[AaronBrown]

I've been impressed the constancy of the inflation-adjusted value of statkes I play. When I was in college in the mid-1970's a serious game had a $1,000 to $1,500 buy-in, either $10/$20 blinds or $5 antes. The big loser would be down $5,000 for the night. When I went to Gardena to find the best players in the world, we played $40/$80. Today my usual weekly game is a $5,000 buy-in with $25/$50 blinds or $20 antes, the big loser will be down $20,000. If I want to find top players (now more likely in Las Vegas), I move up to $100/$200. In inflation-adjusted terms these amounts are almost exactly constant, and when I look back over the last 30 years, I see the same approximate inflation adjusted value each year.

The mystery is $1,500 in college was almost a semester's worth of part-time work, while $5,000 today is much less than that to me. As a percentage of earned income, today's stakes are much smaller, but they feel about the same. I should have been terrified of losing in college, and only mildly disappointed at the same inflation-adjusted loss today. But that's not true.

Also we have some rich people in the game who earn $5,000 per hour tax-free on their muni bond portfolios, and not-so-rich people who can scrape $5,000 together only by hustling smaller games and not paying their rent. But the rich guys care and the not-so-rich guys aren't scared of losing.

I think you cannot compare Poker stakes to income, you have to compare it to amounts people spend. A guy with $100 million net worth doesn't spend 1,000 times as much on dinner or clothes or his car as a guy with $100,000 net worth. $5,000 focuses most people's minds, even if they only round their checkbook off to the nearest $100,000.