I play poker for a living since November 2012. To live as an immoral person is not my cup of tea, therefore I often ask to myself if my current source of economical income is wrong.

I'd like to let you know I'm not here to moralize. Even if you are not a professional poker player, you have an easy option to simply don't care about morality of your profession. But you should know you are always fully responsible for almost everything that happens in your life and for all consequences of your actions and decisions.

I'm aware of my choice to earn money in online poker and here's a few thoughts of how I'm dealing with it.

At first I need to make sure I won't just rationalize and justify myself. Thus I put myself in a position of a person in a butchery asking himself if buying and eating that piece of flesh is really moral and ethical. Like a man in a butchery, I also have a freedom of choice to earn or not to earn money by playing poker. And just because I have an option to make money in this game, it doesn't necessarily mean it's not wrong. Similarly, just because there are butcheries and dairies giving you a possibility to buy and consume their products, you shouldn't turn the autopilot on and mindlessly pay for those goods.

Okay, now I will try to be as honest as possible and as critical as possible.

First of all, what's my outcome of playing poker? What kind of a service do I offer? Who puts money into the poker industry?

It's relatively easy to answer these questions. Nearly all funds in online poker come from recreational players, also known as fishes, whales or donkeys. I simply don't know why someone is able to invest money into a complex game with no or minimal knowledge about that game. Let's assume they have a vision of easy money or they have so much fun while playing poker that they don't mind gambling their bankroll away.

Having said that, my function as a regular player is to give a possibility to recreational players to realize their vision of easy money or provide them fun while playing and losing their money.
Online poker is only a redistribution of money from amateurs between professionals, playrooms and the state, of course.

One could say it's completely fine when money designated for fun is redistributed by providing fun. It's reasonable to think some human beings need to have this kind of entertainment and if they are voluntary willing to pay for it, there's nothing wrong with playing poker for a living.

As a lazy thinker and a comfortably person, I might be satisfied with this conclusion. But as I mentioned above, I should be as critical as possible and therefore I should search for objections. At this moment I've found two.

First, money appointed for enjoyment could be spent more effective than by playing a game with a gamble nature. Let's get one thing straight — I have no doubts poker can be educative and helpful stuff. I developed long-term and effective thinking and much more useful skills by playing and studying this game. But it doesn't mean all players have this ability. I'm not sure if player regularly calling three streets with third pair could sometime take from this game as much as I took. I think recreational players can spend their money reserved for fun in a better and useful ways than by playing online poker.
By providing online poker we are giving those people a possibility to spend their money worse than they could. It doesn't sound like a moral thing.

Second, a man not involved in this industry could rightfully consider that poker is just fooling. More clever and more intelligent persons offer to others to play with them and they know they will be profitable in long-term. This activity doesn't look like a moral activity. Moral and intelligent beings should not abuse their intelligence.
As a man involved in this business I must admit poker has a spirit of fooling less smart people. And fooling is definitely immoral.

If we all had suddenly stopped playing today, then they wouldn't have the option of spending their money in this way.

These two objections look like a valid arguments supporting statement playing poker for a living is not moral. What should I do now? Should I abjure playing poker?

I don't see things in black and white. In some cases, morality should be considered relatively to circumstances. Intentions are part of actions and they should be evaluated in morality statements.

For that reason playing poker for a living in a short-term or a mid-term is not inescapably immoral. It depends on intentions.

If I would play poker only to get rich and to live selfish comfortably consumerist life, my morality would be very questionable.

Therefore I must have serious altruistic intentions while playing poker for earning money. I should spend all of the gained money very reasonably. I should spend as little money as possible for my own existence and I have to invest most of my earnings into smart philanthropical projects.

I'm trying to be influential vegan, animal rights, environmentalism and anarchism activist and I'm doing my best to spend each dollar for my own needs properly.

From my point of view, I'm still not sure whether even in this case earning money in poker is moral and in the future I'd like to generate money in different and more moral ways. Wish me luck!

Feel free to discuss this difficult topic. I appreciate all of your comments.

Good luck at the tables!

(Sorry if I misplaced this thread.)

No matter where you're employed you're taking money from others. Whether you take that money via a game or employment, the outcome is the same. The most moral solution would be to create your own business and generate wealth/employment for the community, but not everyone has the skill-set necessary to generate wealth.

you are taking money bcs. we don't have time to do all things for ourself....

money is exchanged for utility/time - one party provides that utility to the party that gives money (purchasing power of utility) away

poker has no utility for the party that loses money - it teaches them nothing since they are degen losers that think they can be rich via this avenue. It also has no entertainment value since people that lose money are mostly frustrated then happy (and there is not enough rich people that don't care about money).

So as for OP question.....

if moral is defined as providing positive social benefit then we should be better off banning poker do to the high opportunity cost it levies on our society. Similar to cigarets. Similar to gambling. Similar to lottery. Similar to [insert something likewise -ev here].

grunch (tl:dr):
If poker was only pros playing pros there would be no ethical issue, therefore the ethical issue is between the pro's and the fish. Imo, the fish will give all their money away no matter what. The only question is who is going to get that money. Therefore(ish) it's like opportunity cost in economics: you are not taking money from the fish--that money is already doomed--you are taking money from the other pros by depriving them the chance to get the doomed money you received from the fish. xD

Hope that makes sense on paper b/c it does in my head.

Good OP. I recognize myself in it, and I like poker. With that moral questioning I think it will be difficult for you to have poker as a job long term, because your questions are valid. Many people can reason as Ryan above, then there's no personal problem: "If I don't take the money, someone else will". But you (and I) are seeing the personal responsibility quite strongly. If you want to make that much money that you can live on it, you will have to search for weak players, do all you can to take their money, like a predator. I couldn't probably do it. My line goes here: I don't search for weak players, I just sit down randomly. But that can just make me a marginally winning recreational player, on quite low levels, which has to be my role. I have also chosen to mostly play fixed limit, partly for less variance, but also because I will then win the money more evenly, not having to search heavily for weak players to exploit.

Some people enjoy playing cards or enjoy playing video games over other recreational activities. They know it involves a cost of time and money. Playing golf can be much more expensive and frustrating than playing small stakes poker. So are golf course owners immoral?

The difference is that golf course owners are providing a service to people by upkeeping a golf course that they get to enjoy. It would be a stretch to say that someone grinding out 50k a year in online poker is providing any benefit to society through their work.

Define "moral", and then the question becomes easy to answer.

You don't think that the average poker player plays because they enjoy it?

I don't think it's a difficult topic at all. If you want to win at poker you've got to do certain things and some would call that the dirty, dark side of the game. Since you want to talk 'morality' it's my opinion that if you play ethically and with integrity you are doing nothing wrong by taking advantage of the weaker players. You English is pretty good but it's apparent to me that you're not playing from the U.S. so your game is likely legal where you play and (correct me if I'm wrong) and that eliminates at least one objection to playing.

If you struggle w/ these things then poker is not for you, imo. You might not like that statement, you may have anticipated that someone would say it bec they don't understand what you mean but the fact is that you ARE playing despite these doubts and I'm going to guess it's bec you want the money even if it makes you uncomfortable in the way you say it does.

It looks like you're trying to make a morality 'trade-off' of some kind: 'I balance this nasty thing I do w/ some good things.' If that makes you feel better then ok but it's not really any kind of balance at all unless you can hook it up to some weird New Age type of twisted pretzel reasoning.

These are adults that freely choose to spend their money on poker instead of something else. Who are you to say that some other game would be better for them? Unless you are forcing these people to play poker, I don't see how this particular argument holds.

life is a game, everyone is taking money from others everywhere

a company exploits their workers to make money, you exploit fish to make money, what is the difference?

the company makes products that are sold, you make nothing, but how could you be wrong if they aren't?

if that company weren't there, another would come in its place, if you weren't playing poker, you could be taking someone's job...

also a lot of companies like banks make money from nowhere, and lots of it, why do you think that playing poker can be so much more immoral than people working on banks?

If you look at it as "how am I providing a service that benefit's society?" then I doubt anyone could see it as a moral way to make a living.

However this is how I look at it. I see it similarly to a chess tournament where everyone puts in money and the better players earn. There is a very clear divide between play money and real money games so if anyone is willing to step into a real money game he should know the risk he is taking where he could either win or lose.

A fish is willing test himself against others by putting some money in front of him. He can actually win long term if he is willing to put in the study time etc. Compare this to roulette or the lottery and suddenly poker seems like a much more ethical game.

I'm all for allowing people the freedom to decide how to live their lives, and not judging them for how they earn a living. In practice, though, decisions need to be made regarding what behavior we should encourage and what behavior we should discourage. If playing poker for a living doesn't actually generate wealth, or if banks actually are investing time and effort into making money without actually providing anything beneficial, then I think we ought to encourage people to not do those things. I can understand if you don't want to use the words moral or immoral, but I think they're appropriate in this context.

As for your specific examples, workers are benefiting from their labor as well as the company, and in general their labor actually goes to producing something of value that wouldn't exist if not for their labor. Banks (at least in theory - I don't want to get into a debate about whether they currently profit more than the value they provide via derivatives or whatever) provide value by reducing transaction costs for lending/borrowing/investing/storing money.

What of value is being produced by someone who plays poker for a living? People on 2p2 sometimes argue that they're providing entertainment to fish or something, but I don't really buy that argument. Maybe it's going too far to say that it's immoral, but at the very least I think people who earn their money playing poker should be given less favorable tax treatment on their income than people who actually do something useful.

Why not? Why else do you think those that pay the paychecks of poker pros continue to play?

I don't think that people who play poker for fun would enjoy the game any less if there were fewer people grinding poker for a living. For example, most of the people who go to a casino and play poker, or who play in home games for fun would continue to play those games and would have just as much fun if they only played against others who played for fun. Fish probably enjoy poker less the more pros there are preying on their money, since that decreases their chances of winning.

Of course there are some offsetting benefits, like the fact that if there are fewer people grinding out small amounts there would probably be fewer people like Chris Moneymaker or Tom Dwan or whoever people find inspiration in/enjoy watching. On average, though, I think society is better off with fewer people playing poker for a living versus doing something else.

Not to mention things like gambling addiction, but I wouldn't want to get into that argument when I'm so outclassed in that area ^^.

poker is entertainment for a lot of people, in TV for example, online poker(when you watch isildur1 playing)

but yeah, a random grinder online isn't entertaining nobody out there, but as i said, life is a game, if you're playing poker, you're not doing something else, so you're making other people's work worth more than it should if you were looking for a job, because you reduce the offer labor, increasing its price.

working isn't about making a product or anything, working is the way people use to make money by selling their labor to other people at a price that is lower than it should be, considering that everyone out there is playing a game, there's nothing wrong into going into areas that don't benefit directly in human progress, simply because a lot of normal jobs don't do so.

so working on a car factory makes the job more moral than someone who works on a cosmetic products factories?(which are less important for human needs than cars?) or working as a model is something that is not ethic, since you don't produce anything? working in marketing isn't ethic because you use resources to sell your product and not improve them?

Oh boy.

First, get over yourself. Second, if you need to make philosophical or economic arguments to play poker, just quit and spare people the diatribe. I don't know why this is getting serious responses jfc

Why do you think that someone making cosmetic products, working as a model, or doing marketing aren't producing something of value with their labor? Even marketing, which is probably the hardest of the three to see the value of, has value in signaling, at the very least. (i.e., even if ads provide no other useful information, I as a consumer know that the firm who spends a lot on advertising believe their product is good enough to spend a lot of money advertising it)

We have unemployment rates of 8% USA and 12% Eurozone and so let's to cut out more ways of making a living?

nb 1 for epic ban lolz

you know how much employment we would get if we legalize drugs,...

yes, unemployment rates have nothing to do with causation of utility

Professional poker playing is somewhat akin to old school gold prospecting and to Olympians. Both involve an element of rent-seeking - you primarily gain by competing for scarce resources rather than creating value per se.

Poker is arguably a bit worse in that prospectors still extracted something valuable on average (even if the marginal prospector probably didn't result in much additional gold being discovered), and even marginal Olympians still add a bit of entertainment.

So that's my reference point for the morality of poker. It doesn't really add value, but it's not much worse than a few other career paths that most people don't have any objection to. Still, if you're tossing up between poker and some run-of-the-mill office job, the latter is probably more socially beneficial.

well, in general we want to minimize rent-seeking as a society

If all politicians were forced to play top quality poker in order to be admitted to congress or the senate, society would benefit immensely by the radical jump in intellect and math/risk analysis multiple/complex problem solving skills filtered in. The idiots, science/logic thinking hating barbarians would be kept out by definition. Skills learned in poker for those that care to study the game properly can then be applied everywhere. Even love and altruism in life in general can be appreciated further after the relentless aggression and toughness witnessed in the game. So if you play very good poker and do not target or entrap people with gambling addictions you effectively improve the intellect of opponents though a brain intensive activity/game that is also if properly played entertaining. I bet its beneficial to the brain's health as well.

Also if a good person is also a profitable poker player he/she can use the money to improve their lives and fund their own studies, research you name it. I can see poker funding research in theoretical physics for example that is not embraced by current status quo and which therefore is necessary but risky and potentially breakthrough material as it is done without the stress of a career and acceptance by the establishment until results are produced. So why not, win in poker tournaments and study physics for the rest of your life without constraints. Super ethical solution.


If you guys had it in you , you would join forces with me to create a poker playing company of the top 1000 good players here paying a monthly fee that would be used to buy big event tickets for the top 10 best each month (we can play multiple events to find these 10 every month and ranking also all 1000, eliminating luck as much as possible) and then they would share their profits from wins in WSOP and WPT etc according to historical skill ranking of the 1000 back to the all players like stock dividends that are skill weighted and over time this would make all of us profitable according to skill (the skill of the best helps all eventually)(as it would geometrically increase collective bankroll and end up supplying many players per month over time to these events ) and then we would use the profits to do other good things for society as well.

What is the ROI of the top 1% of the players here in big events you think when we kill volatility by having many horses top players elected every month??? 20$ per month buys 5 tickets in big events easily from only 1000 members. But we could introduce a multiple weight fee that buys multiple share in the profits as well. So basic membership $20 per month (eventually all refunded plus profits over time) or even 100x that for whoever likes it to be so much invested. Imagine adding up 100k per month in money used to buy entry tickets all over the country or the world where only the best of us represent the group but all players share eventually according to ranking plus initial entry factor. What do we get back from that 100k per month if we have a ROI of the best >30% (or 130% if you define it as ratio of money received not profit over money used)??? what happens after 1 year to our collective profits if we reinvest them as we can eventually support to send dozens of top players every month (the majority of whom would never had the bankrolls to individually do that so actively) and as we all get better over time by playing against each other for free (only for ranking) ???

See what i did here??? I took something you think was immoral and made it into a wealth creation process that can then be used for good things for all involved.

I like to consider myself a moral person (and I think most people that know me well would prob agree, I hope!) and I have no moral compunction about playing for a living.

The basic reasoning is this: poker is a state-sanctioned game with well-defined rules and all players are willing adult participants. In other words, the game is legal, follows established rules, and is played by consenting adults. Professional poker cannot be reduced to an immorality by definition when none of the essential components of the game itself are immoral.

But the whole question is often unnecessarily complicated by the fact that a lot of things associated with poker (professional or not) are evil, corrupt and/or illegal. I think this is kind of inevitable when you have so many people participating in so many transactions involving transfers of wealth.

In case no one has thought of this analogy: trading of stocks (I guess derivatives might work better) is a zero sum game, just like poker. And, just like in poker, there are transaction costs (rake, tips, etc), professional/institutional traders (grinders) and individual traders (recreational players). The presence of immoral activities/participants in stock trading doesn't make the profession of stock trading definitively evil.

This isn't entirely on point, but I actually think poker as a profession probably requires a higher standard of morals/ethics than a lot of other jobs with comparable skills and pay. But I could be slightly biased .

As for the societal/economic value of professional poker, it's closely tied to the value of the game of poker in particular and that of the entire casino industry in general. One way to think about this is to consider professional poker as just one of many of components of the adult gaming/entertainment industry.