Why Do Professional Poker Players Still Live with Their Moms?

[Professor77]

Why Do Professional Poker Players Still Live with Their Moms?
(And I don't mean you, Daniel Negreanu, so don't call to complain!)

My Poker Blog: http://mypokerroom.blogspot.com

In other words, professional poker works pretty much like the standard capitalist enterprise: you have to be near the top of the pyramid to make a big wage. Notwithstanding the media's rhetoric about the million's of dollars available and the glamour of poker stardom, a player's "wages" are about as skewed as wages in corporate America. A low level pro has plenty in common with a McDonald's burger flipper or a Wal-Mart shelf stocker. In fact, most players also hold other jobs in the legitimate sector to supplement their skimpy poker earnings. Most low level pros make aproximately minimum wage for every hour at the poker tables. And how many burger flippers end up with less money than they started with as a result of flipping burgers?

Consider the cost of a weekend playing poker in Las Vegas:
Flight: $440
2 Nights at MGM Grand: $450
Shuttle to the MGM: $9
Fri. Nite Dinner and Drinks for 2: $130
Two breakfasts: $22
Bar: $12
Monorail Passes: $26
Hooker: $180
Saturday dinner and Drinks for 2: $160
Taxis: $32
Various Other Food/Snack/Drinks: $50
Long-Term Parking at airport: $24
Total:$1,535.
How many minimum wage earners can afford that?

Along with the bad pay and high cost, poker players face terrible jobconditions.Forstarters,they have to sit in a poker room all day and do business with other players. Little or no family life, back problems, bad diet and the stink of smoke are some of the side benefits of sitting for 10 hour stretches at a poker table. Playing in home-games you also risk arrest and, more worrisome, violence.

Professional poker player s have a 1-in-2 chance of divorce and a 1-in-30 chance of fatal heart attack! Compare these odds to being a timber cutter, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls the most dangerous job in the United States. Over four years' time, a timber cutter would stand only a 1-in-200 chance of being killed. Or compare the poker player s odds to those of a death row inmate in Texas, which executes more prisoners than any other state. In 2003, Texas put to death twenty-four inmates-or just 5 percent of the nearly 500 inmates on its death row during that time. Which means that you stand a greater chance of dying while playing in this year's World Series of Poker than you do while sitting on death row in Texas. So if professional poker playing is the most dangerous job in America, and if the salary is near minimum wage, why on earth would anyone
take such a job?



(Thank's to "Freakonomics" for the inspiration)
(To all the critics who do think I hate poker or don't like my math: IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY! I've played and at times loved poker for nearly 30 years.)
My Poker Blog: Click Herehttp://mypokerroom.blogspot.com