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Living on Easy Street

Posted on Wed Nov 22, 2006 08:48:55 PM
Filed under Articles, Bankroll Management and Personal Finance, Playing for a Living, Premium Articles

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The last few months I’ve written about the planning and mindset required to make it successfully as a professional player. I hope those readers with lots of ambition and few responsibilities have taken my advice and are preparing to take their shot at playing for a living. Now is a terrific time to give your dream a go; there may not be a better time in your lifetimes.

A fair number of recently minted pros are making money like they’ve never seen before. Fifty thousand over a summer. Online poker accounts with over a hundred grand. If you are twenty, you just started playing poker two years ago, and Lee Jones just called you to warn you of the dangers of playing four tables of $100-$200, listen up. This article is for you.

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6 Responses to “Living on Easy Street”

PeterL
@ Thu Nov 23, 2006 05:04:08 AM
1

Hi

just a quick question, I am a recent starter and only grinding at the micro limits at the moment.
I noticce this was written last year-when do you think the poker boom will be over or do you believe it has already peaked and is now sliding?

I have noticed a tightening at the tables even at the micro limits.

Thanks
Peter

Ed Miller
@ Thu Nov 23, 2006 07:32:44 AM
2

Well, it’s not really that the boom will ever be “over” in that sort of final sense. Not in the ghost town sense. Poker has been played for centuries now, and it will continue to be played for centuries.

What will be “over” is the enormous amounts of cash some marginally talented players have been able to amass in the past couple of years. Some barely competent players (no names, of course.. :) ) have made tens and hundreds of thousands in the past two years. That’s going to stop.

Poker constantly changes. People’s play styles constantly shift. Last month, they’re loose preflop, next month their tighter, but they raise the turn light every time. Economics changes the game at higher stakes as some players go broke and others win a tournament.

The game changes, but poker isn’t going away. No law or trend or fad can make that happen. Many people will be playing poker in 2100. It’s not going extinct. I’m fairly certain of that.

But poker constantly evolves. And that won’t change either. Games come in and out of fashion, styles change, and how much money you can win will change too. Don’t fear the change! Part of being a good poker player for the long haul is rolling with all the punches.

kerri miller
@ Thu Nov 23, 2006 12:53:05 PM
3

Nice post, Ed, on one of the forgotten meanings of “money management” I’ve a nagging suspicious that this is one of those things that you can hear a thousand times, but its not until you’ve lost your first pile of easy cash that you start to see the advantages to what you’re saying.

A couple quick feedbacky type things..

ON the Hummer/Honda point, you’re 99% correct. The 1% case is that Hummers are low-quality vehicles that don’t hold value, while something like a mid- to high-end BMW actually holds its value fairly well.. so if you can justify the initial outlay, the difference between the value loss of the Honda and the BMW is the price you end up paying for the intangible reward of buying the beemer.

Saw a typo:
“First, you are going to owe taxes on $220,00 provided you don’t lose big. So take about $40,000, give or take, and stick it in a safe, short-term savings vehicle like a savings account or CD.”

One last bit – could you poke at the design of your site and possibly move the block of Google ads that appears at the top of the article down the page? It’d be much easier to read the site if you had a couple paragraphs, then the Google ads (inside a box or having a HR or somesuch to set them off from the text)

Ed Miller
@ Fri Nov 24, 2006 11:36:18 AM
4

Hi Kerri,

Thanks a lot for your post. I’ll look into the typo in a bit. Just have time for a quick response, though, so I wanted to let you know that the ad block annoys me there, and I’m going to fix it when I get a chance. It requires a little code hacking, I think, so that’s why I’ve been putting it off.

And sadly, you are right. People have a nasty habit of having to learn many things “the hard way” before it sticks. Oh well.

Ed

Anonymous
@ Sun Jan 07, 2007 12:52:49 PM
5

CDs are pretty bad investments.

threads13
@ Fri Aug 24, 2007 11:47:29 AM
6

Ed,

As your disclaimer said, you do not intend for this to be a comprehensive guide to the financial planning of a poker player. I was wondering if you know of any good resources to check into. Would ‘The Smart Investor’ be a good choice? Anything else come to mind?

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