Yeah this is a good point. I've been a salaried worker at a good paying job and I've just had enough. Yeah sure you get the vacations but the work just keeps on going and going and going.

Then you can't "project" select like you can game select. Sometimes they hand down **** projects like candy and it can ruin your life for awhile. But you just have to keep doing it and pretend to be happy doing it.

My last day is Sept 8th and I play on starting my poker career the next day. So I'll see both sides. I write for Two Plus Two Magazine, I'm just giving this a try because I love poker but because I want an easy job or I want to be a degen. I'm hoping that translates into putting the hours in.

But I could see myself taking it slower at certain points of year if I had been running hit or possibly hit a decent tournament score.

Scotch,
What city?

Oceanport, NJ. I'm about an hour north of AC and around an hour east of Parx.

well wtf happened here lol. i definitely didn't mean for my comment to blow up the whole thread.

my point was simply that i FELT like a drain on society. i won money from people who i knew owed money to other people, for example. or i lost money to people who had too much of it to begin with and would eventually lose it themselves. or i won money from people who i knew needed it for whatever personal reason. or i took a pot off of a solid player who then lost his mind when he saw i bluffed him off a better hand. i felt good but also bad even when feeling good.

ofc i recognize that for the losers in a game, it's their choice on how to spend their entertainment dollars. but that doesn't prevent me, a living, breathing, feeling human, from feeling certain ways about what i did and do.

now, when i played poker online professionally, it was *WAY* less of a downer feeling. i went so far as to play multiple tables of 50/100 and 100/200 while in class. it was great. i then went to casinos moreso to have fun, play way lower stakes, and brush up on live play than to grind out session after session. that was a learning curve in and of itself. for me, going from online discipline to live discipline was a learning process. now, i can sit forever and ever and ever and pay attention to every hand, watch the moods of all the players, adjust my plans and reads as the game progresses, but that takes a toll. a big one. and no matter what, there were still stories of people who couldn't afford to lose the money they brought with them, and i took that money anyways. i didn't feel as bad b/c it didn't happen on nearly as regular a basis as when you're a live pro. and online, you don't think about it like that. at least i didn't.

anyways, poker players in general also pay far far less than their "fair share" of taxes according to the laws in the state that poker players can live in and i'd be surprised if any poker player actually pays what they theoretically owe, especially in states where you can't credit your losses against your wins. instead, you owe on your wins and you can then deduct the losses. that's bonkers, which is why nobody would declare every single dollar won that way, hypothetically speaking lol.

so that's my take, but anybody can respectfully disagree.

I'm wondering why some consider 2000 hours as a pro as a ton of hours. Isn't it quite often that you post a long 12-14 session due to some very good late night action?

LHE players are analytical enough to investigate the question from every angle, but grumpy enough to engage in 2p2 flame wars.

Hi chillrob:

This didn't come from us.

I agree with your marketing research statement. When much younger I spent a few years working in survey design for the US Census Bureau. In a sense this is similar to your marketing research work.

Best wishes,
mason

Hi jdr0317:

No you're not. While I believe that professional players should be well behaved, there's plenty of them that aren't, and you almost never see a live one quit a game because of an obnoxious professional player.

What keeps them entertained is the game itself, especially winning pots and leaving the game a winner, occasionally a large winner. So you can say that the entertainment factor is supplied by the large short-term luck factor that present in limit hold 'em, not by any of the other players.

Best wishes,
Mason

There is certainly a social aspect to the game that plenty of rec players enjoy just as much as actually playing cards. This is evident in the surprisingly large number of players that think they are being personally assaulted if you bet them heads up. If they take offense to someone playing poker against them... then why are they there?

this is a pretty short sighted position to have given that these transfer payments are usually taxed. to say nothing gets produced ignores everything produced by federal and state taxes. Not to mention self employment taxes which are quite worthwhile to society as well. People that make this argument always ignore this fact which I find irritating.

Agree 100%. If you ask a player in a live game whether they prefer live or on-line, they will enumerate the reasons why they prefer live, usually citing, "the experience". They like to feel the cards. They like to touch the chips. They like to chat with the waitress. They like to chat with who's beating them.

Why not just say the real truth instead....
Free alcohol in casino ( well the ones I tried anyway)!!

I think many players drink while playing online. It just doesn't as easily "click" that they are drunk while online.

If you are going to make a "we pay taxes" argument about poker players (which still doesn't mean we produce anything other than perhaps entertainment), you have to deal with the actual practice of tax payment by poker players, not how much taxable income they may accrue. A lot of poker players fail to pay.

That's pretty insulting lawdude. Are you insinuating that those of us who play for a living lack the integrity to pay our income taxes? Or that we're dumb enough to run tens of thousands through our bank accounts hoping not to get caught?

To say that professionals do not provide anything useful is not right in my opinion. I sometimes think of pros and semi-pros (to use a financial industry term) as market makers. They are more apt to start games short handed and support weak games from dying. One could make an argument that they provide action for rec players (kind of like matching up those who wish to hedge risk with those who are want to speculate or gamble).

However, it would be nice if more pros had a longer term vision of what is good for the poker ecosystem rather than fleecing as many sheep as quickly as possible.

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

how do you deal with the actual practice of defense lawyers when it comes to representing child molestors and trying to keep them on the streets.

Professionals provide an entire education.

Sarcasm?

Moi? Sarcastic? Never!

I was just agreeing with Jon_locke. In addition to income taxes, I'm guessing the average live poker pro pays ~$30k-$40k/yr to casinos and their employees in the form of rake, tokes, meals, and incidentals, which in turn, gets poured back into the economy somehow. I could also name quite a few businesses where owners are prone to dodging their tax responsibilities, and others, that not only contribute little to society, but are downright sleazy professions.

I don't fully buy the argument that poker players contribute nothing to society, or that there aren't other professions with less overall utility. But I jumped in the thread late and didn't read through all 218 posts on win rates, so I apologize if I'm being irrelevant.

90% of jobs are useless to society. Especially the ones that pay well.

It seems this way because there are a lot of *******s and criminals who make lots of money. Each profession has its bad apples. Doctors, lawyers, bankers are three of the highest paid but all for good reason. No doctors, lots of sick people. No lawyers, business grinds to a halt without contracts. No bankers, the markets can't function.

^^^

Paul V is a consummate professional and provides me with incalculable joy every time he is at my table

MLB aces are useless?

I should rephrase what I wrote. Poker players probably don't add much value to society, but I don't think they're a drain either. It was too late to edit.

disagree that 90% of jobs are useless to society. also, my point was being a DRAIN, not being useless. either way though there's TONSS of jobs that are hugely useful. even the high paying finance ones generate value above and beyond the salary/bonuse paid (or at least commensurate with it).

think of what investment managers do, for example. they are self interested, but they also help grow their clients' funds. what help do we as poker players provide? even the hoity toity structured products folks that helped cause the whole financial meltdown in 2007 net net still are a benefit to society all told.

i'd say that it's CLOSER to being right that 90% of jobs are NOT useless to society.