While this may be true, I'm taking a random person with an affinity for numbers/logic/psychology over a random person all day.

that's what I was saying, sorry if unclear. I think natural talent plays a large role.

My definition of "natural talent", as I explained, while including natural factors such as born intelligence, etc., is largely based on non-natural variables like the way you were raised, and your early life experiences. Perhaps the title of the category is misleading.

It would be almost impossible to argue that certain people are more pre-dispositioned to learn these skills, or will have an easier time overall becoming a good poker player, regardless of whether the rote skills themselves can be identified as genetically based. This is the "natural" part of "natural talent"

<3

rumnchess you win 10 internets

did you know it has been scientifically proven that sitting down or any other "sedentary" behavior is unhealthy even if you're fit and work out?

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/....cms?prtpage=1

that was the first thing i got when i googled sitting down is unhealthy.

for your health!

pretty sure anyone who says poker does not take natural talent didn't talk about poker with different types of people

some people literally only need 5 minutes to understand reasonably complicated concepts (like my sister, studying physics, who can't be convinced to play poker for money), while others wouldn't understand it in 5 hours (try explaining poker to the average actor vs say an engineer)

it doesn't feel like it takes a natural talent for us because we take our natural talent for granted

*edit* re the argument on the second page: i'm 99% sure the way your brain handles winning/losing money is determined by our genes to a large extent


agree on work ethic being 70-80% of it though. imo large parts of professionalism and life balance are just subsets of work ethic

table games have nothing to do with poker, i've never had trouble avoiding -ev non poker games (ie i have taken shots vs probably better players when tired, but have never played blackjack). avoiding putting yourself in places where you play table games etc if you have a disposition towards gambling is something you'd also have to do with a regular job (although it might be easier). probably has to do with poker being a bigger part of the american culture. i think a lot of professional euros hardly played/heard of poker before finding out about online poker via video games (tillerman had a list of 40+ Warcraft III players alone) thus are much less likely to have a disposition for gambling

(english isn't my first language so i might word some of the wrongly)

- logical reasoning
- an analytic way of solving problems
- the ability to sit still and focus in front of a computer screen for 2 hours at once
- the 'ability' to not go crazy having little human contact during an important part of your life (work)
- the ability to be able to deal with distorted feedback (performance only marginally linked with results in the sort term)
- having a brain that can handle winning/losing better (less worse is probably a better term) than average - not the same as the previous one
- ... (hell, i wouldn't be surprised if work ethic was genetically determined to a significant extent)


surely all of this abilities can be learned, but that doesn't mean there isn't an element of natural talent (ie a genetic disposition) in everyone of these. tbh i don't see how you can even start arguing that poker takes no natural talent >< i don't see any difference between arguing that poker takes no natural talent and arguing weightlifting takes no natural talent


pulled out of thin air example:

person A starts with a brain that releases 2 amount of 'makeyoufeelbaddon'tdothisanymore' energy everytime he loses a poker hand. after 3 years of professionaly playing online poker, he gets so used to losing that his brain releases only 1 amount of 'makeyoufeelbad' energy everytime he loses a (big) hand

person B starts with a brain that releases 4 amount of 'makeyoufeelbaddon'tdothisanymore' energy everytime he loses a poker hand. after 3 years of professionaly playing online poker, he gets so used to losing that his brain releases only 2 amount of 'makeyoufeelbad' energy everytime he loses a (big) hand


both persons learned, both persons 'trained', but person A was a much better fit for a professional poker playing career when he started it and he still is after 3 years

natural talent:

A+ in poker theory
B- in reading/understanding people (ie understanding what one action means about how he thinks about the game, having the feel for timing when you can bluff, when your opponent is bluffing, when he's strong, etc. i guess you can call that second part gameflow talent?)

work ethic:

no idea here, depends a lot on what time in my poker career. effort put in is probably an A-, but ...

goal setting (for lack of a better term):

C-. work ethic is nothing if you apply it badly

i spent hours and hours thinking about theory with very little practical use for the online poker games i should play in if my poker goal is to make as much money as i can in say the next 4 years (which it is). all that time thinking about general strategy would have been better used determining the optimal strategy vs specific opponents

i spent way too much time playing good regs (10% of your hands vs good regs where you record yourself and watch it again, reviewing the session rly rly hard afterwards, not just hands but also dynamics, discussing it with people/coach prob >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 50% of your hands randomly playing good regs. the opportunity cost both in not playing fish in that time and in the added variance: downswing, days off, loss of confidence, ... is so huge)

i spent way too much time on improving my A+ game, and way too little on improving how often I play my current A+ game. especially at this point in my career the benefits in getting a better A+ game are very little COMPARED TO the huge jumps in $$ i'll make when i play my A game all the time



professionalism:

i think 90% (setup, discipline, playing conditions) of this falls under either either work ethic or goal setting, so whatever. i don't see what spending habits have to with being a professional poker player tbh

life balance:

prob an A or an A+


my list suggestion would be

-natural talent
-poker study (improving your A+ game)
-mental game (improving the frequency of playing your A+ game, both by stuff you do on the tables /no chatting/ and away from the tables /working out, meditation, dno/)
-life balance

the older i get (i'm 23 lol) the more i see evidence around me every single day that work ethic >>>>>>> all

sure you will never make it as a professional poker player (hell, you will not succeed in anything you try to do) without natural talent. but there are a lot of people with natural talent (hell, there might be someone on earth more talented than usain bolt which is probably the hugest natural talent freak one can think of) in any field. work ethic (and luck) determine who wins teh prize


the only interesting thing about that is whether we should consider work ethic a natural talent i tend to say yes to a big extent tbh

just saw this thread, great toughts,
More i read regs 2+2, more u seem to be nice guys and good approach with life.... i dont post much cuz most of the time i get flame cuz i have hard time to express my deep tought in english... Anyway cool to have ppl like u rum

re: natural talent

i agree with what everyone else said, I think I probably took the definition of "natural talent" a bit too far. I was thinking more of things that you were born with, and not something like the ability to solve problems, etc.. I believe, and we could argue about this all day, that none of that are things someone can be born with. I think all of those skills and talents are acquired through growing up with a certain education, parents, environment, etc that make you more likely to develop those skills.

I'm not getting why everyone is saying life balance is so pivitol in becoming a great poker player, U think jungleman or say DUrrrr or other freaks have really good life balance? No offense at all too them but I really doubt it, being a freak at this game requires being completely obsessed with it, the kind of obsession that can very rarely lead to a balanced life imo.

well maybe durr etc would have made a lot more money having life balance?

what about Ivey, the dude plays like 3 days sessions, and didn't he just get divorced? I'm not saying at all these guys are losers or anything, just that generally speaking having an unbalanced life kinda goes hand in hand with being a great at almost anything, especially poker.

ok citing getting divorced as a sign of an unbalanced life was dumb I take that part back

i agree with you that being great at something goes hand in hand with an unbalanced life almost always, but that doesn't mean it's a prerequisite for being great at something

also i'm not sure that jungleman or jman don't have a balanced life. you can spend 50 or even 60h/week on poker and live a balanced life

+ 'balanced' life is a bad phrase: it's more about living a life that makes you happy both short term and long term. for the vast majority of people that includes friends, family, love, exercise, eating healthy, ... but that's not necessarily true for all (eg some russian weirdo studying math problems all his life)

Great thread/read, OP. You've inspired me to write something similar of my own--although I'm sure it won't be half as good. I didn't realize that 2+2 could be a place for introspection/reflection/honesty with oneself and all that good stuff. Surprises me that it's been so well-received and that there haven't been as many douchebaggy comments as I thought I would see. We could all learn something from this.

Great thread, alot of interesting things in it.
Keep it comming your thoughts OP.

I generally agree, They probably have a lot of balance...now*. I'm sure they didn't when they were coming up. I just personally really think this stupid game requires being unhealty obsessed with it for a decent period of time to obtain any real success.

Who cares about a "balanced" life, what matters is a happy life. If you enjoy playing 10hrs of poker per day more than doing other things then go for it. I hope to reach the point where I can play massive amounts of volume and enjoy it. The only thing stopping me from that now is mental fatigue.

For every jungleman and durr there's 1000 others that live and breathe poker also and are completely imbalanced, unhappy and not even successful to boot.

I certainly lack in that sense and it DOES affect my results indirectly. I think keeping yourself in shape and active is a hugely +EV thing in all aspects of life and not just poker.

But their lack of success is prolly not due to having an unbalanced lifestyle, wouldn't you agree??

just to say that i agree with that, sometimes it seems that some ppl here change their point of view by who said it (like ppl in general for what iv seen dosnt seem to be that objective). Maybe its just me but there is probably a nice correlation to do......anyway was just a parenthesis and i tought it was a nice spot to say it. sry i guess if some of u are insulted that i post that here. :P

fwiw I think that the most important thing to have in poker just like in life is confidence. U can be the absolute best talent/potential in the world in hockey, missing confidence and ur not gonna get it, ur not gonna be able to develop ur potential at 100% obv. Its even exponential i would say. If u miss confidence, then instead of developing/growing, ur level of play can dramaticly be worst.
Confidence for some ppl is defenetly (i never knew how spell that *** word lol) a pretty high variance graph. Its obv often a result of how much u succeed in different aspect of life and how u perceive that success or failure (probably more important than the actual truth). ppl who are dominating their field are not always the best ``talent`` but very often are the most confident and beleive that they are the best (perception is more important than actual truth :P...can be the truth too tought). U cant say ok today i work on my confidence, its a lifetime process and it defena*** open ur mind and help to see things together. Achieving goals and always having new ones,push u at the maximum u can, see things in a positive way, thinking that u can and not u should/could are all good habits to stay/reach happiness in life and in everything u undertakes.

lol 1st time i try to write like ``semi-deep thought`` in english, i really dont know if its gonna be readable or a complete mess haha.

Anyway i defanet*** tryied