Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

His section on volume rings pretty true. I used to play a lot recreationally. And by "a lot" I mean probably on the medium-to-high side of recreational, but not even close to pro. Like attending every major regional event and attending WSOP every year for 10 years. Both cash and tournaments. I've stopped because of how much of a tiring grind poker is, and how much time you have to dedicate in order to make it financially rewarding. You need to play -a lot- to get good, and then you need to play a lot as a good player to make money. It is really a lot of work.

If you are not a winning poker player (in other words, your long term EV at the table is negative), you're just going to lose money on average, so playing more means losing more. It only makes sense to play in that case if you actually enjoy playing the game and treat your losses as the cost of entertainment.

But if you are a winning poker player, you still won't win enough to rely on the income unless you are playing A LOT. And by a lot I mean every day, for hours a day. And even more if you play online because the level of play is so much stronger online than live.

And then, even if you are a winning player, and you play a lot, AND you have enough average cash flow to make it worth it, you are still going to have periods where variance wipes you out and you're down for months straight. It's pretty brutal.

After all this time, I decided I'd rather get a different hobby than spending so much of my time grinding away in a smoky casino. I just play (infrequent) home games now.

Volume is incredibly important for any truly serious endeavor. Bryan Caplan's excellent post Do Ten Times As Much makes the point succinctly. [1]

I've come to believe the real reason people shouldn't pursue these kinds of sports or games professionally unless they're born with a deep thirst for winning them is twofold. First, if you love it from day one, the chances that you're actually better than average are higher than they would be for a randomly selected person in the population (e.g. Nike CEO Phil Knight really was able to run a 4-minute mile in college).

But second, deeply enjoying the game makes the requisite 10 (20, 50, 100) thousand hours you need to become a true pro go much faster than for someone who's just putting in the reps, and it even gives you drive to do related things in the likely case that that doesn't pan out (e.g., Nike CEO Phil Knight did not become an Olympian after college, he instead sold Japanese shoes out of his car for half a decade or so as a side hustle to track and field meets across the country while working a day job).

[1]: https://www.betonit.ai/p/do-ten-times-as-much

I particularly agree with the second point. Having enough hours is absolutely necessary to grow into a pro. And the number of hours spent is a non linear function, in two perspectives, from my observation:

First, spending 10 1-hour session produces way less pro-ness than spending 1 10-hour session. Every programmer who attempts a difficult (pro) project can probably attest to this.

Second, not all X hours/days produce the same pro-ness. People have plateaus that seem to stuck somewhere. But you need those plateau X hours/days too. I have a theory that one can avoid as much plateau as possible by always challenging oneself with an almost impossible -- yet still doable project. But it's difficult to get right, so a lot of people get a very long plateau, or burnout, and then quit.

PS: So eventually, anyone who is serious about a career must spend his hours efficiently on high quality (aligned to the career path, while challenging, but not impossible) projects.

PS2: The freedom to spend one's time is absolutely important. Marriage and children could bring havoc to this freedom so people should think carefully before treading into the water.

>Marriage and children could bring havoc to this freedom so people should think carefully before treading into the water.

Way ahead of you, I moved to Europe as a precondition of my getting married. cries in TC

Thanks for your candid report. Not enough people tell it how it is, and everyone thinks they're special.

Fact is, a lot of top players also have deals on the side, with brands and ambassador things. I feel you need those deals to make up for the bad runs.

I love the game, but the variance can inflate egos and the grind makes other hobbies more attractive.

> Thanks for your candid report. Not enough people tell it how it is, and everyone thinks they're special.

That's a good point, too, one I failed to mention. A lot of people are losing poker players, but they don't know it. They don't keep records, and they don't manage and analyze their bankroll over time. A losing poker player has a negative EV. If you buy in to 20 $1000 tournaments, bink one of them for $15K, you're on top of the world, but guess what, you're a losing poker player. Cash players are even worse. They donk off $500 a night but only remember that time last week when they were up $5000 and cashed out. Congratulations, but your EV is still negative.

By my own measure, I was a losing poker player for most of my years playing the game, and I have a spreadsheet to prove it.

I thought this describes many gamblers: remember the wins, quickly forget the losers, be it pull tabs, blackjack, slots, etc.

It does, but there is a crucial difference between poker and most of those other forms of gambling, in that it's possible to be a long term winner at poker, as opposed to games that structurally favor the house. So, you have to be dumb to think you can beat slots long term; you merely have to be delusional to think you can beat poker long term.

A similar thing happens with stock and crypto traders. They do a ton of trading during a bull market and feel like a genius, because they bagged a few big wins, but they downplay all their big losses. At the end of the year and once short term capital gains are factored in, they end up making less than the total market index, but due to poor record keeping are convinced they’re some kind of trading savant. Once the market turns down they’ll likely lose it all and be forced to become a social media influencer selling bullshit trading courses to unsuspecting victims.

Yeah. It's difficult to keep track, especially in cash games. But to be pro is to treat it as a business. I completely agree.

Also distinction between learning (mostly) and production (mostly). In investing, business and no doubt poker there is nothing wrong with a period of losing money while learning. But you better be aware and be learning and you better not tolerate that period lasting indefinitely.

I hear this often about investing: people get started (losing money) with grossly insufficient education and they do learn for a few years, then give up, move on and blame it on "the professionals" or "science shows". When the fact is, if you start investing and learning at the same time, most likely you will underperform everyone else for a while. It's not because you were stupid; it's not because of "the professionals"; it's that you didn't know. It's an important distinction, and the equally losing opposite of "sunk costs".

I think a lot of what you said probably applies to day trading, too.

I was thinking this very thing. At the start of COVID I stuck 20k into a trading account. It went up, it went down, it went up again. But overall I'm probably about break even. Which is too say I did a shitload of researching, buying, selling, watching, worrying and waiting and paid myself a fat zero for all that wasted time and energy.

It's the hardest way to make an easy living.

That perspective makes me wonder how much you were actually paying yourself per hour even if your net gains were in the tens of thousands?

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