Article from U of Alabama paper

[TeeJayORTj]

[ QUOTE ]
Andy McClure, 21, looks nothing like someone making $70 an hour.

He wears the same old blue jeans and the same ragged T-shirts he's had since his freshman year at the University of Alabama. If you didn't know better, you could swear his faded Yankees cap was surgically fixed to his head. He spends most of his time in bare feet.

That's the part McClure likes most about his story. Most college students can only dream of a job that pays big bucks and allows them to sit around with their friends watching TV or listening to music. But that's how McClure spends his time: Hanging out and making money.

McClure is cashing in on America's poker boom. He spends about 50 hours a week, he said, playing over the Internet. That's earned him more than $40,000 since the summer, when he first sat down in -- or logged into -- an online poker room.

McClure cautions that's just a fraction of what he expects to make now that he doesn't have school or any other obligations to detract from his playing time. In 2005, McClure thinks he'll make at least $200,000. "That's a conservative estimate," he said, noting that he could win several hundred thousand with a strong performance in a large tournament. Since Jan. 1, McClure has made about $18,000 online, he said.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats just a portion of it, but my question is does anyone really play 50 hours a week? Also this article was published at the end of February if anyone is wondering. And a estimate of 200K does not seem conservative to me.

[FishBurger]

All the posts here and newspaper articles on gambling reminds me of how popular daytrading was back during the Internet bubble. College kids like Mr. Alabama here were making insane money by flipping tech stocks all day. It seems that there is much less risk and much more skill involved in gambling, but we have to be in some kind of gambling bubble here.

[Fitz]

I've thought about a "poker bubble" too. We are certainly in a sweet spot right now. It seems to me the "bubble burst" will come when the flow of new/weak players dries up. I don't make the kind of money the Alabama Kid does, but I do make a very nice second income with relatively low variance thanks to the pool on Party.

When things tighten up and the pool begins to dry up, it will take more skill to get the money than it does now. The advantage we have over the day traders is that we don't have to worry about a vicious downswing wiping out a year's worth of profit in a bad session(At least we should be smart enough to aviod that mistake).

When day trading was big, I knew two guys who each happened to be poker dealers who claimed to be sitting on 7 figure bankrolls from their trading accumen. I know one of them went bust basically trying to martingale his way back to profit when things crashed.

We will undoubtedly see the day when poker isn't as popular as it is today, but if we keep our heads and depend on skill not luck, we should all come out okay.

Best wishes,

Fitz