Why don't succesful online pros play more cards?

[Zygote]

[ QUOTE ]
This is spun out of a discussion in the HU/SH forum. The question is why big winning online players - I'm speaking of people who can make $200/hour or more playing cards on the internet - don't play more hours. Without getting into a discussion about win rates, I fall comfortably into this category, and I probably play 20-25 hours a week. Of course that is an average and there are some 45 hour weeks and also some 0 hour weeks. I do have another job that requires some of my time (though less than full time), as well as a relationship and the vague remnants of a social life, so there are some competing interests. But certainly there's also some downtime turing a typical week and I could play more than 20-25 hours if I desired.

My impression is that almost all of the other online pros and semi-pros who are capable of big earns also don't play as much as you might think. Some people manage 30 or 35 or *maybe* 40 hours a week, but almost nobody is playing much more than this (feel free to come in and correct me if I'm wrong). I've periodically seen reference on the forums to players who are playing more than this, but generally they are playing for smaller stakes, and their expected cash win rates aren't as high.

The question is why. After all, there's a naive (IMO) interpretation that if you can earn that much money doing anything, you'd want to do it as often as possible.

It seems to me there are basically three explanations for why this might be so. These explanations need not be mutually exclusive.

1. Boredom / burnout. Poker begins to feel like a job when it is your job. Moreover, especially online, it's a job that is quite stressful, quite repetitive, and generally quite draining of one's mental resources.

2. Diminshing marginal returns. Making an extra $50,000 is a lot more attractive to someone used to a $40,000 income than someone used to a $200,000 income. The pros are simply behaving rationally.

3. Temperment. We're wandering into speculative territory here, but my guess is that many or even most people who are capable of gambling and winning big at poker and *also* have decided *not* to take a job in the straight world have somewhat irregular or compulsive or even manic temperments. These people aren't sitting down in front of their computers and treating poker as a job at all so much as they're playing poker when they "feel like it", which may be a lot at some times and much less at others, a sort of manageable addiction.

So which do we think it is?

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i make just about 100/hr playing 15/30 and 10/20, but I work an avg. of 8 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week. If i was making 200/hr, i would only work as much you. I'm building a bankroll now to hopefully do that, though. I also think i'll need to do some skill building too.

[steaknshake925]

nate, i think the most important factor in not playing more hours is that after a while you dont play as well as if you were fresh, and your winrate would probly drop drastically. when i play for more than say 2.5 hours i definitly start noticing more mistakes and probly make alot that im not noticing.

[cwes]

Economists believe in an underlying utility function U(.) that represents an individual. The conclusions you can derive from the analysis of this function supplement your second conjecture.

Now assume the parameters of U(.) are just income (I) and Leisure (T-L,T: available Time, L: working time (Labor)). Now income is just a function of labor I(L). Hence U(.) can be written as:

U(I(L),(T-L)).

As we see it is now just a function of labor (L).

Now assume income and leisure are somehow multiplicative associated (easiest: Cobb-Douglas function):

U(I(L),(1-L)) := I(L)^a * (T-L)^b

Now it will depend solely on a and b how much time you spend working. You can do some math on this stuff, but I do not want to bore you.

What everybody should easily be able to see is that if you work ALL your time (i.e. L=T) (T-L)^b=(T-T)^b is zero. The whole product will become zero and there is no utility left for you. Also if you work too much, the increase of I(L) will not be able to compensate for the decrease of T-L. That is why you stop working at a certain level of income.

And hey: $4-5k a week is not so bad, is it?

[cwes]

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Economists believe in an underlying utility function U(.) that represents an individual. The conclusions you can derive from the analysis of this function support your second conjecture.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm still learning...

[Jacqueline]

Yup... hence the backward bending labor supply curve. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Glad to see another econ geek went into details, I was tempted to go get my Intermediate Micro book. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]