You were SNE?

Well, I play live now, so it would be very hard for a live player to reach the same level with no online experience or data.

It's Good to be Paul Valente!

Basically what Jon said.

But also poker has never been primarily about money for me. It's all about the challenge. I've always loved playing against better players and in gross line ups. Let's get the smartest people together, whip out our pokers, and measure whose is bigger. I'm pretty sure I'd have gotten bored and wandered off in soft games. After doing what Jon said of course

I find it funny how everyone is like "I'm glad I never played in soft games and earned a bunch of money and then lost discipline" instead of "I wish I had more discipline."

Games are tougher now in part because all the widely available tools are widely available. Anyone who used post-boom tools effectively would have used mid- and pre-boom tools effectively as well.

I mean even today someone could beat 20/40 with a rule book and Microsoft Excel. It's not the easiest or fastest thing to do but it's possible.

Button is on player to my right so i put out SB, cards are dealt, four limps, as i complete i say wait, i don't remember paying a BB. Turns out player who should have had button walked and dealer incorrectly moved button to next player. Floor rules too much action, i win big pot and never have to pay big blind that round.

This is how you beat live mid stakes for $8/hour. Oh, and i stiffed that dealer.

Cali, what you seem to be missing or ignoring is for me the most important room was playing million + hands in tough-super tough games. It made me a better limit player but it also really helped me think about poker better which made the transition to mix easy.

That took just isn't available if I have 3 million in the bank. You will have played that many hand to want the 3 million but mainly against morons and you can't get anywhere near that volume playing 100-200 online.


And when you are playing 100-200 online you are playing sgaisnt geniuses that are also playing e dry single 10-20 through 30-60 game going and will have seen more hands in xhrrnet games in a month than I will in 2 years.

So after having losing 40% of winning to taxes, 10% to rubbing bad at 500-1k games or soemtbing, 10% playing PLO and mix games. 20% on a nice house (which we lose in the market crash) and a ballet car, then 10% at clubs, dinners etc. we are left with 200k roll to play those 100-200 games we can't beat

You know you've made the big time when you rock the ballet car

Also you forgot strippers and drugs

I never said I was glad. I said the circumstances around the time I started taking poker seriously were more conducive to me becoming a successful poker player than the party days were

Saying "I wish I had more discipline" is something people say looking back on their life. Not necessarily advice a kid in his early 20's printing money will be likely to heed

After that pot? Or at the end of the down as well?

obviously thats what etc. implied

Both. I can't tip a dealer that screws up that badly, even if it advantaged me.

Just curious - do you think you're going to make over or under 3 million in your life in tough mix games?

Sure, maybe there's a greater chance you go prodigal son when you make 3 million in 2 years in your early 20s. But that's not probability, that's statistics, and your personal destiny is not a function of chance. All other things being equal, I'll take 3 million in 2 years over 3 million in 20 years.

Now I agree all things are not equal. If you don't think you could have handled that much money in your early 20s, the less funny way to put it is, "I'm glad I didn't have that much money in my early 20s." Implying you're better off for having missed the rush smacks of sour grapes.

I know what you're thinking and I'm not missing your bigger point. Where you are today is a function of all the things - good or bad - that happened in the past, and you probably wouldn't be where you are now. But that's not unique to the boom. Every opportunity you've ever missed has shaped you and unless your life is so perfect now that any conceivable deviation would have been worse, there's an infinite number of possible yous in the multiverse glad that they took exactly the path they did. In one alternate timeline you're glad you tore up your elbow and ruined your high school baseball career because then you ended up in a hospital next to a poker pro and you entered the game pre-boom. In another you ran terrible initially and quit poker early on, Trump just called you about the Supreme Court vacancy, and you're glad you didn't waste your life as a gambling degen. Smart, hardworking people find ways to win whatever game they're playing, and no matter what game you're winning, you'll always look back and be glad you didn't take any other path.

Yeah that all seems terrible to me. You'll always be glad you didn't take an other path? How do your fingers even allow you to type that? And just to be clear I never that my life was either better or worse. I just stated that I don't think if I would have ended up as poker pro had I started in what most people would have considered the 'ideal' time. If me being a poker pro is a good or bad or medium things is a different matter

That's my point though, all things aren't equAl. Sure if you win 3 million quit poker and cash it out that's great. But if you gradually spend and lose back 3 million over the next 5 years than that's far worse than the guy that steadily makes 3 million over next 10-20 years

You have to win $5M to have $3M, cause taxes.

no u

So you think you would have fallen into the category of people making 3 mil and losing it all back? Seems pessimistic / sour grapes.

Why does every one just get to make 3 million by playing earlier? Why is it impossible that someone could have made more money post party than pre? Why can't making a **** ton of easy money early in life lead to someone getting bored and moving on to a new project without it being sour grapes?

I don't know what 'high stakes' was for limit at party. 30? But weren't the nl tables like 5/T?

For a long time 15/30 and 2/4 (not sure on that one tbh) were the biggest limits and party slowly added bigger options due to player pressure.

I vaguely remember excitement once party added a NL game with a 1k buy in because it was my broke poker fan phase. Buying in for 1 seemed like crazy high stakes to me at the time

Because 10 years later people were making $200-300k/year playing the same stakes against way tougher opponents.

At the very least, you could have made the same money as a much worse player.

Not sure you understand the sour grapes concept.

You and Jon (and anyone else who chimed in with the same comments) both say you missed the boom but are better players because of it. That's the sour grapes mentality, the implication that you wouldn't have wanted to play in the boom anyway. It's the devaluing of something you never had.

The best case scenario is where you played a bunch in the boom but never lost the drive to improve. If they're mutually exclusive, it's a function of you, not the boom. It's not funny to wish the boom had come later when you were more mature; it's also not funny to wish you were more mature when the boom came. But to consider yourself lucky to have missed the boom is funny. You didn't choose to miss the boom, assuming you'd be a better player in the long run. It just happened that way.

I can't recall if you or Jon expressed the opinion that anyone who made a bunch of money during the boom would have lost it in the housing crash, but that's also pretty funny. Housing prices in competitive markets are above the peaks in 2006; you would have lost money had you bought in 2006 and sold 2007-2014ish, but made money if you sold now. The housing market is not a problem - the mid-2000s mentality that you were going to double your money in 2 years was. And while very few people have control of the housing market, almost everyone controls their own mentality.

"almost everyone controls their own mentality."

"Almost" being the operative word here imo. Fml.

You can keep saying this, and I'll keep pointing it out, but I still have not yet said either way on if I'd have been a better player, or made more money, or had more fun. All I said was my chances of ending as a successful poker pro were probably much greater by starting in 07 than if I had in 04. Doesn't mean I couldn't have raped the game for millions if I worked hard enough and have had a happier life. Just means I don't believe I'd have made it long term as a poker player.

It has a lot to do with the way I learn. I learn better interactively than mathing things out myself. I was a burnt out math major and it would have taken the fun out of poker for me. I know now what kind of work it takes to be successful and I'm pretty sure as a very smart college I wouldn't have put near the amount of work it takes to be good long term. I was able to later because 2+2 had developed much more and vid sites were being born and they provided invaluable sources of information that I enjoy. I still post here because I enjoy talking poker. I hate math.

Doesn't mean I wouldn't have made a **** a ton of money or had a better life path. Just means I don't think I'd have been a poker pro