(OT) If someone paid you a million dollars...

[edthayer]

...to never play a hand of poker again, would you take it?

[Evan]

Yea, unfortunately I would have to. But why did you post this question here?

[edthayer]

Just thought it'd be interesting. I'll mark it off-topic.

[Evan]

You can never tell anymore what's going to be what after this recent trend of insane names for threads (which I believe we can blame on Bison). Fair enough, just curious.

[edthayer]

For me, taking the million would probably be +EV, but I think I'd miss the game too much.

[Evan]

[ QUOTE ]
taking the million would probably be +EV

[/ QUOTE ]
Wow, see my decisions was much easier than yours because taking the million would be so +EV its not even funny. of course I'd miss the game and I'd wish I could play, but $1,000,000 would just mean too much to me to pass it up. By the way, I think we should clarify something, is this pre,post or free of tax?

[edthayer]

Pre-tax million.

Another question: who here wins enough at poker that they become taxable, and who here actually pays taxes on their winnings?

Back to the original question, you could probably use this formula.

(Expected poker winnings for the rest of your life)*(Fun of playing poker)-(Time wasted playing poker) versus (pre-tax million dollars).

[Happy Hour]

Offer me $60,000. I'll take it. Figure I won't make more than that before online poker dries up, anyway. And I detest casinos. I'm only in this for the money.

[edfurlong]

$15.95 pretax would be fine for me.

[Bob T.]

Sure, I can still play a lot of other games that are interesting. Actually, with a million dollars, I probably would have the time to play those games at a fairly high level.

[MarkL444]

You made the number way too high for this question to have any balance. Anybody in this (SS) forum who says they wouldn't take the money is lying (there may be an exception or two). We all love the game, and would still play on a competitive level if there was no money involved (if this is possible), but for many of us this is our only source of income. Im taking the money and WILL BE HAPPY to quit poker forever so I can finally focus on school full-time without worrying about playing x thousand hands of poker every week.

[ElSapo]

I wouldn't take it. I'm not prone to giving up things I enjoy for money.

Now, if you asked if I'd be willing to never go back to my job if you gave me $1 million, that's a different things. I'd do that for about $50,000. Maybe less.

yeah i'd take it, i'd just start playing the stock market instead, and prob take up chess again.