Should You Quit Your Day Job? — Part I

[Al Schoonmaker]

You wrote: "This really is the golden age of poker right now."

I agree, but ALL golden ages end. My next two articles in "Card Player" magazine are Parts I and II of "It's a great party, but..."

You'll be able to read Part I in about two weeks at cardplayer.com.

The fact that almost anyone with reasonable skills and discipline can win right now means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for the long term. The parellels to the stock market are revealing. Every time there is a bull market, lots of people make a pile of money.

And then most of them give it back when the market corrects.

Regards,

Al

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
You wrote: "This really is the golden age of poker right now."

I agree, but ALL golden ages end. My next two articles in "Card Player" magazine are Parts I and II of "It's a great party, but..."

You'll be able to read Part I in about two weeks at cardplayer.com.

The fact that almost anyone with reasonable skills and discipline can win right now means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for the long term. The parellels to the stock market are revealing. Every time there is a bull market, lots of people make a pile of money.

And then most of them give it back when the market corrects.

Regards,

Al

[/ QUOTE ]

but it means a lot for the medium term. To quote somebody, in the long term we're all dead.

chez

[4thstreetpete]

Hey Al, I'm very looking forward to read your new article. Great stuff.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by players with reasonable skills and discipline who can win now means nothing in the long term. Are you saying that the poker boom will go bust or games will dry up in the near future with the fish going broke? I for one am not too concerned about this.
Poker has been around for a long time and will continue to be. Like everything else it will evolve. The internet has opened many doors that just weren't possible before and there's tons on markets that haven't even been tapped (ie Asia).
The golden age of poker will end but it won't be anytime soon in the foreseeable future. Even then, the industry will still stay strong much more so then the pre poker boom.

[Al Schoonmaker]

Not too long ago many casinos closed their poker rooms. For example, Mohegan Sun in CT closed its room, even though there was only one serious competitor in all of New England. A number of LV casinos closed their rooms. A new room opens every month now, but some of them will fail.

Online has opened new markets, and some of them have enormous potential, especially Asia and South America.

I have no idea how long the boom will last or how severe the correction will be, and neither does anyone else. Perhaps it will last for years, perhaps it will end abruptly if the US government takes certain actions. However, there is no doubt that the boom will end because ALL booms end.

I agree that poker will evolve. In fact, poker has always had a Darwinian evolution. The weakest players quit or learn how to play, and the games get continuously tougher. If you played the strategies recommended in the classic books such as "Education of a poker player," you would get slaughtered.

Tools such as computer simulations and Poker Tracker now provide types of data that the old-timers never even considered, and some of their strategies were just, plain wrong.

The games are extremely soft now because so many newbies are playing, but the supply of newbies is not infinite.

It's an exciting time to be involved with poker, but over-comfidence can be deadly. The Chinese have a strange curse: "May you live in interesting times." It means that interesting times are dangerous.

All I am trying to do is to get people to think of longer term issues.

Regards,

Al

[skirtus]

[ QUOTE ]
However, there is no doubt that the boom will end because ALL booms end.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is great advice for anyone. Especially someone who is self-employed.

I have no aspirations or ability to play poker professionally. But I always wondered how pro poker players increase their income over the long term (10-20 years). Do you play higher limits or more tables? Do the higher limits become easier over the long term. In 10 years will the competition at the $55 SnGs be comparable to the $10 SnGs?

[ianlippert]

[ QUOTE ]

I have no idea how long the boom will last or how severe the correction will be, and neither does anyone else. Perhaps it will last for years, perhaps it will end abruptly if the US government takes certain actions. However, there is no doubt that the boom will end because ALL booms end.



[/ QUOTE ]

Just like the lottery boom, or the casino boom, or the bingo boom, people just get too smart for these games.

What are you even talking about? It takes one simple concept to understand that lotteries are -EV. But millions of dollars are poured into these scams, on a yearly basis. Online players getting tougher? Have you even played online? The lowest games on party are being played by people that should be at home playing nickel games, but the internet allows them to play anytime for any amount.

When comparing the internet to B&M its not a BOOM, its more of a Super Nova. I've been to the casino once to play poker. grinding out 40 hands/hr? No thanks. It infinitely easier, faster, and cheaper for someone to find out if they can become an internet pro than it was for someone to become a B&M pro 10 years ago.

[PokerHorse]

The poker boom and going pro are not corelated. yes there is a boom obviously, but you are comparing it to the stock market tech bubble. Just cant happen that way. The expansion will of course slowdown, but before the tv boom, there were still new players coming into the game. as long as we breed and multiply, there will be new blood.
i was in the nutrition industry, which just finished a large boom and then a leveling out and shake-out. it doesnt operate in panic mode as say when your stocks are plumetting. Only the worst players get shaken out pretty fast, and for the rest it is slow death. that's what makes poker so alluring because, players are always questioning themselves as to "how good they really are" while the pros know really what it takes.
i dont advocate going pro unless you are able to play at limits 40-80 and above, but thats just me.
but you can get rich playing poker part time. the internet
makes it possible to play part time. if you can make as little as 600 a month, if you invest this money , you can retire quite well. If you can earn 10k a year on the side and invest it , well, you do the math.
good luck

I think everyone is missing 1 very important factor here. You are underestimating how dumb the average person is. Think about it, most people you run into are plain retarded. For every 1 new poker pro, I say there are at least 100 new poker newbies that decide to give it a try.

I know these people, I grew up in the middle of dumbf**k America. I watch these guys drop at least 500-1000 a piece. They all fool themselves how much they lose too. I have a buddy who started playing on party, after awhile I asked him how he was doing, he said he won a couple hundred so far. I knew he wasn't good, one day we we're over his house and he had party logged on so I looked at his history, it showed about 1000 in depo's with a single 200 withdrawl and maybe 100 in his account. The losers trick themselves into thinking they aren't as big of losers as they are. Ask them why they lose, 100 percent of them will tell you they keep taking bad beats. Then ask them their "Bad beat" story and you realize its just a case of them having unimproved aces that they limped and not being able to lay them down.

Go into any toy store and you will see texas hold em sets for kids, which can assure many new "customers" to come. The poker boom hasn't really hit Asia yet, that should attract just as big of a following as it did in the US.

I think our #1 worry as online pro's is the fear of good online "bots" being made/distributed. This, I feel, could destroy everything. I already hear talk of them, but I'm assuming they aren't bound to make a dent in the short term.

I love being a pro. I work 20 hours a week 4 days a week, if I need extra money then I'll grind out a tough 40 hr week. My only fear in quitting my job was getting health insurance, but it really isn't as much as you think if you are young/healthy and take on a policy with a deductible.

And with the person who is using the SNG's numbers as their basis. A large majority of us are not making our money primarily from the SNG's. I would say, complete conservative guess, for every 1 SNG "pro" there are 15 table "pro's".

I need this easy living to last just 2 more years until I finish getting my degree. After that, it can all come crumbling down for all I care. Hopefully the poker sites can make it easy to use credit cards again, that would really open up the fish flood gates [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[TimM]

Dr. Al seems like a very negative person, but for a lot of players his negativity is justified. I certainly don't want losing players to quit their day job to play poker. I'd much rather they keep a source of income so that they can keep reloading their accounts, within the confines of their entertainment budget, of course.

For myself, I am not terribly worried. I played part time and won consistently for fourteen months and 200,000 hands before I left my job. I handled the swings, the risks, the emotional rollercoaster, and the lifestyle just fine. And for the last six months and 225,000 more hands as a full timer, I have continued to do so.

There is a big difference between pros who go broke or have losing years in big money no-limit cash games and multi-table tournaments, and a small to mid-stakes limit grinder like myself.

If I were to go broke, it would likely be from a slow bleed where I fail to make enough to pay my bills each month. As I prepare to move up to the next limit, I'm sitting on a 1000BB bankroll for the current one. It isn't really possible for me to lose all of this without getting a clue that I might not be beating the game. I'm definitely prepared to move down as necessary to protect my ability to keep playing.

Even if I were to have an extended downswing, about two thirds of my monthly living expenses are covered by rakeback alone. I'm more worried about sites putting a stop to rakeback than the games going bad. I'm more worried about losing my bankroll to a hacker than to a downswing. I'm more worried about the donks in the legislatures around the U.S. than I am about the fish leaving.

I am currently getting a small taste of what it's like to have a job again. I am helping a friend who is running a two week chess and computer gaming camp for kids. I get to play games with the kids all day, and get paid. Not exactly the worst job I could think of.

The downside is having to get up at 7AM every day, commute for an hour in traffic, and get home at 4:30PM after another hour commute, dog tired. I had planned to play a 3-4 hour poker session each night when I got home, but I can only stand to play 1.5 hours before I get so tired I risk misreading my cards. My free time is very important to me, and I hate being too tired to enjoy it. I had to cut out my workout sessions too, and I have not been eating well this last week, since having to eat away from home exposes me to all kinds of temptations.

I can't wait to get back to my "dreary life" as a full time online poker player.

[chezlaw]

Sounds just about identical to me. i guess there's a few like us about.

Good luck to us all.

chez