Quote:
Originally Posted by leavesofliberty
My first thought is that it was some kind've trust-fund baby costing their parents $100,000+/yr.
This is indeed likely, considering that the story has been told by a psychologist, and that the majority of poker players fail to beat the rake.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mason Malmuth
Just speculation on my part. But if the player in question was doing well at poker, do you think his family would offer him significant money to quit playing?
I don't exclude such a possibility. In fact, the article got me worried about my own relatives potentially offering a similar deal (just a few times less money) to me if they learned that I'm still 'gambling'.
The thing is that it's hard (would take hours or days of education) to prove to non-poker people that I'm +EV just enough to pay the bills, especially to those who don't know the probability theory well, in a country where online gambling is frowned upon. Laypeople tend to overestimate the role of luck in poker results.
Besides, some of them see poker play as a dishonest occupation (as if I were robbing problem gamblers) or at least as an activity that doesn't contribute much to the society. It would make sense for the relatives to spend some money on converting me into 'an honest (conformist) man' even despite such conversion being -EV in the monetary sense. (They don't fully realize how difficult it would be for me to secure a well-paying job, for mental reasons that were present way before I started playing poker.)
Poker addiction is not necessarily bad, as
we've discussed, but my real-life environment might find it bad even despite the modest profit that mediocre poker play brings (which is still better than being depressed and doing nothing).
Last edited by coon74; 08-02-2017 at 04:19 PM.