I assume you're talking about online here? If so I've gotta completely disagree. When you're playing online you're making decisions and calculations every few seconds for literally the full hour. You have no downtime whatsoever. I can't think of many jobs where you have both the level of intensity and the lack of respite from that intensity. It's not like you can take even 30s to just sit back and reset/gaze out of the window/have a chat with a co-worker or whatever (unless you sit out obv, but we're talking about a constant hour of poker here).

If you're talking about live, then yeah, you do about 10 minutes of work every hour probably.

U can hide ur balance, tables get jooned automatically and if u open cashier u avoid to look at balance.





I worked in teh real world. In onlinepoker u have to be focussed every single session. If u misclick4bet theres no way to take that back, if u make an atrocious rivercall theres no way to make that undone. If u misspell a word in an email that doesnt cost u 100bucks, if u make a typo in an excel sheet u can correct it later on.
There arent m(any) jobs which take as much focus and dedication as poker does

.

Some jobs take far more. If I don't spot a typo in my day job it could cost my clients far more than a misclick at the tables could ever cost you.

This isn't true at all. There are definitely stressful jobs, and I can only speak for my field, but I played poker to put myself through university and the job I have now (engineer in oil and gas, make more money than I did playing 200nl 5 or 6 years ago) is way less stressful most days.

Every decision doesn't affect your bottom line the same way it does in poker, and you don't need to concentrate nearly as much during an average 8 hour work day. I would take the stress of the real world over the stress of poker any day; there is nothing better than a guaranteed hourly.

while i agree that in theory poker is more stressful than the average job ppl could be working maybe i m in the minority here but it doesnt feel stressful to me and i prob play the longest sessions of anybody itt

dont we all just ignore the fact that we condition ourselves to just handle the tons of decisions we have to make, or even enjoy the rush of those and the information thrown at us? i feel like the 'stress' of our job is more than made up for but the enjoyment we get from outwitting out opponents, from making good decisions and finishing a session knowing we played as good as we can.

going back to rl jobs, that feeling of satisfaction in said avg job is going to be super rare but its fairly easy to get regularly after a session (provided some proper experience and mental game)

i ve met a ton of ppl whose gfs couldnt tell if they had won or lost in their session prior and not only did that do wonders for their relationship itself - it made the player so much more confident

i just woke up so if the above is a boring rable just carry on as normal

Think you missed the point. In any reasonable work environment , either you have time to double check your work, or there is a process in place (eg. 4 eyes check, or a system) to catch errors. None of that exists in online poker, so I'm with Tim on this. If those things don't exist in your work place, then yes you are in a stressful world, but it is stressful due to poor design, not due to a quality inherent to the work.

Ian

You're assuming all real world jobs have the luxury of infinite time and infinite resources. I can assure you this isn't the case. However many systems are put in place, there will be phenomenally stressful situations, and I am pretty sure that anyone who thinks multitabling Stars is more stressful than any real world job I could care to name is playing way above their bankroll. The effect of good BRM is to minimise the stress associated with any particular decision. You don't have that luxury in many real world situations.

The people who play poker for a living will say poker is most stressful and those who have actual jobs will say jobs are more stressful. Yeeeey, solved the discussion guys.

How many who say poker is more stressful have had actual non mong jobs? Can't really compare delivering pizza with poker.

I'm sure being a surgeon or ceo responsible for p&l and 100s of people's livelihood is super duper stress.

But the avg 20something and early 30s person doing entry or mid level managerial work has pretty low levels of every day work stress (I imagine). I'm sure the stress comes from worrying about promotions job stability etc

When I was a dentist I never got home angry and it wasnt stressful either. an hour of poker is a lot heavier on the mind and theres no comparison.

No, I'm not making any assumptions about jobs. I think after 15yrs in investment banking and management consulting I've got a pretty good feel for how corporations work and what a deadline looks like.

Your post implied that normal jobs regularly have critical moments where a mistake cannot be undone or where there are no checks and balances. That is simply not true for the vast majority of time for the vast majority of jobs.

Clearly you can find specific moments in some jobs where the right decision is critical and the safety net is small, but that's not the norm.

Poker is different in that it is many decisions in a short period of time, where its you and only you, so I would generally agree with the view that an average hour of multitabling poker is more intense than an average hour of 9+5 work.

Having said alll that, trying to determine which job is more stressful is a silly exercise (but if we're going to do this, let's at least make reasonable statements). It's going to depend on the individual and how they deal with their "day in the office"

What i personally view as definitely true is that it will be very,very hard for OP to do a 9-5 job, and 30hrs of poker and maintain a strong relationship with someone.

Ian

You can't just say that either is more stressful than the other. When poker goes well, it's the easiest, most stress free job in the world. When you're in the middle of a huge downswing, it's way more stressful than the vast majority of other jobs out there.

Either way, an hour of full on poker still requires more concentration and focus than an hour in most other jobs. You can balance that out by spreading your hours around and being more flexible with your time, which you can't generally do with other jobs.

No offence to you but I'm guessing it was some pleb administration job at best? The reason I said comparative money wise is because someone earning 100k in poker would never be stressed as someone earning 100k in the world,

Most of the problems you guys associate with poker seem to be mental leaks at the worst. The thing with poker is that if you are stressed then you can just stop. If you are sick then you can just take a break. You did a bad river call and start getting mad? Turn off your computer and go outside. Now imagine meeting a clients deadline with a few hours to go and you start getting stressed out? Can you just stop and cool off?

Imagine a client/ceo/director calling you 3am in the morning about work that needs to be done. Can you just take a break then?

The fact you are the only person accountable for your actions is what makes it easy as well. You guys don't need to deal with other people to complete tasks. You don't need to worry about other people in the group completing the work or people completing tasks that you set out for them. Not dealing with office bs or putting on a face whenever you meet people you hate.

Imagine poker was a team game of sorts and pepeman and timstone were on a team and each of their earnings were shared. Could you imagine them working together in any way?

Imagine waking up at 9:30am with teh sound of ur script and scout jesus at ur highest stake. Can u just continue sleeping then?

Similar?

wow, jesus christ, things seem to have blown up in here. I'm gunna respond to a few of the first, lighter posts as i really think you guys have covered all bases in this discussion

thanks mate! I'd have to agree

I'll look into tiltbreaker. I think i used it once and got so angry with it (albeit this was when i tilted pretty hard) i uninstalled it haha. It's a big commitment to make!

thanks for the kind words mate, appreciate it

yucky



yucky

Definitely agree with some of this but not all. I think that Ron pretty much sums it up perfectly for me. The bolded bit stands out more than anything. Arguing either way, work or poker being harder for an hour, with poker you have the option to stop working/playing and take an hour/day/week off. I think they're actually both incomparable tbh. Dealing with downswings in poker or having a dickhead boss to deal with can both be equally painful to have to manage.

hahaha, charlotte LOVED this comment!

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Hopefully we can put this discussion to bed now...

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Poker was average today. Was winning a decent amount and then got totally smashed up. Would say i ended slightly up for the day.

0% equity vs a HUGE whale. The pain



Fish doing the work for me. I didnt cbet as his fold to cbet in 3b pot was 0 off 4 ops.



One of my goooood friends is back at the tables too. Dunno if some of you remember the hands i posted last year sometime. Well anyway, he's back, he's playing the same as always but unfortunately i haven't managed to win a single ***** pot vs them yet. Pots like this ergh:



and this hmmmmmmm



Saw my clients for the the last time before going away so will be nice to have a proper break from any kind of therapeutic work, whether it be personal therapy or being the therapist for the next 2 weeks.

We lost the final as expected last night 5-3. Actually so tilting cus the opposition are just the scummiest players i've ever played against. Wasting time, making horrendous challenges, throwing around the word c*** at any opportunity at any of our team/ref and generally being awful sportsmen/fightclub. Oh well, it makes it even sweeter if we ever beat them! Got our other final on wednesday which we should definitely win so will update after that.

Big grind tomorrow hopefully. glgl

wtf not everyone owns 2 businesses + children or wetever, how can you state that? plasticelephant is ridiculously spot on imo.. altho i agree it depends on the person.

yep and everything is solved you are now a winner for the month

lol nits and jobs. just get a script, find some whales and print $. proceed to ball out afterwards. u nits can thank me afterwards

Bad trolling, timstone would never be posting on 2+2 at this time. Teh real timstone spends this time dreaming of teh fancie quorvettes

I guess it depends on your personality, I personally don't find poker more stressful than playing starcraft lol

Only MTT regs are stressed

**** that life

Don't know what you mean we re hardened professionals

6+ hours to finish any tournament

lol@that

don't think I have done more than 3 hour sessions ever

You ve prob never won 200 buyins in a session either