Since I've gone pro, I've had a bit more trouble answering the "What do you do for a living" question.

Of course, a couple times, I've had people think I was Xuan Liu, haha, so I said, "Hell no, if I were that good, what would I be doing in this game?"

I've also had a guy sit down next to me at the Borgata and say "People talk around here. I heard you were a strong player. Are you a pro?"

For female players, I feel like admitting to being a pro is a little different than it is for guys because there are far fewer of us. When asked, do you ladies just admit to being a pro. Of course the regs in the rooms I frequent all know I'm FOS when I make up an occupation. I've been a economics phd student, an accountant, an actuary, and an aspiring law student in our conversations, but it always gets awkward when someone at the table is actually one of those occupations and wants to network with me.

lol, I get asked if I am Vanessa Selbst a lot, I guess because all butch dykes look alike (rofl). Very flattering tho, if I have to be mistaken for someone. Sometimes I just want to say yes to scare the hell out of them!

But anyways, I'll often say that I am a grad student, that I work with computers, or that I am unemployed. Unemployed is currently my favorite, since it is so common nowadays.

Most of the regulars at my usual room assume I'm a pro already although that won't actually happen until next Monday. I think I'm going to go with fashion designer, if I say it enough times it might actually happen.

Tell them you work for the government. If they press you, tell them you are not allowed to discuss your work publicly. Should be good for a few laughs with your pals.

It probably depends on what table image you are going for, right? I say things like I am unemployed because it is less threatening, which works for me in particular because, as a masculine presenting women, I don't tend to have guys trying to run over me because I'm a "girl". But if you are facing that, you might even want to say you are a pro, or something tough and aggressive (I know women who do that for this reason). It might vary depending on the table.

So maybe coming up with several different answers, depending on the image you want to generate, wouldn't be a bad idea. After all, the whole point of giving misleading information, or not revealing other information, is to gain particular advantages from it!

This is the type of answer I was looking for, thanks

The general consensus among guys is to not let the fish know you take their money for a living. But it might not be a bad idea in certain cases.

I'm a young-ish small and innocent looking Asian girl. The annoying part is, sometimes even other women think I "look" weak and try to run me over. Sometimes I have to show the 4-bet bluff or let a suspected floater float the flop, bet turn when checked to, and show the turn C/R bluff, and say something like" Stop bluffing me, I'm not going to fold" to get the target off my back.

I wrote a blog about this topic (mostly talking about what to say away from the tables) about a year and a half ago (I now live in Vegas). Here's the text:

“So, What Do You Do For A Living?”

A common question among poker players is what to answer when someone asks you what you do for a living. Personally, I like to stick to the truth, which is often a great litmus test of how likely I am to to be friends with the person anyway.

Take, for example, this conversation which takes place almost weekly in my life:

Random person, “So, what do you do for a living?”

Me, “I play poker.”

Random person with their nose wrinkled in the air as if smelling a rotting corpse, “You make money doing that?”

Me, right before I walk away, “Do you make money at your job?!”

Hate to say it fellow ladies, but this happens more with other women asking me than guys. There are a few logical reasons for that, mainly being that fewer women play poker than men and thus are less likely to see it as a viable career. Also a woman is a lot less likely to be trying to impresses me and get my digits, so she may not care about offending me. Or maybe women are just nastier in general (just kidding ladies).

Location is obviously a factor in how a random person responds to your profession. If you tell someone you’re a poker pro in Vegas, as I have, mostly when asked as I am getting a pedicure or whatever, the response is generally pretty enthusiastic. (Except for once when a pedicurist at the MGM spa proceeded to tell me about how her husband lost 100k at video poker—bit of a buzzkill lol.)

Living just outside of Washington, D.C., people are not as used to hearing my profession which is probably why I get the above response so frequently, but I think that does not excuse their super rude follow-up questions. Even if a person told me he was a trash-collector, I could come up with something nice to ask him about it!

Other common and just as annoying responses when people find out what I do include, “Isn’t online poker illegal?”, “How do you do that?”, and this one which made me lol “Oh, I looove slot machines.”

At the same time, there are people informed enough to think it is really cool that I play poker for a living—even if they have never played a game of cards in their life. Count every member of my family in this group.

As Ali G would say, “Respect.”
......
Often times, at the actual table, I'll say I'm a writer, because well, that's true too.

Have you thought also about changing your appearance based on the image you want to create? For example, wearing a hat and/or sunglasses, or even the proverbial headphones.

Or you might want to cultivate the sweet girl look so that they underestimate you and you can trap.

What you say about yourself, as well as your appearance, all affects table image. It is important to style yourself in the way that produces the kind of image you want to cultivate that you then exploit with your play.

For me, I usually look like all the typical internet boys. So people expect me to be very aggressive and bluff a lot. But, while I am aggressive, I place pot control as a high priority in my game and almost never build big pots with a marginal hand. Others will pay me off all day long tho because of my "image."

@Jenny/Katie
Thanks, good food for thought. I think it's more at the table where I don't know what to do. Tonight, I was an aspiring law student again. That was only a semi-bluff because it's a future possibility

@Kamikaze
Haha, so I tried the earbuds thing and I dressed a little more ragged to look less girly than usual. And everybody thought I was a grinder tonight

I guess I should decide what image I want. Sometimes I still think it's easier to play when other players respect me rather than think I'm playing with my boyfriend's pocket change

Assuming you mean at the table:

I think saying you're a pro is just in general a really terrible thing to say. There's no upside other than stroking your ego and a lot of downsides. I would just continue to make something up (either have one story or have fun and make new ones every time they ask). Obviously if you're a live pro the other live pros are gonna know but most places I've played it's pretty much the code that even though everyone knows no one talks about it among regs. If you're young enough an easy answer is "student". Just pick a school to claim you're from, make up a major and how many years you have left, and you're set.

I tell people I do cancer research (which is actually the truth, at least for now), but it particularly makes them go "ooooo" and "ahhhhh" and more willing to donk off chips to me

Lucky, wish I'd have that kind of support/encouragement from my family...

Definitely agree with all of the above annoying responses you said... though it's really "Oh, I looove [insert random table game]."

I definitely try to pull off this image every time I'm checking out a new venue... but once you become a reg at a local game, it's a bit more difficult to get away with...

Look them up and down and say "You couldn't afford me"??

I am not a female pro, but the other day I was out with some family and my mom mentioned to my aunt that I play poker. My aunt was excited and talked about how her sister won a lot playing poker in the casino. It took me a while to realize she was talking about 3-card poker (which is played against the casino and doesn't really qualify as poker in my mind). I mean, at least she was close.

The two responses I get most often to telling random people I am a poker player are:

1) mixing up blackjack and poker: Oh wow, I could never count cards or anything like that.

and

2) mafia concerns (particularly regarding being staked): Is that safe? You aren't going to have some guy show up and break your legs if you owe them money, are you?

why not just run with the line of Equity Analysis?

in all seriousness why not just admit to being a pro

I just tell people I'm a Chippendale.... Adjust accordingly for gender....

When at a table of recreational players, that is akin to saying, "I'm better than you and my job is to take your money."

For a very long time I used to say I was a student. I was in/just out of a PhD program so it was something I could talk about with credibility. Now I just go with the unemployed line. I find it works better and people definitely find it less threatening.

I was playing cash the other night, and someone at the table told me they had read my blog (thinly veiled brag?) and asked how long I'd been a pro. Feeling like I'd been caught red handed, I answered, then a few hands later admitted that I felt dumb whenever it came up at the table because I feared that it made me look arrogant. This changed the table's mood from on-edge (after the dude's initial inquiry) to inquisitive.

Then I switched the convo on to what everyone else did for a living, and focused on the interesting aspects of their jobs. Overall, it went better for me than any other time I've been outed, and I capitalized on the people not wanting to play against me with a laggier style.

When I was playing in a smaller card room in my home town

Guy next to me: "You from around here? Haven't seen you play here before."
Me: "Yeah, I'm from here, but I don't live here anymore. Just visiting."
Him: "Where do you live now, Vegas?"
Me: "No, NY. I'm taking a semester off before grad school. Where'd you get the Vegas idea?"
Him: "Aren't you a pro?"
Me: "Nah, probably just some fish on a heater"
Him: "Except no fish would ever say that. You eye the other pros in this room like another pro. And you had the same tell when you made up the grad school story as you do when you're bluffing"

Ok, why the hell would he tell me all that? If he was just trying to get inside my head it worked, he scared me away from the game. Good thing that wasn't my main casino.

A few minutes before that convo, I 3-bet his CO open with T7o from the button. Flopped a 7 and pot controlled/called him down, since he's pretty LAGgy. When I won and showed down the hand, it made him look stupid. So I guess he decided to call me out after that.

easiest way to get people to leave you alone after the "what do you do for a living?" question is stare at them dead-on and say, "i work for the IRS. i trust you'll be reporting all of your cash-game earnings from this evening?"

instant boner-killer.

I like it! My recent accusatory exchange is probably only one of the few situations it wouldn't find its place, but that answer will definitely be noted. FYI, I actually have a CPA-prep degree, so it's even consistent with the rest of my life story, even if I choose not to bluff about anything else

+1

lmao idk why but I find that hilarious. If someone asks me if I'm a pro (which is rare, most people realize it's a pretty rude question to ask at poker table), my response depends on if I'm winning or not. If I'm up I'll be like "tonight I am" and point to the stack or if I'm stuck a bunch I'll be like "how could I be a pro if I'm losing this much money?"