41–50 of 197 posts
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
It’s almost like you didn’t read all the bits of the post where they discussed all of this.
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…
Is this not also true for many sporting or competitive pursuits that are also effectively zero sum? For sports I suppose one could argue there are benefits to exercise and for other competitive games with professionals like chess there are mental benefits from getting good at them. However, neither seem particularly "productive" outside of all the money that is funneled into events for marketing purposes. There is, o…
In contrast, tournament games (chess, golf, tennis, WSOP, esports, etc) may have significant entry fees, but at a professional level the total winnings are significantly more than the sum of all entry fees. Generally the excess money comes from corporate sponsors or viewership fees. The entry fees can result in some players walking away with less money than they started, but I don't think this is common outside of tournament-play poker.
The most popular professional sports (soccer, football, baseball, etc) have players on salaries. Those players often also get performance bonuses, either for entire-team results (winning the championship) or personal results (number of games played, statistical thresholds, etc). But they're all getting paid _something_ win or lose.
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 will always be soft because there will always be plenty of people there to have fun and gamble no matter how much software exists. Furthermore, only a slim minority of players even actively trying to win actually put serious effort into studying (see also, dan luu's post on how it's relatively easy to reach the top 5% of any endeavour, even if very difficult to reach the top 1%).
I can't help but use the opportunity of poker on the front page of Hacker News to note that I have a strategy blog and training app on this exact topic:
www.livepokertheory.com
There's a lot of beginner to advanced strategy articles on applying practical solver outputs to live poker games as well as a preflop training based on solver generated preflop charts. Poker is currently my only significant source of income and I "eat my own dogfood" on this site so I'm very incentivized for it to be good!
> Poker has the best hourly rate for any job in India. The money is simply un-comparable to any job a 20 year old can get and is close to VP+ level in unicorn/FAANG companies > Imagine sitting in front of a screen for 12-16hrs a day, clicking buttons > The 95th percentile Poker income is about $200-250k. I knew quite a few people who went through poker phases in college and their early 20s, back before it was heavily…
> Poker has the best hourly rate for any job in India. The money is simply un-comparable to any job a 20 year old can get and is close to VP+ level in unicorn/FAANG companies > Imagine sitting in front of a screen for 12-16hrs a day, clicking buttons > The 95th percentile Poker income is about $200-250k. I knew quite a few people who went through poker phases in college and their early 20s, back before it was heavily…
Many former poker players move into finance/trading. Could be a viable route. The owner of Brighton is a former poker player: https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2023/sep/20/bright... .
You don't make money by having amazing unique insight, you make money by finding soft players and milking them for money.
All the retail investors and day traders are the amateur players thinking they are decent but really are just getting milked
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…
I find it interesting that professional poker players are frequently criticized for this but I've never seen someone criticize a casino dealer or other employee for this.
> Poker has the best hourly rate for any job in India. The money is simply un-comparable to any job a 20 year old can get and is close to VP+ level in unicorn/FAANG companies > Imagine sitting in front of a screen for 12-16hrs a day, clicking buttons > The 95th percentile Poker income is about $200-250k. I knew quite a few people who went through poker phases in college and their early 20s, back before it was heavily…
Even without the flight risk, a 5 year resume gap is difficult, especially mid-career. Accurate or not, your hiring managers are pretty much going to assume nothing you learned in those 5 years applies, so you are awkward to place. Especially if your salary expectations have grown.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many former poker players move into finance/trading. Could be a viable route. The owner of Brighton is a former poker player: https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2023/sep/20/bright... .
Poker is a great analogy for the market. You don't make money by having amazing unique insight, you make money by finding soft players and milking them for money. All the retail investors and day traders are the amateur players thinking they are decent but really are just getting milked
Also understanding of odds, management of your bet sizes (Kelly criterion).
There's a write up about it here: https://www.pokernews.com/news/2010/08/making-supernova-elit...
There were other places as well. There were so many stories posted on the 2+2 forums[0] of people making really good money doing this. That's one of the most popular poker forums. It's interesting because it's a different type of skill. Tile a bunch of windows, have a lot of mental fortitude and grind it out. It's a completely different strategy than trying to become a "winning" player.
I used to play microstates back before online poker was banned in the US so I didn't participate in that. What's funny though is even back then at the 5c-10c ($10 buy in) or 10c-25c ($25 buy in) NL tables you'd have folks 4-6 tabling while looking at a PokerTrack HUD which gathered stats about players and displayed them above their name plate. I can't imagine at how much the game must have progressed since then.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even without the flight risk, a 5 year resume gap is difficult, especially mid-career. Accurate or not, your hiring managers are pretty much going to assume nothing you learned in those 5 years applies, so you are awkward to place. Especially if your salary expectations have grown.
Unless you apply to working for a trading company or sports betting company who will appreciate the experience.