Take a Great Job or Play Poker?

[Michael Davis]

"I can't think of much worse than grinding 45-50 hours of online poker per week."

I can. Most jobs.

-Michael

[evilganz]

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Now, if you were a stock trader they'd love it.

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Bzzt.

I was a floor trader on a major exchange for years; I and everyone I knew there had trouble. It almost didn't matter at all how much you had in the bank or were willing to put down. And this is in NYC, where it's not exactly a rarity.

[diddle]

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"I can't think of much worse than grinding 45-50 hours of online poker per week."

I can. Most jobs.

-Michael

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OH SNAP

[Blarg]

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I honestly don't see how this is a hard decision. Multi-tabling for 40+ hours per week is consdiderably more difficult mentally then working twice that amount of hours at a job. As many people mentioned, the fact that you won't be isolate in front of a computer all day is a HUGE pro. Addionally, you have have the job and still play poker but not the other way around. Also, it's exponentially nicer to have a solid guarenteed paycheck then having the possiblilty of leaving work poorer then when you came there. Take job, make some money on the side, sock away some money for a young reitirement, and lease yourself a benz! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Gabe

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I'm saying it's not a hard OR an easy decision. It's one we are simply not able to say much about when it comes to anyone but ourselves.

Your discussion of it echoes that.

You assume that what is mentally difficult for you is exactly what is mentally difficult for others, and even get very drastic about saying so, claiming that working 40 hours of poker is "considerably more difficult mentally" than working twice that amount at a job.

Whose job?

For whom?

Your definition of mental difficulty strikes me as too narrow to be workable, too. I'd include the emotional and psychological, too. Poker can be rough that way, but people usually forget in these discussions to compare it to the other alternative. Kissing ass, being demeaned in front of your peers by jerks and idiots, being blamed for the mistakes of incompetent managers and peers, feeling your work doesn't matter nearly as much as do the social connection or backstabbing of competitive peers, etc. -- these things are all a very real part of the workplace and can be at least as nasty as what goes on at a poker table or behind a poker computer in your living room. Heck, just walking in the door and breathing the stale, heavy, germ and chemical saturated air that's been in your office building since 1976 can cripple the soul by fractions a little more every day. I've heard that most heart attacks come early Monday morning, as people have to face the shock and strain of actually going back to work another full week .... THERE.

As far as being isolated behind a computer, how isolating is it sitting at your desk all day or in a cubicle(some of those cubicle guys make more money than you'd think)? And you know what -- those guys planted behind their desks at work are planted behind computers too!

As to the other things, they are again value judgments.

I'm just saying let's refer to things according to their real values, first of all, and let's also not presume to say that our personal valuation of anything stands in acceptably well for how other people value it.

Which again is far from a specific endorsement of playing poker, or doing anything else. I personally think he should continue to pursue both avenues with vigor, because he'll never really know which one he likes better if he does only one of them. And if he likes poker better and it works for him, he can always quit, whereas if he jumps right to poker and later decides it wasn't a good choice, he'll have lost ground in the meantime. By contrast, he won't really lose all that much ground by playing poker for 10 or 15 hours a week instead of 25 or 30.

[mtdoak]

Dear God son, take the job!!! Play poker 20 hrs or so a week, put all your winnings in the bank, and retire at 40.

[4thstreetpete]

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take it from a guy who graduated in 2000 with a great business degree and landed a great job just out of school... play cards for as long as you can support yourself and still enjoy it... even the greatest job in business is miserable a huge amount of the time, so many stupid ass people, in every company, on every level, that make it to where they are cause they play certain roles well in the eyes of certain people... but when you get to deal with them... its a total nightmare, also, you'll find that what ever industry you are in (esp. consulting, which i am also in) you will wonder what exactly you accomplished on any given day... 95% of what goes never ends up having any kind of real effect on the world or even the bottom line -

at least with poker, you have a very simple goal... win - and as long as you find that goal worthy, you will enjoy cards a lot more than any job - and with a good degree, the jobs will always be there if you change your mind -

go play cards in the paradise man! you should be slapped for thinking of going the other way [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I'm with this guy.

But I guess it depends on the person.

I've been a web developer for 5 years.

I HATE coporate life/politics.
I HATE the commute.
I feel ZERO personal satisfaction/reward from my job.
I HATE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS.

I am trying to save up enough now so that I can quit my job, and play poker while I figure out what I want to do. I'm sure of this: I will never be a coporate drone again.

My job is a [censored] grind and poker may become a [censored] grind, but the benefits that come with poker (basically work when you want, answer to nobody) outweigh my job benefits by a ton, in regards to personal happiness.

I guess what I'm saying is, money shouldn't be the #1 factor.

Do what you love.

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Good to see a honest sincere different point of view, albeit unpopular. This sounds almost exactly like my life.
I go to work everyday and slave away. I truly believe that I'm losing a part of myself everytime I go to work, as I'm no where close to where I want to be right now. As it stands all I'm doing is trying to save enough money and when my condo is paid off I'm going to take a serious look at what I want to do for the rest of my life.

However I do echo the sentiments of the majority of the posters here. It's obvious the most +EV decision is to take the job with regards to the original poster. It seems to me that you already know what the answer is. If the life of a poker pro is that easy you'd do it in a heartbeat.

You say that you make 180K per year in poker now, but there is no guarantee that this will continue in the future. The future of poker is somewhat cloudy. Being as easy as it is now to make good money at poker now we fall into a false sense of security that things will remain the same forever. Online poker is evolving, each day there's new programs that hit the market to gather stats, make decisions for you, help you datamine, etc..to help improve your game. It will be tougher to beat up on the fish. There's also slways the looming threat of government regulations that can put a stop to all this. That's why it's always best to have a backup plan.
The benefits of a great job are numerous and redundant for me to repeat.

I make a lot more by playing poker than my job and I 'only' play about 20-25 hours per week. I get home from work and I'm mentally drained but try to play a few hours of poker every night. I do enjoy poker but it's all about the money really. I was really amazed at how fast it took for me to make 100K playing poker. I played poker recreationally for a while now but it never occured to me until real recently that you could actually make a living off of it as I began to take it seriously.

I'm pretty comfortable now because I go to work and play a few hours of poker everyday and not let things stress me out. Between poker, income from work, and rakeback and bonuses I'm over the 200K range (that's CAD, when I take into account the exchange rate) and that's a very comfortable living here in canada.

I'm a realist, so I'm wary of the fact that making money from poker could get harder in the future due to bots etc. Thus all I'm really doing is saving up money and within 2 years I will be quitting my current job. I have until then to plan out the rest of my life but it would definately be doing something that I truly enjoy regardless of money hopefully working for myself and no longer a corporate drone.

[kiddo]

As long as u "only" make $100/hour there will be no problem. U can play poker for a while and then take that job.

Problem is that u probably will earn much more if u start to play full time and study the game. What happens when you make $300/h? Or $500/h? Now u suddenly have to change your lifestyle a lot if u want to take that job.

After a while u will find that there is a limit to how interesting it is to look at a deck of cards whole day and nothing to talk about after doing it. U lose $3000 in a day and dont feel to good, u think your wife want to hear about it? U win a lot,u think she is interested? Of course not, listening to a pokerplayer talking about his work is about the most boring thing there is when u get used to it. (ask my wife)

U will, at least shortterm, make much more mone playing poker then working so if u like spending money, take the job and play poker parttime. Otherwise there is a decent risk u will get stuck with poker for years making a lot of money, trying to tell yourself: this is not as boring as I right now think it is.

[Shaun]

Playing poker you will make more money (the first few years) and have no one telling you what to do. Move to the Carribean, go fishing and lounge around on the beach in between sessions. That sounds good.

The thing is if you graduated from an Ivy league school you will probably be able to get a very good job later on down the road. Or not. Who knows.

Anyway working 50-60 hours per week to make 70k and have the man take about a third of it in a place like NYC where the cost of living is high as hell may actually suck compared to the Carribean. But then again, the pay-off in the end could be huge, and much greater than the pay-off of playing poker.

Honestly, you can't go wrong either way in my opinion. Do what makes you happy and be glad that you have a choice that more than 90 percent of the people in the world will never have.

[Shaun]

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First good post blarg. You hit it on the head. This person is asking this question because of real concerns about his job and life. Not just money.

I'm going to assume based on the information OP has given that he is a really smart kid. He is probably smarter then most of the adults he's met and his peers. I'm in the same boat (graduating, great job, high IQ). For kids like us, there is an inherent distrust of generally concieved wisdom and the advice of older people. Here are the reasons:

1) Smart kids have always been able to do things we've been told we can't:
Everyone said I couldn't get a job on a W.S. derivatives trading desk at 18, but I did. Or that I couldn't make X dollars by this age or get into this college or win that award and on and on. So when someone tells us we can't do something, or that something is too diffucult, we always find it much easier then people say. Thus, you can tell a kid being a poker player is too hard he might ask why it would be hard when all the other hard things you talked about were easy.

2) Smart kids find the advice of old people inapplicable to them.
Most old people don't have our capabilities, thus they are bound by rules that don't apply to us. Making thier advice not applicable.

3) Young People Can Tell How Miserable Old People Are
I can see the expression on the guy walking out of the office. He hates his life. And no matter how much he tells other people and himself that he likes it, he will still hate his job everytime he walks in the door.

4) Young people can see through convienent lies.
Parents, teachers, police officers, whatever tell you all sorts of convienently calculated lies to get you to act a certain way. Smart people see right through that crap. Once you've lied to us once, why should we believe you a second time. Hence the lie people try to hide in point 3.

This probably comes accross very disorderly, I just kept writing as it popped into my head. But if OP has the same worries I have then they need to be addressed.

5) Poker opens up possibilities to kids.
There was only one choice before poker. Go to college, get a job. Many of us did it because we thought it was the only way. It was that or the poor house. HE IS MAKING A CHOICE FOR THE FIRST TIME. WHEN HE ENTERED HIS FIELD OF STUDY HE REALLY DIDN'T HAVE ANY CHOICE EXCEPT WHAT NOOSE TO PUT ON.

Explain why he should believe you. Explain why you have credibility. Explain why he can't do this if he has been able to do everything he wasn't suppose to be able to do up to now.

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Excellent. I laughed very hard at number 3.

[JohnnyHumongous]

I just want to say that I am blown away by the quality and quantity of the posts in this thread. I have read them all intently and used the information to weigh out my situation.

As many have said, one can have the best of both worlds by taking the job and playing poker on the side. This sounds perfect to me actually, and this is what I'll end up doing. The people in the office I will work at typically work 50-55 hours per week, NEVER over 60 and (depending on the case) sometimes 40 per week for months at a time. This is much better than a lot of consulting firms. The office also doesn't travel much compared to other consultancies... roughly 1-2 days per week when one is on a case that travels, and that is not every case.

Consulting is nice, in that they are open to the notion of sabbaticals. So there is the possibility that after a few years I could get 6-8 months off in which to travel, relax and play some heavy cards if this poker thing is still a cash cow. Alternatively, if I decide to go to B-School after 2 or 3 years, I could also take time off then before enrolling. In theory, I could work for 3 years, burn almost all of my salary on living a great life for a kid my age, and still have like $250-300K in the bank plus whatever returns I'm getting on that dough. That's not bad for a 25 year old... If I am able to get some long-term time off to focus on purely extracting dough from poker then that would just be a bonus.

I don't come from a wealthy heritage, in fact much the opposite. That might explain my fixation with being financially secure straight away. The original question was mostly hypothetical, I just wanted to kick it out there and see if there were any considerations I was missing. What I got was a boatload of useful insight, and for that I'm appreciative. It's funny, but thanks to this thread I feel a ton more confident about everything, my career, my life, everything. Thanks guys. I'll keep you all posted as to how everything develops.