Quote:
Originally Posted by Kardnel
I make strategy posts on here because I enjoy it. It is +ev for me to do so for that reason alone. This is true even if the game became .001% harder because of my posts. And I doubt it actually did get harder because of that. Most bad players don't even seem to listen to the reasonable advice. They let their ego get in the way. Most of the guys that actually listen realize pretty quickly that they can look through the archive and get all of the information anyway.
You want to know what is really financially -ev? A bunch of really smart, self motivating guys playing poker for a living in 2012 (except for the top couple percent of us). The absolute majority of us are making less money than we would if we did something else. And it would be a whole lot less stressful as well.
Why are we actually playing poker? There are all sorts of reasons. But the main reason we even got to this position in the first is place that we love(d) the game for the game itself. For many of us that is no longer the case and some of us actually hate the game now. I'd say that some of the guys posting in this thread - the ones focused solely on the money - are probably the ones that hate it. You only continue because the 100 an hour you make (or whatever your number might be) seems like the most +ev life decision, even with that hatred. So obviously you're going to get quite worried when that rate goes down by 15% a year.
If you're playing poker only (or mostly) for money, and you're making less than 200k a year, you should reevaluate what you're doing with your life. Go figure out something more lucrative, less stressful and more fulfilling. Maybe something that actually helps people. One of the biggest things I've learned from poker that applies to general life is that other people's criticisms are very often projections of themselves. When you say HU bum hunters are scum bags... and you acknowledge that basically all poker players are doing the same thing just to a different degree... well you're basically calling yourself a scum bag. If you look at the issue a bit deeper maybe *that* is your problem.
You might not make much your first couple of years at whatever new thing you wind up doing. But in the long run you will be doing yourself a gigantic favor. Also maybe you need X more dollars for some idea that you have - then by all means keep grinding until you reach it. Also if the game gets legalized you can quickly drop whatever you were working on and go back to poker (because the money is worth it then). But at the moment you should be able to see what a short sighted endeavor poker is. The game will keep getting harder, your hourly rate will keep dropping and all you're doing is wasting the most prime years of your life on something that you hated.
Anyway I am glad that the forum will start being moderated. I can enjoy it again.
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Solid post.
I wanted to also touch on the point that, if RedLine looked at the players that won then lost, he should also consider what playing this game for hours on end year after year can do to someone's mental health. For proof, one need only search "I quit" and see how many winning players just burned out, and that point, your career is over. The chances of being one of those TV guys who's been playing for > 20 years and still going strong is very slim, and think about it: how many TV pros are still playing full time?
There's at least two consulting companies that I know of that focus strictly on getting x-pros back into the real world. That right there is some proof of the need for people looking to get out of the game.
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