Matt Maroon On Playing Poker For A Living

Excellent post. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, Ed!

BTW, which of these aspects were the most relevant for your decision to quit playing for a living:
1. Being self employed: no work = no money (nobody else pulls you through).
2. Dealing with variance (bad runs) in terms of emotional stress.
3. Dealing with variance in terms of inability to plan your future income.
4. Questioning your poker decisions during bad runs: Not knowing whether you need to adapt or not.
5. Working conditions (online or casino environment).
6. others…

Any tips/good books on how to deal with some of these items?

Thanks,
Greyzy

So, do you have some advice to professional players or hobbyists who want to go pro?

Would you tell them to make sure to have a good support network or a back-up plan or a stress-relieving hobby or what?

Heh, I think the best advice is to get a sponsor

Great link, Ed.

I’ve toyed with the idea of going pro or at least seriously semipro. At the end of the day, my motivation is as much my own frustrations trying to cope with ADHD in the conventional workplace as any illusion that poker is a glamorous lifestyle.

I think the ideal for me would be to have poker as one of several income streams (thanks to Nick Grudzien for the term, although I don’t play enough limit to buy his book; but the concept was already well-formed when I read that section in a bookstore). My present career, Web development, could lend itself to freelancing. But setting up a freelancing business is a ton of work, and I’d rather spend my free time from my day job playing poker than building up a freelancing business.

The difficulty with measuring one’s own ability is what’s really driven me crazy, and probably prevented me from devoting more time to poker. I have a pretty good sense when I’m running bad in B&M poker, because I can identify many mistakes in a typical $1-2 game. But online, I start to question whether I’m really good enough to beat NL25.

For now, I’m not aiming at playing full-time, but I am aiming at rearranging my career so

(1) I’m geographically closer to casinos
(2) I can more easily take three months at a time to play full time, either by

(a) contracting
(b) by working in one place long enough to request a sabbatical
(c) changing careers to something situated around the academic year so I have summers relatively free

(3) A more ADHD-friendly day job or career

At any rate, that’s my story — hope it’s useful to someone in the same boat.

I’m gonna give “my take” on this in the hopes that someone might find it useful.

You can “like” something, or you can “really like” something, or you can have a “true passion” for something. These are three very different things.

I have met a lot of people who “like” physics. They ask me “How come nothing can go faster than the speed of light?” and they listen and really try to understand my answer. But though they like physics, they don’t “really like” it. By that I mean, they don’t want to put in the effort it takes to learn the mathematical theory that would allow them to know and understand the answer for themselves.

Similarly, though I really like physics, I don’t have the “true passion”. When I learned just how much effort it was going to take to get a physics PhD, I balked. I got a MSEE instead.

So, I claim that in order to make a living at poker, you better be at the “true passion” level. As a guess I would say that Matt and Ed are at the “really like” level.

I believe that if you are at the true passion level about anything, then you will know it. But if you finding yourself asking “Do I really have a true passion?” then you probably don’t.

The number of lucky people who really have a true passion for something is very small. I very much envy people like Richard Feynman and Sheldon Glashow who had the true passion for physics. It was the thing that drove them to their high achievements.

Ed,

By endorsing Mr. Maroon’s post, are you suggesting you are not awesome, as defined in your previous article “How Do I Know When I’m Awesome?” The sentiments behind these two writings seem difficult to reconcile.

Mr. Awesome,

There is a dfference evaporating within a space -playing your game and what is stated in regard to playing for a living. I have a feeling you have neither found your space or have made a living relying on poker exclusively.

I do not think anyone who has not made a living from gambling can understand.

does the fact that playing poker does absolutely nothing to improve
the world enter into this? i know it sounds corny but at the end of one’s
life standing before the judgement throne does the question “what did you do with your life” present a problem for the pro poker player?

tobori

Tobori,

I think about this quite a bit, both as an empath who would like to do some good for the world and as someone who probably shares your theology of “the judgement throne”.

A lot of corporate jobs don’t really produce anything of more value than playing poker. I’ve worked in situations where I was quite certain my job had no more intrinsic value than playing poker for a living.

Conversely, someone like Barry Greenstein, who makes a living at cash games and donates his winnings to charity, is IMO contributing a lot to society despite doing it off of dead money contributed by inferior players. I’ve always thought that if I played poker full time, I’d need some sort of volunteer or ministry project with my free time to feel fulfilled.

You can find intrinsic value in how you make a living, but you can also find that value in the free-time pursuits that your living allows you to undertake.

AKQJ10, I like your comment a lot, but I’m not sure if it’s because that’s how I think God would see it or how I’d want him to. I’ve been battling with the “Go Pro” move for some time now being 23 and having won several tournaments over $10,000 in addition to taking money away 85% of the time at live 2-5 no limit holdem cash games; however, my biggest struggle being religious is what to say at the gates.

On the other hand, I absolutely hate my job and I think God wants us to be happy. While the “value in the free-time pursuits that your living allows you to undertake” is a statement that would justify my going pro, I could also drop everything and work at an orphanage, a school, a church, etc., where I wouldn’t be paid well but would enjoy the riches of making other’s lives better.

I don’t think making lots of money and donating it carries near the weight that making no money and giving up your time for the bennefit of others does; however, there is no activity in this world other than God, family, and friends that overrides my love for poker, and I can’t change who I am, but maybe I should try?

When you really break it down, winning at poker is taking advantage of other people’s weaknesses. Being a pro at poker mean’s you’re a pro at exploiting human weakness, doesn’t it? That is worse than a job that doesn’t do any good, it’s sending people home broke who we may justify as “shouldn’t of put the money up if they couldn’t lose it”, but poker is a sickness for many and it’s those from whom we profit the most. Take away those kinds of players and we don’t win!

Any thoughts on this? My head is pounding!