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Comment by CodeMage | Hacker News Reader

Let's break it down:

1. The author proposes to replace college by "a modern curriculum that, on average, will produce people better prepared for real life than college".

2. This curriculum "can be funded initially with $5000 for poker".

3. This is because after the first dedicated year of learning poker, "you'll be able to make between $45-60 per hour for the rest of your life".

4. If you follow this plan, your "chance of being self-sufficient and prepared for 'real life' is about 90%".

Let's boil this down even further: the author posits approximately 90% success rate -- for everyone -- for a scheme funded by generating an income of $45-60 per hour from a zero-sum game.

"Completely f'ing delusional" seems accurate to me.

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Here's the full context of the 90% statement:

"There's no guarantee, but I see people work pretty hard at school, and if that same effort were put towards the Hustler's MBA, I thnk the chance of being self-sufficient and prepared for "real life" is about 90%. I'd estimate that non-laywer/doctor college is somewhere around 50-70%. So, like anything, this plan is not totally foolproof, but I think it's a lot better and cheaper than the alternative."

I don't know what kind of experiences you've had with random college graduates and their level of preparation for real life, but I think he's being generous at 50-70%.

I'd certainly be more interested in talking to someone who had the initiative to follow his plan (poker, reading, starting a business, good health, etc.) for 4 years, versus someone who just graduated with a bachelor's in a randomly selected discipline and had no real life experience.

Also, I don't know if you've ever actually played poker seriously for a long period of time, but the reality is that if you're relatively intelligent, have self control, and are disciplined enough to constantly learn new things, you are truly a shark swimming with goldfish. The average person at a poker table in most casinos has no idea what they're doing. There is a reason that professional poker players exist. It is not purely a game of chance, although there is chance involved. Kind of like startups :)

Hey, thanks. I'm the author of the linked post and this is spot on. I haven't replied to the other criticisms here because I've learned that when a person with experience argues with a person with a preconceived notion not backed up by experience, there's essentially no chance of convincing them.

Of course it's spot on. It also doesn't address what I criticized at all.

As @nlavezzo pointed out, the reason why professional poker players can make their living off poker is because the average person has no idea how to play poker well, whereas the professional poker player excels at it.

The problem with your advice is that the more people follow it, the less money they can make from poker, because poker is a zero-sum game at best.

Now, I don't play poker at all, so maybe I'm wrong about poker and there's some way everyone can come ahead of the game. Or maybe I misread your post and you're not really recommending this curriculum as a replacement for college. But if I'm wrong, I'd rather you told me why ;)

It's actually worse than zero-sum for the players, because the house takes a cut. Usually the house takes about $200 off the table every hour (plus tips to the dealer), so the rake matters less for higher stakes games.

However, it's not necessarily true that half of all current players are losing. Because bad players will quit, it is possible that a majority of current players are taking money from a rotating minority group of losing players. I don't think that's true, but it's possible.

Mathematically, you're correct that it isn't necessarily true that half of all current players are losing. It isn't even necessarily true if the pool of players is fixed, since the game being zero-sum doesn't constrain the possible distributions of winners and losers very much. The reality, though, is that the vast majority of players are losing.

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