Cooke's, "Play to Live or Live to Play " article

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi AA:

You wrote:

For example, about 98% of the people who graduate Law School pass the bar

When I entered graduate school there were 30 of us who started the program. Only 10 made it as far as a master's degree.

Also, if you flunked your orals I believe you would get a second chance. If you failed them a second time, that was it.

Best wishes,
Mason

[PokerBabe(aka)]

Bless you, Rick for the first part of your post. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] I will ignore the image of you in your undies. [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] LGPG, Babe [img]/forums/images/icons/heart.gif[/img]

[HDPM]

Law school's easier than that Mason. [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img]

One thing I will give Cooke is that the average winning poker player is smarter than the average of a lot of fields by far. The average poker pro who can beat mid-limit games is a lot smarter than the average lawyer I think. But there are a lot more lawyers making a lot more money than mid-limit pros, so sometimes I wonder what the pros are thinking when they could make a lot more doing something else. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
One other thing I look at is how smart the posters are here. The people attracted to poker are often pretty smart. So I give credit to the pros who can beat some smart people for a living.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi HDPM:

You wrote:

The people attracted to poker are often pretty smart.

I agree that this is true if you only restrict your population to winning poker players. But if you include all the degenerates, I'm not so sure.

Best wishes,
Mason

[HDPM]

yeah, I generally agree. Of course there are smart losing players who just play recreationally. But with that exception I agree. A lot of degenerates or losing players sure are not too smart.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Babe:

I agree with Cooke that to become a highly successful poker player takes much work, and that you always need to work on your game. Where I disagree, and disagree strongly, is that it is comparable to an advanced degree from a good school in a technical field.

But this is a point that most of our readers should be happy with. You don't need to be super smart to become a good poker player. You just need to be willing to work hard. In fact, many people who are pretty smart fall behind the hard workers. It's sort of like the "tourtise and the hair" fable.

Again, my objection was the comparison to someone with a legitimate master's degree. Part of the reason for this is that's I don't believe anyone has worked harder at mastering poker concepts than I have, and many of my private notes have been turned into books and articles. But compared to my work in graduate school, (and some of the work I did in my 11 year pre-poker career), while very tedious at times, the level of thinking required was much easier.

Best wishes,
Mason

[AmericanAirlines]

Hi Mason,
Didn't realize the engineering Master's were so tough. Perhaps it a "era in time" sort of issue as well. Didn't you do your degree in the late 60's early 70's?

I did mine in the 80's. And Comp Sci and the little bit of Law School I did were obviously not the math/physics heavy sort of subjects that Engineering is.

I can remember hearing "College Doctoral Thesis Horror Stories" when I was a kid. Perhaps this is the sort thing you went through?

Comp Sci. even the Operating System specialization I took was much more about logic and alogorithms than any hard math, apart from the obligatory System Performance, Stats with Calc, and Calc classes. But I suspect they were watered down for us guys.

Probably a good thing too. I was working full time at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft there in Florida at the time, could never have survived anything tougher than I did.

I've often regretted that I didn't have the chance to be just a student, and take a really "bad ass" major.

Sincerely,
AA

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi AA:

I got my BS in 1973 and my MS in 1975. Both in math and both from Virginia Tech. I was briefly in their Ph. D. program for statistics but was offered a job with the US Census Bureau and decided to take it.

Best wishes,
Mason

[CEO]

I guess what is so interesting about this debate is how little "bang" you get for your invested time & effort in learning poker, compared to other areas requiring a high level of expertize, especially when you reach either the top of poker or some other profession.

For example, compare the incomes of top professionals in any profession and poker really pales, particularly against the top in business, which poker skills are often compared to. Top business people can literally earn millions, if not tens of millions per year. In fact, at the top it is possible to become worth hundreds of millions, and some become billionaires.
Poker offers nowhere near this oppty.

So which requires more work is up for debate, but I am certain that poker returns, for time invested is far worse. Also, in other areas the really big returns come only when you are successful enough to delegate everything except what you really want to do yourself. Poker offers nothing like this, and you are always forced to be actively engaged in every issue. (hand).

[Dentist]

When I read that statement, I laughed as well.

I spent 4 years in school learning a variety of procedures that I have to perform on a daily basis. Every day is a test for me that I have to pass. The margin for error is none when it comes to treating patients to the penultimate standards that our profession has set.

I have spent 8 months doing some recreational reading on poker (that's how long I've been playing the game) and I consider myself to be ahead of most of the 6-12 players I currently play with (I will move up soon....)

After 8 months of dental school, I was starting to get good at cutting on plastic teeth......
Poker is EASY compared to high level professional work. The amount of knowledge that goes into something as simple as a filling is truly shocking.
Just to do a stupid filling you have to take courses is anesthesia, anatomy, material science, dental pathology, operative dentistry, lab work in handpiece control, and more..

I didn't have to do that much work to understand the flow of the standard hold 'em game.

All the talk of hourly rate is generally a joke to me. If it were all about money, I could do far better griding out more hours at work. There's not a big enough game in town to make my hourly rate as good what I can make at work.

Poker for me is a competition that I enjoy, whose score is measured in chips. It's just my choice of exercising that competitive vibe in me. It's my: (golf, bowling, pool, sports, etc...) because I like to use my mind to play, and I like scoring in money rather than points like in a traditional card game, or chess, or a sports event..

It's not a freaking doctorate degree. If I dedicated 4 solid years studying and playing poker (the amount of time my DDS took). I'd be a freaking LEGEND in my own time.

I'm sure there are other doctors on this site as well. It is the mental aspect of this game that brought me in. I love to analyze things and use knowledge to beat people.

Thanks Mason and 2+2 for allowing the "nerd" in me to be expressed on the Poker table in the form of beating the uneducated..