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Comment by levosmetalo | Hacker News Reader

> That's a fantastic story my friend. It took some luck but also a lot of guts and self confidence to do that. Glad you managed it.

Story is fantastic, but I'm not glad he did it. I would like it much more if he understood that gambling is a zero sum game except for gambling companies, and stopped playing it after learning a lesson.

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I'm well aware that poker is a zero sum game, at least as far as the exchange of money is concerned. That being said, that doesn't mean that playing professionally provides no value to society. As with any game or sport, there's a certain entertainment value provided to those that play as well as those that watch. Even those players that never make it on tv help to provide the foundation for the ecosystem needed to provide the entertainment on a global level, in the same manner that minor league sporting athletes help support the majors.

All that being said, the entire reason I was devoting time and effort to my side projects was the belief that I could derive more meaning from life doing something other than poker. I was already trying to transition to something new. Black Friday just gave me a giant kick in the ass.

Also, poker is not gambling, at least not the way I play.

> Also, poker is not gambling, at least not the way I play.

What you did that night was definitely gambling (buying in with 100% of your bankroll). Glad it worked out for you though

I understand the spirit of what you're saying. Typically risking your entire bankroll is a bad move because you're risking more than you can afford to lose. I'd argue that, in this instance, that wasn't the case. If anything, I was on a "free roll" of sorts. Winning that night would significantly improve my situation (allow me to pay my bills) where losing would not significantly worsen my situation - I'd still be screwed. There just wasn't much difference between having 1k and having 0 and I didn't have enough time to build slowly.

Well, in that case I can only congratulate you for getting rid of the poker. I'm glad that you had a rational approach and kept kalm that allowed you way out.

And about poker being not gambling, well I don't agree. However smart you play, as much as you count on the statistics, in the end of the day, there's still luck involved. Even if it were only pure skill game, you can't always know skill level of your opponents :)

"However smart you play, as much as you count on the statistics, in the end of the day, there's still luck involved."

I guess absolutely everything we do in life is gambling, then :)

Not everything I do involves competing with someone else for both my own and their money.

At the end of each day, yes, luck is a big factor. At the end of a career, statistical probabilities remain supreme, and you'll find that the hand you're supposed to play 60% of the time will win about 60% of the time.

You're not wrong to be critical of the OP for gambling with his lunch money, but at the same time, it's wrong to conflate statistics with luck. If "the way he plays" is "by the numbers", then luck really isn't a factor. Sure, it may bear on any given hand, but in a long enough game, luck is all but eliminated as being relevant.

I agree entirely with everything other than the lunch money comment. Having 1k was no better to me than having 0 - in either case, I wouldn't have enough to pay my bills - so I wasn't really risking anything significant. Really, I only stood to benefit by taking the risk. If I had enough time I would have rebuilt my bankroll slowly but I simply didn't have enough time.

Just for the record, that's exactly what I assumed.

I didn't say 'lunch money' as to imply something necessary. Rather, it was intended as something trivial.

Either way, kudos on the hot streak.

It sounds like you have a very loose definition of what gambling is, going so far as to suggest that placing wagers on chess would be gambling because you might not be certain of your opponent's skill level, and thus cannot predict the outcome. Most definitions of gambling would reject that as an identifying characteristic is that the game be a game of chance. That being said, you might find it interesting to know that professional online poker players usually have a LOT of information about their opponents - usually more than enough to gauge their skill level. There are sites that mine every hand ever played online and then programs that compile that data into useful information that is then displayed beside each player's icon while you play. We know each player's win/lose percentage, how aggressive or passive they are, how likely they are to bluff, fold to a bluff, ect... In addition there are programs that help professionals find the best tables to play at - not only where the opponents are the weakest, but where they are the weakest against your particular style of play. Luck is minimized as much as possible. The true minimizer of luck, however, is volume. I've literally played million of hands of poker. Out of 7 years of play, I've had plenty of losing days, but only a handful of losing months, and never any losing years.

As for whether poker is a game of chance, I would argue that the level of skill involved trumps the level of chance and thus doesn't qualify. A good poker player is much like a casino. On any given bet they could lose but in the long term they never do because they always have an edge on their opponents.

But more importantly, there's luck involved in almost everything you do, and you can almost never predict with certainty the outcome of your actions. Should we seek to avoid all luck in life, or perhaps only when money is involved? That would mean we could no longer make investments in anything. Even putting your money in a savings account has, perhaps not luck, but at least a degree of risk involved. There are some things I would never risk in life but money isn't one of those things. Money is just a means to an end.

>Also, poker is not gambling, at least not the way I play.

Yes, it is. No matter how you play.

I question how "professional" you are if you don't even understand this basic concept of advantage gambling.

Why do people insist on telling us that gambling is a zero-sum game, in an attempt to sound wise and knowledgeable? Do you really believe the are people who think that a poker game magically creates new money for everyone?

There are people who act like they believe that.

> people insist on telling us that gambling is a zero-sum game

people who insist on saying 'zero-sum' is really just passive-aggressively saying that the person indulging on said activity should've spent their time on other non-zero sum activity.

Like SEO :)

I complain because I SUCK at poker and it makes me mad when smart asses take all my money :-)

It's still a hell of a lot of fun though.

When the payoff for not hitting a certain monetary threshold is extremely negative and out of proportion to the amount of money in question (lose your wife/house/family/life) that can actually change that calculus, and taking a losing bet is your best move in the absence of other options.

I don't know...

There's something "romantic" about the whole thing. Sometimes we have to do things that are irrational to experience life. It's sort of like climbing Everest. It makes no sense and still quite dangerous but people do it to satisfy some irrational yearning.

The irrationality and the circumstances of his story are what makes it all so beautiful.

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