i understand your point but being completely honest and upfront isn't always a good thing. e.g, not telling a girl you really like her, even when you do.

also, you come off as wanting/needing her approval. women are useful in support roles; they shouldn't be making decisions in a relationship. if you were a doctor or lawyer or firefighter and she didn't approve of what you did, would you be concerned at all? would you be posting here? very unlikely. you need to approach your poker career the same way.

This obviously depends a lot who you're dealing with. I never really played all that much poker (shock?!) but even then hardly anyone knew that I did. The truth is you should be awesome enough that the fact that you're a good poker player should be like the 20th most interesting part of you, for us mortals. Obviously, if you were crushing HSNL then that would be very difficult.

But for those of you grinding SNG's, SSNL, etc. you need to be awesome enough in other areas of your life that she just assumes you're good at it if it comes up and not a degen. I guess I'm just mimicking what Disko said about dressing nice, taking her out, etc. but if you're otherwise awesome people will just assume you're good at that too.

OTOH, if you are that cool then you should have MUCH better things to talk about than sitting on your couch and playing poker in your boxers so it should really be a moot point in most cases.

While I see what you're getting at I think you may be taking it a little too far. Playing poker as a living is uncommon, open to bad interpretation and needs to be carefully explained.

It's fine to want a girl to understand it. However trying to explain the details of poker shortly after you meet a girl will just freak her out. It'd be like telling her something deeply personal about your past shortly after meeting her. You need to give it time, get to know her a bit first.

Don't lie. But as others have said, just avoid the question or change the subject or whatever and then bring it up to be discussed and explained in more detail when the time is right.

jesus christ

"what do you do?"
"I play poker. what about you"


hows that? act like its NBD and it will be NBD.


if you want to date this chick, lying off the bat would be a poor choice. why would you want to date her if she is gonna hate the fact that you play poker anyway?

The people who insist that poker is a terrible job to admit to are bad at explaining what poker is. They'd prefer to "create a little world where people perceive [it] as a negative" rather than learn how to explain it. We are seeing that from a few posters today.

(quotes because that's what Thremp just said to me on MSN)

How come thremp doesnt post any more but still reads? I get that he was banned but surely he could just get a new account/end the ban? Even though we had our share of disagreements he still made 2+2 better imo

Also on that note: Henry, how come you have stopped posting in the EDF thread? That thread has gone downhill so much

LOL ... I was talking in that thread about making 2,5k$ with 2$ SNGs in 7 days as a probbet with more money involved. I have my sharkscope etc. blocked but I got one graph:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Thats 4 months of real active grinding of MTT-SNGs(End of 2010). It`s easy for me to make 50-60$/h, I just don`t like to grind MTT-SNGs. After my bigger tourneycash I took some time off poker because I felt burnout and started working on my own businessideas(Which I`m still working on, well I might talk about that it`s not a real job yet and still a idea in the making but w/e) and recently I started grinding again.

Also :

I`m 15 days in Australia and also only like 20 days in Korea but 2.5 months later.

edit:

I dont really know how big poker in America is, guess some pros get a lot of TV-Time(With WSOP on ESPN etc.), here absolutely not you only see shows were degens talk about how they busted everything they got. I can`t blame people being sceptical about poker, I know that I can convince everyone longterm(anyone but my parents^^) that it`s not bad but just not if I first talk to them for a short period of time.

Holy **** bite your tongue.

Not really his style

all for not talking about it right away...i was just suggesting against lying about it beforehand and was told that's a horrible idea.

and to the other poster...if i were a firefighter and a girl did not like me being a firefighter or respect the job then NO i would NOT be fine being with her. nothing about what i wrote suggests that what you assumed would be true.

No it's not. And the fact that you could but dont do consistently is evidence for it.

Sure, for some people it might be. It's easy for the $80/h guy to make $60/h, but not for the guy making $60/h and surely not for the guy not making $60/h.

didnt you forget the citation brackets?

This is terrible reasoning.
Some things you have to ease in before you can mention it. If you were into some kinky sex stuff and told her after 5 minutes of meeting, she would think you were a creep, that doesnt mean she wouldnt be into it if you did it during sex.

It was a choice not to play and to concentrate on other things, because I didnt feel well at all and it had nothing to do with poker. I just wasn`t productive the last months. I feel well again and I´m in my normal condition in which I can make 50$/h or if you want make it 40$/h(That`s 40 SNGs at 1$/Game hour) I don`t really care it still is like 4k/Month and I only got like 1k in expenses)

I dont understand why people now try to prove that I don`t make amount X, even if it`s 3-4k month it`s still good enough because I wanted to take off a year and think about my life and did not plan to play poker professionally, it`s just there to pay for my expenses.

I'm failing to see how what I wrote is reasoning at all? All I said that was if I were a firefighter and she didn't like me being a firefighter then I wouldn't want to be with her. What you wrote seems to be more related to what I was saying at first, and agreed with. I am in favor of finding the right time to tell a girl anything, but I'm never going to lie to her about it until that point.

Werent you the one bringing the subject up?

Also, I react allergically when people claim they make x/h, because it's almost always exaggerated.

And if poker is there to cover the expenses, why would you ever have a problem explaining what you are going? Poker never should come up in that case.

You can`t really compare poker to other jobs, especially when talking to people the first time and only doing a little chat.

You can`t explain anything to her or if you do you fail anyways because it`s boring.

Telling somebody you don`t do anything and only sit on your ass, is probably way worse as they might perceive you as not determined, which is absolutely not true for me.

I mostly just want to sit here quoting this post.

NiSash,

When you make 60$/h from poker after a year of playing 30-40 hour weeks, let me know. Saying you make 60/hour is absurd when you don't. That's like me making 60k a year during the day but telling everyone I make 100k because I could work 5 nights a week at my friends bar of I wanted.

WRT poker, Thremp is right.

You have made 1/4th the profits lifetime that your claimed hourly would net in a year, so I'm just being factual here

What expenses are you covering? If you are a student, you are a student, tell her that.

If you are a professional poker player, you better make enough money to make it worthwhile.

Last post in here about that subject:

If you would`ve read closely you would have seen that this was only a 4month graph of end of 2010 where I was in a pretty good condition to grind.

Ok I have to kind of agree here, I should have said that I make 3-4k/Month playing about 60-80 hours every month.



Rent about 450$
Food 300$
Internet/Tel 50$
electricity 70$
Insurance is over my parents till I`m 23, don`t know other living expenses like 100$? So it`s more like 1,3 or 1,4k?

I`m not a student anymore, I quit like 5months ago. I don`t see myself as a professionalplayer(but well it`s my sole income ...) as I use a lot of time for educating in other parts which I might want to do in the future(At moment I read lots of books about Technical Analysis and Trading + How to build up an own business(Got an Idea)).

I was easily making about 60$(post cut ehhh) an hour the second half of last summer, and could still play sometimes, but it requires me not havingmaximum fun so I dont do it. Just because something is easy doesnt mean you should do it. Not to say I dont have fun with poker cause I do, just not as much fun as drinking every night and getting yucky with the boys.

Being a communications major is easy but I sure as hell dont want to do that.

I 'know' NiSash and can confirm that he's not claiming to make more than he actually is.

Regarding the actual topic, I'm still sticking to my opinion that it's a big mistake to talk about poker when you first meet people, especially in a pub/bar/club with drinks involved.
It's really hard for someone to believe that you can make steady money playing a card game and it just won't work as somebody stated earlier in this thread (can't find the exact quote): "Just be like 'I'm playing poker and it pays the bills, what do you do?'" If that person cares at least a tiny bit about you, she (or he) is NEVER gonna let it be like that. Questions will come up and it'll be really hard to explain it in a short but acceptable way.

You don't have to/shouldn't lie, but also it's far from optimal to tell that person about poker after meeting her/him 10 minutes ago. Simply try to find a way to paraphrase the whole topic.

NiSash,

That makes more sense now that you explained it. You still shouldnt cherry pick hourlys from your best months otherwise any MTTer with a big score can tell you about 100-500$ hourlys.

It sounds like you are taking time of school to travel and support yourself by playing poker when you feel like it. If you can't spin that positively...I don't know what to tell you. Traveling when you're young is cool.

Then a) you werent making $60/h b) lol sample size.

As I'm pretty much in the same situation (also quite young, a lot of people tell me I look like I'm 16 ), not studying or working a "real" job but still having lots of free time, I've been doing well with "saved up some money during school/university to see some of the world". That's generally accepted and often leads to good conversations

Basically I just told about what I make in SNGs, I had a "lucky" score of 110k this april. I obv didn`t count that as I will not keep on winning majors.

Yeah basically I will take that advice + the one of your previous post, and talk about my businessidea and that I use money that I earned in previous years to support it.