6 ms·

How teenage poker prodigy Steven Silverman won, and lost, millions

71 points by cwan 16y ago

edanm 16y ago
Interesting article, although it kinda reinforces a false dichotomy - just because this player had an unhealthy lifestyle playing poker, doesn't mean you can't play poker professionally while living a perfectly healthy and otherwise normal life. In fact, the article keeps mentioning the "lavish" lifestyle of the poker players as a given, when that is also just a choice they make. I've always enjoyed playing poker. I'm pretty sure I could make a decent living at it too, if I put my mind to it. But only after reading Paul Graham's articles on Wealth, I realized why making a fortune from poker always seemed "empty" to me: you're not really creating wealth that way.
- evansolomon 16y ago
  There actually are several aspects of being a poker player (online) that make it really hard, though surely not impossible, to live a normal life. You have very little interaction with other people, your working hours are partially out of your control, and it is incredibly stressful/tiring. I know a few people who managed to combine poker with a normal life, but I know way more who utterly failed. Sincerely, A guy who used to do this
  - InfinityX0 16y ago
    Ditto. I also attempted to do this full-time but only managed to squeak out a moderate living, and eventually grew sour with those points of intense rage (going on tilt) that would crush weeks (and sometimes months) of work. It's strange how poker works but I imagine Buddhism and poker to be the most complimentary religion-to-profession complement on the planet. And I agree with the first point - poker is an empty job. You do not create wealth - you make another poor soul, likely a gambling addict, further burdened by that addiction. Meanwhile, the only person you're "creating wealth" for is the guy with his feet up that owns the poker room.
    - city41 16y ago
      I remember reading in a poker magazine where they had asked several professional players what it's like to be a poker player and they all agreed it's actually rather depressing. Your job becomes preying on people with gambling problems, and the whole idea of "emptiness" was brought up by everyone. I wish I could find that article again.
      - varaon 16y ago
        >Your job becomes preying on people with gambling problems Or perhaps you have a gambling problem, but are successful enough to deny it. FTA: > "Looking back, what I've figured out," he says, "is that no matter the amount of money poker players win, they still want more. You're never happy."
        edanm 16y ago
        I'm not sure you can really call this a "problem". That's like saying someone has an "entrepreneurship" problem because they keep wanting to create new companies from zero. If they're successful at it, why not?
        varaon 16y ago
        I was trying to point out that successful poker players might be a part of the same group they're "preying on" - those with gambling addictions. Of course, as you said, they're successful, so the addiction might not be considered a problem. However, if it is an addiction they may be financially successful, but unable to psychologically satisfy their their appetite for money or risk. I wouldn't say that any serial startup founder has an "entrepreneurship problem", but if they were never satisfied with their accomplishments, I would view that as a negative. The quote from the article was: >"[T]hey still want more. You're never happy." I would consider that anyone who repeats a cycle of behaviour with the goal of achieving happiness or satisfaction but who always feels disappointed or unsettled might have a problem.
        16y ago
  - edanm 16y ago
    "You have very little interaction with other people, your working hours are partially out of your control, and it is incredibly stressful/tiring." Sounds exactly like my current situation as an internet entrepreneur :)
  - matt1 16y ago
    There actually are several aspects of being a poker player (online) that make it really hard, though surely not impossible, to live a normal life. You have very little interaction with other people, your working hours are partially out of your control, and it is incredibly stressful/tiring. I also used to play a ton of online poker and it was my ability to balance it all that ultimately convinced me I'd be better off trying to found a startup. A lot of the skills overlap, which is why many of the successful high stakes players also have profitable side businesses. If you're looking for an excellent discussion by a bunch of very successful online players on what they want to do with their lives, check out this thread, which is titled Poker vs Law School vs Trading: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/nc-my-next-move-poker-vs-law-school-vs-trading-292692/ http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/nc-my...
  - andrewljohnson 16y ago
    The stresses of being a pro poker-player are roughly the same as being a start-up founder. My problem was it just got to be too much poker - poker for work, poker for fun, and I couldn't talk to anyone about anything but poker. The same thing happens with start-ups, but the conversation doesn't always start, "So I had KK in the big blind...," so it's more interesting.
  - heyitsnick 16y ago
    I agree many people utterly fail, because I think that's largely because the past-time itself attracts those who have difficulties with addiction, time-management, and social interaction. You list some things that make it really hard to live a normal life, but I disagree with some can offer counter-points to others. You say there is little interaction with other people. This is true for many but doesn't have to be the case. I spend a lot of 'work time' talking with like-minded professionals, studying together or just daily banter. I probably have more social interaction through work than the time I worked in a small development company, and certainly more during my periods of (failing to) run startups. You say working hours are partially out of your control, but with most forms of poker you can work any time of the day (literally any time in 24 hours, 7 days a week) - some times may be better than others, depending on the game you play. There's a lot to be done away from the table if the games are quiet. Compare this to the lack of flexibility with any other job: either a rigid 9-5, or at least restrictions on when business is to be done (conference calls, deadlines). It can be stressful and tiring, but listening to some start-up stories here on HN, it can hardly compare! Some of you guys are working yourselves to death! Certainly you can put in long hours in poker, but it's a daily choice. The more hours at the table, the more money. I also believe that poker is actually fairly low-variance compared to other jobs, such as a running a start-up: Long days with long nights, hacking at weekends, all for a very high risk of failure months or even years down the line. With poker you can't count on a weekly (or even monthly) pay-check but in the long term, you cash in with regularity Personally I like to work around 3 hours a day, 7 days a week. I might put in a short morning session, and a short evening session. Doing this it feels like I have all the day off to spend socialising, hacking on some pet project, relaxing. You don't have to hit the high-stakes to make a living from poker. In the "5-hour-work-week" concept of salary you earn very high, because I have no commute and flexibility to live anywhere in the world. I have moved continent 3 times in the last 3 years. I can jump on a plane and visit friends anywhere, and as long as I have an internet connection I know I can be there, on holiday and making money at the same time. And if you manage your time correctly, you should have time to fully develop other projects, be they startup ideas, or just other, more life-fulfilling hobbies. There are certainly negatives to the job, but - at least to me - there's an overwhelming number of positives that many (including a lot of professionals) just don't focus on. If you take advantage of what the job has to offer there's no reason it should be the lonely, frustrating grind that many feel; quite the contrary.
- adw 16y ago
  One thing you've got to accept, though, is that if you're in this to make a really good company, you're going to hurt people. You're going to make people redundant. Your company is going to destroy someone else's value. It might create more in total, but you're going to cause damage. It can't be avoided.
- bapadna 16y ago
  Poker is an education and entertainment product. Entertainment, because professional players are allowing amateurs to pay to meet better players, and test their skills against them. There really aren't many other games where this is the case. Education, because there are huge numbers of available lessons (in both hard and soft skills) for players who decide to think about the game deeply. I don't see anything "empty" about it. But then again, I'm a winning poker player who ported lessons from poker into everything from business to my golf game. It's had such a positive impact on my life that I can't view it negatively.
- andrewljohnson 16y ago
  I made good money playing online poker - that's what I did for money the last year of college and the first year after I graduated. My group were some of the first people to adopt player databases to get stats on opponents. Some kids at my college made the first of these types of programs, and we knew them. Any smart person can make money playing online poker. But there's more money in making software, by many orders of magnitude.
- Watermelon 16y ago
  "But only after reading Paul Graham's articles on Wealth, I realized why making a fortune from poker always seemed "empty" to me: you're not really creating wealth that way." You needed to read PG's essays to figure that out? Gee, no wonder some people joke that HN and YC look like a cult at times. Do all your thoughts on wealth-creation stem from PG's gospel?
- jdietrich 16y ago
  Playing for a living is nothing like playing for fun. The psychological pressure to stay on form, the fatigue of playing hour after hour of poker, the uncertainty of chasing fish, the knowledge that your only career prospects are to play for higher stakes - it can be absolutely crushing. The great paradox of poker is that the more you care about the money, the less you are able to think rationally and impartially. There's a strong argument that the only real difference between world class tournament players and averagely profitable semi-pros is the ability to keep playing your 'A' game when there are millions of dollars on the table. Plenty of skilled pros end up blowing their money because it just doesn't mean anything to them - the obvious example is Stu Ungar, who earned millions at poker and lost millions betting on golf. It doesn't matter one jot how well you play at your best, what matters is how well you play when you're stressed and upset and ill and exhausted and it's 2am and the fish whose money you need to take is calling your mother a whore. That's the real job of playing professional poker - you're on a tightrope where an hour of perfect poker earns you $80 but an hour on tilt can lose you $800. The skills that allow you to turn pro are learned as an amateur, but there's a whole other set of skills required to stick it out without losing your mind. I had the former, but not the latter. I walked away from poker because I am absolutely certain it would have killed me.
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    Sounds a lot like starting a company...
    - mattmaroon 16y ago
      Starting a company is a walk in the park in comparison. My stress level has gone down enormously.
- mattmaroon 16y ago
  I thought the same thing going in (I played for a living for almost 6 years) but discovered that you can't lead a perfectly healthy and otherwise normal life. And I'm pretty sure it isn't just that I couldn't, because once you get to know them you realize not one of the hundreds of successful professional poker players (much less the thousands of unsuccessful ones) have managed it. Some have gotten part of the way there, some have become sad junkies, but nobody's ever anything that even remotely resembles normal. My theories as to why would be too long for this forum, but the two big ones are the losing streaks and lack of respect for money. Losing streaks are like nothing you can understand until you've been a professional poker player. Imagine if you went to work, performed flawlessly, far better than all of your coworkers, and instead of getting paid your bank account got debited and your boss told you "you really sucked today". Then that happens every day for a month. Humans (and especially poker players, who study probabilistic decision making as a hobby) are conditioned through life to believe outcomes are a direct result of actions. Do a good job at something and work hard at it, you succeed. Do a bad job at something and slack off, you fail. While this is true in poker in the long run, the long run can be a long time. I broke even for a year at one point, and that's at cash games. Meanwhile donkeys without the slightest clue what they were doing were lucking ass backward into multimillion-dollar tournament prizes. You can't even fathom what this does to you emotionally until you've lived through it. It engenders self-doubt, which gets you off your game, which probably makes you play worse, which you know you're doing but aren't sure exactly how, or what to do about it, which in turn prolongs the losing streak. There is no end to it. The lack of respect for money is universal in a world where thousands of dollars change hands in minutes. It's impossible to think "I shouldn't buy that Lexus I've had my eye on" when you just made enough to do it in the last 4 hours. Everytime I played a pot I was risking far more than I was playing credit card roulette for dinner for 4 at Craftsteak. (BTW, my luck at credit card roulette is legendary. If my luck at poker had been half that good I'd have won the WSOP.)
  - tsotha 16y ago
    This comment brings back memories. I was pretty serious for a decade or so, and I remember how long the losing streaks can be ("Oh my God. This is my first set in a week and you just cracked it with a one-outer on the river.") I had a girlfriend for most of that time who went pro. She was pretty good, too, but she had that lack of respect for money in spades (heh). She'd spend a whole day grinding out $3000 in the $40-80 game and then lose $20,000 in an hour at the Pai Gow table. One day she decided to skip the Pai Gow and went to the mall instead. Bought all kinds of designer clothes and perfumes and electronic gadgets. She practically filled up the car. When she came home there was this shocked look on her face. I asked her what the problem was and she said "Look at all the stuff you can buy for only $5000! I'm so used to using money as ammunition I forgot you can trade it for stuff."
steveklabnik 16y ago
I find the "I wonder what his future will be like without a college degree" vs "upswings of $160,000 at a time" to be interesting.
- bl4k 16y ago
  A lot of investing (esp trading) is a game of incomplete information between two or more parties, so yes.
kroger 16y ago
One-page version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100105833_pf.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10...
- nfriedly 16y ago
  In case it hits anyone else with a "login required", here's an account to use: Username: getjiggly@sogetthis.com Password: bugmenot [Edit] Actually.. the log in worked for me, but it didn't give me the one-page version :/
rospaya 16y ago
Did I miss the part where he lost his fortune?
- bapadna 16y ago
  http://www.pokertableratings.com/fulltilt-player-search/zugwat http://www.pokertableratings.com/fulltilt-player-search/zugw... http://www.pokertableratings.com/stars-player-search/Zugwat http://www.pokertableratings.com/stars-player-search/Zugwat http://www.pokertableratings.com/absolute-player-search/ZUGWAT http://www.pokertableratings.com/absolute-player-search/ZUGW...
  - bl4k 16y ago
    So typical - you see this all the time. Moving up too soon thinking they are the best in the world, only to lose it all. (For non players, this means that you are a winner at lower stakes, say $5/10 - but a common trait is that you become bored with that level because the most you can win each day is ~$1000-3000. As you move up levels the play is a lot harder (exponentially so). Players like this guy crush the small levels and think they are good enough for the higher levels, and just end up losing it all - often blaming their luck in the process. If you look at his chart, you will see that he won it all playing medium stakes, and lost it all (in a lot shorter time) playing high stakes).
    - basugasubaku 16y ago
      He also could have been staked for the high stakes and so didn't necessarily lose his own money. From what I hear this is not uncommon for winning players taking a shot at the higher stakes or even a high stakes regular who found what he feels is a good but risky spot. Actually the article headline seems inconsistent with the text, which suggests he decided to quit to pursue other things and is not in fact "busto" as rumored. Not saying you're wrong but it's another possibility.
    - aquateen 16y ago
      His PTR pages clearly show most of his hands at 5k/10k/20k NL. That's not medium stakes. I'd guess his losses at 40k/60k/100k NL /are/ due to luck; doubt he's a -20BB/100 loser at those games.
deleted 16y ago
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Ganthor 16y ago
Can anyone point me towards some good online resources about getting started in online poker?
- happy4crazy 16y ago
  www.deucescracked.com I played online for a living for about a year and a half, and they're awesome.
  - bapadna 16y ago
    I've never been on deucescracked, but as a long-time acquaintance (and poker foe) of Joe Tall, DeathDonkey and Jay Rosenkratz, I'd be surprised if it wasn't good. I can still remember the exact moment back in 2002 or 2003 where I realized just how much than me better Joe Tall was. We were having a cigarette near the Foxwoods poker room and he reviewed the action on a few hands we'd just played in a 20/40 game, and he remembered them in more detail than me, but he also processed the detail differently to emphasize different aspects of my game. I was a winning player but after that night I stopped playing for a month, did nothing but study books, analyze hands and sessions, and grind out math to see if some of my assumptions about lines against various hand ranges were correct. After that I got a lot better, jumped limits, and ended up meeting DeathDonkey in a 100/200 game at Commerce and again realized I was outclassed. I'd say I owe them a debt of gratitude, but I'm pretty sure I already paid it at the tables.
    - joetall 16y ago
      Hi Bapanda, I likely know who you are but not exactly from the story. Thank you so much for the comments. Hope all is well and you are still grinding and working. -Joe
      - bapadna 16y ago
        Didn't expect a response from you! All is excellent, except for the fact that I'm east coast now and the mixed game and limit game selection around here is worse than terrible. Seriously though, I meant what I said about the debt of gratitude. Massive thanks.
sz 16y ago
Mentioned in the article, and applicable to more than poker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt_(poker) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt_(poker)
mkramlich 16y ago
Wall Street reminds me of poker done on a much larger scale.
- jrockway 16y ago
  Not really. Sure, people make money on their market bets... but the real money is made by sitting in the middle of other people's transactions. That way, you get money when they open their bet, and you get money when they close out their bet. It doesn't matter whether they won or lost, because they have to go through you.
  - brisance 16y ago
    And that's why high-frequency trading should be deemed illegal because it is technically insider-trading; the intermediary makes a commission and masks the true positions of buyers and sellers, profiting at the expense of both.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - jrockway 16y ago
      I'm talking about exchanges. Matching buyers to sellers is actually something that adds value. Market makers are also similar. (Also, the rest of your comment makes no sense. "High frequency trading" is just trading at high frequencies; it's not any different from any other trading strategy. Your program quotes the other guy a price, he either accepts or doesn't.)
  - bullseye 16y ago
    You just described a poker room's rake perfectly.
jeffepp 16y ago
I know quite a few online professional poker players. They have won & lost several million combined. Many were 'born' out of a home game we had at Michigan State in the early 2000's. To the average person the swings are insane; for anyone playing high limits online (multiple tables to boot) it is generally expected. Those who cannot afford the swings, or are emotionally effected by them, are generally not winning pros for long. In some respects, those who do really well (millions won & lost) are akin to athletes or celebrities. They work strange schedules -- for poker you can work whenever -- and have much more money than they could have ever imagined. You can afford to do almost anything, go out 7 nights a week and travel the world. Money is easy come, easy go. It's rather fascinating. It is a tough lifestyle to maintain a balance when you can lose thousands upon thousands and be playing well. I recall a friend telling me with a dead straight face he lost over 100k the past 2 days and had played some of his best poker... In the end of the day, I would have to imagine it would be a lot tougher on the spouses. Although, in many respects, we as founders are taking similar risks (uncertainty).
mattmaroon 16y ago
This article does a pretty good job. Much of what you read about poker misses the mark. Also the credit card roulette caused me a large bit of nostalgia. I got a lot of the busto rumors when I quit too. In fairness, it's a lot more frequently the case than someone successful walking away, but I'm always glad to hear of other people doing it. A really young kid named Jason Strasser became one of the best tournament players around and then gave it up to go back to school. It's a seductive lifestyle, but often not a healthy one, and rare is the poker player who realizes there's much more to life than money while they still have some of it left. Unfortunately in my case it took my mom dying to put it in perspective for me. I hope for him it was something less traumatic.
- jiganti 16y ago
  The way the poker economy works among the high stakes regulars is generally such that if you go 'busto', you'll inevitably be able to get staked from buddies if you are legitimately good. This results in players playing with extremely aggressive bankroll management. In addition, there's no real visualization of the value of what you're playing for. It's just numbers on a computer screen. By far the most legendary story of a young player who's completely detached from the money is the Isildur1 phenomenon. [1] I played high stakes online at a young age and felt the same sort of detachment- the appeal of "getting to the top" was too much to pass up to grind steadily at lower stakes. One of the problems is that over the past ten years, the dynamics of online games have changed considerably. Even an 18 month difference shows a dramatic development in the style of play you see- I'd contend that poker training sites like cardrunners play a large part in this. So a lot of players go on a tear for nine months, then have a big downswing as a result of moving up stakes too fast and failing to adjust their game. One thing you see sometimes is tournament players like Zugwat trying to play high stakes cash games. It's well understood that in poker, the deeper the chip stacks are (defined by the number of big blinds players have) the more technically demanding the game will be. As tournament poker tends to be played with stacks of 10-50 big blinds, and cash games with 100-500 big blinds, the former requires less decision making. This is for a few reasons, but the main one is that on average you'll have fewer decisions to make with a smaller chip stack since you will be all in earlier in the hand. Tournament players who are admittedly great at what they do often try to dabble in cash games because they've made enough to bankroll themselves for it. I remember watching Zugwat play Tom Dwan (who goes by the alias 'durrrr', [2] and talking to a few of the other high stakes regulars who had played him previously. The consensus was that he was pretty solid (which is saying something- many cash game players have a somewhat condescending attitude towards tournament players because of the supposed simplicity of tournament poker) but he had bit off much more than he could chew and would inevitably lose a good chunk of his bankroll before realizing it. I think he played four or five tables of 200/400 ($40,000 buyin per table) and lost about a quarter million that session. To his credit he was surprisingly mature in the chat box, something that can be hit or miss after large losses. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isildur1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isildur1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durrrr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durrrr
maloalto 16y ago
I know, I hate my life. 6 years ago I had 2 degrees and so much enthusiasm for poker, life, and the future... Now I wonder how a resume with nothing on it is gonna look in a job market I know nothing about... The habits of this oft toxic lifestyle will be harder to break than many of the good parts of my routine were to establish... Plus, for me at least, 17k months and 5k days have never translated to actual wealth... On the otherhand, my 'job' has cost me relationships and years (plus two inches of hairline) I will never have back...

71 points by cwan 16y ago

edanm 16y ago

Interesting article, although it kinda reinforces a false dichotomy - just because this player had an unhealthy lifestyle playing poker, doesn't mean you can't play poker professionally while living a perfectly healthy and otherwise normal life. In fact, the article keeps mentioning the "lavish" lifestyle of the poker players as a given, when that is also just a choice they make. I've always enjoyed playing poker. I'm pretty sure I could make a decent living at it too, if I put my mind to it. But only after reading Paul Graham's articles on Wealth, I realized why making a fortune from poker always seemed "empty" to me: you're not really creating wealth that way.

evansolomon 16y ago
There actually are several aspects of being a poker player (online) that make it really hard, though surely not impossible, to live a normal life. You have very little interaction with other people, your working hours are partially out of your control, and it is incredibly stressful/tiring. I know a few people who managed to combine poker with a normal life, but I know way more who utterly failed. Sincerely, A guy who used to do this
- InfinityX0 16y ago
  Ditto. I also attempted to do this full-time but only managed to squeak out a moderate living, and eventually grew sour with those points of intense rage (going on tilt) that would crush weeks (and sometimes months) of work. It's strange how poker works but I imagine Buddhism and poker to be the most complimentary religion-to-profession complement on the planet. And I agree with the first point - poker is an empty job. You do not create wealth - you make another poor soul, likely a gambling addict, further burdened by that addiction. Meanwhile, the only person you're "creating wealth" for is the guy with his feet up that owns the poker room.
  - city41 16y ago
    I remember reading in a poker magazine where they had asked several professional players what it's like to be a poker player and they all agreed it's actually rather depressing. Your job becomes preying on people with gambling problems, and the whole idea of "emptiness" was brought up by everyone. I wish I could find that article again.
    - varaon 16y ago
      >Your job becomes preying on people with gambling problems Or perhaps you have a gambling problem, but are successful enough to deny it. FTA: > "Looking back, what I've figured out," he says, "is that no matter the amount of money poker players win, they still want more. You're never happy."
      - edanm 16y ago
        I'm not sure you can really call this a "problem". That's like saying someone has an "entrepreneurship" problem because they keep wanting to create new companies from zero. If they're successful at it, why not?
        varaon 16y ago
        I was trying to point out that successful poker players might be a part of the same group they're "preying on" - those with gambling addictions. Of course, as you said, they're successful, so the addiction might not be considered a problem. However, if it is an addiction they may be financially successful, but unable to psychologically satisfy their their appetite for money or risk. I wouldn't say that any serial startup founder has an "entrepreneurship problem", but if they were never satisfied with their accomplishments, I would view that as a negative. The quote from the article was: >"[T]hey still want more. You're never happy." I would consider that anyone who repeats a cycle of behaviour with the goal of achieving happiness or satisfaction but who always feels disappointed or unsettled might have a problem.
        16y ago
- edanm 16y ago
  "You have very little interaction with other people, your working hours are partially out of your control, and it is incredibly stressful/tiring." Sounds exactly like my current situation as an internet entrepreneur :)
- matt1 16y ago
  There actually are several aspects of being a poker player (online) that make it really hard, though surely not impossible, to live a normal life. You have very little interaction with other people, your working hours are partially out of your control, and it is incredibly stressful/tiring. I also used to play a ton of online poker and it was my ability to balance it all that ultimately convinced me I'd be better off trying to found a startup. A lot of the skills overlap, which is why many of the successful high stakes players also have profitable side businesses. If you're looking for an excellent discussion by a bunch of very successful online players on what they want to do with their lives, check out this thread, which is titled Poker vs Law School vs Trading: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/nc-my-next-move-poker-vs-law-school-vs-trading-292692/ http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/nc-my...
- andrewljohnson 16y ago
  The stresses of being a pro poker-player are roughly the same as being a start-up founder. My problem was it just got to be too much poker - poker for work, poker for fun, and I couldn't talk to anyone about anything but poker. The same thing happens with start-ups, but the conversation doesn't always start, "So I had KK in the big blind...," so it's more interesting.
- heyitsnick 16y ago
  I agree many people utterly fail, because I think that's largely because the past-time itself attracts those who have difficulties with addiction, time-management, and social interaction. You list some things that make it really hard to live a normal life, but I disagree with some can offer counter-points to others. You say there is little interaction with other people. This is true for many but doesn't have to be the case. I spend a lot of 'work time' talking with like-minded professionals, studying together or just daily banter. I probably have more social interaction through work than the time I worked in a small development company, and certainly more during my periods of (failing to) run startups. You say working hours are partially out of your control, but with most forms of poker you can work any time of the day (literally any time in 24 hours, 7 days a week) - some times may be better than others, depending on the game you play. There's a lot to be done away from the table if the games are quiet. Compare this to the lack of flexibility with any other job: either a rigid 9-5, or at least restrictions on when business is to be done (conference calls, deadlines). It can be stressful and tiring, but listening to some start-up stories here on HN, it can hardly compare! Some of you guys are working yourselves to death! Certainly you can put in long hours in poker, but it's a daily choice. The more hours at the table, the more money. I also believe that poker is actually fairly low-variance compared to other jobs, such as a running a start-up: Long days with long nights, hacking at weekends, all for a very high risk of failure months or even years down the line. With poker you can't count on a weekly (or even monthly) pay-check but in the long term, you cash in with regularity Personally I like to work around 3 hours a day, 7 days a week. I might put in a short morning session, and a short evening session. Doing this it feels like I have all the day off to spend socialising, hacking on some pet project, relaxing. You don't have to hit the high-stakes to make a living from poker. In the "5-hour-work-week" concept of salary you earn very high, because I have no commute and flexibility to live anywhere in the world. I have moved continent 3 times in the last 3 years. I can jump on a plane and visit friends anywhere, and as long as I have an internet connection I know I can be there, on holiday and making money at the same time. And if you manage your time correctly, you should have time to fully develop other projects, be they startup ideas, or just other, more life-fulfilling hobbies. There are certainly negatives to the job, but - at least to me - there's an overwhelming number of positives that many (including a lot of professionals) just don't focus on. If you take advantage of what the job has to offer there's no reason it should be the lonely, frustrating grind that many feel; quite the contrary.
adw 16y ago
One thing you've got to accept, though, is that if you're in this to make a really good company, you're going to hurt people. You're going to make people redundant. Your company is going to destroy someone else's value. It might create more in total, but you're going to cause damage. It can't be avoided.
bapadna 16y ago
Poker is an education and entertainment product. Entertainment, because professional players are allowing amateurs to pay to meet better players, and test their skills against them. There really aren't many other games where this is the case. Education, because there are huge numbers of available lessons (in both hard and soft skills) for players who decide to think about the game deeply. I don't see anything "empty" about it. But then again, I'm a winning poker player who ported lessons from poker into everything from business to my golf game. It's had such a positive impact on my life that I can't view it negatively.
andrewljohnson 16y ago
I made good money playing online poker - that's what I did for money the last year of college and the first year after I graduated. My group were some of the first people to adopt player databases to get stats on opponents. Some kids at my college made the first of these types of programs, and we knew them. Any smart person can make money playing online poker. But there's more money in making software, by many orders of magnitude.
Watermelon 16y ago
"But only after reading Paul Graham's articles on Wealth, I realized why making a fortune from poker always seemed "empty" to me: you're not really creating wealth that way." You needed to read PG's essays to figure that out? Gee, no wonder some people joke that HN and YC look like a cult at times. Do all your thoughts on wealth-creation stem from PG's gospel?
jdietrich 16y ago
Playing for a living is nothing like playing for fun. The psychological pressure to stay on form, the fatigue of playing hour after hour of poker, the uncertainty of chasing fish, the knowledge that your only career prospects are to play for higher stakes - it can be absolutely crushing. The great paradox of poker is that the more you care about the money, the less you are able to think rationally and impartially. There's a strong argument that the only real difference between world class tournament players and averagely profitable semi-pros is the ability to keep playing your 'A' game when there are millions of dollars on the table. Plenty of skilled pros end up blowing their money because it just doesn't mean anything to them - the obvious example is Stu Ungar, who earned millions at poker and lost millions betting on golf. It doesn't matter one jot how well you play at your best, what matters is how well you play when you're stressed and upset and ill and exhausted and it's 2am and the fish whose money you need to take is calling your mother a whore. That's the real job of playing professional poker - you're on a tightrope where an hour of perfect poker earns you $80 but an hour on tilt can lose you $800. The skills that allow you to turn pro are learned as an amateur, but there's a whole other set of skills required to stick it out without losing your mind. I had the former, but not the latter. I walked away from poker because I am absolutely certain it would have killed me.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  Sounds a lot like starting a company...
  - mattmaroon 16y ago
    Starting a company is a walk in the park in comparison. My stress level has gone down enormously.
mattmaroon 16y ago
I thought the same thing going in (I played for a living for almost 6 years) but discovered that you can't lead a perfectly healthy and otherwise normal life. And I'm pretty sure it isn't just that I couldn't, because once you get to know them you realize not one of the hundreds of successful professional poker players (much less the thousands of unsuccessful ones) have managed it. Some have gotten part of the way there, some have become sad junkies, but nobody's ever anything that even remotely resembles normal. My theories as to why would be too long for this forum, but the two big ones are the losing streaks and lack of respect for money. Losing streaks are like nothing you can understand until you've been a professional poker player. Imagine if you went to work, performed flawlessly, far better than all of your coworkers, and instead of getting paid your bank account got debited and your boss told you "you really sucked today". Then that happens every day for a month. Humans (and especially poker players, who study probabilistic decision making as a hobby) are conditioned through life to believe outcomes are a direct result of actions. Do a good job at something and work hard at it, you succeed. Do a bad job at something and slack off, you fail. While this is true in poker in the long run, the long run can be a long time. I broke even for a year at one point, and that's at cash games. Meanwhile donkeys without the slightest clue what they were doing were lucking ass backward into multimillion-dollar tournament prizes. You can't even fathom what this does to you emotionally until you've lived through it. It engenders self-doubt, which gets you off your game, which probably makes you play worse, which you know you're doing but aren't sure exactly how, or what to do about it, which in turn prolongs the losing streak. There is no end to it. The lack of respect for money is universal in a world where thousands of dollars change hands in minutes. It's impossible to think "I shouldn't buy that Lexus I've had my eye on" when you just made enough to do it in the last 4 hours. Everytime I played a pot I was risking far more than I was playing credit card roulette for dinner for 4 at Craftsteak. (BTW, my luck at credit card roulette is legendary. If my luck at poker had been half that good I'd have won the WSOP.)
- tsotha 16y ago
  This comment brings back memories. I was pretty serious for a decade or so, and I remember how long the losing streaks can be ("Oh my God. This is my first set in a week and you just cracked it with a one-outer on the river.") I had a girlfriend for most of that time who went pro. She was pretty good, too, but she had that lack of respect for money in spades (heh). She'd spend a whole day grinding out $3000 in the $40-80 game and then lose $20,000 in an hour at the Pai Gow table. One day she decided to skip the Pai Gow and went to the mall instead. Bought all kinds of designer clothes and perfumes and electronic gadgets. She practically filled up the car. When she came home there was this shocked look on her face. I asked her what the problem was and she said "Look at all the stuff you can buy for only $5000! I'm so used to using money as ammunition I forgot you can trade it for stuff."

steveklabnik 16y ago

I find the "I wonder what his future will be like without a college degree" vs "upswings of $160,000 at a time" to be interesting.

bl4k 16y ago
A lot of investing (esp trading) is a game of incomplete information between two or more parties, so yes.

kroger 16y ago

One-page version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100105833_pf.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10...

nfriedly 16y ago
In case it hits anyone else with a "login required", here's an account to use: Username: getjiggly@sogetthis.com Password: bugmenot [Edit] Actually.. the log in worked for me, but it didn't give me the one-page version :/

rospaya 16y ago

Did I miss the part where he lost his fortune?

bapadna 16y ago
http://www.pokertableratings.com/fulltilt-player-search/zugwat http://www.pokertableratings.com/fulltilt-player-search/zugw... http://www.pokertableratings.com/stars-player-search/Zugwat http://www.pokertableratings.com/stars-player-search/Zugwat http://www.pokertableratings.com/absolute-player-search/ZUGWAT http://www.pokertableratings.com/absolute-player-search/ZUGW...
- bl4k 16y ago
  So typical - you see this all the time. Moving up too soon thinking they are the best in the world, only to lose it all. (For non players, this means that you are a winner at lower stakes, say $5/10 - but a common trait is that you become bored with that level because the most you can win each day is ~$1000-3000. As you move up levels the play is a lot harder (exponentially so). Players like this guy crush the small levels and think they are good enough for the higher levels, and just end up losing it all - often blaming their luck in the process. If you look at his chart, you will see that he won it all playing medium stakes, and lost it all (in a lot shorter time) playing high stakes).
  - basugasubaku 16y ago
    He also could have been staked for the high stakes and so didn't necessarily lose his own money. From what I hear this is not uncommon for winning players taking a shot at the higher stakes or even a high stakes regular who found what he feels is a good but risky spot. Actually the article headline seems inconsistent with the text, which suggests he decided to quit to pursue other things and is not in fact "busto" as rumored. Not saying you're wrong but it's another possibility.
  - aquateen 16y ago
    His PTR pages clearly show most of his hands at 5k/10k/20k NL. That's not medium stakes. I'd guess his losses at 40k/60k/100k NL /are/ due to luck; doubt he's a -20BB/100 loser at those games.

deleted 16y ago

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Ganthor 16y ago

Can anyone point me towards some good online resources about getting started in online poker?

happy4crazy 16y ago
www.deucescracked.com I played online for a living for about a year and a half, and they're awesome.
- bapadna 16y ago
  I've never been on deucescracked, but as a long-time acquaintance (and poker foe) of Joe Tall, DeathDonkey and Jay Rosenkratz, I'd be surprised if it wasn't good. I can still remember the exact moment back in 2002 or 2003 where I realized just how much than me better Joe Tall was. We were having a cigarette near the Foxwoods poker room and he reviewed the action on a few hands we'd just played in a 20/40 game, and he remembered them in more detail than me, but he also processed the detail differently to emphasize different aspects of my game. I was a winning player but after that night I stopped playing for a month, did nothing but study books, analyze hands and sessions, and grind out math to see if some of my assumptions about lines against various hand ranges were correct. After that I got a lot better, jumped limits, and ended up meeting DeathDonkey in a 100/200 game at Commerce and again realized I was outclassed. I'd say I owe them a debt of gratitude, but I'm pretty sure I already paid it at the tables.
  - joetall 16y ago
    Hi Bapanda, I likely know who you are but not exactly from the story. Thank you so much for the comments. Hope all is well and you are still grinding and working. -Joe
    - bapadna 16y ago
      Didn't expect a response from you! All is excellent, except for the fact that I'm east coast now and the mixed game and limit game selection around here is worse than terrible. Seriously though, I meant what I said about the debt of gratitude. Massive thanks.

sz 16y ago

Mentioned in the article, and applicable to more than poker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt_(poker) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt_(poker)

mkramlich 16y ago

Wall Street reminds me of poker done on a much larger scale.

jrockway 16y ago
Not really. Sure, people make money on their market bets... but the real money is made by sitting in the middle of other people's transactions. That way, you get money when they open their bet, and you get money when they close out their bet. It doesn't matter whether they won or lost, because they have to go through you.
- brisance 16y ago
  And that's why high-frequency trading should be deemed illegal because it is technically insider-trading; the intermediary makes a commission and masks the true positions of buyers and sellers, profiting at the expense of both.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrockway 16y ago
    I'm talking about exchanges. Matching buyers to sellers is actually something that adds value. Market makers are also similar. (Also, the rest of your comment makes no sense. "High frequency trading" is just trading at high frequencies; it's not any different from any other trading strategy. Your program quotes the other guy a price, he either accepts or doesn't.)
- bullseye 16y ago
  You just described a poker room's rake perfectly.

jeffepp 16y ago

I know quite a few online professional poker players. They have won & lost several million combined. Many were 'born' out of a home game we had at Michigan State in the early 2000's. To the average person the swings are insane; for anyone playing high limits online (multiple tables to boot) it is generally expected. Those who cannot afford the swings, or are emotionally effected by them, are generally not winning pros for long. In some respects, those who do really well (millions won & lost) are akin to athletes or celebrities. They work strange schedules -- for poker you can work whenever -- and have much more money than they could have ever imagined. You can afford to do almost anything, go out 7 nights a week and travel the world. Money is easy come, easy go. It's rather fascinating. It is a tough lifestyle to maintain a balance when you can lose thousands upon thousands and be playing well. I recall a friend telling me with a dead straight face he lost over 100k the past 2 days and had played some of his best poker... In the end of the day, I would have to imagine it would be a lot tougher on the spouses. Although, in many respects, we as founders are taking similar risks (uncertainty).

mattmaroon 16y ago

This article does a pretty good job. Much of what you read about poker misses the mark. Also the credit card roulette caused me a large bit of nostalgia. I got a lot of the busto rumors when I quit too. In fairness, it's a lot more frequently the case than someone successful walking away, but I'm always glad to hear of other people doing it. A really young kid named Jason Strasser became one of the best tournament players around and then gave it up to go back to school. It's a seductive lifestyle, but often not a healthy one, and rare is the poker player who realizes there's much more to life than money while they still have some of it left. Unfortunately in my case it took my mom dying to put it in perspective for me. I hope for him it was something less traumatic.

jiganti 16y ago
The way the poker economy works among the high stakes regulars is generally such that if you go 'busto', you'll inevitably be able to get staked from buddies if you are legitimately good. This results in players playing with extremely aggressive bankroll management. In addition, there's no real visualization of the value of what you're playing for. It's just numbers on a computer screen. By far the most legendary story of a young player who's completely detached from the money is the Isildur1 phenomenon. [1] I played high stakes online at a young age and felt the same sort of detachment- the appeal of "getting to the top" was too much to pass up to grind steadily at lower stakes. One of the problems is that over the past ten years, the dynamics of online games have changed considerably. Even an 18 month difference shows a dramatic development in the style of play you see- I'd contend that poker training sites like cardrunners play a large part in this. So a lot of players go on a tear for nine months, then have a big downswing as a result of moving up stakes too fast and failing to adjust their game. One thing you see sometimes is tournament players like Zugwat trying to play high stakes cash games. It's well understood that in poker, the deeper the chip stacks are (defined by the number of big blinds players have) the more technically demanding the game will be. As tournament poker tends to be played with stacks of 10-50 big blinds, and cash games with 100-500 big blinds, the former requires less decision making. This is for a few reasons, but the main one is that on average you'll have fewer decisions to make with a smaller chip stack since you will be all in earlier in the hand. Tournament players who are admittedly great at what they do often try to dabble in cash games because they've made enough to bankroll themselves for it. I remember watching Zugwat play Tom Dwan (who goes by the alias 'durrrr', [2] and talking to a few of the other high stakes regulars who had played him previously. The consensus was that he was pretty solid (which is saying something- many cash game players have a somewhat condescending attitude towards tournament players because of the supposed simplicity of tournament poker) but he had bit off much more than he could chew and would inevitably lose a good chunk of his bankroll before realizing it. I think he played four or five tables of 200/400 ($40,000 buyin per table) and lost about a quarter million that session. To his credit he was surprisingly mature in the chat box, something that can be hit or miss after large losses. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isildur1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isildur1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durrrr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durrrr

maloalto 16y ago

I know, I hate my life. 6 years ago I had 2 degrees and so much enthusiasm for poker, life, and the future... Now I wonder how a resume with nothing on it is gonna look in a job market I know nothing about... The habits of this oft toxic lifestyle will be harder to break than many of the good parts of my routine were to establish... Plus, for me at least, 17k months and 5k days have never translated to actual wealth... On the otherhand, my 'job' has cost me relationships and years (plus two inches of hairline) I will never have back...