest references available, but a naive Google search brings up quite a few sources from databases and surveys that say that while 30% of poker players do better than break even, only 18% of actually manage to make any kind of worthwhile income from poker and only 5% of poker players make what is considered good income from it.

I don't know what "good income" is, whether it's like 100k a year or 500k a year... but I can take a pretty good guess that unless you're in the top 15%, poker is probably not worth it professionally.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#179

Post by Kranar »

kybernetikos wrote: post #107
Tarsul wrote: post #21

I find interesting that no one (yet) in OP or in the comments has talked about my main complaint about playing Poker as a living: it's a zero sum game where you basically only take money from other people. It's not productive. For me, that in itself is as depressing as the grind. But it appears most players don't really care about this, maybe because life oftentimes is not fair and thus being productive is not seen a…

If you don't count human entertainment and skill as a positive then it's not just poker you'll find depressing, but also almost all media, sport and games. It's an absolutely massive 'unproductive' chunk of the economy. I've played in small poker tournaments where there was a buy in which went to charity and the prizes were provided by local businesses. That's positive sum. Poker itself can be exciting and entertaini…

I would differentiate between entertainment and gambling. Sports and media get revenue from a massive audience of people who pay to watch it, and that revenue pays to promote solid talent within the field itself.

If playing sports required taking money from the losers to pay the winners, and the people who lost the most amount of money are those who end up having some kind of addiction and serious problem that the winners are exploiting, then yeah, sports would be also be quite morally questionable.

You are right that there is exploitation in sports and other forms of media, but I think most people can identify those aspects of sports and call them out.

Re: Quitting the full-time poker scene

#180

Post by hayd »

saucymew wrote: post #59
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…

Not much has changed in the current live poker meta. Yes, the average player may be better, but if you put in the consistent time to study/solvers/hand reviews, IMHO that puts you in the top 20 percentile. It's getting to the top 5-10 percentile that is killer. Ultimately, like life, the only true edge you can control is game selection. Hence, that Rounders quote that rings eternal: "Listen, here's the thing. If you…

Surely there's a lot of HUD/automated play now. Where players are simply seeing the GTO play for the entire hand. Sites make an attempt to prevent this but today I'd play online with extreme scepticism.

Real-time assistance simply wasn't a thing back in the day.

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