So true, no attractive women in the southern US.

This: "slave away 9 to 5 every day". Actually, the hours are 8 to 5 with a one hour lunch these days and that is my life. However, it is not the doom and gloom trolls make it out to be, at least not in my case. I work from home 3 days a week. On my home days, there are times when I (office space) put in 15 minutes of actual work and I pretty much spend the rest of the time watching Netflix, Poker Central or being intimate with my wife.

When I am in the office, I spend half of my time in meetings and the rest is when I do my actual work. I make 6 figures +.

I'll take that over grinding poker 60 hours + online weekly.

Poker: I have been playing hard core since 2003. I won thousands in the boom. Paid off all my debt and bought 2 cars (one in 2007 and one in 2010) which we still drive and had much left over. I still win live. I went to Vegas this summer and won 3k. My interest to actually go play though is just not there anymore. The money won or lost is not life changing so the motivation is not there. Soooooo...

I play online for fun. Pretty much all on BCP. I lose. I lost over 1000 in 2015, 1300 in 2016 and I am pretty such I'll top that in 2017. I play for fun hoping for a big score. I expect to lose and I pretty much always do. Just tonight, I was deep in a mtt and aipf AA vs JJ and lost. Yep, that happens. But I will keep doing it because I pretty much always get it in good and one day..BING

It's an analogy in terms of earnings, not in terms of the skill level.

But if Cambridge is your home and you're happy playing for smaller sums....

No, sports is the exception where the harder the competition, the more money you get. The real world is more like poker.

For example, I'm sure I make more as probably the only decent Slovak to English translator than I could every make if I learnt Spanish and tried to compete with the (literally?) millions of people in the world are genuinely bilingual.

Actually there are plenty of parallels in sport - e.g. the UK doesn't produce many good ice hockey players but its league has higher attendance and more money than some countries that do, even though there are players in it who couldn't get a game on the continent. One guy from the street my wife grew up on got cut from the local club here after he was too old to play in the juniors. Later resurfaced as MVP of the season in the whole UK Ice Hockey league. Unless you are NHL or KHL standard you make more by running away from the competition and towards the money.

this is exhibit A of most ppl posting bout how bad it is to pursue poker professionally. guys who used to win at poker during the boom when everybody was awful and can no longer win but feel qualified to talk about why playing pro sucks

New bot vs human heads up challenge has begun and the bot is off to a hell of a start!

So in summary since 2010...
- Black Friday.
- Tons of sites have gone tits up with millions of cash.
- Bots have gotten crazy good, crushing MSNL and HSNL through 2010-present.
- Sites "find" bots and pocket the money.
- Less and less fish depositing.
- Any new player that does make it on is chased away by regs/bots with seating scripts.
- Increased rake.
- VIP rewards slashed to basically nothing.

And we still have people justifying online poker saying it's possible if you work hard and live in the 3rd world country... lol. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading posts in this thread.

At least go play live pokers people! You can still make a living playing 2/5!

Not really sure about that. Anything that involves real skill, as a rule, will compensate increasing skill with increasing pay, many times on an exponential scale.

You can always find Dick Cheney examples of CEO's, where someone is appointed because he's got all the right country club memberships and knows the right senators. But, as a rule, guys running Fortune 500 companies are pretty freakin talented. The same goes for programmers, web developers, wealth managers etc. Talent always has options.


Manning the drive through at Taco Bell and translating Julio Cortazar are two different things - very different. If you're the best in Slovak you would quickly rise through the ranks in Spanish as well.

imo getting into poker at this moment seems like a terrible idea unless you are 16 and come from a sh*thole of a country. you are better off going to uni or learning programming or something like that. there is little money in poker and its in decline now that grinding has been optimized (hello piosolver and scripts). you will miss A LOT of soft skills by sitting in front of your computer playing cards for 5 years. but if you do want to become a pro just grind piosolver a lot, have a great memory and jump the stakes ASAP to then grind 500z while bumhunting the high stakes on all sites where it runs.. then maybe if you are talented you can make 10k+/month after a couple of years of learning. then i would start searching for a way out ASAP. most guys who made it are a bit stuck in life, they dont know anything but poker and they have a lot of cash but nothing to do with it.

Agree with all of this except the bolded. It can still be done but it's definitely hard. It was very easy to get into programming without a degree around 09-10. Demand it still skyrocketing today but it's changed considerably. In 5~ years, even today companies are outsourcing the majority of entry level/ support tier work to eastern europe and india.

What happens is companies will farm out the majority of the code to firms in india and eastern europe under specific specifications. 80-90% of the code is done by them. The "real" coding is done by the specialized onsite programmer the company has. Those kinds of jobs require you to be really really good at what you do and probably require a degree as well. They're the ones that makes sure the code works, is secure, and make the important changes/coding to the companies needs. I like to think of code as DNA, all organisms have it, if you mix it up/ change it a little you can get a completely different animal- and that's what the onsite smart programmers basically do.

^^ I'm in the IT sector, not a programmer. Just know quite a few who keep me updated. Programming is fun and everyone should be required to learn a little.. but don't go into thinking you'll make big money because that window has passed imo.

Sorry but I am a programmer and that's wrong. Maybe not entirely and there is some truth to it but it is not nearly as grim as you make it.

well, programming is very wide and there are many applications. it's not really so binary as to "the job market is good/bad". i come from argentina and sure as hell i would recommend any 18 year old there to quit everything they are doing and learn programming if they care about their future. maybe the same doesn't apply to some american or canadian cities because they have better oportunities. maybe it's a good idea to get into machine learning but a bad idea to get into web development, etc.

anyway it was just an example. just saying that my 2 cents is that there is little value in poker and i think the vast majority of people would benefit from focusing on something else. it makes me sad when i read poker blogs about some 18 y.o. looking to "become a pro" (that phrase in particular makes it extra cringe worthy)

Actually I was agreeing with you and disagreeing with upswinging. Programming is still very good and will continue to be for a long time.

ishipkq how do you suggest to start a programming career other than going to university and getting a degree? How do you get qualifications?
I get the impression from this thread that it's as simple as reading Coding for Dummies and printing. Not trying to be snarky, just curios about the concrete steps to becoming a programmer.

South America is at least 10 years behind in technology so yeah the market is probably hotter with a lower barrier to entry. I didn't mean to paint a grim picture of getting into programming/tech. I just think it's a good idea to warn those that have no interest in tech/programming and are only looking for the next new hot thing to make a quick buck (like online poker used to be).

Right now a person could probably get a job/internship with a basic cert and a github which shows their proficiency. But to get the high paying jobs it takes passion, dedication and lots of self study.. and in the near future the competition will be a lot tougher. I think IT is the way to go, just saying don't do something if you don't like it, and don't give up on IT if programming isn't your cup or tea.

Everything that you must know you can learn by yourself for free and from the internet. You don't need a degree to land a good programming job. I have a degree but not in computer science and it is fine as long as you are proficient at programming languages that are necessary for your work. That being said, it really takes a lot of time to learn and especially to master several programming languages.

i guess something like: start researching online. complete some tutorials. go to sites like Udacity and complete nanodegrees. make some projects. anything really. Find challenges online and complete them. upload them into github. get a linkedin page. apply for MANY positions. get a job, especially one where you will learn a lot. keep applying for better positions and learning while in the process.

i think computer science is a field where people look more at what you can do and less at your qualifications, so just learn as much as possible as quickly as possible.

i never had a normal job, neither am i a talented programmer fwiw. but i have seen many people follow different paths and the one above seems to be the fastest. i wouldnt really recommend going to uni for computer science.

Advice above is very good.

Yes, but part of the talent is the ability to steer the company's activities into uncharted waters where the company will have first mover advantage and face little competition. Not to steer it head-on into low-cost competition. Those guys (if sufficiently informed about the industry) wouldn't advise you to play on Stars.

To clarify, not the best in Slovak by a long way (and hence rubbish at the EN>SK direction). The best in English and therefore the best at doing the SK>EN direction - skill in the target language is far more important.

I hear you about the Taco Bell example - translating e.g. a contract or marketing materials (there's a lot more of that which gets done than literature) - requires a a high level of knowledge/experiences in both cultures - a Spanish-speaking woman working at Taco Bell might be able to understand her US job contract but might not necessarily have the level of education to be able to write the same thing in Spanish legalese to a level that would be acceptable to a client back home. I'm thinking more about the second generation, when she marries an English speaker and has kids with him - of course often such "bilinguals" might know words for family situations but have little knowledge of workplace terminology in the old country culture - I'm just thinking though that due to the large numbers there must be tons of them who've lived in both countries and do. Maybe the market is just bigger though.

New thread title: Why would anyone take programming seriously in 2017

Growing and well paid market :P

computers will be able to everything in 10 years why take anything seruous? ? answr: fun!

Buy a coding book from oreilly and work it trough. Now write some fun programms. If you are good at solving problems, you are on your way for a 6-digit job.

The IT world is full of people without degrees, and even at major companys like google noone gives a **** about grades or whatever. Just prove yourself worthy.

This, end of thread. The amount of tilt free adjusting nerdnits is too tilting to play anymore. Ad in software, selftrained geeks who r determined to make 1k a month. *** poker.

Like I've been trying to tell JudgeHoldem, get off stars and play live.

Not that all live players are glamorous and cool though.

Last time I tried to play live was at the biggest tournament series that are held in my country (MCOP in the Netherlands). I sat at 3 different 2/5 tables for about 6 hours and I think I spotted 1 player that didn't know what he was doing. The rest were just nitgrinding, everything that went to showdown were basically setups. Add in a 10% / 20€ rake cap, and live poker seemed to be even less appealing to me than it already did.

Maybe it's different in the states or anything but this was my official last time ever playing live.

Not going to pretend I'm not jelly because I am. There are a tonne of guys walking around spruiking the catchphrase "I do nothing and get paid six figures+" It's commonplace to read this ****.

What am I missing, tell me how this is possible?