Q&A #54: It’s All About the Benjamins

This isn’t tilt. This is a gambling problem.

Thanks for fixing the syndication, by the way.

Ed,

You asked for suggestions. Here’s one I’m sure you’ve thought of already: how about giving “gifts” for donations, ala PBS fund drives?

Say, an NPA t-shirt for a $x donation,
a mug for a $y donation,
a signed book for $z,
a one-hour lesson for $a….

For what it’s worth, I think poker authors are to blame for a tiny part of this “I play for money and excitement” phenomenom. It’s not that it isn’t the responsibility of a player to have realistic goals and a reasonable stance for the game. But the message most books, if not all, are pounding is that most players out there are stupid and with just a bit of learning, you can make some serious dough.

It’s true, of course, in a sense, but it’s not the message an aspiring player should be hearing. Sure, it gets you started and excited, but leaves you with no clue on the big picture.

Like I’ve said before, Ed’s blog is a good example of a much-needed counter-force. Articles like this are just the cure for the extremes one reaches after couple months of play (depending on whether you’ve hit a downswing or upswing).

I don’t know, maybe time’s ready for a “Philosophy of Poker” book. A book that would discuss poker from the bird’s-eye-view only. Like, what’s this game of poker really about.

Thank you for this explanatory post. I’ve noticed that I’m currently in a similar situation and need to get back in touch with my game. It’s good to hear that I’m not the only one and confirms my suspicion that I need to step down and study more.

I’m not ready for Tommy Angelo yet. But when I am, and I find myself in a Las Vegas hotel room with 8 grand cash, I hope I’ll have the will power to follow through with it.

Play at stakes where you can lose and lose and not care.

The only exception I take with your advice is the above.

Show me a player who does not care about losing and I’ll show you a player who is not sufficiently involved in the game to learn it well.

I guess I would therefore suggest that this player play at a stakes level where losing hurts at least a little.

I played BJ for a living and was getting so much heat I decided to switch to limit holdem expecting to be remunerated as I was with BJ. Six months later at a 5-10 table, when it was easier to beat, I was $6k poorer before expenses.
Even when I learned to beat the game and moved up I ended up in the poker hospital a few times. Poker tends to reveal one’s false logic that has moved one through life but one is forced to change and adapt a winning game if that is your only source of income. It was not until I put together a strategy like counting cards (wished I had Ed Miller back then) - though dynamic, could I detach myself from the emotions of it being about the money - than I became a good player. It needs to be about the process, I the process is correct the money will come.

Jarno said: “But the message most books, if not all, are pounding is that most players out there are stupid and with just a bit of learning, you can make some serious dough.”

I think the problem might be the definition of “serious dough”. There are lots of bad players at the lowest limits, and it’s probably true that you can beat them with a little learning. You could make maybe a couple hundred per month.

OTOH making a livable wage of a some thousands per month is a more difficult problem.

Perhaps some poker students don’t understand the difference here, and get these these two confused? Poker authors are actually talking about winning a few bucks, but the over-zealous student interprets it as thousands?

A great piece, Ed.

Makes me smile after losing a bunch playing 2/4 LHE online today whilst getting my money in good on all the big pots I lost.

Learning to generate a $200k annual income requires you to be fairly elite.

A couple of questions for Ed, or for anyone else who wants to provide an opinion:

1. I’m taking “fairly elite” here to mean above average intelligence, or above average innate “feel” or intuition for poker. In other words, this is to say that only a minority of the population can get to this point even with a lot of work. Am I understanding correctly?

1a. How closely does this poker ability correlate to IQ? How closely does it correlate to the ability to read something like SSHE or NLHE:TAP and “get” the concepts?

2. Given the changes in the poker landscape in the last year, is this $200k number (or any number above $50k) now more attainable in B&M than online?

This artikel next to When Do I Know I’m Awesome? is really good for me and will be reading it a couple of times for sure. I love the mindset you get after reading it. Money doesnt matter, money doesnt matter, I am just a student of the game.

I think it is probably a mistake to equate smartness with being good at poker. You probably have to be “smart enough” to be good at poker, but being “smart enough” won’t make you good at poker. Sure it may help, maybe a lot, to be smarter than “smart enough”, but once you are “smart enough” all of the other factors start to come into play.

For example, an elite NFL linebacker needs to be around 6-4 and a muscular 240, more or less, to be successful at the position. Sure, there are some bigger and some smaller, but for the most part you need that size to play the position. If you are 6-4 and a muscular 240 can you play linebacker in the NFL? Not likely. There are a bunch of other talents, a lot of commitment and probably a quite a bit of luck invovled in playing linebacker at the NFL level.

I think the big issue is age.

Few eighteen year olds have the maturity to seriously play poker in my opinion.

Ed said: “It’s about audience and it’s about what ‘not that hard’ means to the reader.”

Thanks Ed for clearing this up. I think I get it now - when David said “no big deal” he meant “as compared to what you have to do to earn that much in other careers.”

Say you want to be a master carpenter - you don’t just read a couple of books, then pick up your hammer and saw and go do it. You have to apprentice for a couple of years, and learn the tricks of the trade. Probably making a few mistakes along the way and learning from them too.

BTW Ed I hope you didn’t take my “poker authors” comment personally - I think everyone here knows that you are a really honest guy and you are doing the best you can to tell it like it is and teach us right. That’s why we keep coming back here…

Great article. I have observed that a lot of today’s successful poker players have been in the elite of other fields besides poker. I will use two examples: Andy Bloch has a multitude of advanced degrees from top schools and was part of the MIT BJ team that was nothing short of pure genius. Doyle was an NBA caliber basketball player in his younger days. I feel there is a direct correlation between these players demonstrating the drive and dedication it takes to succeed in other fields that have translated into their success on the felt. What do you guys think?

This kid probably isn’t a winning player anyway, but I wanted to add that having big rushes lead to unwise expenditures is terrible. Not just because you can go broke, but because of the basic economic concept of diminishing marginal utility, as applied to someone with widely fluctuating disposable income. It boils down to this: you’re rarely gonna like that $800 purchase as much as you’d like 100 $8 purchases spread out, if your psychology when you make the big purchase involves a massively inflated sense of your wealth level.