Open Side Menu Go to the Top
Register
The reason why Poker is a waste The reason why Poker is a waste

10-12-2011 , 07:25 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kuval
Get a profession, drop poker.
Would you tell the same to all kids in minor sports leagues, dreaming to, one day, play in the #1 league?

There's what, like just a few thousands players who get to play for millions, in any sport.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-12-2011 , 07:39 PM
I think the OP undervalues having fun while working. I was making 50k a year working for the government at 21 years old and I was bored to tears. I hated getting up in the morning.

I would gladly trade that for 27k a year playing a game...
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-12-2011 , 08:55 PM
I read the first three paragraphs, but I can safely assume OP is a losing player who can't figure out why, so you feel everyone else does the same thing.

Inb4 rigtard?
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-12-2011 , 09:56 PM
I don't think we'll ever know if your inb4 is right, because the OP made this thread on March 20, 2010.

The last post was on April 5, 2010, until someone resurrected it 3 days ago.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-12-2011 , 10:23 PM
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-12-2011 , 10:35 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darraess
All of the above from LunaEqualsLuna and CBorders, hold true indeed.

Life is rarely black and white, nevertheless, one must always be able to recognize on which shade of gray he is at any given moment and constantly strive to move to a lighter one, having a profession that can't help you add white, makes the task harder.
What? No, there is no rule that states I have to strive to move towards any color. I am my own person, and so long as I'm not harming anyone I'm free to live how I so choose.

I'm not sure why it's so hard to understand that some people don't want to live the existence that has been deemed standard by society.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-12-2011 , 10:37 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kuval
So by now there are probably over 5 million people in europe and north america who call themselves "poker pros" meaning that in most cases they get their sole source of income from the card games of holdem/omaha/variations. This might be a bit high of an estimate, or it could be completely low. I'm not including places like China/India/Elsewhere because I've never been to those places and I haven't seen enough media coverage to make any assumptions.

I'm including live players in my estimate... just judging from the 100 or so players in my Canadian city that would call themselves poker pros and assuming there are a bunch that only play on the net too... but I think it's a decently fair estimate to make.

Of all of these players, let's assume half actually do make money and the other half are just problem gamblers that lie or don't realize they're not making money because they're pretty much breakeven or bonuses put them slightly ahead.

I think that's an overly conservative statement and I wouldn't be surprised if 70% of them weren't making any real money and 10% on top of that weren't making the equivalent per annum of a minimum wage job full-time. I'd even go so far to say that the top 10% are actually making decent cash

But let's stay with the low estimate of 50%.

So that means 2.5 million people are making some kind of decent wage (minimum wage+) for shootin cards.

Is that really your goal? Every poker pro will tell you that they just want to live comfortably off of poker or maybe even supplement their other incomes with a poker income. Do you really want to be making 24k a year for your full-time job?

The dream is that you will one day be playing Chris Ferguson heads up for 100 billion dollars... but most players will never live that dream.

The good life in poker is just a carrot dangled infront of your face and the more time you spend at it, the more time you waste. Most of these breakeven/slight winner players will congregate around the lowstakes/midstakes and either move up and lose or stay at those stakes because that's the only place there is to make money.

People will be quick to show big tourney winners, cash game winners and general winners alike that have opened their own websites and are turning HUGE profits... but I'd suggest that those people are the biggest telltale sign of the fact that poker is a waste.

I've heard the question answered a bunch, "why would you coach?" The answer is almost always the same and it is something along the lines of being bored with the game or because they enjoy coaching. The true reason is coaching is an actual profession that can develop actual income. Playing poker is not an actual profession and provides no good or service to anyone except to other players (by providing a game) and already rich fat-cats IE) Pokerstars, Your Casino, Any poker-site.

I've seen a lot of coaches post great graphs... but what you're not understanding is THESE PLAYERS ARE THE BEST OF THE BEST. They are in my top 10% bracket. If they weren't, how would they get to be an accepted coach? If the players in my best-of-the-best category would rather coach than play, or coach to supplement their poker income... then that should display that the people that know the most about the game prefer to get a stable income in an actual profession rather than playing the game that aparently makes them more money faster than coaching.

If you're educating other players to the level you're at, you're also making the game tougher and thus lowering YOUR hourly rate... so there must be something else here people, something you're not picking up on.

So this means that one of two things are happening:

1) They're not coaching you to the best of your or their abilities and they're not going to help you learn to become as knowledgable as them.

2) These coaches have realized that poker is a waste and the best way to get money is to extract from an actual profession.

If you're going to argue that these coaches do NOT belong in this top 10% bracket... then why are you hiring them?

The game has evolved to a place where it was not 10 years ago. 10 years ago, there was endless money to be made with shoving 5x pot sized bets on the river with the nuts... today, even fish won't call.

Your game will develop and go further and further until your hourly rate will decrease less and less at which point the game will be about bumhunting. You must find the worst players you can and play with them and your only source of actual income will be:

1) Players trying to beat that bad player and making mistakes against you

2) You taking the bad player's money

This means that there is a definite loser at poker and losers don't play forever. They eventually lose until they're fed up with it and they move on or they learn to become winners.

So this means that the games will eventually be so hard that you will not be able to make money, and that change could be almost overnight. It will not be noticable. There are only so many actions you can do and once everyone understands all of them fully, as well as the most knowledge they can get from their players... then all players are on an equal field and thus LUCK is the only deciding factor in who gets money. Since there's a rake and no luck in the long term that means all players will lose money.

I don't buy in to the "sucker born every minute" mentality anymore in poker. Although rich people play, they too will either lose and leave or learn and become good. When either of those happen, you're SOL.

When the game of poker finally does collapse, and I'm sure it will sometime over these next 10 years (many top pros have already realized that they're just passing money around from hand to hand and have called it quits), when this collapse happens, you will have wasted all of the time you have put into it and only have whatever assets you have collected to show for it.

If you've been one of those top 10% players, you have nothing to worry about because you're gonna be fine anyways. You're making great money and coaching and this collapse will not hurt you in any way.

If you're one of the other players who makes a middle income like 100k a year... you're still going to be fine because you'll have collected enough assets to be floatin on sunshine.

The problem comes to my bottom 60-75% of players in the "pro" category.

Eventually the only place with bad players in any number will be at these low limits where these "bottom pros" play. The bad players will of course be these "bottom pros" and other fish that appear (because these games are accessable to the recreational player). These pros will then have their income swallowed and syphoned by the upper pros that are looking to increase their margins until they demolish the game.

When these "bottom pros" fail, they will have years wasted with nothing to show for it.

Get a profession, drop poker.
This is probably the worst piece of "analysis"...
That I ever skimmed before I gave up.

The OP is a complete fish...
Has no business playing poker, etc...
Or anything else requiring human intelligence.

Have you ever considered working with your hands?

There are many satisfying trades for a dude like you...
Maybe you can be lifeguard and chase dogs on the beach.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-12-2011 , 11:40 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by RedManPlus
This is probably the worst piece of "analysis"...
That I ever skimmed before I gave up.

The OP is a complete fish...
Has no business playing poker, etc...
Or anything else requiring human intelligence.

Have you ever considered working with your hands?

There are many satisfying trades for a dude like you...
Maybe you can be lifeguard and chase dogs on the beach.
looool
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-12-2011 , 11:45 PM
If OP were taught how to swim there's a good chance he'd forget how to walk on land.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-12-2011 , 11:50 PM
Doc Holiday made money playing poker and that was 130 years ago. I think poker is only going to grow. It translates well on tv and the internet is perfect for hosting games as we have found in the past decade. When laws change, it will only get bigger. People who are saying it is going to die are losing bitter players and really don't seem to know how long the history of the game really is. Its here to stay folks.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-12-2011 , 11:56 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by heehaww

Poker players aren't very useful to society, I admit. But i disagree that we're a burden.

We are neutral, we don't affect society good or bad. We mind our own business. The world would be no different if I wasn't born.


//end rant
well we pay taxes..rite?
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-13-2011 , 12:06 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crystal ExtacY
well we pay taxes..rite?
Not in the UK we don't
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-13-2011 , 12:13 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by LunaEqualsLuna
Not in the UK we don't
how fortunate. well here in america if your a "real pro" as in you make your income just from playing professionally the u.s govt bites your ass for a decent chunk, i think 30-35%.

way too much imo.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-13-2011 , 12:34 PM
while reading the OP,
i was really looking forward to reading the motivational replies
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-13-2011 , 01:41 PM
@ Darraess

pls don't take offense if the way I write things seems aggressive. this is just how I normally talk and also english is not my mother language. I don't have the energy right now to write a well thought out answer, I'll just ask you one question: you've been a broadcast engineer for 20 years. I don't dispute that you prob know many times more about broadcast engineering than I'll ever know. based on a quick wikipedia search I've made my own conclusions about being a broadcast engineer but I sure as hell wont argue w you about them coz I know you know the intricacies of this work and how to make it interesting. otoh you've been playing poker for how many years for how many hours per day, and you've put how many hours into thinking about your strategy? what makes you think that you know that much about poker to make the kind of judgements you made in your post?
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-13-2011 , 10:15 PM
k, my english isn't good but i try to explain it how i see things.

You think poker dies in 10 years? how come man, poker was invented in 19th century, today is 21st century and games are still goin' on. you can always find games if you want to.
online poker is also big business and prolly will stay as long as internet, sorry USA.
tho i think in few years or maybe less US is back in online poker too...

now you think it's waste cuz u don't see guys going prflp all in with T5o and that kind of s*hit? so what, life is hard, so is poker. you have to work hard, play alot, improve your game, play A game as much as possible to be the best. just playin 2hrs a day wont make you win millions.

why poker isnt waste for me is that, every1 isn't from the US where you guys make 25-40k$? with ur regular job.
where i live avg salary is 800€/month so with bonuses about 10-10.5k€/year.

for example poker is my saviour, i almost droped out of high school, even tho i graduated it i never learned math or physics or that s*it cuz i cutted classes and smoked blunts rather than doin math tests. so what are my options? all i know is how to play poker, fight or sell drugs and i dont want to get in troubles anymore so obv i chose poker. i put in decent volume on eurosite and i make ~1k€ in rb+bonuses (thats more than avg salary ) + winnings... [thats only nl20€]. but with my high school education best job i could get is like 2.80€/h in mcdonalds doin 12 shifts with stinkin' *******s or maybe a f*cking builder for 4€/h. i love poker, i can play when i want, how long i want and where i want plus i make more than most average work people here,working for 180hrs in a month doin' a job they really hate.

i'm young and i can take risks with poker at the moment, if everything goes wrong i can always go to college or work or w/e. but i want to move on, get better, beat other players, try to learn, play more hours etc... and my goal is in 3-5 years to play nl5k, even tho i know it's going to be very hard it isn't impossible, you have to have the skill and the will, but the will must be stronger than the skill... and anyone who tells you different is a f*cking lethargic devil.

over and out
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-13-2011 , 11:44 PM
I guess this thread is old by now but OP ...your bitter attitude towards to the game and people who make a living/aspire to make a living playing cards just shows that you failed at being successful playing poker at one time in your life. You made a post to justify your negative attitude towards poker. The fact of the matter is poker is a strategic skill game that can be beaten. However probably the most important quality of being a successful poker player is discipline over many aspects of the game.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-14-2011 , 06:41 AM
Even if the players playing today either get better or quit. There will always be players at different skill levels in the game. People will always aspire to be a pro try and fail, or try and succeed. So the experienced players will always have players to make money off of. This in itself will make sure poker wont die.

As for players getting better or quitting. I ask players all the time why they played a hand that way. They come up with some reason that they think is rational when in fact they got lucky on the hand and are results oriented. People are too proud to admit they need improvement. For those that do need improvement. What percentage actually possess the work ethic it takes to get good. I have been a winning low stakes player online and live and I have a ton of leaks. 1 money management, 2 tilt which comes from entitlement feeling when my aces that I 4 bet pre gets beat by J4 cause some idiot thought I was restealing and shoved on me. But I recognize my leaks and work hard on them. Not everyone can even admit they made a mistake. So these people will always blame bad luck not bad play and will always donate money.

Not to mention the recreational players that play just for fun. They can afford to lose the money they come for the game and social competition. They hope to win but if they dont oh well.

There will always be money in poker. Its like anything else in life its not easy and takes adjustment along the way.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-14-2011 , 07:21 AM
Did OP just write a post that says there are 5 million poker pros in the world?

I don't think there are even 5 million professional athletes in the world, let alone poker pros.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-14-2011 , 12:08 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by heehaww
I don't think we'll ever know if your inb4 is right, because the OP made this thread on March 20, 2010.

The last post was on April 5, 2010, until someone resurrected it 3 days ago.
I will definitely read dates more closely. :facepalm:
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-14-2011 , 04:01 PM
The difference between poker and another job is that you can be average at other jobs and still earn money.
Also, people will keep losing money because they - unlike you - are gamblers and/or have poker as a hobby.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-14-2011 , 06:04 PM
I turned pro late 2007. I profited about 80k in 4 months and decided I was going to play for a living. The following year I lost money, I was struggling to earn money, but not recognizing the reasons for why I wasn't being successful.

The year following that, I turned back into a solid winning player. What changed? I realized that the game is in constant evolution and even if you are a winning player for some span of time, if you don't keep up with the games and continue to study you will definitely fall into the category of losing player--just like I did.

I agree with OP on a lot of the things he said and think the guys who are calling him an idiot definitely don't get it. OP was trying to point out that it's no longer a get-rich-quick idea. Back in 2005 it definitely was. Probably all the way until 2007 it was. There used to be a play they called "the move of glory" or something like that where pros would just open ship 100bb all in preflop w/ AA and they'd get called by people willing to gamble with like J8s or whatever. Clearly this doesn't happen anymore, it's no longer a race to build a bankroll big enough to play 25/50.

On the coaching aspect, I've coached well >100 different players. I'd estimate the majority of them have moved on to become solid winning players, but some just can't because they won't put in the work or have certain preconceived notions about the way things are supposed to be (i.e. feelings of entitlement) or they just don't have the personality necessary to sustain a living as a pro.

And lastly on whether or not poker will die. As long as it's a game played by humans, it can't and won't die because as previously stated in this thread, humans make mistakes (i.e. they tilt), and are often times unable to control themselves and thus make poor choices. I'm probably at the current moment declining in skill as I haven't been working much on my game over the last few months while others who weren't as good as me are now pulling ahead. Once I come back and start playing more consistently I'll have to put in more work and effort to figure out what those guys are now doing in order to beat them again. It's the way of the world.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-14-2011 , 06:27 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kuval
I don't buy in to the "sucker born every minute" mentality anymore in poker. Although rich people play, they too will either lose and leave or learn and become good. When either of those happen, you're SOL.
The OP is wrong. He should buy into it. He played for a while, stopped, someone else started, and the rest of the world isn't SOL.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-14-2011 , 07:17 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marshall28
I agree with OP on a lot of the things he said and think the guys who are calling him an idiot definitely don't get it.
Crossing the street via the North Pole...
Makes you an idiot.

The OP needs to go back in a time machine...
And get his Grade School certificate...
So he can write a coherent sentence or two.
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote
10-14-2011 , 10:45 PM
Thread should be moved to Psychology imo
The reason why Poker is a waste Quote

      
m