This last week or so I’ve been pretty much cut off from the poker world. I’ve been at home spending time with family and friends, not worrying about what’s going on in the games or dealing with students or wading through the chatter on 2p2. It’s nice to get some breathing room away from the world of poker. I know that being a poker player is a big part of my identity and trying to move past that is one of my personal goals, but the time I’ve spent away from the game has brought something to my mind that I feel a strong desire to share. It’s very simple, unlike most of the garbled sermons I spout. I hope you will find its stupidity unexpected, and that you appreciate it.

The simple thought is this one: being a professional poker player is a ****ing awesome job.

That’s it. It’s simple. It’s almost a joke that I thought it was worth posting this. In fact, I’m probably going out of my way to make this point more for myself than for anyone else. But **** it, I think it’s worth saying and worth going out of my way to do so.

Let me see what I want to say.

HSNL has become something of a monument. It has outlived its usefulness as the genuine nexus of high level poker discussion. Nowadays it’s more like a cross between a museum and a watercooler. And sometimes it feels like a strangely bitter place. There are the mid-high stakes players who for whatever reason are often pissed off when posting on an internet forum and do their best not to talk about anything interesting to anyone else, and then there are some random spectators who don’t know how to contribute other than by acting pissed off, hoping to fit in. Some of the people here are mid-high stakes players to whom this will make sense, and some of the people here will be the spectators who might find it absurd. And that’s okay. Hopefully this will hit some of you guys in some meaningful way.

We easily convince ourselves (through the perceptions of others) that “being a poker player” is about the poker. But once you reach this far, the poker part is easy. Even when it’s hard it’s easy. It comes naturally. It is the “being” that becomes the challenge. When you’re coming up in this world, it seems like the poker is all that matters, and once you acquire the skills to become as great as you are now, it’ll all be taken care of. But having gotten here, with the poker pretty much taken care of, having reached your former dream of being within the top .01% of all poker players in the world, you might look around in a moment of honesty and say to yourself… “what, is this it?”

This is it.

Poker is a lonely job. You know all the small reasons why it’s lonely. You’re always by yourself at a poker table, you’re always fending for yourself at a table full of enemies. You’re fighting for your own money, you spend long hours by yourself in your own head figuring out your own strategies, and ultimately you go through your swings alone. Poker is a lonely job, and you know it, you find friends and companions to travel with you alongside through this lonely world. Poker players invented communities like 2p2, training sites, chatrooms to try to create some connection within this lonely world – and so when you were learning how to be a poker player, you learned the foundations of poker from others who were there to guide you. Whether it were from friends, from 2p2, from a training site – nobody invented their own poker game. The community taught us how to play poker. But it never taught us how to be poker players. It didn’t teach us how to view ourselves, how to deal with our lives, how to keep our minds in balance, and most importantly, how to love our job. And because nobody taught us that, poker is a lonely job.

I say again, poker is a ****ing awesome job. And being the good and cynical 2p2er you are, you might ask yourself, “How is poker awesome? In what sense is it awesome, in comparison to what is it awesome? Awesome compared to being a janitor, compared to being a starving kid in Africa? I’ve heard this all before. I hope you aren’t trying to get me into thinking that because I have money and success I should feel guilty.”

That’s not at all where I’m coming from. And the feeling behind this thought has nothing to do with guilt, fairness, entitlement, or anything like that. It’s far simpler than any of those things, and to understand what I’m saying you have to look no further than your own intuition. Comparisons are an easy place to start.

You could compare poker to any other job and recognize that there are few jobs in the world that offer so much challenge. Poker is pure challenge. If poker is anything, it’s one big ****ing beautiful challenge. There is no bull****, there are no poker politics, and there are no barriers in your way. It is perfectly and brilliantly meritocratic. All you need is desire and hard work and you can succeed in poker. Poker loves only the diligent and hates only the lazy. Most people here started with next to nothing and are now some of the greatest poker players in the world. That is ****ing awesome.

Not only that, but most jobs in the world that seem to have more intellectual content or difficulty than poker are illusions – the vast majority of them are mired in meniality or they are too high above a ladder of meniality to be able to get without tons of brain-decaying work. How awesome is it that poker is always challenging? That there is always something more to do, someone more to beat, something new to learn? You never have to spend a day without improving if you don’t want to.

I could waste more of your time talking about how dynamic poker is, how lucrative it is, how it offers you so much freedom and allows you to answer to no higher authority than yourself, but you know all that and you’ve heard it all before. Poker allows you no hopelessness and gives you a fundamental security – let’s all remember. No matter how bad poker treats us in the short term, we could all move down and start again, and still make a great living. Poker loves the **** out of you. Can you see that?

You remember when in school you imagined what your ideal job would be, and it seemed like so many people in the world hated their jobs? And maybe eventually you realized that the happiest people were those who were paid to do what they love.

Well? Do you love what you do?

If you don’t, and I’m not sure that I do, then this insight is worth pondering – is it too late to fall in love with it?

Poker makes us forget all this. Money makes us forget this. Your brain, the very act of living your life is designed to make you forget. Your brain has no reason to make you appreciate what you have; your brain is simply designed to make you want more. We learn our bitterness. It’s a strategy. Poker becomes just another pair of jeans, once we stop perceiving the feeling of wearing them, we forget how awesome they are. Jeans are awesome aren’t they?

Jeans are awesome. Do you love your jeans?

This isn’t about comparing poker to profound adversity, it’s not about looking at starving kids in Africa or or underprivileged kids in the ghettos of L.A. and telling yourself “I have no reason to complain, I have a responsibility to be satisfied. I owe it to the world.” This is not an intellectual maneuver to make you feel guilty and pretend that it makes a bit of difference.

And neither is this a call to spend money, I’m not saying “**** yeah, you’re a young free baller, go spend a ton of money and prove it!” Money is secondary, this is not about money. And this isn’t a call to donate to charity to make yourself feel like the world is more fair, to feel like a better person or assuage your guilt (although of course I have nothing against charity and have all of the respect in the world for it), what I want to say is simpler than that. It is simple.

Poker is awesome, and maybe there’s nothing special that you should do about it except love it and make an effort to enjoy this experience.


That’s all I wanted to say. I hope I didn’t come across as too preachy/BS-ful, just really wanted to write this.

Haseeb

Poker is fun for everyone....

well said

Very nice article!

I could especially identify with the part where you say that once you become accustomed to something, you don't even realize just how good it is anymore. I think this is something not only poker players do (even though it seems to be particularly common among them), but most of the people I know, too.

very well said. i think its easy to forget that being a ealry 20 something self made millionaire or hundred thousandaire doing something as easy as playing cards for a living is something probably worth enjoying and appreciating.

Nicely said. I've always felt that the act of being a poker pro inherently offers very little opportunity to appreciate it.

[ ] unlike most of the garbled sermons you spout

Not to say that I don't like your writing or anything because I do, but seriously you were really all over the place trying to make a point here and I'm not sure that you got there.

i didn't even read most of that, but i love you dog is head.

Basically, I agree with you and if I could I would give poker a bigggggg hug.

At the end of the day, poker and life offers us the same ability....hope

please don't stop writing, dih.

this guy is a ****ing genius. i love it. perfect response.

you come off very arrogant

THX 4 THE ADVICE BRAH

poker is one huge, pure, neverending ****ing challenge. i honestly was never fully cognizant of this, so ty for pointing it out.

enjoyed the post.