Quote:
Originally Posted by Jsimo003
Hi, I know it's early but I am 16 years old. I live in Melbourne Australia. I am currently going to a private school which is one of the top in the state. I am ranked in the top 2% of students in mathematics and generally love numbers.
I have been playing poker ever since I was 10 and have loved every second of it. I read books and play a little bit of 888 poker and am an ok player. I do not know if I should invest all my time in it and perhaps try make decent money off of it. The edge I feel I have is that I have a good number brain. Is it hard making money in poker? Because all these people on this site seem extremely indulged in the game and seem to invest so much of their time in the game but aren't making decent money ? Do you think I could make it? The only thing holding me back is the fact that I could be successful as some sort of business owner or broker of some sort.
Please, I am desperately seeking some deep, well thought out advice
Okay, I'll give you the response desire (yet likely wish not to hear), but perhaps we can link this to every other 15-year-old with $ signs in their eyes preventing them from seeing clearly.
I play high-stakes poker for a living (not the nosebleed high-stakes you're probably envisioning when you hear the term high-stakes, but high-stakes nonetheless). My typical opponents are white collar professionals (e.g., surgeon), wealthy businessmen (e.g., hedge fund manager), other poker professionals (i.e., ***holes), a spattering of successful sociopathic criminals, inherited wealth, and maybe the occasional prince from a Middle Eastern country.
The majority of opponents come from the first two fields: white collar professionals and elite businessmen. You don't get into the positions they are in without being highly intelligent. Some of them have highly impressive backgrounds in mathematics. Save for a few, I'll play any of them HU all day long. Why do you think that is?
It's because all of them fall into two groups:
1) I don't give a ****
and
2) I really don't give a ****
Group 1, the
I don't give a ****s, are the players who could beat the game if they really worked on it (i.e., they have the requisite knowledge to figure it out on their own), but their time is worth too much money away from the table to be bothered with calculating equities etc., for something that will yield them little money, comparatively speaking.
Group 2, the
I really don't give a ****s, are the players who could beat the game if they really worked on it (i.e., they have the requisite knowledge to figure it out on their own), but they are so ****ing loaded that when they sit in the game and lose a bunch of money, they still come out ahead due to how much passive income they generate by doing absolutely nothing, so poker winnings would be peanuts.
Don't get me wrong - with the exception of a few that just like to blow money, most of these guys are competitive and relatively tough. It's just that the money is more important to me than it is to them, so I put the work in. I put as much work into poker as they probably did in their respective careers. I'm sure if they wanted to crush poker they could do it in far less time than it took for me, but like I said, that's not their main objective for playing.
The point I'm trying to illustrate is that you are looking for the easy way out - the free lunch. It's not there. It does not exist. Either way, you're going to have to work your ass off because the edges in high-stakes games are thin enough that it requires you to squeak every bit of EV you can find to make a good living from the game, and the edges in elite business are similar.
The only reason I play poker is for the money. I don't care anything else about the game. It sounds like you want to play poker for the money because you think that would be fun. Based on personal observation, I'm guessing it's probably more fun to be in one of the
I don't give a **** groups. If you have the potential to be in one of those two groups, why would you want to settle for being the dude trying to chip at what they discard to make your living?
I came from a corporate career. I started making far more than my job and my job's future earning potential (in hindsight, my perspective back then was correct), so I left it for poker at the beginning of the poker boom. That's how it's done. You don't decide at 15 you want to be a poker pro. That's on par with every 8-year-old saying they want to be a professional athlete; it's something that neither of you have the full picture of to make an accurate reflection on.
Maximize your full potential. You can still play poker. They are not mutually exclusive. At some point your full potential could very well turn out to be poker, but that's not a decision you make when you're 15 and can't even beat the game yet.