lol

OH THAT's what you meant. I think you told me this on tables a week ago and I was utterly confused.

This is what I thought too. Just being the messenger. I haven't read it in a while though so take that fwiw.

lol @ resumes

lol at what is going to happen to a lot of poker players when they have to finally go look for a job.

Honestly, do you think you're going to be doing this for 40 years of your life? or do you think that you will become the top 0.000001% of players that is able to make enough money from poker to retire?

People may laugh at gadolparah but that shouldn't be because he is looking beyond the end of next week in his life.




Having an exit strategy is important.... especially considering how volatile the online poker market is in general.

Im quite sure I will be in gambling for a living at tis point. Be it online poker, grinding cssinos, sportsbetting, u name it. Maybe stox trading, watever. Wat I also know is that b4 I work as an employee again in my life I will rather overdose some very decent h in teh backroom of a brothel...
So no stupid resume for teh tim stone

Solid exit strategy. Mine is quite similar.

"9 to 5 is how ya survive, I'm ain't tryin to survive, I'm tryin to live it to the limit and love it a lot"

I don't get this. Why 40 years? Why 0.000001%? Surely you are making at least three or four times as much a year from poker compared to an average person's salary? Shouldn't this be enough to retire comfortably in 10-15 years?

i absolutely hate this view, i think your being very naive, there shouldn't be a single professional poker player who isn't using the money to fund their future.

invest it, buy property, start businesses but ffs dont make $100k/year from poker to then at the end of it start applying for full time jobs.

I asked this question on fb and got a few hits, friend's dad is CIO of a major company, another friend said he could forward my questions to his boss. Basically I'm going to ask how to portray poker in a good light, because I know that it will be a huge positive for me in pretty much any job I want to get, and if they're ******ed enough to think it's a negative I honestly don't want to work for them anyway...

But I'll pass that along, talk to me on skype if you want more info.

lol no

lol ok, most estimates are that nlhe will literally be solved in the next 10 years. I played full time for 3 years and don't intend to quit if/when I do get a job, but 100k/year is not even close enough to live and save enough to retire on by the time poker will most likely be dead unless you live in your mom's basement right now and basically are a huge life nit and don't have any fun.

Change the 100k to 500k and I could agree with you, but I've known plenty of people who went from making 100k/yr to busto in 2-3 years and had to move in with their parents and get jobs working for super busto amounts because they didn't have a degree and had a huge resume gap. Meanwhile the average starting salary for my degree (comp sci) is 60k/yr and I tend to think I'm above average for people with comp sci degrees in this country, I'd be pretty happy making 70k/yr plus benefits to start and having a ton of room for advancement. Meanwhile there's nothing stopping me from playing poker on the side and making an extra 50-100k from that. And then when poker dies maybe I'll be making a variance-free 100k+ when all you can get is a minimum wage job (not you in particular, just people with no back-up plans in poker) and pray you saved enough to retire on.

Also sometimes there's more to life than hourly. Poker's one means to make money, and for most of us in the short term it's the best in terms of strict $/hour, but there are benefits to finding something I might enjoy doing more than poker, and not dealing with the absurd variance in poker (even in fr cash games it can sometimes be kinda brutal) for my primary income is also a pretty huge plus.

idk don't get me wrong I love poker and I've gotten a ton out of it, but anyone not preparing a back-up plan or being naive enough to think they can retire after 10 years of making 100k is just doing it wrong. Anyone who's intelligent enough to still be making 6 figures from poker today I have a really hard time believing their best way to maximize their long-term money made is poker. Maybe 10 years ago, but I don't see how it can possibly be true today.

i was joking, almost no one can say with certainty whether it is/isn't good to put on a cv.

They were just numbers i plucked out.... obviously the 0.00001% is meant to be hyperbole, but it should be obvious that with the number of people playing poker that the actual % of players that will make enough money from poker to never have to work again will be extremely small nowadays. The % that make enough money to do start another business etc (exit strategy) will of course be larger but is still going to be a small % proportionally.

Also have to +1 what zach said, you have to be extremely naive to assume that poker will always be there for you in some form or other and even more naive to assume that you will still be able to win in a similar fashion for the next X years until you retire. Bots, regulation, the game getting progressively solved etc should make everyone consider the fact that you may not be able to make as much money in future.

And this is actually not what I would expect from you Tim since you seem to be on the ball with doing things that are most +ev for you.

Lets assume something happens to online poker (stars removes seat selection and your winrate was quartered), I find it funny that you assume that you could just switch to becoming a sports bettor or stocks trader like it was nothing. Is just a ******ed view. what happens If you end up being bad at both of them? or spend too much time partying and go busto before learning the skills of the trade quick enough? there are plenty of more intelligent poker players than you that have failed going down this path.

You are right that the other option is grinding casinos etc... sick life at 40, if you've married some girl and have a family... they will loooooove daddy having to go grind out some crusty win at the casino each night... the funny thing is, as the game gets more solved, you will find lots more ex online pros becoming live pros so i don't imagine the live scene getting any easier in 10 years etc.

So yeah, sounds good taking an X% chance on everything falling in to place, teh clever timstone.

And as zach pointed out, you're being more than naive to assume that even people who meticulously plan their exit strategy from poker are still going to win enough, have enough time, have few enough rl commitments etc etc etc etc etc etc to still do it.

how do you invest in property if you're earning $60k a year in the uk etc? you ain't getting a mortgage, that's for sure... yeah, you could just start a business as you say, cause that **** is real easy right? doesn't need lots of money saved up over x years to do it or a good idea in the first place let alone the fact that you have living expenses too etc. And in no way are my circumstances going to change between now and X years when i finish.

The point is it's not anywhere near as easy as some people make it sound and you're silly for thinking it is.


Lots of poker players aren't going to be able to just jump ship in to another decent job, certainly not the less qualified ones and even they will have a ton of problems in regards to experience. I'm probably one of the more qualified (education wise) people on this forum yet do you honestly think i believe i could just walk in to X or y position with little experience over the last X years? don't be daft. The fact of the matter is a ton of ex poker players will likely end up having to go back to school to get relevant qualifications or end up taking menial jobs when poker finally ends for them.


But don't worry, am sure the people reading this who aren't already crushing mid/high stakes will fall in the tiny percentage of people that make it...

oh ok sorry thought you were being serious (trying to confuse people into hiring you isn't a great strategy heh). Like I used it and it basically got me an internship on Wall Street last summer, although granted I was told before I ever submitted it that poker would be a huge positive. In general people are under-estimating the intelligence of people in the industries a lot of us would be going into. I can't speak for other people but I actually have a hard time believing most people hiring for comp sci-related jobs would see poker as a negative. I think most realize that it's a math game and not just purely gambling. They may not understand the intricacies but if you can show you used it to support yourself for several years and then in an interview are able to articulate it in a confident/positive light I think it's nothing but upside. And like I said if my boss didn't understand that I wouldn't want to work for them anyway...

I dont want to maximize longterm money, I want to maximize longterm freedom.
Money is a nice thing but it not even close to teh personal freedom u have which is way moar important for me.

95% of 9to5 suck, 95% of peopke genuinly hate their jobs. Nuff said.

U can easily retire after 10 decent years but not in every country...

Same, which is why I spend the money I make from poker. I've saved up enough and if we ever get FTP money I'll be able to last a few years before I'd need to get a job if I really wanted to, but I'd much prefer to be able to travel, eat well, buy **** without having to worry about money, etc. I did forget that not everyone here lives in a 1st-world country, but making a million over 10 years in the US is nowhere near enough to retire. First off after taxes that's like 65-70k/yr, and I think ~3k/month is normal for expenses. So that means you could either have 300k saved up if you want to live like a nit, or you could enjoy life and have an extra 20k spending money per year to travel/eat well/buy **** you want/etc. and then have 100k at the end.

Either way 300k isn't even enough to retire on though. I'm assuming for most people after 10 years of playing as a pro you're now 30ish. Let's say with inflation it now costs 45k/year to live. Cool now you can support yourself for 6-7 years. Now you're 37. Were you really making enough in interest from your investments to go until you're 80+?

Also I don't think even close to 95% of people genuinely hate their jobs, and the number goes way down for intelligent people as well. Of course if you're working minimum wage at McDonalds you're gonna hate your job, but I know a lot of people in comp sci and most of them actually enjoy what they're doing now and are making solid money. Now would they quit their job if they could still make the money but not have to work? Probably. But would any of us play as much poker as we do if we were paid whether we played or not?

zach,

ill get to your post later.

timstone,

wouldn't you agree money = freedom? "financial freedom" springs to mind, so does wealth rather than riches.

I'm not one to suggest i would do anything for money... far from it. I'd prefer to work on a checkout than as an accountant again. But am telling you now tim, if you have no money, you will have far less freedom than you imagine.

And you can definitely move to any country in the world, no questions asked, to retire. I forgot about that too.


Anyway not going to go on about it any more in the thread. If people are interested in discussing exit strategies or just want to argue against my points then feel free to pm. gl all.

ps, sorry tim/YF, i was more than a little grouchy in my respones to you. gl to you both.

interesting discussion

i definitely need much less money to retire than those of you who live on the us, uk, etc
also, i definitely wouldnt be ashamed to tell my potential future wife and children that i'm going to the casino to grind the manies for their living
and i'm 0% worried that the live poker tables could get so much tougher that me or anyone of us cant make a living off of them

for this and so much more lol @ resumes and exit strategies, yolo.

One thing I would like to say is that Checkers is currently the largest solved game! It contains a 'trivial' set amount of squares and players can move one space at a time (unless jumping or kings). Chess is still not solved! We understand exactly how many squares are present and exactly how many spaces each and every single piece can make, and we still can't currently solve it for an exact optimal strat that cannot be beaten!

There are above and beyond a ridiculous amount more variables for just heads up NL (Between two players of completely differing skill) compared to Chess, let alone 6max and 9max NL holdem.

Will computers become very efficient at playing rudimentary strat that is as efficient at crushing fish and weak regs as the best humans? Very very very probable. Will they be able to process all the intricacies better than the very best at even 200nl in the next ~10 years (assuming continued skill growth of player pool)? I just don't see it, and saying "solved" is in the equation for 6max and 9max NL is LOL when you add in the real time human element of those games where players of any social circle can still afford to act irrationally without crippling the family.

In the end the game tree just becomes incredibly too large! Get as close to GTO as possible and in most lineups of 200nl and below you're still a dog in terms of win rate to the best of the best regs at those levels who can hand read properly + play balanced vs typical randoms at that level + not tilt from variance of said stakes + make real time adjustments based on small samples of the huge player pool that will always play these stakes given no overload of bots...

Assuming we can avoid an upcoming invasion of undetectable computer programs that can run for multiple hours a day (or multiples of small programs that can run in small batches for multiple hours) then the SSNL crowd is still very likely to have sufficient action in a climate of 'legal' online poker over the next couple decades. High Stakes games will be scarce as the risk of being colluded against is rising at an astronomical rate and the fish to reg ratio is already crazy out of whack. The 'Bean Stake's', however, will become the ceiling of online poker in the next two decades and those that can become what they know they need to become will continue to live fine. As the landscape keeps evolving, with legal highs and lows, those that stagnate their games will be recycled out like fax machines and beepers (no real home and a service no longer relevant in any way, shape, or form).

In the end, though, we are quite literally the last generation of players that can make a complete lifetimes living from online NL Texas Hold-Them's, and we have to be quick about it!

i read about poker bot softwares and they said principally that all softwares they made up to now are just trash on the tables and that they have no idea how to change that at all and even if its psb.
i hope u can sleep well at night again from now on...

not about being ashamed. It's about having other commitments that make going to the casino to do an all nighter (as work) possibly very difficult.

also need to consider what stakes you could beat live, how often then run etc etc etc

of course, there are tons of things to consider, and a bunch of stuff about playing live for a living truly suck, i actually hope i never have to do it but if the day comes where i cant make m living with online poker i'm sure as hell gonna grind the live games or set up a business or whatever doesnt involve me fixing up a resume to try and convince some dude to give me a job that i will hate

@menace, I've actually done extensive research on the current research on solving for gto. At this point, computers have gotten close enough to gto at HU LHE that even top human pros lose to computers. The nlhe bots are absurdly bad at the moment, but they are getting a lot better. Similarly some non-public bots were beating 5/10 on euro sites a few years ago, I'm not sure whether they're still around but I'd imagine they're only getting better. I guess I don't actually think we'll solve for a nash equilibrium for 6m or FR nlhe in the next 10 years, but I think in less than 10 years unless sites really step up their detection methods that bots will be rampant in online poker to the point where making a living from poker is impossible. Even if not bots it only requires coming up with an algorithm simple enough for humans to follow and then getting 3rd-world workers to follow the algorithm for $2/hour.

As for live poker, for anyone who's played live for the last ~5 years they have gotten absurdly tougher. 5/10 live used to be equivalent to maybe 25nl online. Now it's not uncommon to have tables where literally everyone at the table could beat 100nl online, and there are a lot of guys who used to play 5/10 online that now play 5/10 live. I'm not saying live isn't easily beatable now, but if the trend continues I can see a point where the top winners at 5/10 are only winning something like $20/hr (I estimate right now it's in the vicinity of $100/hr). Also keep in mind the swings in a 5/10 game getting 25 hands/hr are pretty absurd. How many of you have had downswings that last a few months online? Ready for multi-year downswings?

i just played 40 or 50 hours of 2/5 live and i probably played with one or two guys that could actually beat 25nl on stars, i hardly think it changes that much from 2/5 to 5/10

You guys can enjoy online poker thx to me !

When I was a kid and I was playing like Pacman and stuff like that, I wished for a computer game, where I could print out my score as money.

Too bad I myself discovered my wish had come true like 10 years later

On the topic of retirement and stuff, You cant just put out number in dollars and say what is and what's not possible lol, in Estonia avg salary is like 1000$ per month and if I go around asking how many ppl at my age get close to that, there will be most who are getting even less and they have to live from that. A few good years in poker and living with 11 VPIP(voluntarily put money in pussy), I could be financially 15 years ahead of ppl my age.