Neither has Phil Ivey. He must be terrible at NLHE.

It's pretty clear that Negreanu enjoys the big mixed games more than the huge field NLHE events. If you look at what he's played the last few years, it's mostly the bigger buy-in of whatever is running on any given day at the WSOP. Seems pretty clear that he would rather sit with pros and try to get through a smaller field for a bracelet/POY points than mix it up with the recs in the baby events. If you aren't playing a lot of hold 'em events, you aren't going to win a lot of hold 'em bracelets.

Also, there's a decent argument that hold 'em bracelets are the toughest to win because the fields tend to be huge and it's the one game that most people are at least semi-competent at. Even the bad players in the big NLHE events probably have a basically decent strategic approach, albeit still with a lot of leaks.

The two guys who seem most motivated to chase bracelets and POY are Hellmuth and Negreanu. If you look at their live cashes from this WSOP, it's mainly mixed games. I think part of that is because a simple numbers game dictates that there are fewer bodies to get through in these fields, but also probably that these guys don't want to be sitting at tables with 9 tourists having to play the role of friendly poker ambassador all day. If they sit with pros, they know they can basically stfu and nobody will take it personally or bother them for a picture.

I think he's played enough stuff to where he probably should've come away with some wins at the Rio at some point in the last several years, but variance is real to a certain extent and he genuinely does seem to run kind of terribly in the big spots. Whether he's some super elite crusher or not, I'd guess that there are many players far worse than him who have won tournaments at the WSOP in the last 4-5 years.

Tournament poker is pretty sick and you can get deep consistently, but still get crushed by variance at major inflection points. I didn't watch any of his FTs this year except the recent Omaha, and in that one he seemed to do enough to give himself a chance to win if the deck had fully cooperated.

First, your insistence that Negreanu's WSOP game be judged by Las Vegas but not Europe results is both irrational, and a convenience allowing you to ignore his bracelet win in a $25K high roller at the WSOPE for nearly a million dollars. He was the overall WSOP player of the year for that year, 2013.

Second, he finished this year's WSOP up $400,000, and is net in the green for the past decade plus of WSOP competition, during which he's provided buy-in, gross cashes, and net win/loss figures on a yearly basis.

To refer to him as barely an average professional poker player is absurd.

Here is someone else being transparent about their stats:

Wow, awesome. So tournament poker is beatable after all! Oh, wait...

Survivorship bias

Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to some false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias.

I seriously doubt anyone is going to think poker is easy after looking at that multi-year chart with all those losing years. He's averaging $225k/yr over 10 years. And he's considered elite. Get a tech job and you will do much better without the incredible ups/downs.

Those are his results working 1.5 months each of those years

So he's able to have 10.5 months to earn more, spend time with family, and/or sit on the beach

You don't get 46 weeks of vacation on a tech job

That might be quite an over-simplification just like when the scam artists are trying to sell trading courses saying you only need to work 30 minutes a day when daytrading.

We could talk about all the other buy-ins that he lost at all the other tournaments as well as the pieces that he sold off in order to stay afloat. Look at Josh Arieh. He could barely make the $100k WSOP event buy-in unless he sold significant pieces. This is the guy who won PoY and had multiple wins. In the end, having a sponsership ala DNegs or selling poker sources ala J. Little makes life as lot easier for the poker pro.

Um no, I don't think I'm saying being an MTT pro is an easy gig

Just saying why it's silly to imply BSH would have been as well off over the past ten years with a tech job. Perhaps you weren't saying this,, don't mean to imply something you did not intend.

But for some people, poker for one reason or another is the only thing they can or want to do with their life. And of course getting a job that pays 225K is not easy lol. And of course, making a fraction of that say 25K is a good earn for a month and a half. Yes, there is the ups and downs, but if someone plays cash the other 10.5 months and buys into some events with extra earnings then ups and downs are not that bad.

Didn't hear the thing about Arieh, perhaps he's just responsible and only played the 100K if he sold pieces because he just wanted to and/or thought he was a dog in that field. But I doubt he had to. I mean he probably had all of himself in the 1500 PLO win and more than likely the 10K PLO8. But who knows of course.

actually, if BSH is paying his taxes (assume 35% Federal and 5% for Illinois), then his results drop to a net profit of $1,218,606 for the 12 years, which results in a NET after tax ROI of 99.25% (instead of his reported GROSS IRR of 184%). Now we are getting a bit closer to the tech job, and without the mind numbing variance.

Buy ins cash outs pre tax after tax
147,700 160,332 12,632 7,579
8,300 3,205 (5,095) (5,095)
142,800 43,343 (99,457) (99,457)
198,180 478,300 280,120 168,072
194,500 97,060 (97,440) (97,440)
163,000 1,057,700 894,700 536,820
159,000 59,750 (99,250) (99,250)
139,350 1,444,720 1,305,370 783,222
31,000 0 (31,000) (31,000)
22,500 126,925 104,425 62,655
14,500 14,000 (500) (500)
7,000 0 (7,000) (7,000)

1,227,830 3,485,335 2,257,505 1,218,606

There is a psychological toll when playing poker or daytrading for a living. The inevitable downswings can cause serious damage when you can't handle it. So even an office job say $100k/yr with health benefits and pay vacation is the best choice for most. You gotta be a true degen to play poker full time. I say that lovingly but with concern. All that psychological and mental toll requires a decent payback otherwise it isn't worth it.

Yeah Arieh had to sell at least 60% otherwise he wasn't playing the $100k. In fact I think he only entered because he was leading the PoY and had to defend against Hellmuth. There was some tweets about it.

I've worked in IT and Wall Street for more years than I care to mention. With the recent millenials quitting the workforce after the pandemic, the pay for tech people has gone through the roof. Just learn to code and master leetcode. EASY $100k/yr. I was recently shocked to hear a former JUNIOR colleague get two $300k/yr offer from companies. Not gonna say anymore as I don't want to incriminate myself but that person basically spent a full year just mastering leetcode.

You pay taxes at tech jobs too

And it's still just a month and a half at work

Also, tech jobs making 225K don't grow on trees, it's not telling people to reboot

All probably true, not a job for most but that's not what we are talking about

Regarding Arieh, define "had", if he really had to play the 100K I'm guessing he could easily with liquid funds unless you think he got staked in a 1500 tournament. More than likely it is what we wanted to do. Perhaps he was worn out, didn't think he was positive EV in a 100K field, and did not place as high a value on POY as others where he felt the need to plop down 100K and spend more time in Vegas away from family.

Yeah, that's true. It's just that 100% of people working tech jobs are making money each and every year, whereas, I would guess, less than 10% of WSOP entrants are positive lifetime. BSH is an outlier even among professional MTT'ers. And even his results, while impressive, aren't that much above the pay rate for a standard tech job these days. Not to say there aren't other considerations when choosing a career as you mentioned before, but when only viewing the results posted by the 3 sigma players like BSH (i.e., survivors bias), many young, aspiring minds will be led to make the wrong choice.

Arieh was pretty specific in his reasoning for not firing the $100k. He thought he was a huge dog to the field and it would’ve just been to test his sun run.

Arieh isn't a young guy anymore. I'm sure he's had his share of degeneracy and heartache being a poker pro. Of course he could have fronted the money for the $100k by himself but now that he's older and wiser with a family, it wasn't a +EV play for him. Can't do stupid things anymore cuz the downside is much worse than upside.

I agree with the majority of your post except for the fact that the money was made in only 1.5 months for each of the years keeps on getting forgotten. So in BSH's case extrapolating for an entire year the pay rate for this standard tech job needs to be 1.8 million.

It's ten years of results, but BSH put in less than two years of work to earn it

Don't think you can extrapolate it like that. He's also running at an unsustainable ROI over the sample (Think he'd be the first to admit that). Based on some rough math and not factoring in selling action his full series grind is prob worth around $100-$150/hr. So between variance/tax situation (can't carry forward losses in losing years)/no other benefits/etc the tech job described is prob superior on money alone. But like you said earlier, it's not like those jobs are easy to come by or be qualified for either. And if you take the stress of variance out of it the poker route is prob more fun day to day. At the end of the day almost any job with high earning potential is going to be difficult to achieve/sustain and have a lot of competition.

Reasonable assessment.

Anyone who digs into solver math and likes to crunch numbers can do an IT job. Poker is so much better and fun when you can come and go as you please without having to worry about grinding the rent money. Having that income stream backup gives you a great deal of peace of mind.

Also big opportunities in poker have not been as plentiful as during the boom. Majority of cash games are like nitty 1/3 and 2/5 at the casinos. Then you have the pandemic stalling your poker income stream whereas most tech companies were paying the same during pandemic as well as covering all health costs. I wonder how most poker pros survived the pandemic. Uber/Lyft? Quite a bleak life.

That's a good point about the taxes and no one has said he wasn't running good, of course with the obvious necessary disclaimer that this isn't a fish on a heater

But what was said was that even his income wasn't better than a tech job. But that's wrong, even if knocked down in half due to significant wins it's still 900K annual salary or something

It's not really an extrapolation, he grossed 2.25 million in a working span of around 1.5 years. Probably less if you look at the low number of events he played some of those years. Can't possibly ignore it, you don't get 46 weeks a year of vacation on a tech job.

good point the best part about 225k a year tech jobs is you don't pay income tax

225k is on the low end of the spectrum these days.

Depends on the company, but RSUs in any FANG over the past 10yrs is not insignificant.

What’s the deal with DNegs offering someone named Tim Reilly a $10K free roll lie detector, that TR uses fake vax cards?

What’s the background/history? I looked through Twitter but IDK

I was hoping someone would start a new thread on this. It's a very long back and forth between a lot of poker players. Basically, the accusation is that Tim played the WSOP with a fake vax card and cashed in several events. Daniel offered 10k freeroll to pass a lie detector.

Apparently there is suspicion that Foxen did the same thing. It's a pretty entertaining and long thread on twitter. lol

I mean given the stance of Foxen and his girlfriend, I was surprised to see him at WSOP, thinking he would have to be vaxxed to be there.