There are times when you need someone, I will be by your side. I take my chances before they pass, pass me by. There is a light that shines special for you and me. You need to look at the other side, you’ll agree. Darlin’ open your eyes. Let me show you the light. You may never find a love that’s right. Darlin’ open your eyes-- Bobby Caldwell

If you’re around poker long enough you’ll get wind of a large variety of stenches. Some of which will make you sad. Sad for the poor saps from whom they exude. Sometimes it will make your eyes well up at the thought that you yourself are indeed a part of this “community”.

There’s actually very little that’s communal about it. 2p2 is like a college dorm with no chicks and no booze, but with all the post-adolescent male chest-thumping, douchebagery, and self-serving fib-telling. That and a friggin game. PoKeRz!!!!! The game that’s turned more would-be nerd boys into a-holes than Richard Dawkins and Wall Street combined!

This is my 2k post but I’ll spare you the eye-glazing yawn of “my poker story”. I will quickly say that I am a lifetime winner overall. This includes ~500k hands of low stakes online PLO, about 20k games of STTs & MTTs, and around 75k hands of Live 1/2, 2/5, and 5/10 NL cash. I supported myself playing poker (live and online) from 2008 to mid 2010. The End.

Glory days, well they’ll pass you by. Glory days. In the wink of a young girls eye… Bruce Springstein

For those of you who don’t know (of which I hope there are few but I fear there will be mannnny) there is no glory in poker. Unless you make it to HSP or final table the WSOPME or are the next Isildur1. No glory. What I mean by glory is that no one in the “real world” is going to pat you on the back or celebrate or revere you just because you spend countless disciplined hours in deep concentration making highly complex decisions hundreds of times a day in order to net $65/hr without punching a clock. It just isn’t going to happen.

You made $4k last night? So what. Girls want doctors not poker players. Parents want engineers not “grinders”. Generations of conditioning will not be undone in your lifetime. Forget about it. Stop thinking it. Stop hoping they’ll come around. Unless you are very smart with your $ and diversify with savvy investments and wise financial planning outside of your bankroll. And who are you kidding? You ain’t gonna do that. So before that resume gap gets any wider you might want to give some serious thought to just how long you can truly stand living with Stigmata. How important is it for you to be respected by others? You are not, nor will you ever be, the most interesting man in the world because you can shuffle chips and know the TRUE definition of “range-merging”.

From Busto to Mo-busto…

Now… To whom it may concern: I regret to inform you that you CANNOT make $30/hr at live 1/2 NL with a 200max buy and a $4 rake. I don’t care how soft it is. I don’t care if West Indian Gary plays every night and can’t fold AQ-high for his stack post flop. It ain’t happenin. Phil Ivey couldn’t do it if he had a $2m sidebet on it. Well, maybe he could. But you can’t. If you think you’re a live 1/2 pro please (I BEG OF YOU!) stop. Just take a deep, soul-centering breath and think about your life for a moment. Think of your mother. Remember how she tried her best to teach you right from wrong. Remember when she worked two jobs and used to come home at the crack of dawn from work, bunioned and scoliosised-out just so you and your slow-witted brother Derek would have food on your plates and pencils longer than a inch and a half in your bookbags when you went to school? Damnit if not for yourself, do it for Ma. She didn’t want this for you. She didn’t bust her hump so you could waste your life c/r’ing Uncle Willie for his SSI check. You’re the reason she’s drinking herself to sleep tonight. Be merciful.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail. - Midieval Proverb

Simple arithmetic time! YaY!!!!
If you have a slight lapse in concentration (we won’t even call it tilt) that equates to the loss of just one buy-in every 5k hands, that works out to -2bb per 100 hands off your winrate. If you’re grinding 20k hands a week of 100nl that’s the equivalent of -$20,000 a year!!!! And you wonder why you can’t move up. And we’re talking something as simple as one slip every 6 or 7 hours opening a hand you shouldn’t open, or calling a 3bet you shouldn’t be calling, and subsequently getting stacked. Or just one itty bitty tilt shove in the midst of an otherwise stellar session. Or maybe it isn’t one identifiable mistake, maybe it’s several tiny ones. Regardless, it really doesn’t take much. The margin between big winner and small winner -- small winner and b/e -- is just that, marginal. You don’t have to be a bad poker player to be unsuccessful. You can, for the most part, be a good player and still suck.

All you old rappers tryin to advance, it’s all over now, take it like a man. - Tupac

2005 is gone and it ain’t coming back. There will be no second Poker Boom. That was a one shot deal. If you missed it you missed out. From 2004 to 2006 I was playing live 3/6 and 6/12 LHE ‘cause it’s all my local casino offered and I thought internet poker was bollshyt. All the while 2/4 NL on Party was playing like .02/.05 does now. That’s how I spent my Poker Boom. How’d you waste yours?

Whatever the case, check it out McFly, you can’t go back in time. I’m really sick of 25NL grinders saying “Send me back to 2003 with $50 and a laptop and knowing what I know now, and by the time UIEGA passes I’ll have $500k!” Well, you know what buddy, you’re probably right. But do yourself a favor, LET IT GO. It’s worse than saying your goal in life is to have Megan Fox tongue-lash your perineum. I mean unlike the back-in-time thing, that goal is actually theoretically POSSIBLE, but you’d never be retarded enough to feel like it was owed to you or that there is something missing in your life because your not able to attain it. Get over it and move on.

In 2010 I’ve had more poker friends quit poker than ever before. And these guys aren’t scrubs; they’re mostly current or former MSNL / MSPLO winners. Good, smart, hardworking players. But it’s that they’ve come up against the reality of today’s poker climate. Very few players are getting rich these days. That ship has sailed. So more and more often guys who have been around a while -- guys in their mid or late 20’s say – are just looking at their 20k rolls going: “F-this grinding out 1.8BB/100 stuff, I’m cashing out my roll and going back to get my Masters.” And it's the right move.

Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. What ever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. - Steve Grand

If you're a lifetime 3.4BB/100 winner at 25NL-thru-100NL over a gillion hands, good for you. But you are not a 3.4BB/100 every minute of the day. When you first groggilly open your eyes in the morning that is not your winrate. Which is why hopefully you dont wake up, roll over, and instantly start 9-tabling at 8am. Cuz you know better. But think about during a session. Say you open the SB w/ A7 and the fish in the BB calls. the flop comes A 7 2 you bet, BB calls. Turn: 5 you bet BB minraises, you either ship or call, the river bricks off and the fish shows you 63. Simulateously on another table you run AJ into 66 on an A-6-J flop. Now the wave of emotion starts to overtake you and you are no longer making crisp rational decisions the way you normally would. Should you get up from your games? This is low stakes, so many fish! And you're a 3.4BB winner! No, at this moment you are not. However steamed you are, have enough wherewithall to say to yourself "Despite my winrate, at this moment I may not be a winner in the game. I should walk away until my mood normalizes. My 3.4BB winrate is not static." Your bankroll will thank you for it.

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment. - Charles Darwin

The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results. - Edward de Bono

You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don't see them. - Jay Abraham

Okay I've painted a pretty bleak picture above, but don't get me wrong, I'm just ranting about the common misconceptions and self-delusions of others, many of which I have partaken in myself in the past. YOU CAN SUCCEED AT POKER. You just have to get your mind right and be realistic about it. There are a number of things you need.

1) Youth helps. Being a professional poker player is a lot like being a stripper. You have a very small window to accomplish what you need to and age is the enemy. Once you get to be over 25 say, a lot of words like marriage, children, morgage, retirement -- start to suddenly have meaning. People around you (parents, friends, sig others) begin to expect you to, if not already have "made something of yourself", at least be on the way to achieving some sort of status in society. So if you are getting a late start, you may want to explore other options than poker.

2) Preparation. Everyone knows this but very few people heed to it: you not only need to have a bankroll, you need to have $ outside your roll as well. How much? That's tough to say. Hopefully you have a low monthly nut and little to no debt. But regardless your going to need cost of living $ on hand that you do not use for poker -- the amount of which may need to be equal to or greater than you bankroll. Ignore this notion at your peril. Unless ofc youre 19 and living with your parents or something.

3) Everything else: poker skill, work ethic, mental discipline, emo management, blah blah blah blah, you know the drill.

I guess what I'm trying to stess in this post is honesty. Be honest with yourself. And if you have an honest dialogue with yourself and realise that things don't quite work the way you thought they did, remember, theres more to life than poker. At the end of the day it's just a game.

tl;dr .. but goin to read it later

Great post! I enjoyed it.

Yeah, making it in poker is tough. Good thing my life goal is to have Megan Fox tongue-lash my perineum.

The OP is as good as it gets, great work, just great. I sincerely hope that those who read it will take it to heart but am not very optimistic. Too bad for them, what you've laid out is the real deal.

I like it, i like sex, its nice.

good read, what are you doing now OP?

Thanks

Thank u sir I am humbled. Though we rarely frequent the same forums I've seen ur posts around from time to time and know u dish out quality urself.

I work fulltime at San Quentin State Prison in the health&dental dept. I've also gone back to university to finish my degree in English. I still play, but not nearly as often obv and at much lower stakes than I used to since I cashed out nearly my whole roll to pay for school and pad my savings. I am however enjoying rediscovering microstakes nlhe as my last half million hands online have been exclusively plo. Anyhooz, life is good. Hard (as always) but good nonetheless.

Thanks for reading.

What I see from most break even and decent players is that the grave picture painted in the first 75% of the article is almost immediatley whitewashed by the advice given in the last 25% of it; that upon reading that last 25%, the collective American spirit in most players will say "fine, I got the top part...but that's not me...and if I take care of the 25% below, and I'm going to be a winner. And insofar as it is going to take me a while, it's better than the soul drubbing white collar professions out there in the 'real world.'"

Most online players are suspended between idea and reality - neck deep in the shadows.

Also, much of the "drill" that coaching videos and forums like to propogate are symbols of success that players attribute to themselves; the actual qualitative components of the drill are indelible components of skill and psychology that belong to a very tiny %ile of players who have made a huge portion of profits in the online game.

I think the OP brings up some good points but i disagree big time with the point about respect. You should never live your life based around what other people think of you. Instead you should do what you love and surround yourself with people that support your dreams (whether its being a doctor, engineer or professional poker player). Yes playing poker is tough, its always been a hard way to earn an easy living - just more-so today then say 10 years ago. But then again so are other ventures like golf or investing ect.

Yes there has to be a certain point where you say i gave it my best shot but im just not good enough and never will be. I guess my point is if you love doing a certain thing then have the balls to give it your best shot but also be realistic. If you think you have what it takes to make a living of poker then go for it.

I am of this ilk. I don't need to make $60 an hour to be happy. Remember that no one works for the money. It is proven conclusively in psychology and psychology never proves anything conclusively. They always are very cautious. But there is always another reason that people do something based on emotion. I want to be the intellectual crusher. To have my enemies in tears before my great mind. Actually, though poker is just something that I am doing until I can properly apply myself to a Phd. Look at Nietzcshe's or Heidenburg's philosophy on life. 'Become who you are' and the rest will follow. That is how I have lived my life and I am pretty happy with where I am.

At one point op said that girls go for doctors. What type of girls are you after? I want someone that appreciates my honesty. I run a strip club / brothel. I don't think you know what you are getting with a gold digger. Like you want to be some sort of Biggie or Tupac with a string of hos. I think that true companionship is more valuable. Like a soulmate. If you can offer that to a girl then that is what you will get. If you can offer money then you will get a gold digger.

I like the stuff about the adolescent chest thumping. I think that a lot of that goes on. People saying that they make more money than they do. People trying to prove that they understand more. It is pointless really. Poker players might think that you are God but no one else in the world cares at all.

"In life it doesn't matter if you're Alexander the Great, or the garbage man, we all end up in the same place at the end. So live your life whatever way makes you happy".

Best piece of advice I ever received and I'm happier than I've every been because of it.

pretty sure .. the one simple fact of me considering 2nd a loss... and that winning is the only way... gotta crush the comp in whatever u are doing and will back it up with putting in more hours more risk more efficiency and its inevitable... the best will rise to the top well cause winners gonna win

Extremely well put. I wish I could incorporate your post into the OP as a disclaimer. Mods??? hehe

I agree with this in theory but the real world is more complicated than this. The life choices you make affect the way in which other people perceive you, and the way people perceive u affects the way that they treat you. Unless you r an island unto yourself, you are going to be subject to the expectations of your family, friends, lovers, etc -- the people close to you. If the way in which you are living your life disappoints or embarrasses them, that will affect you. It doesn't mean they are right. And some of them may be more supportive than others, but its just the way things work.

If John is 23, from a family of laywers, and his superior court judge father expects him to go to law school and become an attorney, that is a heavy burden for John, especially since all he wants to do is paint fruit. He loves and looks up to his dad so he goes to law school. But his grades arent great cause in class all he does is sit at his desk sketching zuccini squashes.

One year and one 40k loan later John can't take it anymore and drops outta law school to go to an art academy with a bunch of hipsters. His father is furious and heartbroken and all but stops speaking to him. 2 years later, in his crappy $700/mo apartment with a broken sink, John is still enjoying painting portraits of produce but he's broke, his family life is fractured, and his futures looking more and more grim as the months peel by.

Let's not pretend there isnt a price to pay for following our hearts. Especially if we don't think things through very well and end up "failing" in everyone elses eyes (if not our own).

As for the "girls want doctors" thing, I meant that kind of tongue-in-cheek. I'll concede tho, I'm from the Bay Area, and places like here, LA, NY (places with very high cost of living) people can be somewhat jaded, and a little of that may have seeped into my post.

But I will say, just because financial viability is high on a woman's list regarding criteria for choosing a mate that doesnt nec mean she's a gold-digger. It just means shes practical and looking out for her own interests. I'm pretty good at making women like that fall in love with me even though my net worth is for shyt. But love by itself isn't always enough to sustain a longterm relationship in today's world.

Nice. We each have our own existence but there is a price to pay for it. Interesting. Nice post. I suppose the question that we ask ourselves daily is, is poker worth it?