If he a.) plays at stakes where he can lose over a million in a couple days and b.) bases his decision to play someone (especially another pro) on emotion and recent short term variance, it's pretty much guaranteed he will end up broke eventually unless he actually has many many millions (like possibly in the hundreds if we're talking about enough to cover the swings of heads up PLO games at those stakes with Gus Hansen).
It's hard to fathom how much variance really exists in poker. Lucky and unlucky streaks can and do last months to years for people who play thousands of hands per day. Statistics dictates that there will always be a number of outliers who, due to a combination of moving up aggressively and running hot at the right times, become millionaires in a short time and draw a lot of attention, but unless they're the real deal and sufficiently bankrolled to cover the swings, it will all go back, often as quickly as it came. Most of the famous players on TV actually fit this mold, go broke constantly, and only make consistent money due to endorsements. Among real high stakes pros (mostly math-oriented, highly self-disciplined nerds you've never heard of), a large portion of the TV stars are considered fish. I've always found it interesting how distorted the general perceptions are versus reality.
I worked for an online gambling company for several years in the analytics area. I saw young players rise meteorically, win millions (not exaggerating) and eventually go broke.
Almost everyone is human. Once losses start to mount, it's hard to play with according to the program and stay emotionally detached while your world is crumbling with every lost pot.
Never underestimate the cheaters. Most online poker players don't understand how rampant collusion is. Dumb colluders are easy to spot. Smart ones will stay undetected until someone gets greedy. Almost everyone is human. It's hard to maintain discipline.
I myself thought about playing online professionally. After I realistically evaluated my chances and my stats, it became clear that I would make more money on a guaranteed basis by being a consultant than a professional poker player. When you have a family that depends on you, stable income becomes very important.
Online gamblers live a very unfullfilling life: you are staring at several computer screens many hours each day, you don't really create anything and you have wild swings in your income. With exception of few lucky, hard working, disciplined and possibly intelligently colluding players you will not make good money in the long run.
In the short run, impossible is nothing. Play that tourney, enjoy a night in a casino. It's good fun if it's not your job.
I haven't read the article yet, but I do hang in poker circles and play. jungleman is an absolute legend in the online poker world - mostly because he is not the reckless Hansen type.
He built most of his roll grinding stakes lower than he was capable of playing because he understood variance, skill etc. It was only more recently that he stepped up to play durrrr et al (early last year, IIRC). Before that, he was famous for declining games with the stars
Lucky and unlucky streaks can and do last months to years for people who play thousands of hands per day.
This cannot possibly, possibly be true. The expected deviation goes as the square root of the sample size, which means that the percentage deviation goes as the inverse square root of the sample size, which means that if you play thousands of hands a day for a year, your deviation ought to be less than 1%.
Anything that persists over 100,000 samples is not luck.
It's about the metrics, or lack there of. And what a critical distinction that makes in pro poker vs most any other business endeavor.
The irony, tho, is even within the "reality" you mention...of those we deem or see as "quiet and disciplined nerds" who look down on the "famous tv pros"...
An equally false sense of success and financial gains define them.
Empirically....and logically it makes the most sense too...the truest of winners in poker are those who come closest to treating it like a normal/more traditional business, with real metrics...and act and think as legitimate entrepreneurs running a business.
I played quite a bit of poker and blackjack to help pay for college; Some of my "not-really-friends" friends dropped out to play professionally.
Playing 6+ simultaneous tables isn't as romantic (it's a boring way to play) or hard (there's software to help you keep track) as this article makes it out to be, when you're essentially asking the same question every hand, doing the same calculation. It gets to be mind numbing. There are few situations in poker that are truly interesting when you've played tens of thousands of hands.
I'd liken the experience less to Command and Conquer and more to mining for gold in World of Warcraft.
And that was the difference between me and the others in my circle that still play full time: Mental stamina.
Seeing the chips as points and not money is really a defense mechanism to keep you playing rationally. Where many good, but not great, online players lose it is in the grind of constantly calculating pot odds.
I would badly like to sit this guy down with 'young poker hotshot' expected lifetime net worth graph, median lifetime net worth graph and 'likelihood you will go broke' worksheet, and convince him to dump $3mm into T-bills.
Oh well. I wouldn't have listened either when I was his age.
I have several self-recognized cognitive biases that make me a terrible poker player.
I hate to give up on something once I start. If I start reading a terrible book, it burns me because I feel obligated to finish. This also means its pretty tough for me to fold a hand after I've been had.
Given this bias, I've predicted that my highest EV move in poker is not to play.
(By the way, take out the extra periods from your links)
Its very common for high level rts players to also play poker. During the time of starcraft broodwar before starcraft 2 launched there was not much north american/european interest in the gaming scene. Professional players use to play poker by day to make money and starcraft by night to practice for their next tournament.
You know, that's a really interesting observation. Having lived across the hall from day[9] in college and seen him play both Starcraft and poker, the intense concentration, and frenetic clicking, and split-second analysis involved in both activities are really not all that different. :)
In fact, one of the first foreign (non-Korean) StarCraft players to move to Korea went on to become a pro poker player (Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Grospellier)
From what I understand, many of the Korean pros get into online poker as well.
Good question. I think it's pretty hysterical by the way, how it seems like half of the online gambling articles published in the mainstream media are about the shady underbelly of an illegal industry and the other half sort of glamorize the top winners.
To answer your question though, online poker is in a kind of legal limbo. The Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was tacked onto the SAFE Port Act of 2006 in a midnight rush job, making it illegal for banks to facilitate transactions related to online gambling. It didn't specifically make the act of playing illegal beyond what has been on the books since the Interstate Wire Act of 1961. In theory, poker's ace up the sleeve is that it's a skill game and can't fall under the same restrictions that regulate other games of chance.
At a state level, there are states that have specifically made online poker illegal, Washington (where it's a felony) and Kentucky are two, if memory serves but I think there might be one or two more by now. Then you see other states NJ/CA/NV moving to legalize and regulate intrastate network gaming.
Probably most of the players winning smaller amounts just don't bother to declare, and the bigger players are filing Form W2-G the same as they would for offline winnings.
I used to bet on sports. I've made 13k in 13 days. I've wagered 10k on a single game (numerous times). I've lost 14k in three hours. I've wagered my entire bankroll on a single day of NFL games.
And guess what? It was never about the money. Sure, I always wanted to see the number go up, but I had no intentions of withdrawing any of it. It was about being right. It was about pushing the envelope. And most importantly, it was about trying to figure something out.
I don't care if you make millions or go bust... or go back and forth between the two. As long as you leave your emotions at the door, you'll be fine. And to be honest, I was good at that (and still am). But it's probably not a life you want...
I mean, yeah, it's fun trying to solve something and seeing if you're right or wrong. But you're only doing it for yourself. You and no one else. And if that tickles your fancy, go for it - I have nothing against it. But what if you chose to share your passion for wanting to be right, for wanting to push the envelope, for wanting to figure something out...
In my eyes, it wouldn't necessarily make you a better person, it'd just be hard to call that bet a loss.
I'm going to make a prediction and say that this kid is flat broke in the next 2-5 years.(if it takes that long) The article seems to gloss over the sickening amounts of variance that poker can have. Just like you can run up from nothing to millions in year, you can go from living in the penthouse to sweeping the lobby over a few bad sessions. Especially at the stakes he's playing at. Ask Mike Matusow about being a pro who's borrowing money to pay bills.
With midrange professional players, I don't think you really see those kinds of crazy swings. Once you reach a certain level, you start doing dumb things, like playing head-to-head games at ridiculous stakes against players you're equally matched with.
Which is why poker doesn't scale well. Eventually you're not going to hit a level where you don't have as clear an advantage over your opponents. Your profits will eventually end up capping out. You either need to find a new angle or start gambling like a degenerate to further advance.
Players like Matusow aren't going to scale down their stakes when their bankroll starts to shrink dramatically.
The prob with..every..mainstream story on (e)poker is the unflinching marketing élan of the writers, and necessity to give a (stil truly) sub-terranean slice of life immediate resonance to the audience.
Not too encroach upon anyone's character or existence, let alone the actual people in the article...
Poker is an inexorable gambit; both in lifestyle (subjectively define by 'sanity', and career (objectively define buy debt and financial bottoming out.
Poker is a fairly pure, distilled hologram of the caprice/randomness, and skill/will that resides over living and life itself, and a stripped bare interplay of emotional and psychological alchemy that everyone has, and lives with.
The greatest poker success carries little to not weight, in terms of posterity. IMO, greatest difference between poker and "other jobs".
Even aject fail in other occupational pursuits almost always carries over some tangible good productive benefit for you and your career. Whether it's contacts, savings, reputation, experience itself.
Contra poker; even after enormous success, the above benefits are a double edged sword at best, where your experience and connections (ability to get back in) are as likely to be the underpinnings of cyclical, fixed failure.
At best, it's a totoal unknown; emoyrically, it's pretty obvious.
And either way, poker is devoid of true metrics...in the same way -- IMHO -- other businesses get/should be hinged upon.
Ironic, since poker is all about a scoreboard and 'statistics'. But the living and breathing reality of metrics is a seperate (undomesticated) species from standard business metrics.
One more thing, hopefully more concrete (I'm reticent to be too specific since I know/knew a lot of the actual ppl involved),
The luck of poker, applied to people otherwise talented and able, is most profound in the beginnings of their poker experience, most often at adolescent ages where an underlying emotional caprice and aversion (or tolerance..) to risk is extremely strong.
Majority of the "long"term winners, had remarkably pain-free beginnings, when their emotional and psychological poker fortress got created. Still, many dropped out of school after losing/borrowings appreciable sums, to persevere.
Pointedly, of the latter...most were in financial umbrella's of school and family, and insulated from the psycholigical tumult n emotional traumas that define any poker career.
This got too long n fumbling, but personal experience/a vacuum of time on the treadmill/and a general interest necessitated.
People who win at high stakes poker count in wins/losses, not in value of money earned. Poker has become a lifestyle game. It's about the prestige, not the money.
The most important point that you made is that poker brings nothing to the table for a player except money. You learn little that can be monetized away from the table, and spend your time building a bankroll instead of building a business that has value other than the money it brings in.
Poker doesn't scale. The goal is to increase your hourly rate. Spend your time coding.
[+] [-] danenania|15 years ago|reply
It's hard to fathom how much variance really exists in poker. Lucky and unlucky streaks can and do last months to years for people who play thousands of hands per day. Statistics dictates that there will always be a number of outliers who, due to a combination of moving up aggressively and running hot at the right times, become millionaires in a short time and draw a lot of attention, but unless they're the real deal and sufficiently bankrolled to cover the swings, it will all go back, often as quickly as it came. Most of the famous players on TV actually fit this mold, go broke constantly, and only make consistent money due to endorsements. Among real high stakes pros (mostly math-oriented, highly self-disciplined nerds you've never heard of), a large portion of the TV stars are considered fish. I've always found it interesting how distorted the general perceptions are versus reality.
[+] [-] TY|15 years ago|reply
I worked for an online gambling company for several years in the analytics area. I saw young players rise meteorically, win millions (not exaggerating) and eventually go broke.
Almost everyone is human. Once losses start to mount, it's hard to play with according to the program and stay emotionally detached while your world is crumbling with every lost pot.
Never underestimate the cheaters. Most online poker players don't understand how rampant collusion is. Dumb colluders are easy to spot. Smart ones will stay undetected until someone gets greedy. Almost everyone is human. It's hard to maintain discipline.
I myself thought about playing online professionally. After I realistically evaluated my chances and my stats, it became clear that I would make more money on a guaranteed basis by being a consultant than a professional poker player. When you have a family that depends on you, stable income becomes very important.
Online gamblers live a very unfullfilling life: you are staring at several computer screens many hours each day, you don't really create anything and you have wild swings in your income. With exception of few lucky, hard working, disciplined and possibly intelligently colluding players you will not make good money in the long run.
In the short run, impossible is nothing. Play that tourney, enjoy a night in a casino. It's good fun if it's not your job.
[+] [-] nikcub|15 years ago|reply
He built most of his roll grinding stakes lower than he was capable of playing because he understood variance, skill etc. It was only more recently that he stepped up to play durrrr et al (early last year, IIRC). Before that, he was famous for declining games with the stars
Sounds like the article didn't do him any justice
[+] [-] Eliezer|15 years ago|reply
This cannot possibly, possibly be true. The expected deviation goes as the square root of the sample size, which means that the percentage deviation goes as the inverse square root of the sample size, which means that if you play thousands of hands a day for a year, your deviation ought to be less than 1%.
Anything that persists over 100,000 samples is not luck.
[+] [-] anagnorisis|15 years ago|reply
And like i said, likely pretty poorly:
It's about the metrics, or lack there of. And what a critical distinction that makes in pro poker vs most any other business endeavor.
The irony, tho, is even within the "reality" you mention...of those we deem or see as "quiet and disciplined nerds" who look down on the "famous tv pros"...
An equally false sense of success and financial gains define them.
Empirically....and logically it makes the most sense too...the truest of winners in poker are those who come closest to treating it like a normal/more traditional business, with real metrics...and act and think as legitimate entrepreneurs running a business.
[+] [-] zecho|15 years ago|reply
Playing 6+ simultaneous tables isn't as romantic (it's a boring way to play) or hard (there's software to help you keep track) as this article makes it out to be, when you're essentially asking the same question every hand, doing the same calculation. It gets to be mind numbing. There are few situations in poker that are truly interesting when you've played tens of thousands of hands.
I'd liken the experience less to Command and Conquer and more to mining for gold in World of Warcraft.
And that was the difference between me and the others in my circle that still play full time: Mental stamina.
Seeing the chips as points and not money is really a defense mechanism to keep you playing rationally. Where many good, but not great, online players lose it is in the grind of constantly calculating pot odds.
[+] [-] vessenes|15 years ago|reply
Oh well. I wouldn't have listened either when I was his age.
[+] [-] rms|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DevX101|15 years ago|reply
I hate to give up on something once I start. If I start reading a terrible book, it burns me because I feel obligated to finish. This also means its pretty tough for me to fold a hand after I've been had.
Given this bias, I've predicted that my highest EV move in poker is not to play.
(By the way, take out the extra periods from your links)
[+] [-] ianl|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andfarm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjm|15 years ago|reply
From what I understand, many of the Korean pros get into online poker as well.
[+] [-] brianbreslin|15 years ago|reply
If I was him I'd be socking away a % monthly for saving and rainy day funds
[+] [-] rboyd|15 years ago|reply
To answer your question though, online poker is in a kind of legal limbo. The Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was tacked onto the SAFE Port Act of 2006 in a midnight rush job, making it illegal for banks to facilitate transactions related to online gambling. It didn't specifically make the act of playing illegal beyond what has been on the books since the Interstate Wire Act of 1961. In theory, poker's ace up the sleeve is that it's a skill game and can't fall under the same restrictions that regulate other games of chance.
At a state level, there are states that have specifically made online poker illegal, Washington (where it's a felony) and Kentucky are two, if memory serves but I think there might be one or two more by now. Then you see other states NJ/CA/NV moving to legalize and regulate intrastate network gaming.
Probably most of the players winning smaller amounts just don't bother to declare, and the bigger players are filing Form W2-G the same as they would for offline winnings.
[+] [-] nmaio|15 years ago|reply
And guess what? It was never about the money. Sure, I always wanted to see the number go up, but I had no intentions of withdrawing any of it. It was about being right. It was about pushing the envelope. And most importantly, it was about trying to figure something out.
I don't care if you make millions or go bust... or go back and forth between the two. As long as you leave your emotions at the door, you'll be fine. And to be honest, I was good at that (and still am). But it's probably not a life you want...
I mean, yeah, it's fun trying to solve something and seeing if you're right or wrong. But you're only doing it for yourself. You and no one else. And if that tickles your fancy, go for it - I have nothing against it. But what if you chose to share your passion for wanting to be right, for wanting to push the envelope, for wanting to figure something out...
In my eyes, it wouldn't necessarily make you a better person, it'd just be hard to call that bet a loss.
[+] [-] daimyoyo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zecho|15 years ago|reply
With midrange professional players, I don't think you really see those kinds of crazy swings. Once you reach a certain level, you start doing dumb things, like playing head-to-head games at ridiculous stakes against players you're equally matched with.
Which is why poker doesn't scale well. Eventually you're not going to hit a level where you don't have as clear an advantage over your opponents. Your profits will eventually end up capping out. You either need to find a new angle or start gambling like a degenerate to further advance.
Players like Matusow aren't going to scale down their stakes when their bankroll starts to shrink dramatically.
[+] [-] eapen|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anagnorisis|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mellowgold|15 years ago|reply
Becoming a successful poker player not only requires you to be quite skilled, but you also need to run well at the beginning of your career.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] anagnorisis|15 years ago|reply
Not too encroach upon anyone's character or existence, let alone the actual people in the article...
Poker is an inexorable gambit; both in lifestyle (subjectively define by 'sanity', and career (objectively define buy debt and financial bottoming out.
Poker is a fairly pure, distilled hologram of the caprice/randomness, and skill/will that resides over living and life itself, and a stripped bare interplay of emotional and psychological alchemy that everyone has, and lives with.
The greatest poker success carries little to not weight, in terms of posterity. IMO, greatest difference between poker and "other jobs".
Even aject fail in other occupational pursuits almost always carries over some tangible good productive benefit for you and your career. Whether it's contacts, savings, reputation, experience itself.
Contra poker; even after enormous success, the above benefits are a double edged sword at best, where your experience and connections (ability to get back in) are as likely to be the underpinnings of cyclical, fixed failure.
At best, it's a totoal unknown; emoyrically, it's pretty obvious.
And either way, poker is devoid of true metrics...in the same way -- IMHO -- other businesses get/should be hinged upon.
Ironic, since poker is all about a scoreboard and 'statistics'. But the living and breathing reality of metrics is a seperate (undomesticated) species from standard business metrics.
One more thing, hopefully more concrete (I'm reticent to be too specific since I know/knew a lot of the actual ppl involved),
The luck of poker, applied to people otherwise talented and able, is most profound in the beginnings of their poker experience, most often at adolescent ages where an underlying emotional caprice and aversion (or tolerance..) to risk is extremely strong.
Majority of the "long"term winners, had remarkably pain-free beginnings, when their emotional and psychological poker fortress got created. Still, many dropped out of school after losing/borrowings appreciable sums, to persevere.
Pointedly, of the latter...most were in financial umbrella's of school and family, and insulated from the psycholigical tumult n emotional traumas that define any poker career.
This got too long n fumbling, but personal experience/a vacuum of time on the treadmill/and a general interest necessitated.
[+] [-] knowtheory|15 years ago|reply
People who win at high stakes poker count in wins/losses, not in value of money earned. Poker has become a lifestyle game. It's about the prestige, not the money.
[+] [-] Wolf_Larsen|15 years ago|reply
Poker doesn't scale. The goal is to increase your hourly rate. Spend your time coding.