7 ms·

The Hustler's MBA

48 points by bennesvig 14y ago

taw9 14y ago
I encourage EVERYONE to follow this phenomenal advice!!! ... and when the next tech bubble bursts, I look forward to picking up good CHEAP programmers without college degrees. MWAH HA HA!
jeremysmyth 14y ago
While correct (in a sense), this suffers from pretty much the same naïveté that a lot of similar essays contain. Simply put, the chief benefit of formalised higher education is that it forces you to learn stuff you didn't even know you didn't know, deeper than you ever thought you had to. It's many years since I left university (studying electronics and software), and I while I still work in tech (who doesn't around here?!), I only used a fraction of what I learned there once I got to the real world. That's the chief argument of essayists like this one, and it's one I agree with. However, I have many times been in situations where I've had to solve a problem that I would not have had the mental tools for, were it not for a deep distant memory of some obscure piece of maths I did (painfully, perhaps even reluctantly) in second year, or some recollection of a weird hack with CPU registers I learned in third year. True, these moments in my career have been fleeting, but they helped me in a way that OP could not have been helped. I've since worked a lot as a technical trainer. For me, the difference between technical training (or vocational, or OP's self-inflicted syllabus) and education (college, university) is that the former gives you a great hands-on real-world grasp of the available tools and techniques and how to use them to solve problems. The latter gets you further into the "why", and makes you better suited to making your own tools and techniques. Those of you who have written your own operating systems and compilers - would you ever have done that had you _not_ been in university? And how much did you learn from it?
hiphopopotamus 14y ago
Meanwhile back on earth...
potatolicious 14y ago
He lost me at the part where the secret to life is becoming a professional poker player. Because in a highly competitive game of chance you're pretty much guaranteed to come out on top to the tune of $50-60 an hour... Does this post strike anyone as completely f'ing delusional? Perhaps applicable to the author, one of the greatest card sharks alive today, but seems silly to the vast majority.
- nlavezzo 14y ago
  If you're talking casual play, off and on for a year, then yes it's highly unlikely. If you're taking about spending a good part of a year, reading some of the best books out there (I recommend Harrington on Cash Games Vol. I and II) and then methodically applying the techniques in those books to your play, it's doable. Or at least, when I took some time off between startups, I was able to average being a reasonably profitable poker player at cash games in casinos. However, I came to the conclusion that it was a good learning experience and that $80k a year was not worth having to sit in a room with a bunch of guys, hunched over a table, breathing in their germs, and listening to their half drunk rants. Great lessons to be learned from poker though, but you must be dedicated to average being profitable. If I go back and try now, I'm probably going to lose more often than not.
- ojbyrne 14y ago
  Yes it does. Perhaps college would have helped him with his delusion.
- dminor 14y ago
  It's actually not terribly hard to get good enough to make money playing poker, but sustaining $60/hr for 8 hours a day takes an enormous amount of dedication and concentration, plus it takes time to get to that level. You're far better off learning to program.
- nancyhua 14y ago
  Yeah it's off putting that poker was #1 on the list. His remaining suggestions were actually things that seemed sensible, like reading, writing, programming, and starting a business, but the poker stuff was so distracting it was hard to continue.
fmitchell0 14y ago
It's definitely an interesting concept, but does assume a certain 'buffer' level of class and income level to go down this road. Having a home to be in while you 'get up to speed in poker', having parents that understand and provide some sort of boundaries at 18 years old, assuming poker winnings will be the base 'bank' for all other ventures, and assuming that the networks you make at school are not very important are big red flags for me. For some, going to college, despite the hand-wringing, is also a way to break cycles of poverty within a lineage, a sense of family pride, and an escape from their home circumstance. It's a little disconcerting that the author is a little lost in their own privilege and that his Hustler's MBA curriculum is probably a product of previous generations who went to college. I think the better message is: Don't expect college, however many years you spend, to GIVE you everything or ANSWER everything. You still have to live life, take chances, and exist outside of your comfort zone. College is a concrete foundation to that mission.
- rnernento 14y ago
  He definitely forgot to check his privilege, big mistake...
- anewguy 14y ago
  The marginal utility of college is declining. Our near ancestors got a lot out of a college degree. The author is noticing that we won't get nearly as much.
srehnborg 14y ago
I lost focus after he talked about how easy poker was to make $85k a year.
kcodey 14y ago
He also lost me at poker. A lot of us entrepreneur types love poker because we just love risk, IMO. To say that you can comfortable make 85k a year playing poker is the most outlandish statement I've ever heard. I also hate how people try and tell me poker is a skill. Yes to a degree it is, but it's more luck than anything once you understand the game, let's be real. Seemed like a good blog post until he became delusional about poker.
- bjourne 14y ago
  Playing poker, like Texas Hold-Em is definitely a game of skill and not luck. It is absolutely possible to still make big bucks on it if you are skilled enough. My brother used to live a fairly decadent life thanks to his poker winnings from a few years ago. However, that was at the peak of the world wide poker craze where everyone thought they could be millionares by playing Paradise Poker a few hours per day. But the times have changed in online poker and there aren't enough whales around that the poker sharks can exploit for profit anymore. The only way to consistently make money playing poker is if the skill differential between you and your opponents is high enough and in your favor. The lower the difference, the more time it takes to make a profit, the lower your hourly wage gets. On top of that, you can suffer fluctuations or "bad beats" as they call it. One week you may win 100k only to lose it the next week. It is a very stressful situation if poker is your work and you need to win. There is a definite risk of burning out. 85k isn't a lot when it takes 8-10h per day of really boring online poker playing.
- Nate75Sanders 14y ago
  Poker is unquestionably a game of skill. You need be able to separate the orthogonal components of EV and variance. Over a large sample of hands, a professional poker player will wipe the floor with you. There is a great deal of variance in poker, but that doesn't mean that one person can't be significantly better than another in the long run.
- coryl 14y ago
  If its about luck, than why do we see the same familiar faces deep into WSOP finals? Luck is only relevant if you're playing for the short run. Professionals generally make decisions that favor them in the long run against natural statistical deviations. That's why playing against a beginner is incredibly hard; they make poor choices that don't necessarily result in poor results. But put compare the results of that beginner vs a pro after 1000+ hands, and you'll see how much luck vs skill matters.
Nate75Sanders 14y ago
In 2006, you actually could fairly easily make $85K in a year playing poker. Not anymore, though, and not for the past few years.
- stuff4ben 14y ago
  what happened after 2006 that caused the dropoff in payout?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - stevenwei 14y ago
    UIGEA [1]. It basically killed the entire U.S. online poker market. And what little that remained was destroyed by Black Friday [2]. It certainly was possible (with a little bit of study) to make $85k/year playing online poker back then, but those days are long gone. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enfo... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg
  - Nate75Sanders 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enfo... That scared off a lot of the fish, plus, in mid-2007 (I think?) the biggest payment processor, Neteller, got busted by the US Attorney's Office (I hope I'm remembering all this correctly), which made it so that even the fish that were left around couldn't keep re-filling their accounts. Also, there was a wealth of information about how to play by 2006-2007 and there were a lot more absolute numbers of good players which, with the decreasing supply of fish led to a much higher concentration of good players. From early 2006 to early 2008, the game had changed so dramatically that it was guys who used to crush NL400 ($2/4 NLHE) couldn't beat NL100 (50c/$1 NLHE)
    - naner 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
doktrin 14y ago
This post would have held more sway for me if it had been touted as a preparation for school - not as a replacement. I am of the opinion a number 18 year olds are very far from being emotionally mature and self possessed enough to get the most ouf of college. Such individuals would probably be well served by making a go at dealing with the world, which might well include some form of the OP's syllabus. However, touting this as an alternative to higher education is IMO doling out plain bad advice. I'm not even going to touch the highly dubious claims made about poker as a source of reliable income (by an amateur with one year of experience).
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I think this is pretty insightful, I was comparing my daughter (17) as she looks at colleges to some of the other potential freshman. It was clear that a noticable number of young people were going to be lost. I'd guess that its the 'hovering parent' syndrome which trys so hard to keep their kids 'safe' and 'competitive' that they don't let their kids develop into adults, but I don't know. It is definitely a factor though.
ulisesrmzroche 14y ago
And here I thought the answer to life was 42, not Poker.
mattmaroon 14y ago
As someone whose done it, I can tell you that you shouldn't rely on making money over the long run at poker. There are a lot of reasons why you'll probably fail, no matter how smart and hard working you are, most of them emotional. It is a great way to learn decision making with incomplete information though. There's sort of a class divide in the world between those who understand and apply the concept of expected value to every part of their life and those who don't.
abolibibelot 14y ago
How to be a great [developer|dad|founder|hustler|manatee trainer] in 11 easy steps 1-7. Do what I did. 8-10. Learn what I learned. 11. Listen to advice from random people on the Internet.
paborden 14y ago
Disagree with articles that are so myopically focused on dropping out of college. College is only overpriced if you make it overpriced (i.e. you major in underwater basket weaving). My alma mater is one of the more expensive ones out there ... yet, between the connections I gained, classes I took, habits and ways of thinking it beat into me, and rep I acquired from the school ... it was worth every damn cent.
naner 14y ago
I found it odd that there is no direction here. What are you working towards? Also Tynan seems to be making the mistake of giving advice on how to be Tynan. This isn't really anything to do with "hustling" or an MBA (Is Tyan running a sucessful business? It appears not).
ssharp 14y ago
College is proven way to improve productivity and lifetime earnings. And it's scaled fairly well. And unlike poker, it's not zero-sum. "In fact, apart from very specific cases, I think that school is a bad thing, not worth doing even if it was free." Very wrong. You're not going to become a doctor, lawyer, nurse, accountant, etc. by playing poker and traveling. You're not going to get recruited by an employer because you claim to have read a lot of books. What the author is actually saying, but incorrectly applies to everyone (startup bubble thinking, maybe?), is that for would-be startup founders, college may be obsolete. This is in no way, shape, or form, indicative of the value college provides to the rest of the population. People have lots of motivations and reasons for attending college and many of them are completely valid, logically and economically.
- hhabgood 14y ago
  I believe he notes that if you are going to school to become a professional (i.e. doctor) then it doesn't necessarily apply. To your point, you also aren't going to become a zookeeper or programmer by playing poker or travelling, but you also won't necessarily become one by going to college. You WILL become one if you make the effort to do so, it doesn't matter whether it's in college or elsewhere.
  - jhartmann 14y ago
    I really think that is the takeaway that I got from the post as well. You become what you put your effort into, no amount of schooling is useful without the desire and drive to really make someone successful. While many of us here don't agree with the exact path he lays out, the gist of the message is to only go to school if you have a really good reason for going and the drive to make it worthwhile. Hustle and drive are key factors to success in this world, anything you can do to improve those will definitely be more useful then a college degree. These skills/personality traits are also not taught/picked up very well from classroom studies. I have been in college two different times in my life, and the first time I had no business being there. I was driven and wanted something the second time. Definitely much more useful the second time around, even though it was expensive. If you don't have that purpose and drive, go figure yourself out first.
tlrobinson 14y ago
He "left with zero additional skills after three semesters" in college, and is now advising people to make money playing poker? I'm having a hard time taking this seriously.
vsloo 14y ago
Sometimes a person needs to go to college in order to understand why it might not be relevant for them. By simply touting that college is useless as a fact seems too far-fetched for me. No one is born with an ability to assess going to college as it is today. It's all social conditioning. To that end, college is useful. If it can teach you something about yourself then the 2 or 3 semesters were not wasted time or money.
anuraj 14y ago
It depends. Depending on the field of study, university may be a pass time or where you cut yourself out for greater challenges. If you are into a deeply technical subject, college is pretty much the only option. If you want to get by studying humanities and few easy courses, you can as well help yourself without spending all that money for college.
freshfey 14y ago
Articles like these (although it has some good points in it) give the word 'hustler' a bad reputation in this world.
qdog 14y ago
If one is disciplined enough to go for 4 years following a rigorous schedule, sure go for it. I doubt most people could follow this program for 4 years. It took me 8 years to get through college (those 9 am classes were too damn early...), and I had no idea what I was going to eventually do. Many people entering college are not highly motivated, and certainly not motivated with the iron will required to play winning poker. The states letting state universities set the price of tuition up to ludicrous level seems to be the main issue with debt. At a reasonable state college, a 4 year degree 20 years ago for tuition would have cost less than 2k/year (I think I have some receipts for $800-900 from 92 or 93 for a full semester, 13-18 credit hours at the time). It is now about 2700/semester or 3x the price 20 years ago. Actually I guess 2700/semester is still not too bad, at full price for 4 years, that's a little over 20k. While going to Stanford or somewhere and getting a CS degree might pay off, you don't actually have to go to freaking ivy league schools if you don't have the money or want the debt. If you are in the humanities or something where your future is probably a lower paying job, then a state school is probably the way to go. 20-30k in debt is still a bit painful, but that's a 4 year degree for the prices of a semester at some colleges. Poker, btw, is a game of statistics, not chance. Since you can change your bet when the odds change, ie: betting more when the odds favor a bet, or folding when they do not. Craps, Roulette, and most other casino games are all games of chance, where the odds are not in your favor at any time. Craps can give you the best odds of a normal casino game, but every dollar you bet at craps is returning at best ~$.99 over the long run. I used to play craps until I read all the odds and now all I can see is the negative numbers everytime the dice rolls. Poker is pretty much the only casino game I enjoy playing, because skill can effect your outcome. However, I don't have the years or bankroll to be a professional at it, and haven't played in a few years now.
- natrius 14y ago
  "While going to Stanford or somewhere and getting a CS degree might pay off, you don't actually have to go to freaking ivy league schools if you don't have the money or want the debt." The idea that one has to go into debt to go to a top-level school is an outdated one. Every fancy school I got into was cheaper than the University of Texas after financial aid.

48 points by bennesvig 14y ago

taw9 14y ago

I encourage EVERYONE to follow this phenomenal advice!!! ... and when the next tech bubble bursts, I look forward to picking up good CHEAP programmers without college degrees. MWAH HA HA!

jeremysmyth 14y ago

While correct (in a sense), this suffers from pretty much the same naïveté that a lot of similar essays contain. Simply put, the chief benefit of formalised higher education is that it forces you to learn stuff you didn't even know you didn't know, deeper than you ever thought you had to. It's many years since I left university (studying electronics and software), and I while I still work in tech (who doesn't around here?!), I only used a fraction of what I learned there once I got to the real world. That's the chief argument of essayists like this one, and it's one I agree with. However, I have many times been in situations where I've had to solve a problem that I would not have had the mental tools for, were it not for a deep distant memory of some obscure piece of maths I did (painfully, perhaps even reluctantly) in second year, or some recollection of a weird hack with CPU registers I learned in third year. True, these moments in my career have been fleeting, but they helped me in a way that OP could not have been helped. I've since worked a lot as a technical trainer. For me, the difference between technical training (or vocational, or OP's self-inflicted syllabus) and education (college, university) is that the former gives you a great hands-on real-world grasp of the available tools and techniques and how to use them to solve problems. The latter gets you further into the "why", and makes you better suited to making your own tools and techniques. Those of you who have written your own operating systems and compilers - would you ever have done that had you _not_ been in university? And how much did you learn from it?

hiphopopotamus 14y ago

Meanwhile back on earth...

potatolicious 14y ago

He lost me at the part where the secret to life is becoming a professional poker player. Because in a highly competitive game of chance you're pretty much guaranteed to come out on top to the tune of $50-60 an hour... Does this post strike anyone as completely f'ing delusional? Perhaps applicable to the author, one of the greatest card sharks alive today, but seems silly to the vast majority.

nlavezzo 14y ago
If you're talking casual play, off and on for a year, then yes it's highly unlikely. If you're taking about spending a good part of a year, reading some of the best books out there (I recommend Harrington on Cash Games Vol. I and II) and then methodically applying the techniques in those books to your play, it's doable. Or at least, when I took some time off between startups, I was able to average being a reasonably profitable poker player at cash games in casinos. However, I came to the conclusion that it was a good learning experience and that $80k a year was not worth having to sit in a room with a bunch of guys, hunched over a table, breathing in their germs, and listening to their half drunk rants. Great lessons to be learned from poker though, but you must be dedicated to average being profitable. If I go back and try now, I'm probably going to lose more often than not.
ojbyrne 14y ago
Yes it does. Perhaps college would have helped him with his delusion.
dminor 14y ago
It's actually not terribly hard to get good enough to make money playing poker, but sustaining $60/hr for 8 hours a day takes an enormous amount of dedication and concentration, plus it takes time to get to that level. You're far better off learning to program.
nancyhua 14y ago
Yeah it's off putting that poker was #1 on the list. His remaining suggestions were actually things that seemed sensible, like reading, writing, programming, and starting a business, but the poker stuff was so distracting it was hard to continue.

fmitchell0 14y ago

It's definitely an interesting concept, but does assume a certain 'buffer' level of class and income level to go down this road. Having a home to be in while you 'get up to speed in poker', having parents that understand and provide some sort of boundaries at 18 years old, assuming poker winnings will be the base 'bank' for all other ventures, and assuming that the networks you make at school are not very important are big red flags for me. For some, going to college, despite the hand-wringing, is also a way to break cycles of poverty within a lineage, a sense of family pride, and an escape from their home circumstance. It's a little disconcerting that the author is a little lost in their own privilege and that his Hustler's MBA curriculum is probably a product of previous generations who went to college. I think the better message is: Don't expect college, however many years you spend, to GIVE you everything or ANSWER everything. You still have to live life, take chances, and exist outside of your comfort zone. College is a concrete foundation to that mission.

rnernento 14y ago
He definitely forgot to check his privilege, big mistake...
anewguy 14y ago
The marginal utility of college is declining. Our near ancestors got a lot out of a college degree. The author is noticing that we won't get nearly as much.

srehnborg 14y ago

I lost focus after he talked about how easy poker was to make $85k a year.

kcodey 14y ago

He also lost me at poker. A lot of us entrepreneur types love poker because we just love risk, IMO. To say that you can comfortable make 85k a year playing poker is the most outlandish statement I've ever heard. I also hate how people try and tell me poker is a skill. Yes to a degree it is, but it's more luck than anything once you understand the game, let's be real. Seemed like a good blog post until he became delusional about poker.

bjourne 14y ago
Playing poker, like Texas Hold-Em is definitely a game of skill and not luck. It is absolutely possible to still make big bucks on it if you are skilled enough. My brother used to live a fairly decadent life thanks to his poker winnings from a few years ago. However, that was at the peak of the world wide poker craze where everyone thought they could be millionares by playing Paradise Poker a few hours per day. But the times have changed in online poker and there aren't enough whales around that the poker sharks can exploit for profit anymore. The only way to consistently make money playing poker is if the skill differential between you and your opponents is high enough and in your favor. The lower the difference, the more time it takes to make a profit, the lower your hourly wage gets. On top of that, you can suffer fluctuations or "bad beats" as they call it. One week you may win 100k only to lose it the next week. It is a very stressful situation if poker is your work and you need to win. There is a definite risk of burning out. 85k isn't a lot when it takes 8-10h per day of really boring online poker playing.
Nate75Sanders 14y ago
Poker is unquestionably a game of skill. You need be able to separate the orthogonal components of EV and variance. Over a large sample of hands, a professional poker player will wipe the floor with you. There is a great deal of variance in poker, but that doesn't mean that one person can't be significantly better than another in the long run.
coryl 14y ago
If its about luck, than why do we see the same familiar faces deep into WSOP finals? Luck is only relevant if you're playing for the short run. Professionals generally make decisions that favor them in the long run against natural statistical deviations. That's why playing against a beginner is incredibly hard; they make poor choices that don't necessarily result in poor results. But put compare the results of that beginner vs a pro after 1000+ hands, and you'll see how much luck vs skill matters.

Nate75Sanders 14y ago

In 2006, you actually could fairly easily make $85K in a year playing poker. Not anymore, though, and not for the past few years.

stuff4ben 14y ago
what happened after 2006 that caused the dropoff in payout?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- stevenwei 14y ago
  UIGEA [1]. It basically killed the entire U.S. online poker market. And what little that remained was destroyed by Black Friday [2]. It certainly was possible (with a little bit of study) to make $85k/year playing online poker back then, but those days are long gone. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enfo... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg
- Nate75Sanders 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enfo... That scared off a lot of the fish, plus, in mid-2007 (I think?) the biggest payment processor, Neteller, got busted by the US Attorney's Office (I hope I'm remembering all this correctly), which made it so that even the fish that were left around couldn't keep re-filling their accounts. Also, there was a wealth of information about how to play by 2006-2007 and there were a lot more absolute numbers of good players which, with the decreasing supply of fish led to a much higher concentration of good players. From early 2006 to early 2008, the game had changed so dramatically that it was guys who used to crush NL400 ($2/4 NLHE) couldn't beat NL100 (50c/$1 NLHE)
  - naner 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

doktrin 14y ago

This post would have held more sway for me if it had been touted as a preparation for school - not as a replacement. I am of the opinion a number 18 year olds are very far from being emotionally mature and self possessed enough to get the most ouf of college. Such individuals would probably be well served by making a go at dealing with the world, which might well include some form of the OP's syllabus. However, touting this as an alternative to higher education is IMO doling out plain bad advice. I'm not even going to touch the highly dubious claims made about poker as a source of reliable income (by an amateur with one year of experience).

ChuckMcM 14y ago
I think this is pretty insightful, I was comparing my daughter (17) as she looks at colleges to some of the other potential freshman. It was clear that a noticable number of young people were going to be lost. I'd guess that its the 'hovering parent' syndrome which trys so hard to keep their kids 'safe' and 'competitive' that they don't let their kids develop into adults, but I don't know. It is definitely a factor though.

ulisesrmzroche 14y ago

And here I thought the answer to life was 42, not Poker.

mattmaroon 14y ago

As someone whose done it, I can tell you that you shouldn't rely on making money over the long run at poker. There are a lot of reasons why you'll probably fail, no matter how smart and hard working you are, most of them emotional. It is a great way to learn decision making with incomplete information though. There's sort of a class divide in the world between those who understand and apply the concept of expected value to every part of their life and those who don't.

abolibibelot 14y ago

How to be a great [developer|dad|founder|hustler|manatee trainer] in 11 easy steps 1-7. Do what I did. 8-10. Learn what I learned. 11. Listen to advice from random people on the Internet.

paborden 14y ago

Disagree with articles that are so myopically focused on dropping out of college. College is only overpriced if you make it overpriced (i.e. you major in underwater basket weaving). My alma mater is one of the more expensive ones out there ... yet, between the connections I gained, classes I took, habits and ways of thinking it beat into me, and rep I acquired from the school ... it was worth every damn cent.

naner 14y ago

I found it odd that there is no direction here. What are you working towards? Also Tynan seems to be making the mistake of giving advice on how to be Tynan. This isn't really anything to do with "hustling" or an MBA (Is Tyan running a sucessful business? It appears not).

ssharp 14y ago

College is proven way to improve productivity and lifetime earnings. And it's scaled fairly well. And unlike poker, it's not zero-sum. "In fact, apart from very specific cases, I think that school is a bad thing, not worth doing even if it was free." Very wrong. You're not going to become a doctor, lawyer, nurse, accountant, etc. by playing poker and traveling. You're not going to get recruited by an employer because you claim to have read a lot of books. What the author is actually saying, but incorrectly applies to everyone (startup bubble thinking, maybe?), is that for would-be startup founders, college may be obsolete. This is in no way, shape, or form, indicative of the value college provides to the rest of the population. People have lots of motivations and reasons for attending college and many of them are completely valid, logically and economically.

hhabgood 14y ago
I believe he notes that if you are going to school to become a professional (i.e. doctor) then it doesn't necessarily apply. To your point, you also aren't going to become a zookeeper or programmer by playing poker or travelling, but you also won't necessarily become one by going to college. You WILL become one if you make the effort to do so, it doesn't matter whether it's in college or elsewhere.
- jhartmann 14y ago
  I really think that is the takeaway that I got from the post as well. You become what you put your effort into, no amount of schooling is useful without the desire and drive to really make someone successful. While many of us here don't agree with the exact path he lays out, the gist of the message is to only go to school if you have a really good reason for going and the drive to make it worthwhile. Hustle and drive are key factors to success in this world, anything you can do to improve those will definitely be more useful then a college degree. These skills/personality traits are also not taught/picked up very well from classroom studies. I have been in college two different times in my life, and the first time I had no business being there. I was driven and wanted something the second time. Definitely much more useful the second time around, even though it was expensive. If you don't have that purpose and drive, go figure yourself out first.

tlrobinson 14y ago

He "left with zero additional skills after three semesters" in college, and is now advising people to make money playing poker? I'm having a hard time taking this seriously.

vsloo 14y ago

Sometimes a person needs to go to college in order to understand why it might not be relevant for them. By simply touting that college is useless as a fact seems too far-fetched for me. No one is born with an ability to assess going to college as it is today. It's all social conditioning. To that end, college is useful. If it can teach you something about yourself then the 2 or 3 semesters were not wasted time or money.

anuraj 14y ago

It depends. Depending on the field of study, university may be a pass time or where you cut yourself out for greater challenges. If you are into a deeply technical subject, college is pretty much the only option. If you want to get by studying humanities and few easy courses, you can as well help yourself without spending all that money for college.

freshfey 14y ago

Articles like these (although it has some good points in it) give the word 'hustler' a bad reputation in this world.

qdog 14y ago

If one is disciplined enough to go for 4 years following a rigorous schedule, sure go for it. I doubt most people could follow this program for 4 years. It took me 8 years to get through college (those 9 am classes were too damn early...), and I had no idea what I was going to eventually do. Many people entering college are not highly motivated, and certainly not motivated with the iron will required to play winning poker. The states letting state universities set the price of tuition up to ludicrous level seems to be the main issue with debt. At a reasonable state college, a 4 year degree 20 years ago for tuition would have cost less than 2k/year (I think I have some receipts for $800-900 from 92 or 93 for a full semester, 13-18 credit hours at the time). It is now about 2700/semester or 3x the price 20 years ago. Actually I guess 2700/semester is still not too bad, at full price for 4 years, that's a little over 20k. While going to Stanford or somewhere and getting a CS degree might pay off, you don't actually have to go to freaking ivy league schools if you don't have the money or want the debt. If you are in the humanities or something where your future is probably a lower paying job, then a state school is probably the way to go. 20-30k in debt is still a bit painful, but that's a 4 year degree for the prices of a semester at some colleges. Poker, btw, is a game of statistics, not chance. Since you can change your bet when the odds change, ie: betting more when the odds favor a bet, or folding when they do not. Craps, Roulette, and most other casino games are all games of chance, where the odds are not in your favor at any time. Craps can give you the best odds of a normal casino game, but every dollar you bet at craps is returning at best ~$.99 over the long run. I used to play craps until I read all the odds and now all I can see is the negative numbers everytime the dice rolls. Poker is pretty much the only casino game I enjoy playing, because skill can effect your outcome. However, I don't have the years or bankroll to be a professional at it, and haven't played in a few years now.

natrius 14y ago
"While going to Stanford or somewhere and getting a CS degree might pay off, you don't actually have to go to freaking ivy league schools if you don't have the money or want the debt." The idea that one has to go into debt to go to a top-level school is an outdated one. Every fancy school I got into was cheaper than the University of Texas after financial aid.