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October 6, 2010
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preface: i am writing this as an educated professional, i have degrees in engineering and physics, and have nearly completed a masters, and i work full time as an engineer, but i have put in a TON of time into poker over the past few years, to the point where i am pretty profitable in the small amount of poker i play. I am particularly writing this about the professional poker players that either dropped out of university or have a degree but dont use it, but i guess it applies to any job that has a pretty high ceiling on expected earn in the long term.
this is a generalisation and doesnt apply to every professional poker player, so tell me if you dont fit into this, but some poker players are adamant they are only going to play poker for a short amount of time. all the time you hear of players that say they are only going to play for 5 years, or maybe even a couple of years before they decide to go do something else. even if they are making decent but not amazing money, say 50k a year.
poker is a super tough game to master (obv) and typical wisdom is that you have to spend at least a few years before you will get to anywhere near the top of your game. (10000 hours is the generic answer for the amount of time needed to be able to “master” a subject, which works out to be 3.4 years of 8 hour days, every day)
so, and this may be slightly cynical, but it seems many poker players either become burnt out before they reach their full potential, or when they have reached that potential they decide to leave the game. this then represents a skill that they arent using anymore, but more importantly, there is a massive opportunity cost associated with them learning poker and then abandoning that skill, when they could have been learning something else related to their future career instead.
it is something i have been thinking a lot about recently in my own life. i am an electronic engineer so i make good money and poker will always be a hobby to me, i have been making maybe 10-15k a year playing poker. which is awesome because it allows me to travel and renovate the house etc. i dont spend that much time playing poker, maybe 10 hours a week on average, but i feel i have almost reached my ceiling that my lifestyle and time constraints allow for me. this is mostly because i can only really play weeknights, and at the moment there are only a few games that are higher stakes than i play. and because i play in australian night times, there isnt an opportunity for me to make more than maybe 3-5k in a single tournament.
but what, instead of poker, i spent 10 hours a week learning internet marketing or entrepeneurship or wrote an iphone app or something else that was engineering related. im sure that any of these things, if i spent 10 hours a week doing, would be much much more profitable to me as a professional in the long run. so even though i am pretty profitable and i have a real passion for playing poker, i could be limiting my overall earning power. this applies to just about any field where it takes a significant amount of study.
i think by extension from my own circumstances, a lot of poker players that get their degree and then dont use it because they turn pro are hurting themselves a lot more than they realise in opportunity cost, because they are delaying the things that they know they are going to be doing in a few years anyway.
conversely, if you are really really good you can buck that by financially securing yourself which will allow you the freedom to not have to worry about your future earning power. but most pros would make less money than the average professional job they dropped out of university from.
as a graduate engineer i would make more than most pro poker players, and as a senior engineer in the last 5 years of my career, i would make money that would be considered a sicko if playing poker (not counting the very very top guys obv, but your average very good grinder). not trying to brag, but how many pro poker players would make 100k+ a year? im sure these very smart people could do that if they used their degree instead of playing poker.
so lets say as a graduate you make 50k a year, and for the last 10 years of your career you earn 150k, and you can make 10k a year on the side playing poker.
contrast that with the professional poker player who earns 50k a year for 5 years, then decides to go out and get a graduate job with his degree, and still plays poker on the side a bit.
firstly it will be a lot harder to get a job because you have to try and explain a 5 year gap in employment. but even if we dont account for that, those 5 years of poker affect your earning power because now you only have 5 years at the end of your career for maximum earning power.
So playing poker for 5 years costs you $500k in lost earnings at the end of your career!!!! in reality it probably affects you even more because as i said before, instead of upskilling yourself in your chosen career, you are playing poker, which is going to hurt your earning power as well as the lost time, not to mention the lesser job opportunities.
now there are a couple of counter arguments to this, and one of them is you should only do what you love, and if you love poker then do it. and thats completely valid, but i am more talking about the person that knows that poker wont be their career for life. also the people that dont have significant future earning power, they dont really have this problem, but tbh if you arent smart enough to get a professional degree you arent going to make it to the very top of poker either.
there is also the obvious gambling aspect – if you manage to bink a huge score then you are really on your way, but how many full time pros would have a 200k+ score in their lifetime?
this is most defintiely a TLDR and probably quite cynical, but what are people's thoughts?
October 6, 2010
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one thing i didnt account for is rising earnings as a poker player, but honestly the reverse might even be happening at the moment, where ROI and therefore earning power is actually becoming less
September 29, 2013
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Very good thread benny. I'm happy that you are living in an as awesome country as Australia, (I hope that I will visit it one day), and doing so well in your full time job and in poker also.
I have degree in land management architecture, and I work full time as it, I like my job I'm doing quite well in it also, poker is a hobby for me and doing my best to get better and better on it as I'm a very competitive person.
But I'm living in a country where average salary in a month is 1000$ (for engineers, architekts its a bit bigger but not much) and it's a rare case if you get that amount of money by working 40 hours per week. We can do easy maths in 12months we earn 12000$ on average and we spend working 4x time to get such amount that it can be done in poker,
It's just an example thought, I can't say everyone can crush the game as you do, but if people put more time in studying the game and working on it, they can earn way more significant amount of money in poker than working fulltime in a country as I live and they can invest the money somewhere else that money could make more money etc. There are tons of people who have degree's, masters degree's, have put all theyre heart in studying something and now they don't have a job or if they do, they get paid even less than average. Thats where I give big + to poker and it's opportunities nowadays.
Nicely put. Luckily (maybe not really) I am in the not much to lose category. Make about 40k in an industry that is for the most part moving to China etc. where wages are much less. The chances of my having no job at all in the next 2 years are pretty high.
Not sure if I will ever be good enough to make a living playing poker but absolutely love the game and am kind of a fossil as far as age of the average player goes so am gettnig to a point where child support is almost over and a few other things are about to be paid off.
I make quite a bit more working then I do playing poker at this point and don't really expect that to change too much. The only way I really think this might work for me is by lowering my cost of living by moving somewhere out of the states – thinking Panama Costa Rica etc.
Like many players I wonder how much more I might improve if I played and studied the game full time.
Love what you wrote, but I still think I'm gonna give it a shot.
October 6, 2010
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great points guys, i guess you are right in that i am lucky and live in a country that has really high wages on average. that actually makes a pretty big difference, because when you say the average person might earn 12kusd a year, it becomes really attractive to play poker because you could make that playing small stakes, you dont have to be a high stakes sicko for that.
i guess that in a nutshell may have changed my opinion for a lot of people, but i think it still might be valid for people in australia, US/canada, scandanavia, germany etc where wages would be similar. but for other countries i agree it could look mighty attractive.
in hindsight i look like a massive **** for complaining that i earn too much to make poker a viable alternative, it wasnt my intention but i can see how that would come across, sorry guys!
Didn't take it that way at all. I thought you were right on for your situation and assuming that income is the main driver made some valid points.
Really trying to simplify my life, sure would love to make millions and be on ESPN etc. but i think I could be very happy grinding out 15-20K in a country with beautful beaches and low cost of living etc.
Everyones situation and goals are different.
January 16, 2013
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Excellent post bennymacca. FWIW it didn't sound like complaining.
May 30, 2012
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lots of variables to consider, NZ (where I am from and is similiar to Australia) has the same wage growth shape. but compare it to Norway, where I am currently studying, where the starting salary is higher but growth tends to be flatter so the opportunity cost doesnt hit home as much.
I also think a large proportion of serious poker players come from less well off backgrounds than you or I neccesarily do Benny, where the immediate income allows alot more flexibility and immediate income growth than what the current job market contains. NZ and Aus are currently still hiring top end graduates, this isnt neccesarily the case in other countries atm.
Money is also not the ultimate measurement of fufillment or success. making enough money to be happy or achieve your goals is kind of the only yardstick to measure by, and this varies from person to person. So while I agree with your assessment in terms of $EV, lifeEV also matters.
October 6, 2010
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yeah good point duggs. i guess my post was mostly directed at the people that know they arent going to be playing full time in 5 years but they still play anyway. i think they would be better off playing part time to offset the opportunity cost of delaying their inevitable career
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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I'm gonna play devil's advocate here, since this is 'Ask the Pros' and all. IMO there are a lot of factors that don't seem to be entering the debate yet.
1. Most people who choose to spend large amounts of time playing poker do so because they enjoy it. If you gave the average poker fan the choice between making $50k playing poker and making $70k doing something else, a lot of them would choose poker, because they love poker.
2. There are significant lifestyle benefits to poker, in that you can be your own boss. This gives people time and money to do things they would never have the chance to do if they were working a 9-to-5, and helps them work towards a future career while continuing to make roughly the same money working less hours. Not to mention, your twenties is the best time in your life to not be busy and stressed out with a high-pressure job. No-one wants that.
3. It is RIDICULOUSLY, ****ing CRAZILY hard to get a graduate job in your chosen field these days – or at least it is in the UK. I spent five years at a top 20 UK university, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I know who came out of university and went straight into a graduate job in the field that they wanted to work in. The vast majority of people I know either spent months applying for jobs, gave up and went travelling, or accepted a job in a field that wasn't the one they wanted, or simply started training to be teachers/went into postgraduate study because they had very few other options. I couldn't blame anyone who saw poker as a better option than spending years fighting for a job you're not even sure you want.
4. The vast majority of people that come out of universities don't really have any clue what they want to do with their lives. They're following the blueprint that's been laid out for them since they were eight years old. I know dozens of people who have come out of university with a degree in one thing, then gone on to work in a field completely unrelated. The reason these people don't use their degrees isn't because they didn't put enough time into developing their skills in a field, it's because they were too young to make the right decisions about their future. I know engineers who work in sales, I know linguists who work in marketing, I know economists who work in social services or are math teachers. I would argue that it is infinitely more productive to spend five years playing poker full-time while working on other projects than it is to be forced into a career path you don't want, simply because you don't have the financial resources behind you to turn down a job.
5. Poker teaches you a set of incredibly valuable skills. It teaches you analytical decision-making, the basics of business management, and it gives you the right mental attitude to succeed at something in the long-term. It also teaches you how to learn the process of becoming good at something. If and when I go on to achieve success in my chosen field – screenwriting – it will be as a direct result of the work ethic and learning methodology that poker instilled in me. Poker also teaches you to be independent, to manage yourself, and to understand that the only thing governing your freedom is your financial sustainability – there are thousands of people out there who are perfectly willing to sacrifice their own freedom and happiness for the sake of a paycheck, and I find that rather sad. Poker has taught me to raise my standards and not accept a life of mediocrity, and I would not change that for anything.
6. I would argue that the people who are playing poker full-time and are happy to accept making $50k a year as the limit of their earnings are not the kind of people who would be making more money elsewhere. To be brutally honest, if you're a professional poker player and you're not doing your best to progress towards reaching the top of the game, what the **** are you doing? Heck, if you're a professional ANYTHING and you're not doing your best to progress and get better at what you do, chances are it's not what you're truly passionate about in the first place and you should consider doing something else. The nature of motivation dictates that if you're doing something that represents your greatest passion in life, people will have to tear you away from it at the end of the day and you'll be breaking your neck to be the best at it. The reason that smart people with the capacity to reach the top choose poker is because they recognise that they have the potential to be earning a seven-figure salary in their twenties, something you just don't get anywhere else unless you're Mark Zuckerberg. If you're a pro who's not shooting for that seven-figure salary* or for bracelets and titles and is content making $50k, then $50k is all you're ever gonna make. I'm sure for some people that's enough, but for those people who could be making big bucks elsewhere as an engineer or salesperson or whatever, they're probably smart enough and passionate enough about poker that they're reaching for the stars.
I honestly believe that if every 21-year-old who came out of college were forced to play poker full-time for five years before they went out into the world and got a job somewhere, the world would be a better place. People would have a better understanding of what they wanted in life, how to get it, and how to use the information available to get better at it. They wouldn't be kicked out the door of the university with no clue what to do next beyond what society expects them to do. They would understand that agreeing to spend eight hours a day, every day, doing something you can tolerate but don't really enjoy, is not the best they can hope for out of life.
In short, I think the only way in which poker might hurt someone's future career is if they are basing all of their expectations for their future career on how someone else is going to perceive their skill set. Sure, it looks shitty to have a five-year gap on a CV, but who says you need a CV to make money, be happy and do what you love? You don't need a CV to start a business or write a book or do charity work. Obviously you need it for some things, but if those things are the things you're passionate about (like engineering, for example – I'm sure it's hard to prove your skills without a CV, but I'm sure you don't mind doing engineering-related stuff to put on your CV because you like engineering) then it's no big deal. The only problem becomes when you're turning your life into a list of things that are on your CV without stopping to think about whether or not they're making you happy.
Okay, that's it for my big long rant now. I hope this wasn't a bit aggro, it wasn't meant to be. I just have a lot of thoughts about people's career choices since some of my friends are going through some big decisions right now. Happy to answer questions if anything's unclear.
*WRT the possibility of the earning potential of poker going down, I completely disagree. We just had the first $10M guaranteed online tourney last year, earning potential has never been higher. Earning potential is only decreasing if your ability is standing still.
October 6, 2010
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interesting post, thanks for taking the time to reply. i agree with some of the things you said but very much disagree with some things you said, ill address it when i have a bit more time to post. but thankyou very much for putting in the time to reply
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December 6, 2012
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Interesting conversation guys, sorry I'm late to the party.
Benny definitely raises a point worth thinking about. My own “play poker for a few years” career plan is now creeping up on a decade. I did it at the right time, made legitimately a lot of money in those years, and it will still probably turn into a -$EV decision in terms of my lifetime earnings.
That said, it was still very +LifeEV. My college roommate and I were both planning to go to law school and got into poker at the same time. He ended up going to Harvard Law School and I played poker. When he graduated, he got a job with a corporate law firm with brutal hours that he absolutely hated. They sent him all around the world, but he rarely had time to do anything but work when he was in Germany, Japan, etc. He eventually quit that and now has a (much lower paying) job that he likes a lot more.
I look at him a bit like an alternate reality version of myself, if I could suddenly leap like Nicholas Cage into a version of my life where I took a different turn at a crucial moment. I've done a lot of things I'm proud of for myself and others in the nearly 10 years since I graduated college, things I surely wouldn't have done as either a law student or a philosophy PhD.
Even if I had to leave poker tomorrow, pursuing either of those routes is nearly unthinkable to me now, which makes me wonder how good of an idea they would have been for me nine years ago. That makes me sympathize with Ginger's point that if you're sufficiently dispassionate about your supposedly chosen career that poker is able to tempt you away from it, then maybe that career is not for you anyway.
I know there are people who do it successfully, but I've never been very good at making plans that extend years into the future. I think at any point in my life if you'd asked me to predict where I'd be five years later, I'd have been way off. My strategy so far has been to pursue things that are immediately interesting and valuable and that have some potential future payoff.
The key, though, is that I don't need to be sure about that payoff, because I know that what I'm doing is valuable in the short term. I don't want to waste years of my life studying or building something that may never come to fruition or that I decide I'm not interested in.
For example, when Nate and I started the Thinking Poker Podcast, we knew there was potential for it to gain a large audience and maybe even make some money, but we also knew that we'd enjoy the process of making it and getting to meet and talk to interesting people. So even if it didn't turn into something larger, we knew our time wouldn't be wasted.
I felt the same away about poker, about blogging, about the nonprofit organization that I founded, etc. I've been lucky that these things have mostly worked out for me, but I was also ready for any of them to fail and would have been fine with that.
All of that said, this does start to make me feel a bit nervous as I enter my 30s. This is the time where, had I been laying the foundation for big plans in my 20s, I'd probably start reaping the rewards. So maybe I just haven't yet hit the point where I'd really expect to feel the consequences of my lack of planning, and maybe a few years from now I'll be cursing my younger self for that.
October 6, 2010
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Ok, so i have a bit of time to reply now. thanks a lot though guys for taking the time to reply.
matt ill try to respond to each of your dot points
1. completely agree with this, if you are happy doing it then you should definitely keep playing, because your main sentiment is we should be driven by happiness and i completely agree with that. I didnt have these players in mind, i had those in mind that are obviously trying to grind it out towards some sort of poorly defined end goal and poker is supposed to be a stepping stone.
2. this is an absolutely MASSIVE positive about poker. having the flexibility to do what you want would be amazing, and i think could be the biggest positive about being a poker player. but i think this could be traded off by the fact that although you get significant flexibility, i really dont think you can say poker is less stressful than working long hours. playing poker for a living would be one of the most stressful things i can think of doing.
3. i think this might be country specific, and would obviously depend on what degree you have, what local industries are going strong etc. As an engineer im pretty sure every one of my mates at university had a job lined up before we left. I was recruited for a graduate position 6 months before i finished university. That was 6 years ago, and things have no doubt slowed down significantly since then, but i think if you are in the top 20% of your class im still sure you could find a job no worries. the bottom people in the class might struggle a bit now though.
i think having a generalist degree (arts etc) would hurt you here too, and given you want to be a screenwriter i am guessing you have an arts degree (sorry if i am off the mark here). i wholeheartedly agree with you that it is ridiculously tough to find a job with those sorts of degrees, but it always has been. i am more talking about the people who have professional degrees (engineering, law, architecture) that it is traditionally easier to find a job in their field.
4. i disagree with this quite a lot. once again this might be a difference between a generalist and professional degree, becaue i could certainly see people with generalist degrees doing them because they dont really have a defined idea of what they want to do. the thing you are also missing here is that even if you get a graduate job in your chosen field, you are definitely not stuck doing that job forever. you can work in one field and change just as easily as you can play poker for 5 years and then change. but even if the field is completely unrelated working would usually provide you with a lot more employable skills than playing poker, im sure of this. now once again, and this was the basic premise of my thoughts, i am assuming that there is not a huge difference between the money you can make as a graduate and the money you can make playing poker. if you can make 3x playing poker then i think this is a much better option, but most poker players are just grinding it out for that “big score” that never seems to happen.
5. to me this is where i have the biggest reservations of your whole argument, because although i agree that poker teaches you the skills you have mentioned, i would contend that if you really, really wanted to learn just about any of those skills you have mentioned, there are better places to go do so
analytical decision making – yeah sure, but my degree was pretty good at that too. learning anything complex with deductive logic and mathematics would help with your decision making.
the basics of business management – really? if i wanted to open my own business in 5 years, im sure as hell not going to play poker, i am going to go and do a business course, i am not going to sit and play poker and assume that this is teaching me something. not sure if you are different to me, but my business management towards poker comprises of looking at the line on my database. and if you were playing full time it would extend to a household budget too. none of those things are exclusively something poker could teach you, and in fact there are much much better places to learn it than with poker.
how to be good at something – once again this applies to poker as well as it does to any endeavour where you decide to put lots of time and effort into, so you cant really use this as an argument for playing poker.
once again i really do agree with you about people sacrificing their happiness for a paycheck, and if you are happy playing poker then you SHOULD play poker. but if you know you arent going to be in poker forever, it is an admission that either there are other things that you know make you happier than poker, or that it is not a good career move to be playing poker forever. and either of those things point to trying to upskill yourself for your future career, even whilst playing poker.
6. your assumption is that everyone who plays poker can become the best in the world if they work hard enough, and i think this is a fallacy – some people just wont have the skill set to be crushing high stakes MTTs or playing nosebleeds, no matter how hard they work on this skillset. the vast, vast majority of poker players think their future earning potential is higher than it is. by its very definition not everyone can win at poker, or even get close to the top. its a pyramid scheme in the most part, where people of different skillsets bounce up and down in stakes until they find an equilibrium in stakes where they are mildly profitable, or they continue in a breakeven cycle of trying to go up and down in stakes.
and once again if you are talking about reflecting on what you want in life, what about poker gives you the ability to do that over something else? i mean i am an engineer and i think that is exactly what i am going through right now. i have for quite a while thought that i would love to be a teacher. i havent taken the steps to make that happen yet, becasue i am unsure whether i want to go and do a PHD and work in a university, or whether i want to go and be a high school teacher. or whether i want to be a teacher at all. but if i was playing poker i could still have these sorts of thougths.
i agree that if i was playing poker i could probably go back to university a bit easier, but i think that is more difficult because of the fact that i have a mortgage, not the fact that i have a job instead of playing poker.
the stuff regarding the CV, if you are after a professional job, sometimes you cant even get in the door without a CV. but to your other points – yes you can start a business without a CV, but if your goal is to start a business, then why arent you doing some business courses to upskill yourself instead of playing poker? poker is just taking away your opportunity to better yourself in your future career, because those skills you mentioned that poker taught you, whilst valuable, can be learned more effectively elsewhere.
lastly, your point earning potential i completely disagree with. if you look at the winrates of the 50 best 400nl grinders now and compared it to 5 years ago i would bet my life roll that it is significantly less. i would do the same for tournaments, though this is skewed significantly by the big scores, which are somewhat random. i still think the winrate is lower in the top players. the more knowledge that is disseminated by sites such as TPE is just leading to the average person being better at poker. even playing part time, i know that 4 years ago i was looking at fish on my table to try and exploit, and now i am looking to try and exploit bag regs instead. granted i now play mid stakes instead of micros but i think in general my point is still valid.
having huge money guaranteed tournaments doesnt increase your earning potential any more than entering a lottery with a huge score does. im obviously not saying that playing poker tournaments are a lottery, but winning an individual massive one comes pretty close. overall ROIs of the top players would be dropping significantly, and barring a massive influx of new players i would think ROIs would continue to drop. interested to hear your thoughts about that.
October 6, 2010
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i thought i would start a new post to reply to andrew.
thanks for replying, very interesting. i particularly like your analogy of your friend who is now a lawyer and how that could have been you. i often wonder myself what would have happened if i found poker a few years earlier. i only really started playing online semi-seriously in about 2009/2010, after donking around for 5 years or so before that, and i graduated in 2007. i do wonder if i played seriously in 2005 for instance instead of just a $5 sng here and there whether that would have changed my career path somewhat, because i feel like i do have the passion and skills to play poker full time, but the mortgage and wife and impending children are all things that would be stopping that.
i do wonder whether i would be happier playing poker, because nothing makes me happier than when we have a lazy friday night in and i can load up a few tourneys, have a few beers, crank the headphones and get my grind on.
i think i have concluded that poker is only a realistic career path for those that are only just out of university and dont have any significant financial committments to tie them down. but i think my original point still stands, quite often poker is just delaying their inevitable career switch and could be hurting them in the long run.
June 27, 2012
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In my humble opinion your dedication to most pursuits boils down to personal responsibilities, finding some comfortable medium within the dynamic interaction between financial, family and health obligations. I’d love to play poker full-time, disregarding my career as a research scientist and associated PhD, but I correctly, or incorrectly, consider this an irresponsible career change.
After investing 10 years at university, and a further decade in the same discipline, my income is good, but not proportionately ‘great’. Well, not as much as some of my mates who embarked down the trade route fresh out of high school. I have a young family, help run a retail business, and strive to live well. I thoroughly enjoy poker as a hobby, or more importantly a therapeutic release from conventional life. I comfortably admit I’m an average player who can occasionally pull in some extra ‘soft money’, my challenge is to simply trend my green line up.
Life would no doubt be different if poker was a focus in my formative years and I had the freedom to immerse myself with similar doctoral dedication. However, I am constantly reassured, through bubbling final tables, getting bad beaten and missing spots, that variance cannot penetrate my established career at the same insidious level. I can’t expose my family, health and collective lifestyle to that level of uncertainty with a clear conscience. I do, however, have the upmost respect for those who can succeed in this situation, and given the zero-sum nature of the game, you are indeed in elite company.
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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Benny do you really think there are a lot of 20-somethings out there who don't really enjoy playing poker and are just gritting their teeth and grinding because they think it's the best option they have to make money? My bet is that a lot of the people who claim to be doing that are lying to you and possibly to themselves. I don't think anyone without passion for the game is making big money at, and if you're just making small money I wouldn't think it would be too hard financially or emotionally to set it aside and go do something else.
The one exception might be the folks who live in countries with low cost-of-living, where the ability to earn what I would consider “small money” is a huge opportunity, but it sounds like those aren't really the folks you had in mind anyway.
October 6, 2010
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yeah its a fair question
i guess im not really questioning the passion of people, im sure that to play full time you have to have the passion, even to play seriously part time as i do you need to be passionate. passion isnt really the issue, but there are some people out there that just know that poker isnt going to be a long term career – not necessarily that their passion will wane, but the games might become different or harder, or they might want to settle down with wife/kids where travelling or the uncertainty of poker income might not gel that well etc, so they know they cant play full time anymore even if they have the passion.
thanks for your input all
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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bennymacca said:
Ok, so i have a bit of time to reply now. thanks a lot though guys for taking the time to reply.
matt ill try to respond to each of your dot points
1. completely agree with this, if you are happy doing it then you should definitely keep playing, because your main sentiment is we should be driven by happiness and i completely agree with that. I didnt have these players in mind, i had those in mind that are obviously trying to grind it out towards some sort of poorly defined end goal and poker is supposed to be a stepping stone.
2. this is an absolutely MASSIVE positive about poker. having the flexibility to do what you want would be amazing, and i think could be the biggest positive about being a poker player. but i think this could be traded off by the fact that although you get significant flexibility, i really dont think you can say poker is less stressful than working long hours. playing poker for a living would be one of the most stressful things i can think of doing.
3. i think this might be country specific, and would obviously depend on what degree you have, what local industries are going strong etc. As an engineer im pretty sure every one of my mates at university had a job lined up before we left. I was recruited for a graduate position 6 months before i finished university. That was 6 years ago, and things have no doubt slowed down significantly since then, but i think if you are in the top 20% of your class im still sure you could find a job no worries. the bottom people in the class might struggle a bit now though.
i think having a generalist degree (arts etc) would hurt you here too, and given you want to be a screenwriter i am guessing you have an arts degree (sorry if i am off the mark here). i wholeheartedly agree with you that it is ridiculously tough to find a job with those sorts of degrees, but it always has been. i am more talking about the people who have professional degrees (engineering, law, architecture) that it is traditionally easier to find a job in their field.
4. i disagree with this quite a lot. once again this might be a difference between a generalist and professional degree, becaue i could certainly see people with generalist degrees doing them because they dont really have a defined idea of what they want to do. the thing you are also missing here is that even if you get a graduate job in your chosen field, you are definitely not stuck doing that job forever. you can work in one field and change just as easily as you can play poker for 5 years and then change. but even if the field is completely unrelated working would usually provide you with a lot more employable skills than playing poker, im sure of this. now once again, and this was the basic premise of my thoughts, i am assuming that there is not a huge difference between the money you can make as a graduate and the money you can make playing poker. if you can make 3x playing poker then i think this is a much better option, but most poker players are just grinding it out for that “big score” that never seems to happen.
5. to me this is where i have the biggest reservations of your whole argument, because although i agree that poker teaches you the skills you have mentioned, i would contend that if you really, really wanted to learn just about any of those skills you have mentioned, there are better places to go do so
analytical decision making – yeah sure, but my degree was pretty good at that too. learning anything complex with deductive logic and mathematics would help with your decision making.
the basics of business management – really? if i wanted to open my own business in 5 years, im sure as hell not going to play poker, i am going to go and do a business course, i am not going to sit and play poker and assume that this is teaching me something. not sure if you are different to me, but my business management towards poker comprises of looking at the line on my database. and if you were playing full time it would extend to a household budget too. none of those things are exclusively something poker could teach you, and in fact there are much much better places to learn it than with poker.
how to be good at something – once again this applies to poker as well as it does to any endeavour where you decide to put lots of time and effort into, so you cant really use this as an argument for playing poker.
once again i really do agree with you about people sacrificing their happiness for a paycheck, and if you are happy playing poker then you SHOULD play poker. but if you know you arent going to be in poker forever, it is an admission that either there are other things that you know make you happier than poker, or that it is not a good career move to be playing poker forever. and either of those things point to trying to upskill yourself for your future career, even whilst playing poker.
6. your assumption is that everyone who plays poker can become the best in the world if they work hard enough, and i think this is a fallacy – some people just wont have the skill set to be crushing high stakes MTTs or playing nosebleeds, no matter how hard they work on this skillset. the vast, vast majority of poker players think their future earning potential is higher than it is. by its very definition not everyone can win at poker, or even get close to the top. its a pyramid scheme in the most part, where people of different skillsets bounce up and down in stakes until they find an equilibrium in stakes where they are mildly profitable, or they continue in a breakeven cycle of trying to go up and down in stakes.
and once again if you are talking about reflecting on what you want in life, what about poker gives you the ability to do that over something else? i mean i am an engineer and i think that is exactly what i am going through right now. i have for quite a while thought that i would love to be a teacher. i havent taken the steps to make that happen yet, becasue i am unsure whether i want to go and do a PHD and work in a university, or whether i want to go and be a high school teacher. or whether i want to be a teacher at all. but if i was playing poker i could still have these sorts of thougths.
i agree that if i was playing poker i could probably go back to university a bit easier, but i think that is more difficult because of the fact that i have a mortgage, not the fact that i have a job instead of playing poker.
the stuff regarding the CV, if you are after a professional job, sometimes you cant even get in the door without a CV. but to your other points – yes you can start a business without a CV, but if your goal is to start a business, then why arent you doing some business courses to upskill yourself instead of playing poker? poker is just taking away your opportunity to better yourself in your future career, because those skills you mentioned that poker taught you, whilst valuable, can be learned more effectively elsewhere.
lastly, your point earning potential i completely disagree with. if you look at the winrates of the 50 best 400nl grinders now and compared it to 5 years ago i would bet my life roll that it is significantly less. i would do the same for tournaments, though this is skewed significantly by the big scores, which are somewhat random. i still think the winrate is lower in the top players. the more knowledge that is disseminated by sites such as TPE is just leading to the average person being better at poker. even playing part time, i know that 4 years ago i was looking at fish on my table to try and exploit, and now i am looking to try and exploit bag regs instead. granted i now play mid stakes instead of micros but i think in general my point is still valid.
having huge money guaranteed tournaments doesnt increase your earning potential any more than entering a lottery with a huge score does. im obviously not saying that playing poker tournaments are a lottery, but winning an individual massive one comes pretty close. overall ROIs of the top players would be dropping significantly, and barring a massive influx of new players i would think ROIs would continue to drop. interested to hear your thoughts about that.
It's kinda hard for me to reply to all of this, because you raised some really interesting and complex points that I'm not really sure I have an answer for. I'm pretty sure it was late at night when I wrote my original post, so I might have been tired and stated my points a little more forcefully than I intended to.
I think ultimately, the thing that everyone can really learn from the fact that we have such contrasting opinions on some aspects of this issue, is that there is no real answer. The decisions we all make in life come as a result of an incredible number of social, personal, economic and environmental factors that can make it completely impossible for one person to understand the life choices of another person in certain circumstances. Sometimes trying to understand the way other people think on such a rational and logical level is simply a road to nowhere – we are occasionally creatures of impulse, and sometimes we do things just because they 'feel right'.
Ultimately, the reason we make all the decisions we make over the course of a lifetime is with the goal of being happy and fulfilled. If an opportunity arises to skip a few steps and do something that will put us into a consistent state of happines right now – whether that be the feeling of working towards a particular life goal by doing a certain job, or the feeling of doing something every day that we enjoy – then it would seem to be a bad decision not to take that opportunity. For some people playing poker serves exactly that purpose, and for others there are better options.
For me, playing poker is absolutely the right thing to be doing with my life right now. I sacrificed a lot to be where I am. In 2011 I was attending parties and having Facebook chats with the CEOs of multi-million-dollar companies. I was invited to give a speech to the Business Council of the nation of Cote d'Ivoire in Abidjan, before a civil war cancelled my trip there. I worked in several different countries and met all kinds of people, but I was never as happy as I am now. My present happiness, in my opinion, validates my decision to play poker for a living. I don't find it stressful to any great degree, at least not any more – I think anyone who does find it overly stressful after having reached the point where they can make a decent living off the game and not worry about money probably just has some mental game issues to resolve.
The only thing in your post I really have any problem with is that I think you're confusing the concept of ROIs with the concept of earning potential. You might be right about the earnings of regs at specific cash game levels going down over the last few years, but that has to be balanced against certain other factors like the growth of PLO and the widening of cash game options across a variety of sites. In tournament terms, I think it's almost certain that while you're correct about ROIs going down, earning potential has gone up. There's more money in the poker economy. There are $100k buyin tournaments on a regular basis now. Next year we'll have the second ever $1million buyin tourney. Ten years ago, it was next to impossible to make seven figures for winning a poker tournament. In 2014, my guess is that there will probably be 25-30 tournaments taking place that have seven-figure sums for first place. There are online tourneys with $2million+ for first place. Poker is growing exponentially.
I recognise that my opinions are coming from the point of view of defending my own life choices, so to an extent it's going to be hard for me to ever agree with you 100%. I will point out that I wasn't saying that the skills poker teaches you are a reason to choose it over something else – more like a pleasant side-effect. But what I am most definitely saying, in conclusion, is that while we both raised some good points, it's hard to dispute that if there are people out there who would be happier playing poker for a living than they would be doing something else, then that's probably what they should be doing.
November 22, 2013
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I'm not a professional, so take this with a grain of salt, but I've been thinking a lot about “going pro” vs. working and keeping poker as a hobby. Please don't take offense to anything I'm about to say.
The thing is that I think that it is actually a false choice. For the past 3 years I've been working full-time as an attorney and playing poker about 1000 hours per year or about 20 hrs per week, mostly in live tournaments. The reason why I think it is a false choice is that because between leave, holiday, and weekends I have been able to attend most of the tournaments I would have attended anyway if I were a pro. I've been playing almost every regional WPT tournament, following the HPT circuit, playing in the Venetian Deep Stack, and the Grand Series. I've also made more than 50K NET playing poker each of the last three years. If you consider that I've also made a little swapping/staking (def won more than I've lost) and gotten a little extra cheese in the way of comps, I've come close to six figures in terms of net profit + fringe benefits of poker. I've come to a few conclusions based on my own experience:
1) The reason why I'm still working a full-time job is not because of the salary but because of insurance and retirement benefits. I have a chronic, but not life threatening illness. If I wasn't working then I wouldn't have insurance, or it would be prohibitively expensive. Also, if I work long enough I will have a vested pension valued at over 1M. It would be difficult to save 1M playing poker, as there are pro poker players who haven't even earned that much in their career, let alone saved that much for retirement.
2) On the other hand, people greatly overestimate the stability of a working professional. I have had to move 4 times in 5 years since graduating from law school. I'm currently on a 3 yr contract, with no real stability beyond that, I could get my contract renewed, but I may not. Additionally, my wife and I were both working in Washington DC when we lost our jobs. I was fortunate enough to find a better job in Orlando, but she has not. Most of my peers are even worse off. I believe no one really has any comprehension about how bad the economy is. I went to a tier 1 law school and less than half my class found full-time employment. I was a lucky one. Still, I basically rely on the whims of the organization I work for, if they don't have the funding, I don't have a job. At least with poker, you rely only on yourself.
3) The definition of a “professional poker player” is a loose one. One definition is a player who relies on poker as their primary source of income AND works more than 40 hrs per week playing. That definition is a key one because how do you define players like Selbst who go to school full-time while playing? By that definition, she would be a student, not a professional. Yet she is a much more highly skilled player than a lot of full-time pros and has the winnings to prove it. I have played against several players with more than 1M career and many of them are not great players imo. If you consider that many have of them have played 20+ years, they only are averaging 50K per year, which is not more than I make playing poker part-time. Cong Pham is the best player I've ever played against personally and before this year was basically just a Florida regular, not a well known pro. Moneymaker and Raymer were not really considered professional when they won the WSOP. All this is just to say that a highly skilled amateur is better than a low-end professional and will have the winning% to prove it. There are many professional grinders whose hourly win rate is lower than a very good local amateur who is highly skilled but only plays on the weekend.
4) This leads me to my next point, which is even as an amateur you have to have a very good hourly win rate to even consider going pro. You should go off hourly win rate and not total winnings as a barometer of success. A lot of people believe that if they just played more hours they would have a better win rate. Imo this is akin to a pickup basketball player saying if they just had more practice they could beat Jordan. It's putting the horse before the cart.
5) As with all sports, you need to be a great player to make a lot of money, but if you are a great poker player you will win a lot more per year than 50K. It's much better to compare poker to other sports than it is to compare it to being an office worker. The best poker players make millions through tournament winnings and endorsements, just like athletes of any other sport.
6) You know in your heart whether you can go pro or not. IMO a lot of players love playing poker, but they don't love learning about poker; therefore, they aren't cut out for playing professionally. Even when I didn't have a lot of time, I took poker books to work, and read them during lunch. Over the course of 3 years, I studied just about every poker theory book known to man. I studied WPT vids before bed instead of watching TV. And I mean really studied them, like an NFL coach watches film. I watched them in slow motion to pick up tells. I went over every single play in my head to learn from them. IMO if you are considering going pro and you don't have a deep love for the game, not playing the game mind you, but a deep passion for the game at a theoretical level, I don't know why you're even considering it. If you love poker, you make time for it.
I'm not saying any of this to brag or to be rude, they're just some thoughts I came up with, and trust me, I've thought about this a lot. This is a good topic for me to read because I myself have put a lot of thought into going pro. I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather work full-time and play part-time. However, I disagree with your main point. I have NOT wasted my time. I could lose my job at any time and at least then I know I can make money griding at poker. It's a sad state of affairs when poker is seen as a more reliable income source than being an attorney, but at this point in time, for me, it probably is. I love poker and I love it at a deep theoretical level. I love discussing hands. I love traveling to play in big events. It's a thrill. I wouldn't exchange it for the world. Just because it isn't my primary income source at the moment doesn't mean that it is time wasted.
November 16, 2013
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These (slightly superficial) opinions of OP are pretty standard for people in the age between 25-35.
Backward thoughts tbh.
Much research has been done about what people om their deathbeds regret most. And one thing is that they always seem to regret the most is that they worked too hard and didnt relax enough and enjoy life.
Im pretty sure OP will realise this also in 20-50 years. The sooner the better i guess.
Life is not about overachieving, getting the best salary or having the best degree. Its about enjoying the 80years you have.
I would never stop playing poker because i could making x amount of money more from my career. I want to enjoy life and play poker. Poker is fun and a challenge. Money does not mean that much to me personally.
Who is happier at the age of 50-80 because they have made 30% more money than they would have made by playing poker and working?
Thats a person i never want to become. And tbh, a person i feel a little bit sorry for..
(ps, english is not my native language in case some things sound weird)
October 6, 2010
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good post, i agree with you for the most part. and i can tell you i have thought more about quitting my job and going full time since i wrote this post than before it!
the main thrust of my argument wasnt “stop doing what you love, you can make more money” it was more about the people who i percieved to be burnt out already, or where full time poker was never going to be a sustainable long term career move for them, and they might be better playing part time and trying to prepare for their future career instead.
the extreme to your argument is the 30 year old that still lives at his parents house who cant afford to move out because he is a pro poker player – sure he loves what he does, but he hasnt taken responsibility for his life and maybe wont ever do that.
i do take offence to being called superficial though, as you can see i think i put in a lot of thought. I am not sure i myself even agree with some of the points i made earlier, but i intended to write a thought provoking counter argument to what a lot of us (including myself) aspire towards, being a pro poker player.
November 16, 2013
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Hello, thanks for the reply. I just want to clarify that i have way too few reads on villain to label him (you) as superficial.
(Bad joke, i know.)
I was mainly refering to opinions similar to these that so many young people have these days.
November 22, 2013
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bennymacca said:
good post, i agree with you for the most part. and i can tell you i have thought more about quitting my job and going full time since i wrote this post than before it!
the main thrust of my argument wasnt “stop doing what you love, you can make more money” it was more about the people who i percieved to be burnt out already, or where full time poker was never going to be a sustainable long term career move for them, and they might be better playing part time and trying to prepare for their future career instead.
the extreme to your argument is the 30 year old that still lives at his parents house who cant afford to move out because he is a pro poker player – sure he loves what he does, but he hasnt taken responsibility for his life and maybe wont ever do that.
i do take offence to being called superficial though, as you can see i think i put in a lot of thought. I am not sure i myself even agree with some of the points i made earlier, but i intended to write a thought provoking counter argument to what a lot of us (including myself) aspire towards, being a pro poker player.
My counter to your extreme example is the 30 year old law school grad still living in his parent's house because he hasn't found a law-related job. Or a public defender eeking by on 50K a year with 100K in student loans. That's not the situation that I'm in, but I know people that I went to law school with are in that position. I can see you're in Australia. I don't know about how things are there but in the states I don't think the prospects for people with professional degrees is nearly as good as you make it out to be and I don't think the prospects for good poker players are nearly as bad as you make it out to be. A top tier poker player can out earn a top tier attorney and can do so without the 100K in student loans. I don't per se regret going to law school but I still have student loans. On the other hand, this past year I've made as much playing poker part-time as I have from my salary, and with less educational investment. Sure, some players can't really hack it as a pro, they don't have the win rate to do so, and may also be lacking in skill, dedication, bankroll management, etc. But I would argue that these people also wouldn't be successful in another career field. I don't think that being a poker pro is a bad option at all. In fact, I'm sure that if the 3 years I had spent in law school I had instead spent studying poker, I could have made it as a pro, and I wouldn't have gone through as much B.S.
October 6, 2010
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yeah its a valid point. i think australia has been shielded somewhat from the economic uncertainty, and maybe that has made me complacent about my future job opportunites, or what my skills would give me in other countries
November 22, 2013
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bennymacca said:
yeah its a valid point. i think australia has been shielded somewhat from the economic uncertainty, and maybe that has made me complacent about my future job opportunites, or what my skills would give me in other countries
If you'll forgive a political aside, in the U.S. many blue-collar jobs have been outsourced. So many people who would ordinarily work them are either jobless or went back to school. This, in addition to the fact that high school teachers have been jamming down students' throats that they need to go to college to be successful, has resulted in many more people going to college and for professional degrees than they would have otherwise. Also, many people go to law school not because it is their true passion but because they graduated from undergrad with a major that is unlikely to lead to a job, and don't know what else to do. The legal market has become oversaturated, although law schools won't tell you this. I'm certain the situation for M.B.A.s is the same. Studies have shown there is still high demand for medical professionals; however, if this is true it won't be true for long bc the people who would ordinarily work other jobs will simply become nurses, P.As, etc. The situation is particularly poor for young people under the age of 30 bc in most law firms they aren't letting people go, they simply aren't making any more new hires. When the economy was good 20 years ago, the way it worked with law school grads was that the top 10% of the class would get a high paying job at big firms and got actively recruited to interview by getting free dinners, box seat sports tickets, etc. The 11% to 40% would work at small to midsize firms. Finally, the bottom would work for the government. Now the firms aren't hiring. So instead the top 20% works for the government and the bottom 80% are left to fend for themselves, many are jobless, some are temporary hires, and some open their own small practice. Some even go back to school to get another degree and more student loan debt. Personally, the only reason why I have an aversion to playing poker professionally is because of the risk, yet opening a legal practice would have even more risk due to more overhead, and that it takes 3-5 years to build a reputation and client base. Therefore, I think it is actually safer to play poker full-time than to open a law firm. I got a six figure job at a research University, but I also came from the top of my class at a tier 1 law school. Even my job isn't stable as I am on a 3 year contract and there is constant talk about us not having the funds to renew our contracts. Playing poker professionally comes with a certain risk; however, I think the risk of working for someone else is just as great. If I lose my contract I may just give up being an attorney to play poker full-time, my hourly win rate the past few years (approx 3000 hrs) says that I can do it. Maybe I would still use my law degree to take on small cases for friends, so it wouldn't be a complete waste. Not to mention that the quality of life for a poker player includes a lot of freedom, plus playing a game that I love versus the tedium of being a lawyer. I wouldn't look down at a pro poker player; in fact, I envy them. I envy their courage to do something that I probably could do but so far I have been too risk-averse to take the plunge.
November 7, 2013
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I prefer to think of it as planning ahead for future streets. You have to take the time to research trends in the job market.
I’m going for my degree in geological studies because we’re always gonna need resources.
Obviously I’d love to go pro but I’m no where near at the level where I could make a go of it.
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