Apologies for the delay in replying to questions posed regarding my comment...this past few weeks has been lots of time in the air between Texas and Las Vegas as I attempt to balance clients and prime poker season.

No, I do tend to keep a sum that hovers around $10K in an easily (to me) accessible location between homes and office...this is because I have been known to decide at the last minute to book a flight and don't feel like paying ATM fees at a casino. If we actually had legal poker in Texas, I may not be inclined to keep as much on hand, but we don't and so I do...

The interest, such as it is even with the recent hikes, for that sum isn't much that is being lost compared to what I would pay if I took funds out in a casino. I rarely use much of it and it often comes back with friends (thin brag), but I would rather have it available and NOT need it than to pay to withdraw it IF needed.

That being said, most funds outside of that sum will be in interest-bearing or dividend-paying vehicles.

Similarly, my roll is about 20% cash in the fire safe, 40% each in a money market and balanced mutual fund (Vanguard FTW IMO)

Vanguard’s expense to dividend ratio is the best in finance, if not then second best. Their funds seem to be highly competitive although I’ve found more
Success in personal real investment vs. their REITs, i very much like them for ETFs.

Truth. I'm not a real estate expert, but I don't think I've found a REIT yet that earned returns that passed my smell test, Vanguard's included.

I don't think it's a terrible time to be in cash right now. Berkshire Hathaway likes to keep about $20 billion in cash. At the moment they have over $100 billion cash.

Good points.

My point is if you’re smart enough to play poker professionally you’re also probably smart enough to make a living via another avenue of self employment and therefore wouldn’t have a boss.


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Self-employment is still employment. If you don't have a boss, then you probably have clients. You can't just decide to relax for a month or 2 and expect them to just sit around waiting until you deign to come back and do some work. Poker games on the other hand are more than happy to do just that.

A) Poker is also self-employment/employment

B) There are plenty of ways to earn your own living that don’t require clients.

C) If you play poker for a living and decide to relax for a month or two and not play how exactly are you earning income?


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I am a big fan of Dave Ramsey and his program. Being debt free is an incredible feeling that helps one sleep easy at night. Good job getting rid of all that STUPID (that's how Dave would say it) debt and then building your roll. Keep us updating on your progress.

If you're a good player, taking on debt may be a smart move.

This debt vs no debt question is a question a majority of businesses face on a daily basis. Treat your poker career as a business, and you should be able to figure this one out too.

Do you expect to earn a bigger ROI from playing than from the interest on servicing your debt? If so, it is +EV to take on debt to finance your playing. Notice, I said +Expected Value, which means you're expected to make more money, but due to the nature of the game, not guaranteed.

Apples is probably the most successful company profit-wise in existence, yet Apple continues to issue debt. IBM the same. They have enough cash where they don't "need" to, but they do so because they expect that they can generate a higher ROI on those loans than it costs to pay the banks to borrow that money.

So, to sum, yes, taking on debt to finance your poker career is probably +EV if you're a good player.

A) Huh??

B) Like what, exactly? I really can't think of too many businesses you can walk away from for a month or 2 and just jump right back in. An Internet business still requires some regular attention and upkeep. Securities trading comes closer, but you will suffer a little bit if you're away for a while and not paying attention to market conditions.

C) Seriously? You shouldn't be living hand-to-mouth regardless of how you make your money. It's called a savings account. If you can't go two months without income, then whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong.

Good points. However, I would point out that:
A big part of Apple's decision to take on debt was because of pressure to issue dividends to its shareholders and bringing the necessary cash back to the US would trigger a large of amount of income taxes. So they issued debt to be able to pay dividends AND avoid the taxes.
Both Apple & IBM have a core amount of net income that won't have significant variance and can cover the debt (a/k/a Free Cash Flow). Poker is not a always-make-a-profit-every-day business.

There is so much pie in the sky nonsense out there. I have made my living gamboolin for over 25 years. I have seen countless wannabees fail...and few in comparison succeed. If you want to make it you need to set yourself up for success. This does not include taking on unnecessary debt. If you have read any of my posts you will know how I feel about gambling as a profession - especially the way the current landscape is. One thing that has worked very well for me in gamblin is the ability to take blocks of time off to do other things and not worry about making money. That being said I busted my ass to achieve that - again most do not have the discipline to actually crank out big time hours while playing kick ass poker.

There's tons of project/event-based jobs where you're not on-call full-time, year-round. I know several programmers/developers and a video production guy who take on short-term assignments/contracts, and then leave their schedule open when they want to travel.

+1. Listen to him, this guy is for real.

Those 2 examples might be valid but I am not seeing how they qualify as "tons." And even they don't come close to the flexibility that a poker player has: once you commit to a project you are on the hook until it's finished, and if you start telling your clients you're "not available" to start a new project one too many times, you'll find new work harder to come by when you come back.

As far as programming is concerned, in my experience only web devs and the like can get away with that kind of thing. That's both the least lucrative and least enjoyable form of programming; personally I'd honestly rather grind 2/5 than mess with PHP, but hey, to each their own. If you're a systems developer, it often takes 3-6 months just to get a new guy up to speed and productive, so short-term gigs rarely make any sense.

Not saying grinding full-time is a dream job by any means whatsoever, but let's not downplay its biggest advantage: if you want to, on a moment's notice, take a couple of days off or a couple of months, the games will still be there ready and waiting when you come back.

Because they were examples and not an exhaustive list?

Anyway, your original comment mentioned being able to take a month or two off. If you are now including “at a moment’s notice “ then yes, it’s a lot shorter list.

That's fair enough, I should have included that to begin with. But yeah, I do think the freedom to work when and only when you feel like it is a pretty valuable perk. I still can't think of any alternatives that offer that, though I'd love it if someone else can, as I seem to suck at poker pretty bad... lol