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Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: RyanHesson on July 29, 2014, 09:45:39 AM

Title: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: RyanHesson on July 29, 2014, 09:45:39 AM
Has anyone played some poker to supplement income? I don't play much, but decided to play this weekend at a gambling hole not too far away. It's too far away to go too often, but every once in a while it's possible. The game there is pretty weak, much easier than online play, made $1900 playing $1/$2 NL. I went there in May also and won about $750. Very few there are pros, they're mostly dudes with day jobs and no families to spend money on, they play some poker because they ain't got nothing else to do, and don't play very seriously. I'm thinking maybe I could go every Friday after work, sleep in the car out there (at least during the summer months), and come back Saturday night. I'll at least give it a few more times to make sure my wins weren't just a fluke (I don't think I'm that good), but I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with this. Has anyone looked at getting good at poker and playing for some extra cash? How's it worked out for you?
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Fishingmn on July 29, 2014, 09:51:23 AM
I would probably do more online research at poker sites instead of here.

My impression is that even the best players in the world go through hot and cold streaks. If you lose $750 a few weeks in a row how is that going to impact you financially and psychologically?
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Psychstache on July 29, 2014, 09:56:08 AM
The general rule of thumb when playing as a career no limit is to have 100 buy ins as a reserve to handle streaks. In the case of $1$/2 NL, that would mean having a $20,000 bank roll strictly for poker. If you are doing this as a 'side job' You could probably knock that in half and set that aside as your funding.

I would caution you to make sure you are familiar with the game and are confident that you are playing efficient and mathematically sound. Don't drink when you are playing. Leave the table for a few minutes when you get frustrated. Don't play tired, don't feel sorry for other players. It is a serious job, so you need to treat it that way.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Psychstache on July 29, 2014, 09:59:14 AM
I have played for years, sporadically, online and in real life after spending significant time and energy studying and reading about the game. I typically drive out to the casino near by and play there. Since I started to play seriously and keep track, I have average roughly $70/hr playing 1/2 NL. Nothing major, but it's always nice when your hobby makes you money.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on July 29, 2014, 10:06:03 AM
I used to play all the time.  It was easy with friends, slightly less easy online, and even less easy in the casino.  I think I might have been good enough to grind it out in the casino, but that would require a huge amount of time and effort, and has already been pointed out a huge bank roll.  Plus there is the possibility of me losing that whole bank roll. 

Online was very worthwhile until they make it illegal in the usa.  They brought it back, but then made it illegal again.  It's still illegal, although there are a few sites you can still get on and play, but you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get money in and out.  Too much of a pain in my ass, so I haven't played online in like 8-10 years.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: RyanHesson on July 29, 2014, 10:07:09 AM
Quote
My impression is that even the best players in the world go through hot and cold streaks. If you lose $750 a few weeks in a row how is that going to impact you financially and psychologically?

In terms of financial security, it won't do much. Psychologically, I'll be pissed. But it won't affect me too much. Never lost quite $750 but I have lost a little over $500 in a night once. I like to think I've gotten better since then though. And that was online. I think online play is just harder. Fish/Pro ratio is worse than in real life.

Quote
I would caution you to make sure you are familiar with the game and are confident that you are playing efficient and mathematically sound. Don't drink when you are playing. Leave the table for a few minutes when you get frustrated. Don't play tired, don't feel sorry for other players. It is a serious job, so you need to treat it that way.

Oh yeah, I play serious. I've made some bad moves, I'm not a great player or anything, but I'm not reckless. And I'm no where near professional level. Maybe someday but not now. Goal is some side income. Only real bad beat (lost when the guy had to catch runner-runner cards) I had I just quit for the night. I play calm.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JGB on July 29, 2014, 10:17:50 AM
Yes. Started off with $25 online. Slowly built that to $25k, then stopped keeping track as my poker finances blended with the business finances of running my poker training site (http://www.grinderschool.com), since losses and wins became business expenses and profit (respectively).
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JGB on July 29, 2014, 10:26:01 AM
The general rule of thumb when playing as a career no limit is to have 100 buy ins as a reserve to handle streaks. In the case of $1$/2 NL, that would mean having a $20,000 bank roll strictly for poker. If you are doing this as a 'side job' You could probably knock that in half and set that aside as your funding.

I would caution you to make sure you are familiar with the game and are confident that you are playing efficient and mathematically sound. Don't drink when you are playing. Leave the table for a few minutes when you get frustrated. Don't play tired, don't feel sorry for other players. It is a serious job, so you need to treat it that way.

This is in the right vein, but I'd argue that these numbers are a little too conservative, especially in live poker (where the competition is comparably quite poor). $7500 is easily enough to fully fund $1/$2 live games (assuming your skills are there). Doubly true if you also play some lower stakes games online. Then again, personal risk tolerance may trump the other factors here, if the amount in play would influence a decision.

Everything else in your post is very valid.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on July 29, 2014, 10:29:50 AM
Quote
My impression is that even the best players in the world go through hot and cold streaks. If you lose $750 a few weeks in a row how is that going to impact you financially and psychologically?

In terms of financial security, it won't do much. Psychologically, I'll be pissed. But it won't affect me too much. Never lost quite $750 but I have lost a little over $500 in a night once. I like to think I've gotten better since then though. And that was online. I think online play is just harder. Fish/Pro ratio is worse than in real life.

Quote
I would caution you to make sure you are familiar with the game and are confident that you are playing efficient and mathematically sound. Don't drink when you are playing. Leave the table for a few minutes when you get frustrated. Don't play tired, don't feel sorry for other players. It is a serious job, so you need to treat it that way.

Oh yeah, I play serious. I've made some bad moves, I'm not a great player or anything, but I'm not reckless. And I'm no where near professional level. Maybe someday but not now. Goal is some side income. Only real bad beat (lost when the guy had to catch runner-runner cards) I had I just quit for the night. I play calm.

Sometimes it's not a matter of how good you are.  If you play enough poker you will get drawn out on, and you will have bad beats.  You need that bank roll because you are going to lose your ass some nights, because that's just what happens some times.  You make the move with a positive EV and you lose anyway.   It should all balance out in the long run if you are making moves with +EV, but there are going to be swings up and down along the way.

I lost several hands when I was the favorite and made the right moves.   I remember one time early in my online career that I flopped the nut flush, and had some guy betting into me with top pair.  He ended up hitting runner-runner to get a full house and win the pot.  That was several hundred dollars.  I was so pissed! But I ended up making it up in the long run when other suckers were betting into my nuts.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JGB on July 29, 2014, 10:31:33 AM
Online was very worthwhile until they make it illegal in the usa.  They brought it back, but then made it illegal again.  It's still illegal, although there are a few sites you can still get on and play, but you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get money in and out.  Too much of a pain in my ass, so I haven't played online in like 8-10 years.

With the exception of states like Washington, online poker is not illegal in the US. Many of the big sites were/are banned, but that has to do with violating other laws unrelated to poker.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JGB on July 29, 2014, 10:35:46 AM
I think online play is just harder. Fish/Pro ratio is worse than in real life.

In general, this is true. If you are comparing $1/$2 in a casino to $1/$2 online, it is much more true. In terms of skill, $1/$2 in a casino is like $0.05/$0.10 online.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on July 29, 2014, 10:38:12 AM
Online was very worthwhile until they make it illegal in the usa.  They brought it back, but then made it illegal again.  It's still illegal, although there are a few sites you can still get on and play, but you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get money in and out.  Too much of a pain in my ass, so I haven't played online in like 8-10 years.

With the exception of states like Washington, online poker is not illegal in the US. Many of the big sites were/are banned, but that has to do with violating other laws unrelated to poker.

This is what I was referring to:

Quote
On October 13, 2006, President Bush officially signed into law the SAFE Port Act, a bill aimed at enhancing security at U.S. ports.[13] Attached to the Safe Port Act was a provision known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA). According to the UIGEA, "unlawful internet gambling" means to place, receive, or otherwise knowingly transmit a bet or wager by means of the internet where such bet is unlawful under any law in the State in which the bet is initiated, received, or otherwise made. Thus, the UIGEA prohibits online gambling sites from performing transactions with American financial institutions. As a result of the bill, several large publicly traded poker gaming sites such as PartyPoker.com, PacificPoker.com and bwin closed down their US facing operations. The UIGEA has had a devastating effect on the stock value of these companies.[14] Some poker sites, such as PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, continued to operate and remained open to US players.[15]

From my experience the ones that remained open to the US had crazy restrictive rules on putting money in and out.  Crazy enough that they effectively made it not worth the hassle.  I spoke with a coworker that claims to have an account online a couple years ago, and I got the name of the site he was at so I could set my own account up, but they were also crazy restrictive.  I lost interest and stopped researching the issue after that.

What sites are fully legal and available in the US, and actually allow me to easily transfer funds to and from without huge fees and a huge hassle?
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: RyanHesson on July 29, 2014, 11:18:09 AM
Quote
In general, this is true. If you are comparing $1/$2 in a casino to $1/$2 online, it is much more true. In terms of skill, $1/$2 in a casino is like $0.05/$0.10 online.

Probably more like $1/$2 in real life is equivalent in play to $.10/$.25 online, $.05/$.10 online is a complete joke, but the point still holds. I got my ass handed to me when I tried to play $2/$4 online. That's when I lost that $500, in the span of about 100 hands or so. But I have played and been profitable (I think positive expected value, not just lucky) on up to $.25/$.50 online.

Quote
What sites are fully legal and available in the US, and actually allow me to easily transfer funds to and from without huge fees and a huge hassle?

I use Bovada but they charge a fee to get money in and out except for the initial deposit.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JGB on July 29, 2014, 11:22:47 AM
The terms of the UIGEA (the portion of the bill you're referencing that applies to gambling)  specifically prohibit financial institutions from processing illegal online gambling transactions and let other laws define what is illegal. Washington state criminalized online poker. Utah and Hawaii each had pushes to do so, but I do not know if they were successful and/or are still in place. I do not know of any other states that have criminalized it on any level.

Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware each have specific sites that are licensed to operate in their states, with laws prohibiting playing on unlicensed sites. That led to a very easy deposit/withdrawal process in those states.

In other states, you are at the whim of your bank or credit card company as to what they will allow. Some companies are overly cautious to avoid any chance of violating the UIGEA but their policies do not make it illegal to play. Most sites also accept Western Union.

Specifically, sites on the Merge Network (Black Chip Poker and Carbon Poker are two of the better ones) and America's Cardroom are generally regarded as the best choice in today's market. Avoid Lock Poker as they are on shaky grounds financially (which is impacting their withdrawal processes significantly).
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JGB on July 29, 2014, 11:28:48 AM
Probably more like $1/$2 in real life is equivalent in play to $.10/$.25 online, $.05/$.10 online is a complete joke, but the point still holds.

I use Bovada...

Bovada is definitely the softest site available to most US players. The downside is the anonymous tables. But play at Bovada is definitely at least one level below play on other sites (so $0.10/$0.25 on Bovada will play like $0.05/$0.10 on must sites).
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: MoneyCat on July 29, 2014, 11:34:48 AM
Gambling is just about the most anti-Mustachian thing a person can do.  That said, I do game the hell out of CET and MGM's rewards programs to get free meals and nearly free vacations without doing any gambling.  If you get the Total Rewards credit card and join Social Rewards, you can easily rack up a ton of reward credits that can be used for free meals or hotel rooms at CET resorts.  Also, if you play MGM's My Vegas game on Facebook (which can easily be played for free), you can save up loyalty points good for free meals, hotel rooms, show tickets, and more.

If you need to feel the rush of gambling, but you want to save money risk-free for ER, I recommend trying that stuff out.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on July 29, 2014, 11:40:58 AM
Gambling is just about the most anti-Mustachian thing a person can do. That said, I do game the hell out of CET and MGM's rewards programs to get free meals and nearly free vacations without doing any gambling.  If you get the Total Rewards credit card and join Social Rewards, you can easily rack up a ton of reward credits that can be used for free meals or hotel rooms at CET resorts.  Also, if you play MGM's My Vegas game on Facebook (which can easily be played for free), you can save up loyalty points good for free meals, hotel rooms, show tickets, and more.

If you need to feel the rush of gambling, but you want to save money risk-free for ER, I recommend trying that stuff out.

Why?  If you gamble when you have the edge wouldn't that be very mustachian? With poker you are playing against other people, not the house.  As long as you make more from the other players than it cost you in rakes then you make money.   

I think poker belongs in a separate category from other casino games for that reason, and it can be very smart to gamble if you can make money at it.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: MoneyCat on July 29, 2014, 11:46:23 AM
Gambling is just about the most anti-Mustachian thing a person can do. That said, I do game the hell out of CET and MGM's rewards programs to get free meals and nearly free vacations without doing any gambling.  If you get the Total Rewards credit card and join Social Rewards, you can easily rack up a ton of reward credits that can be used for free meals or hotel rooms at CET resorts.  Also, if you play MGM's My Vegas game on Facebook (which can easily be played for free), you can save up loyalty points good for free meals, hotel rooms, show tickets, and more.

If you need to feel the rush of gambling, but you want to save money risk-free for ER, I recommend trying that stuff out.

Why?  If you gamble when you have the edge wouldn't that be very mustachian? With poker you are playing against other people, not the house.  As long as you make more from the other players than it cost you in rakes then you make money.   

I think poker belongs in a separate category from other casino games for that reason, and it can be very smart to gamble if you can make money at it.

It's anti-Mustachian, because no matter what people say about strategy and the human element of poker, it is still a game of chance.  It's still a game where you may have a hot streak one day and then have a cold streak the next day that wipes out your bankroll.  It is also highly addictive and has destroyed a lot of people's lives.  Mustachians should be focused on "winning" all the time and that means not throwing your money away on games of chance.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JGB on July 29, 2014, 11:47:31 AM
Gambling is just about the most anti-Mustachian thing a person can do.

Who's talking about gambling? I thought he asked about poker.

Poker is very much a skill-based game. Yes, on any given hand, luck can play a factor, but in the long run the player that knows the math and psychology behind the game will come out way ahead.

For the well initiated, poker is less like gambling than the stock market is like gambling. Just because you can lose in a given hand (or series of hands) doesn't make it gambling. Is investing in the market gambling because a stock (or even the market as a whole) can go down over a period of days/weeks/months?
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JCfire on July 29, 2014, 11:49:46 AM
Has anyone played some poker to supplement income? I don't play much, but decided to play this weekend at a gambling hole not too far away. It's too far away to go too often, but every once in a while it's possible. The game there is pretty weak, much easier than online play, made $1900 playing $1/$2 NL. I went there in May also and won about $750. Very few there are pros, they're mostly dudes with day jobs and no families to spend money on, they play some poker because they ain't got nothing else to do, and don't play very seriously. I'm thinking maybe I could go every Friday after work, sleep in the car out there (at least during the summer months), and come back Saturday night. I'll at least give it a few more times to make sure my wins weren't just a fluke (I don't think I'm that good), but I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with this. Has anyone looked at getting good at poker and playing for some extra cash? How's it worked out for you?

What you experienced was absolutely, positively, 100% a fluke.  You can win money at poker, but you don't have to guess what's possible, there are hundreds of pros who are better than you at poker who play $1/2 NL full time and have theorized a great deal about maximum win rates.  Read the small-stakes NL forum on twoplustwo poker.  The consensus you'll find is that the maximum possible win rate at $1/2, for an elite poker pro, would likely be about $30 an hour.  The average "win" rate in the game is about -$15, based on the rake and typical dealer tips.

You admit freely you are not an experienced pro.  You are probably a winning player from the sounds of things, but realistically you cannot expect to make more than $10 or $15 an hour on average.  To do that, you are not just giving up time, you are also accepting financial risk.  You can read more on twoplustwo about how big your dedicated poker "bankroll" needs to be to finance this poker investment/job.  For complete confidence, figure it is about 30x what you bring to the table when you buy in -- so maybe about $6000 for your game.  Less if you were an established experienced player who knew for a fact he had a large expected win rate over time, but you're not.

The good news is that if you're a winning player, and you enjoy playing, it's great to have a hobby that earns you even $0.01/hr.  Most people spend money on their hobbies.

Just don't go in with an unrealistic idea of your win rate, especially if your sample size so far only includes one bad beat.

You asked for personal experience.  My experience was that poker was a great money-making hobby between 2002-2006, playing online.  I had spare time and needed spare money.  I played low stakes poker, with a bankroll of 20x what I brought to a table at any given time, and made steady profits.  I didn't get rich or anything, but was making a good hourly wage (say $25-$30/hr) doing something fun.  Why so much more than I said was possible above?  For one thing, games were super-soft back then, so the max possible average win rate per hand was higher.  The bigger factor though was that with online poker, you could easily play 300+ hands per hour, while in a live game you're more likely to play about 30.  In $0.50/1 NLHE, playing 4 tables at a time, I was making about $3 per 30 hands, which would equate to $6/hr at the live game you're considering.  My best night, I played for about 4 hours and made $1200.  My worst night, I lost several hundred.  The difference was not how I played.  It's a volatile game.

You've been warned, but if you decide this route is for you, do it more for the fun than the money, and read the small stakes live NL forum at twoplustwo poker before you take this road further.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Cwadda on July 29, 2014, 11:53:44 AM
Gambling is just about the most anti-Mustachian thing a person can do. That said, I do game the hell out of CET and MGM's rewards programs to get free meals and nearly free vacations without doing any gambling.  If you get the Total Rewards credit card and join Social Rewards, you can easily rack up a ton of reward credits that can be used for free meals or hotel rooms at CET resorts.  Also, if you play MGM's My Vegas game on Facebook (which can easily be played for free), you can save up loyalty points good for free meals, hotel rooms, show tickets, and more.

If you need to feel the rush of gambling, but you want to save money risk-free for ER, I recommend trying that stuff out.

Why?  If you gamble when you have the edge wouldn't that be very mustachian? With poker you are playing against other people, not the house.  As long as you make more from the other players than it cost you in rakes then you make money.   

I think poker belongs in a separate category from other casino games for that reason, and it can be very smart to gamble if you can make money at it.

This is true. Poker against other players is the #1 best probability pay-back game out there. This is followed by the house games:
-Video poker
-Blackjack [card counting + basic strategy]
-Blackjack [basic strategy]
-Craps

I've always found casino games somewhat intriguing but I don't have the time/money to put into them. I do know Blackjack basic strategy and rudimentary card counting, but that's about it (Blackjack's my favorite casino game).

I don't see the problem with supplementing your income with poker winnings. Just be really careful.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JGB on July 29, 2014, 11:57:50 AM
It's still a game where you may have a hot streak one day and then have a cold streak the next day that wipes out your bankroll.  It is also highly addictive and has destroyed a lot of people's lives.
If you are doing it right, no cold streak could wipe out your bankroll, especially in a matter of days. Playing in a way that let's that happen is like throwing your entire stash into a random small company based on reading one article in favor of their business.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JCfire on July 29, 2014, 11:58:30 AM
It's anti-Mustachian, because no matter what people say about strategy and the human element of poker, it is still a game of chance.  It's still a game where you may have a hot streak one day and then have a cold streak the next day that wipes out your bankroll.  It is also highly addictive and has destroyed a lot of people's lives.  Mustachians should be focused on "winning" all the time and that means not throwing your money away on games of chance.

I hope you don't have money in the stock market.  Isn't that also a "game" where you could be up one day, down another day?  How many people's lives have been destroyed by frittering their savings away in the stock market?  By daytrading, or having all their money in one stock?  Should mustachians be focused on "winning" all the time, even though that clearly rules out participating in volatile financial markets?

And riding your bike on the road.  That's a great hobby that can make your financial life easier if done safely, but no matter how skilled a cyclist you are, your life can be ruined by one bad driver.  Anti-mustachian because luck can turn an expected positive outcome into a catastrophic negative?

Winning poker is like investing in a way.  You don't put all your chips in one basket -- you "diversify" by having a bankroll that is very large relative to the amount that you bring to the table at any one time.

There are three big differences between poker and investing.  First, the average win rate is negative, and that is why 90% of people who play poker are making a financial mistake.  Second, the amount by which a skilled player is able to "beat the market" is huge, while in investing it's arguably zero, which is why the remaining 10% of players are not being anti-mustachian.  Third, investing gets easier with higher scale (lower fees as % of assets), while poker gets harder (tougher competition), so your investments grow exponentially while poker AT BEST earns you a linear income.

There are serious drawbacks to trying to earn money at poker, which I detailed in an earlier post, but it is silly to caricature it as anti-mustachian because of the fact that somebody who does it poorly and brings his whole life savings to the table will go broke.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Ohio Teacher on July 29, 2014, 12:02:23 PM
I second JCFire.  I am also a member of the TwoPlusTwo poker forum, and win rates for various levels has been discussed extensively.  In your short time, you may have played a couple thousand hands.  To get a true idea of your win rate, you will need to play a couple HUNDRED THOUSAND hands.  You are definitely running hot as far as variance is concerned.

The good news is that you posted this thread here and not on TwoPlusTwo or any other poker forum, where you would've been flamed endlessly for thinking that a few sessions are anywhere near indicative of what you can expect for the long term.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on July 29, 2014, 12:03:05 PM
Gambling is just about the most anti-Mustachian thing a person can do. That said, I do game the hell out of CET and MGM's rewards programs to get free meals and nearly free vacations without doing any gambling.  If you get the Total Rewards credit card and join Social Rewards, you can easily rack up a ton of reward credits that can be used for free meals or hotel rooms at CET resorts.  Also, if you play MGM's My Vegas game on Facebook (which can easily be played for free), you can save up loyalty points good for free meals, hotel rooms, show tickets, and more.

If you need to feel the rush of gambling, but you want to save money risk-free for ER, I recommend trying that stuff out.

Why?  If you gamble when you have the edge wouldn't that be very mustachian? With poker you are playing against other people, not the house.  As long as you make more from the other players than it cost you in rakes then you make money.   

I think poker belongs in a separate category from other casino games for that reason, and it can be very smart to gamble if you can make money at it.

It's anti-Mustachian, because no matter what people say about strategy and the human element of poker, it is still a game of chance.  It's still a game where you may have a hot streak one day and then have a cold streak the next day that wipes out your bankroll.  It is also highly addictive and has destroyed a lot of people's lives.  Mustachians should be focused on "winning" all the time and that means not throwing your money away on games of chance.

I disagree.  By that logic you should not put your money in the stock market.  Sure you have a positive expected return in the long run, but what if it goes on a bad streak and you lose 50% of your money? 

Poker is a game of math not chance.  Yes it is "chance" what cards will come up on any given hand, but that's why you only put yourself in situations where you have the advantage and the math on your side.  Mustachians should be using that math to their advantage, and if a certain situation offers them a +EV the mustachian thing to do would be to take that risk.   
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on July 29, 2014, 12:06:02 PM
Also you have a large enough bank roll to ride out the bad "streaks".  If you lose your entire bank roll on a bad "streak" you either

a.) did not have a large enough bank roll, or
b.) are not as good at poker as you think

It is very similar to the 4% SWR rule (and inherently having 25X+ your annual budget).  You have a large enough bank that even during an unlucky streak you don't lose it all, and have enough to recover.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: shotgunwilly on July 29, 2014, 12:21:59 PM
Also you have a large enough bank roll to ride out the bad "streaks".  If you lose your entire bank roll on a bad "streak" you either

a.) did not have a large enough bank roll, or
b.) are not as good at poker as you think

It is very similar to the 4% SWR rule (and inherently having 25X+ your annual budget).  You have a large enough bank that even during an unlucky streak you don't lose it all, and have enough to recover.

Nice comparison. I agree.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: defenestrate on July 29, 2014, 12:45:56 PM
Gambling is just about the most anti-Mustachian thing a person can do. That said, I do game the hell out of CET and MGM's rewards programs to get free meals and nearly free vacations without doing any gambling.  If you get the Total Rewards credit card and join Social Rewards, you can easily rack up a ton of reward credits that can be used for free meals or hotel rooms at CET resorts.  Also, if you play MGM's My Vegas game on Facebook (which can easily be played for free), you can save up loyalty points good for free meals, hotel rooms, show tickets, and more.

If you need to feel the rush of gambling, but you want to save money risk-free for ER, I recommend trying that stuff out.

Even if you are great, there are real transaction costs--patience, you have to wait a very long time for good odd bashing hands, the rake, which is going to be pricey over time. My gut tells me that you will not find many people who consider their skill at poker a supplemental income. To do this right, it is a real profession, not a side gig. And if it goes pear shaped (and it will) well...your screwed. A side job for income should not be so risky.

Why?  If you gamble when you have the edge wouldn't that be very mustachian? With poker you are playing against other people, not the house.  As long as you make more from the other players than it cost you in rakes then you make money.   

I think poker belongs in a separate category from other casino games for that reason, and it can be very smart to gamble if you can make money at it.

It's anti-Mustachian, because no matter what people say about strategy and the human element of poker, it is still a game of chance.  It's still a game where you may have a hot streak one day and then have a cold streak the next day that wipes out your bankroll.  It is also highly addictive and has destroyed a lot of people's lives.  Mustachians should be focused on "winning" all the time and that means not throwing your money away on games of chance.

I disagree.  By that logic you should not put your money in the stock market.  Sure you have a positive expected return in the long run, but what if it goes on a bad streak and you lose 50% of your money? 

Poker is a game of math not chance.  Yes it is "chance" what cards will come up on any given hand, but that's why you only put yourself in situations where you have the advantage and the math on your side.  Mustachians should be using that math to their advantage, and if a certain situation offers them a +EV the mustachian thing to do would be to take that risk.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Iron Mike Sharpe on July 29, 2014, 02:41:25 PM
I've been playing regularly for a little over four years.  Started playing when I gave up drinking to have something to do.  I'm a winning player overall, but my winrate sucks.  Too often I spew chips or do not get full value.  I need to work on getting better.

This year, I was ready to give up poker.  I started off the year on a big losing streak.  Then that caused me, without knowing it, to start playing a littel looser and more passive. 

I had also made the decision to quit taking Adderall back in December.  I think that played a part in my losing too.  Anyway, by mid June I was actually down $3700 on the year.  I had never had a losing year before. 

I had some problems at my job and realized that the last six months things in my professional life and personal life had started becoming unstructured and disorganized.  So, I made the decision to get back on Adderall.

The last 6 weeks, I have started thinking more about poker, reading books, working on hands, overall studying.  I am also able to focus more at the table.  I'm playing with confidence now and am playing tighter and with a lot more aggression.  I've cut about 40% off of my losses so far in that short time, and that's even with two of my biggest all-time losing sessions mixed in. 

I need to keep working on my game.  My local market is shrinking in size and I don't think the games are as easy as they once were, but there is money to be made still.  I just need to keep getting better playing the players.  I've definitely become a lot better at switching strategies between sitting back in a loose, wild game.  Or ramping up my bluffing in tight games with old people.

I'm becoming better about leaving games that are bad for me and moving to games where my favorite targets are sitting.  I need to get better at leaving the casino if none of the games are good and identifying when my play and thinking start to slip.  I often stay too long and give up profit because I will start playing looser or more passively.  I will start trying to hit a big hand and will lose track of situations where I can easily steal a pot.

But it is a great game.  I enjoy sitting down and talking with people of different backgrounds throughout an evening.  This Sunday I was playing with an old guy who is a successful restauranteur and owned businesses in the college town where I went to school.  We ended up talking a lot.  I was able to tell that he is a big time gambler and loves the action, so I know I want to play with him again as he admits he normally loses most of the time at poker.  The only bad thing was he hit a 3-outer against me in a $900 pot.  LOL.  Beats no longer phase me.  My bankroll is big enough for my play so I was able to smile and congratulate him on his win.  I'm sure I'll get it back from him over time.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Crabricorn on July 29, 2014, 04:28:42 PM
A more realistic win-rate over the long haul is 10bb per hour for a good winning player- this is pretty well established and understood within the poker community. This is over a very large sample of hands (hundreds of thousands). Yes, it is possible to turn $200 into $1300 in 30 minutes at 1/2 - I've done it - but it's not a realistic win rate over the long term. Neither is the $70 per hour mentioned earlier. $20 per hour would be a very nice win rate at 1/2 and you'd likely make more like 10-15 per hour - and you could certainly lose money.

You have to consider many factors - especially the rake and how that impacts your win rate. The goal should be to improve your skills as much as possible so that you can move up stakes where rake has less of an impact (but the players are much better so there is that). Get out of 1/2 asap and get to 2/5 with a goal of 5/10.

Poker can be a fabulous income supplement provided you have proper bankroll management, realistic expectations, work on your game constantly and avoid all pit games.

Should you do it? Maybe. If you have the will and enjoy the game (and have the time, finances, support of SO, etc), then sure.

I wouldn't count on online for any significant winnings as payouts are slow and uncertain. Live poker is the best option in most parts of the US (right now anyway).
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Marko34 on April 23, 2015, 09:22:00 PM
I am a grad student, who plays poker as a PRIMARY source of income.  I don't mention it often on this Forum, though you are all great people and all, just like in the real world, many people make judgements at first and fully grasp that poker is a skill and edge based game. Though if you are into money management and investing, its very similar.

I've steadily won money for years, I have backed data that shows I am a winner.  It very much resembles a long term Stock Market graph, many ups and downs but the more volume you put in, the more steadily it climbs. 

I play almost entirely Live, a mix of 1-3 2-5 and 5-10 NLHE.  2-5 is my preferred level to limit variance.

This has been the first year I have stopped working to play poker solely for income and it has worked out well.  I have put in almost 650 hours so far this calendar year, with an overall winrate of around $59 per hour.  It honestly should be higher, but the casino I live closest to doesn't have 2-5 running every day of the week so my winrate drops playing 1-3.  I have made just under 35k so far in 2015.

If anyone ever wants to chat poker on MMM and make it feel like less of a taboo, I'm always down.

GL to anyone else who plays recreationally or more seriously!
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: KittyFooFoo on April 24, 2015, 01:06:38 PM
Poker occasionally comes up on these forums.  The inevitable "BUT POKER IS RANDUM" discussions are nauseating, and embarrassing for a board that supposedly understands that investing outcomes are unpredictable short-term but predictable long-term.

OP, it is possible to make money playing poker, but it is very hard and takes a tremendous amount of study, practice and play (including ~100k hands, or ~3000 hrs of live play to even construct a reasonable CI to determine IF you are a winning player, and a MILLION hands to for a CI on your winrate with a reasonable margin of error of like ~2bb/100).   Your results from 5 sessions are absolutely meaningless. 

(https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/378800000392013618/9853f337af8dbe6b4e343efb74e08987_400x400.jpeg)
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dividendman on April 24, 2015, 01:33:53 PM
I would just like to add, on top of results with < 100k hands are meaningless, that make sure you keep track of how you are doing.

1) Keep a spreadsheet of, at a minimum, session hours, and the amount you won/lost.
2) Keep your bankroll separate from your other funds.
3) Deduct any expenses you have in order to play in the amount won/lost (travel, food, etc)

Doing the above will make sure you don't trick yourself into thinking you're winning when you're not. A lot of people say they are great at poker or some other game, and when I ask for their records they have none. I have a spreadsheet. If you don't have at least this then you are a losing player - I guarantee it.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on April 24, 2015, 02:49:01 PM
Any money used for poker should be considered throw away money.  As long as you approach it that way, you're fine.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: SugarMountain on April 24, 2015, 04:38:13 PM
Any money used for poker should be considered throw away money.  As long as you approach it that way, you're fine.

Why?  As has been pointed out, poker is a game of skill.  If someone truly is a winning player, they just need to be properly bankrolled for the limits they play.  The challenge is being good enough to beat limits that are high enough to not be destroyed by the rake.  I suspect I'll use poker as a side gig at some point. 

As others have also pointed out, online is tougher than live, at least for ring games.  Even towards the end of the golden years for online before the UIGEA, aka "Black Friday", it was getting a lot tougher.  There are several reasons for that:
- Tools like Poker Tracker and heads up display (basically shows you exactly how many hands your opponents play, allows data mining, etc)
- Collusion/cheating.  Sites try to keep this from happening, with mixed success.
- Good players at low limits doing massive multi-tabling, i.e. 4, 8, even 16+ tables at once. 
- Said players basically playing pretty close to mathematically optimally, i.e. they are not very exploitable. 
- Pain of depositing.  This got harder and harder as the years went on.  First, normal credit cards stopped working for most sites, then Netteller went away, then it all fell apart on black Friday.  Compare that to Vegas where you get tourists who go to Vegas with an expectation of losing $x over the course of a weekend so as long as they're having fun, they don't care.

That said, online was a great place to learn because you could play so many freaking hands.  I'm in a league where we play what is essentially a two table SNG once a month.  I used to play the equivalent of 5 years of league play in a few hours.  Plus, you could observe guys playing at ridiculous limits.  Nothing like watching Gus Hanson and Phil Ivey go at it with $100k+ pots playing Pot Limit Omaha. 
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on April 24, 2015, 04:49:49 PM
Any money used for poker should be considered throw away money.  As long as you approach it that way, you're fine.

Why?  As has been pointed out, poker is a game of skill.  If someone truly is a winning player, they just need to be properly bankrolled for the limits they play.  The challenge is being good enough to beat limits that are high enough to not be destroyed by the rake.  I suspect I'll use poker as a side gig at some point. 

As others have also pointed out, online is tougher than live, at least for ring games.  Even towards the end of the golden years for online before the UIGEA, aka "Black Friday", it was getting a lot tougher.  There are several reasons for that:
- Tools like Poker Tracker and heads up display (basically shows you exactly how many hands your opponents play, allows data mining, etc)
- Collusion/cheating.  Sites try to keep this from happening, with mixed success.
- Good players at low limits doing massive multi-tabling, i.e. 4, 8, even 16+ tables at once. 
- Said players basically playing pretty close to mathematically optimally, i.e. they are not very exploitable. 
- Pain of depositing.  This got harder and harder as the years went on.  First, normal credit cards stopped working for most sites, then Netteller went away, then it all fell apart on black Friday.  Compare that to Vegas where you get tourists who go to Vegas with an expectation of losing $x over the course of a weekend so as long as they're having fun, they don't care.

That said, online was a great place to learn because you could play so many freaking hands.  I'm in a league where we play what is essentially a two table SNG once a month.  I used to play the equivalent of 5 years of league play in a few hours.  Plus, you could observe guys playing at ridiculous limits.  Nothing like watching Gus Hanson and Phil Ivey go at it with $100k+ pots playing Pot Limit Omaha. 

Because the vast, vast, vast majority of people aren't good enough to play with money that puts their livelihood on the line.

Which opposes the reality that the vast, vast, vast majority of people think they're good enough to play with that kind of money on the line.

Even Gus Hanson and Phil Ivey don't play with money they aren't willing to lose.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: hodedofome on April 24, 2015, 08:47:18 PM

The general rule of thumb when playing as a career no limit is to have 100 buy ins as a reserve to handle streaks. In the case of $1$/2 NL, that would mean having a $20,000 bank roll strictly for poker. If you are doing this as a 'side job' You could probably knock that in half and set that aside as your funding.

I would caution you to make sure you are familiar with the game and are confident that you are playing efficient and mathematically sound. Don't drink when you are playing. Leave the table for a few minutes when you get frustrated. Don't play tired, don't feel sorry for other players. It is a serious job, so you need to treat it that way.

+100




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JamesAt15 on April 25, 2015, 04:51:54 AM
Because the vast, vast, vast majority of people aren't good enough to play with money that puts their livelihood on the line.

Which opposes the reality that the vast, vast, vast majority of people think they're good enough to play with that kind of money on the line.

I think you just made the argument in favor of playing poker in a serious fashion as a money-making opportunity.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on April 25, 2015, 08:32:06 AM
Because the vast, vast, vast majority of people aren't good enough to play with money that puts their livelihood on the line.

Which opposes the reality that the vast, vast, vast majority of people think they're good enough to play with that kind of money on the line.

I think you just made the argument in favor of playing poker in a serious fashion as a money-making opportunity.

How so?  The most likely scenario for most people is that they'll lose money or win a much smaller sum than if those hours were spent on a side gig.

That's why I said before, if you pursue this with money you can afford to lose, go for it.  But I wouldn't recommend putting your livelihood on the line playing poker.  Even the best pros in the world have gone bankrupt doing that.  Some have recovered and some haven't.

Ever heard of Gus Hansen?  Formerly one of the top pros.  He lost $5M in 2013, another $8M in 2014 and on Full Tilt alone he has lost $20M.  I believe there are reports he is now flat broke.

As long as you have the discipline to cap your losses (again, throwaway money), it can be a fun way to have a good time and maybe even make money while you're doing it.  But if you play it to make money, well, then you're not even playing the game right.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JamesAt15 on April 26, 2015, 04:51:49 AM
My apologies - I was interpreting that bit of your post to mean that the vast, vast majority of players who are playing for that kind of money on the line are not nearly good enough players to be playing for that level of money.

In other words, the games are good (i.e. there are plenty of opportunities for a skilled player with proper bankroll to expect to make money in these type of games).

Reading more closely, I see that wasn't your point at all and I mostly agree with your other points, so no further comment from me.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: libertarian4321 on April 26, 2015, 05:32:10 AM
I clicked on this thread assuming it was a (bad) joke.

Then I realized some of you really think gambling is a good plan to supplement your income.

Hoo boy.

Have fun with that, kids.  Just don't blow the rent money, and don't be surprised when your lofty income projections fail to materialize...
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on April 26, 2015, 08:56:44 AM
My apologies - I was interpreting that bit of your post to mean that the vast, vast majority of players who are playing for that kind of money on the line are not nearly good enough players to be playing for that level of money.

In other words, the games are good (i.e. there are plenty of opportunities for a skilled player with proper bankroll to expect to make money in these type of games).

Reading more closely, I see that wasn't your point at all and I mostly agree with your other points, so no further comment from me.

No worries.  I think the key word there is bankroll and then having the discipline to stick to it.

From an investment analogy perspective, I'd say it is a lot like day trading stocks.  It can be done, though not consistently well by many people, but any "investment" that offers up sizable upside typically also has a significant floor.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: arebelspy on April 27, 2015, 04:15:34 PM
I clicked on this thread assuming it was a (bad) joke.

Then I realized some of you really think gambling is a good plan to supplement your income.

Hoo boy.

Have fun with that, kids.  Just don't blow the rent money, and don't be surprised when your lofty income projections fail to materialize...

Poker is the stock market investing of gambling.  There's certainly negative EV ways to do it, but there's also positive EV ways if you have discipline and strategy.

Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Marko34 on April 27, 2015, 04:43:53 PM
I clicked on this thread assuming it was a (bad) joke.

Then I realized some of you really think gambling is a good plan to supplement your income.

Hoo boy.

Have fun with that, kids.  Just don't blow the rent money, and don't be surprised when your lofty income projections fail to materialize...

Poker is the stock market investing of gambling.  There's certainly negative EV ways to do it, but there's also positive EV ways if you have discipline and strategy.

This makes me laugh seeing how similar folks think about money on this blog but how something like poker shows who really understands it, and who is making snap judgements. I play for a living currently and would probably say only about 10% of random players are long term winners in the game. One of the reasons I got so into it was because of how fascinating it is and how many correlations you can draw from poker to other aspects of life. It takes TONS of hard work and practice. Leaks just like in life are your downfall in poker, plugging leaks just like we discuss when it comes to finances. Also there is tremendous mental strain. How many people can go to work and do everything correctly and actually leave having lost money for the day, because it happens to me quite often.  Long term though winning players win, that's the bottom line. The game has way less to do with luck and the cards you are dealt over a long term sample. I would also say there are many many solid life lessons you can learn from poker.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on April 27, 2015, 04:58:16 PM
Gambling is just about the most anti-Mustachian thing a person can do. That said, I do game the hell out of CET and MGM's rewards programs to get free meals and nearly free vacations without doing any gambling.  If you get the Total Rewards credit card and join Social Rewards, you can easily rack up a ton of reward credits that can be used for free meals or hotel rooms at CET resorts.  Also, if you play MGM's My Vegas game on Facebook (which can easily be played for free), you can save up loyalty points good for free meals, hotel rooms, show tickets, and more.

If you need to feel the rush of gambling, but you want to save money risk-free for ER, I recommend trying that stuff out.

Why?  If you gamble when you have the edge wouldn't that be very mustachian? With poker you are playing against other people, not the house.  As long as you make more from the other players than it cost you in rakes then you make money.   

I think poker belongs in a separate category from other casino games for that reason, and it can be very smart to gamble if you can make money at it.

It's anti-Mustachian, because no matter what people say about strategy and the human element of poker, it is still a game of chance.  It's still a game where you may have a hot streak one day and then have a cold streak the next day that wipes out your bankroll.  It is also highly addictive and has destroyed a lot of people's lives.  Mustachians should be focused on "winning" all the time and that means not throwing your money away on games of chance.
This is not even slightly true. I don't call investing gambling just because some idiot may put all their retirement money in Radioshack stocks. There are indexing equivalents of poker if you are familiar with the maths behind it and practice strict emotional control and bankroll management. I played poker professionally for many years and never gambled once. That said, I ended up hating it because it's a fucking rough job. Do not recommend. The fun is in the gambling. Playing poker properly is just doing statistics while someone kicks you in the gut over and over.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Jeremy E. on April 27, 2015, 05:53:20 PM
I'm not a professional poker player and don't have a whole lot to add to this conversation.... But wanted to let any interested folks know that there is a really cool podcast by the mad fientist where he interviews someone who originally made money by playing professional poker, then used the money as a startup fund and started a business which was a poker training website, and now makes a living from other investments dealing with online businesses. It was a good podcast that mainly focused on Positive Estimated Value, or +EV, it seems a someone that was commenting on this post last year, JGB, may be the person who was interviewed by him? Anyways just thought I'd add this, sorry for the offish topic post.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Iron Mike Sharpe on April 27, 2015, 06:36:57 PM
I clicked on this thread assuming it was a (bad) joke.

Then I realized some of you really think gambling is a good plan to supplement your income.

Hoo boy.

Have fun with that, kids.  Just don't blow the rent money, and don't be surprised when your lofty income projections fail to materialize...

Pretty sure the people in here discussing poker as a good source for a secondary or primary income can easily whip out spreadsheets / databases containing years worth of data that shows they are, indeed, winning players.

I know I have 5 years worth of data that shows I am a winning player.  It's a side income for me and gives me something to do in my spare time (no wife or kids).  Though I should put in my work away from the tables to get my winrate up as my market isn't super soft.

I also need to give myself more time off from playing to keep from getting burnout.  I've been on a 6-week $3K downswing right now that's wiped out about 40% or so of my profit for the year.  I need to start taking notes on key hands to replay them and run simulations at home the next day.  I know during this run there have been so many sick beats it's been unbelievable (how many times can you flop a set and lose?  LOL).  But I know there has also been bad play, or spots where I could have made money had I run a bluff that I might not have run due to lack of confidence.

One thing I know about myself is, I will not quit my real job to play professionally.  But once I hit my minimum number for FI, I probably will retire and play 1200 hours a year or so at the 1-3 or 2-5 levels to pad my stash / allow for a slow increase in travel budget.  Poker will definitely be one of my streams of revenue.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dividendman on April 27, 2015, 09:34:35 PM
I clicked on this thread assuming it was a (bad) joke.

Then I realized some of you really think gambling is a good plan to supplement your income.

Hoo boy.

Have fun with that, kids.  Just don't blow the rent money, and don't be surprised when your lofty income projections fail to materialize...

Pretty sure the people in here discussing poker as a good source for a secondary or primary income can easily whip out spreadsheets / databases containing years worth of data that shows they are, indeed, winning players.

I know I have 5 years worth of data that shows I am a winning player.  It's a side income for me and gives me something to do in my spare time (no wife or kids).  Though I should put in my work away from the tables to get my winrate up as my market isn't super soft.

I also need to give myself more time off from playing to keep from getting burnout.  I've been on a 6-week $3K downswing right now that's wiped out about 40% or so of my profit for the year.  I need to start taking notes on key hands to replay them and run simulations at home the next day.  I know during this run there have been so many sick beats it's been unbelievable (how many times can you flop a set and lose?  LOL).  But I know there has also been bad play, or spots where I could have made money had I run a bluff that I might not have run due to lack of confidence.

One thing I know about myself is, I will not quit my real job to play professionally.  But once I hit my minimum number for FI, I probably will retire and play 1200 hours a year or so at the 1-3 or 2-5 levels to pad my stash / allow for a slow increase in travel budget.  Poker will definitely be one of my streams of revenue.

3k downswing on a 2/5 NL table isn't much at all... on 1/2 it's a lot.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: MikeBear on April 28, 2015, 12:10:11 AM
Charlie Ergen, who started EchoStar and  Dish Network and has a present net worth of over $19 BILLION dollars started out by being a professional poker player! He used that gambling money in the early 1980's to buy a couple dishes, threw them into the back of a pickup truck, and drove around Colorado selling systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Ergen

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/ceos/charles-ergen-net-worth/


Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Iron Mike Sharpe on April 28, 2015, 07:56:41 AM
I clicked on this thread assuming it was a (bad) joke.

Then I realized some of you really think gambling is a good plan to supplement your income.

Hoo boy.

Have fun with that, kids.  Just don't blow the rent money, and don't be surprised when your lofty income projections fail to materialize...

Pretty sure the people in here discussing poker as a good source for a secondary or primary income can easily whip out spreadsheets / databases containing years worth of data that shows they are, indeed, winning players.

I know I have 5 years worth of data that shows I am a winning player.  It's a side income for me and gives me something to do in my spare time (no wife or kids).  Though I should put in my work away from the tables to get my winrate up as my market isn't super soft.

I also need to give myself more time off from playing to keep from getting burnout.  I've been on a 6-week $3K downswing right now that's wiped out about 40% or so of my profit for the year.  I need to start taking notes on key hands to replay them and run simulations at home the next day.  I know during this run there have been so many sick beats it's been unbelievable (how many times can you flop a set and lose?  LOL).  But I know there has also been bad play, or spots where I could have made money had I run a bluff that I might not have run due to lack of confidence.

One thing I know about myself is, I will not quit my real job to play professionally.  But once I hit my minimum number for FI, I probably will retire and play 1200 hours a year or so at the 1-3 or 2-5 levels to pad my stash / allow for a slow increase in travel budget.  Poker will definitely be one of my streams of revenue.

3k downswing on a 2/5 NL table isn't much at all... on 1/2 it's a lot.

1/3.  Taking a couple of weeks off to recharge my batteries and just get this out of my head.  I can't do anything about the hands where I had AA vs 88 and we both flopped a set, but I lost to runner-runner flush or when I had AA vs QQ and my opponent rivered a Q. 

But during this time, I'm going to go back and read a few texts I like.  And then focus on playing in position, having good bet/raise sizes, not paying off, not bluffing in bad spots, floating in good spots, etc.

I think its been a combination of two things:  1)  run bad, and 2)  I had a 2.5 month stretch where I was killing it, so I probably got cocky and let some leaks into my game.

Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JGB on April 28, 2015, 08:28:19 AM
It seems a someone that was commenting on this post last year, JGB, may be the person who was interviewed by him? Anyways just thought I'd add this, sorry for the offish topic post.
I've helped Mad Fientist debug some of his tools, and we talked briefly about working together to do further development efforts down the line (once we're both fully post-FIRE), but that's the extent of my interaction with him. I'm not to the point of FIRE just yet.

The podcast you're talking about was from another training site focused on mid-stakes and high-stakes poker, with info on how to beat people who know what they are doing. Grinderschool.com (my site) is focused on micro-stakes and low-stakes poker, with info on how to beat recreational players and others who have significant leaks in their game (as well as a recent shift toward overall Game-Theory-Optimal play).
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Jeremy E. on April 28, 2015, 11:24:24 AM
I didn't think there would be multiple people that poke around the FIRE blogs and also got a startup fund playing poker and then made poker training sites, but I was wrong, I guess it's not such a small world after all.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: DoubleDown on April 28, 2015, 01:34:01 PM
Re: Poker as "gambling." Some people understandably and reflexively equate playing poker with "gambling," but they should understand that poker and other games where you can gain a small statistical advantage over opponents will very reliably (with mathematical certainty) provide positive returns, as promised by the Law of Large Numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers).

In that sense, one is not "gambling" at all if they have a statistical advantage through their skill. In the short run there may be ups and downs, but in the long run they will reach their expected value. This is the very premise of how casinos earn billions of dollars every year, by exploiting small statistical advantages over the masses of players and lots of time. So, for those of you worried that skilled poker players are gambling away their futures, it's likely misplaced concern (unless they are unskilled, then it is very legitimate cause for concern). And for what it's worth, I'm not a poker player at all.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Iron Mike Sharpe on April 28, 2015, 02:43:45 PM
Yup.

It's like if I offered you a proposition to flip a quarter for $100.  If it is heads, I win $100 from you.  If it is tails, I will pay you $100.  Only thing is this quarter comes up tails 55% of the time.

Let's say I somehow win first 10 flips in a row and then ask you if you want to keep flipping.  Hopefully, your answer is to keep flipping indefinitely. 
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: arebelspy on April 28, 2015, 02:49:48 PM
Yup.

It's like if I offered you a proposition to flip a quarter for $100.  If it is heads, I win $100 from you.  If it is tails, I will pay you $100.  Only thing is this quarter comes up tails 55% of the time.

Let's say I somehow win first 10 flips in a row and then ask you if you want to keep flipping.  Hopefully, your answer is to keep flipping indefinitely.

I'd question the coin, the odds of a 45% occurance happening 10x in a row is 0.034%  (not 3%.. 1/33rd of 1%, i.e. ~3 times in 1000).  ;)

But yeah, with an EV of $10/flip, flipping indefinitely is the way to go. There will be swings, but as long as you have an edge, and can consistently have one without tilting or anything like that, the law of large numbers will play out.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on April 29, 2015, 12:45:15 PM
Re: Poker as "gambling." Some people understandably and reflexively equate playing poker with "gambling," but they should understand that poker and other games where you can gain a small statistical advantage over opponents will very reliably (with mathematical certainty) provide positive returns, as promised by the Law of Large Numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers).

In that sense, one is not "gambling" at all if they have a statistical advantage through their skill. In the short run there may be ups and downs, but in the long run they will reach their expected value. This is the very premise of how casinos earn billions of dollars every year, by exploiting small statistical advantages over the masses of players and lots of time. So, for those of you worried that skilled poker players are gambling away their futures, it's likely misplaced concern (unless they are unskilled, then it is very legitimate cause for concern). And for what it's worth, I'm not a poker player at all.

Misplaced concern?  Almost every single professional poker player has gone broke at least once in their careers.

Here's the problem with the math argument.  It works fine in a theoretical model over millions of hands.  It also works fine if you're not a human being.  The math argument says that if you have a 3% chance of winning a hand, the proper play is to make a bet that is any amount less than 3% of the pot as long as you have at least a 3% chance of winning. 

So, if someone makes a bet that is 2% of the pot size and your hand has a 3% chance or better of winning, you HAVE to call to play by the math.

If the pot is a $5,000,000 pot, to play by the math, you'd have to put up $100,000 even though you have a 97% chance of losing!

Unless you have money to throw away, you're never going to make that call, and you shouldn't.  Well, unless you're playing math theory, then you definitely should. 

Let's say if you sell all of your assets, you had $500,000.  And I offered you a one-time opportunity to make $5.5M.  You have a 90% chance of losing everything you have but mathematically, you should still make that call.  But no reasonable human would.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on April 29, 2015, 12:54:43 PM
Re: Poker as "gambling." Some people understandably and reflexively equate playing poker with "gambling," but they should understand that poker and other games where you can gain a small statistical advantage over opponents will very reliably (with mathematical certainty) provide positive returns, as promised by the Law of Large Numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers).

In that sense, one is not "gambling" at all if they have a statistical advantage through their skill. In the short run there may be ups and downs, but in the long run they will reach their expected value. This is the very premise of how casinos earn billions of dollars every year, by exploiting small statistical advantages over the masses of players and lots of time. So, for those of you worried that skilled poker players are gambling away their futures, it's likely misplaced concern (unless they are unskilled, then it is very legitimate cause for concern). And for what it's worth, I'm not a poker player at all.

Misplaced concern?  Almost every single professional poker player has gone broke at least once in their careers.

Here's the problem with the math argument.  It works fine in a theoretical model over millions of hands.  It also works fine if you're not a human being.  The math argument says that if you have a 3% chance of winning a hand, the proper play is to make a bet that is any amount less than 3% of the pot as long as you have at least a 3% chance of winning. 

So, if someone makes a bet that is 2% of the pot size and your hand has a 3% chance or better of winning, you HAVE to call to play by the math.

If the pot is a $5,000,000 pot, to play by the math, you'd have to put up $100,000 even though you have a 97% chance of losing!

Unless you have money to throw away, you're never going to make that call, and you shouldn't.  Well, unless you're playing math theory, then you definitely should. 

Let's say if you sell all of your assets, you had $500,000.  And I offered you a one-time opportunity to make $5.5M.  You have a 90% chance of losing everything you have but mathematically, you should still make that call.  But no reasonable human would.

This is why you need a large enough bank roll to cover the bets.  The same reason you don't retire when you only have 10X your spending accumulated.  You might end up ok, but what if the market crashes hard the first year of FIRE? Then your retirement is ruined because you only have 10X your expenses, and that just dropped to 5x because of the market crash.  To use that as an example that retirement is impossible because you could potentially lose half your stache is absurd.

I need to restate it because it's critical to long term success in poker.  You must have enough money in your bank roll to ride out the bad beats, and streaks of bad cards, just like you need enough money in retirement accounts to ride out bad markets.  Placing a significant fraction of your stache or bankroll on a single bet is a bad move even if you have +EV.  It's +EV, but you can't afford to take that bet in the first place.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on April 29, 2015, 12:58:40 PM
Re: Poker as "gambling." Some people understandably and reflexively equate playing poker with "gambling," but they should understand that poker and other games where you can gain a small statistical advantage over opponents will very reliably (with mathematical certainty) provide positive returns, as promised by the Law of Large Numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers).

In that sense, one is not "gambling" at all if they have a statistical advantage through their skill. In the short run there may be ups and downs, but in the long run they will reach their expected value. This is the very premise of how casinos earn billions of dollars every year, by exploiting small statistical advantages over the masses of players and lots of time. So, for those of you worried that skilled poker players are gambling away their futures, it's likely misplaced concern (unless they are unskilled, then it is very legitimate cause for concern). And for what it's worth, I'm not a poker player at all.

Misplaced concern?  Almost every single professional poker player has gone broke at least once in their careers.

Here's the problem with the math argument.  It works fine in a theoretical model over millions of hands.  It also works fine if you're not a human being.  The math argument says that if you have a 3% chance of winning a hand, the proper play is to make a bet that is any amount less than 3% of the pot as long as you have at least a 3% chance of winning. 

So, if someone makes a bet that is 2% of the pot size and your hand has a 3% chance or better of winning, you HAVE to call to play by the math.

If the pot is a $5,000,000 pot, to play by the math, you'd have to put up $100,000 even though you have a 97% chance of losing!

Unless you have money to throw away, you're never going to make that call, and you shouldn't.  Well, unless you're playing math theory, then you definitely should. 

Let's say if you sell all of your assets, you had $500,000.  And I offered you a one-time opportunity to make $5.5M.  You have a 90% chance of losing everything you have but mathematically, you should still make that call.  But no reasonable human would.
You're saying this as if this is some amazing new idea that poker players aren't aware of which disproves everything when really it's about as basic and easily solvable as anything in poker gets. If you practice bankroll management you will never be in a situation in which any decision represents a threat to your bankroll.

You shouldn't talk about poker with people who know more about poker than you which in this case means literally everyone.  MOD NOTE: Forum rule #1.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: DoubleDown on April 29, 2015, 02:31:39 PM
Re: Poker as "gambling." Some people understandably and reflexively equate playing poker with "gambling," but they should understand that poker and other games where you can gain a small statistical advantage over opponents will very reliably (with mathematical certainty) provide positive returns, as promised by the Law of Large Numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers).

In that sense, one is not "gambling" at all if they have a statistical advantage through their skill. In the short run there may be ups and downs, but in the long run they will reach their expected value. This is the very premise of how casinos earn billions of dollars every year, by exploiting small statistical advantages over the masses of players and lots of time. So, for those of you worried that skilled poker players are gambling away their futures, it's likely misplaced concern (unless they are unskilled, then it is very legitimate cause for concern). And for what it's worth, I'm not a poker player at all.

Misplaced concern?  Almost every single professional poker player has gone broke at least once in their careers.

Here's the problem with the math argument.  It works fine in a theoretical model over millions of hands.  It also works fine if you're not a human being.  The math argument says that if you have a 3% chance of winning a hand, the proper play is to make a bet that is any amount less than 3% of the pot as long as you have at least a 3% chance of winning. 

So, if someone makes a bet that is 2% of the pot size and your hand has a 3% chance or better of winning, you HAVE to call to play by the math.

If the pot is a $5,000,000 pot, to play by the math, you'd have to put up $100,000 even though you have a 97% chance of losing!

Unless you have money to throw away, you're never going to make that call, and you shouldn't.  Well, unless you're playing math theory, then you definitely should. 

Let's say if you sell all of your assets, you had $500,000.  And I offered you a one-time opportunity to make $5.5M.  You have a 90% chance of losing everything you have but mathematically, you should still make that call.  But no reasonable human would.

This is why you need a large enough bank roll to cover the bets.

+1

For the doubters: Math also provides a reliable way to determine the exact bankroll amount (or capital) required to succeed with X% probability. For example, you can determine exactly how much is needed to assure you will never go bankrupt with 99.99% probability, or whatever level of certainty is desired.

Again, this is how casinos make money and do not go bankrupt based on some random guy's "lucky streak." They have a gigantic amount of capital to ride out anyone's winning streak, and they put betting limits in place to ensure that no one (or small number) of very large bets will break them.

If you replace the words "advantage player" with "casino" you'll see that this strategy is in fact a profitable one. Casinos have made money for decades taking advantage of the known odds in their favor. It's no different for a skilled player, and if you stick to the claim that an advantage player is destined to lose or go bankrupt, then you really have to say all casinos are destined to go bankrupt when someone gets lucky against them (that is, not because they just went out of business for lack of clientele or other business reasons). That is clearly a false argument, as casinos are turning billions of dollars in profits by exploiting the relatively small statistical odds in their favor.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dividendman on April 29, 2015, 03:22:15 PM
Also the fact that a lot of professional poker players have gone bankrupt only *proves* the point of bankroll management. When you're playing $1M cash games having $30M isn't enough.

There are a lot of poker pros who haven't gone bankrupt as well.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: JGB on April 30, 2015, 06:50:44 AM
As others have noted, bankroll management is important and by playing within the realm of what you can mathematically risk without risking your bankroll, you essentially lower the chance of bad results at games you beat to nearly zero. But there is another important side note: many (possibly most) of the famous poker pros who have gone bankrupt did so through non-poker gambling. It's a story that is repeated over and over: guy makes good, reliable money playing poker and then he loses all of it and more playing high stakes roulette.

To someone approaching poker from a non-gambling perspective, that scenario has absolutely no relevance. Many poker players (myself included) detest table games where you are gambling against the house.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Ccube19 on April 30, 2015, 07:23:49 AM
I've also thought about suplementing income with poker in retirement, something that could happen as soon as January. Plan is to have 700k plus invested so I figure 15-20k for a poker bank roll isn't too risky.

Best case scenario is I can get in 10,000 hands between now and January, any thoughts on the data I should capture as I play, other then the obvious money and time?  Also any conservative adjustments I cam make to adjust my win rate to at least get an idea if it's positive since 10,000 hands isn't a great sample?

Thanks
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on April 30, 2015, 08:53:47 AM
Re: Poker as "gambling." Some people understandably and reflexively equate playing poker with "gambling," but they should understand that poker and other games where you can gain a small statistical advantage over opponents will very reliably (with mathematical certainty) provide positive returns, as promised by the Law of Large Numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers).

In that sense, one is not "gambling" at all if they have a statistical advantage through their skill. In the short run there may be ups and downs, but in the long run they will reach their expected value. This is the very premise of how casinos earn billions of dollars every year, by exploiting small statistical advantages over the masses of players and lots of time. So, for those of you worried that skilled poker players are gambling away their futures, it's likely misplaced concern (unless they are unskilled, then it is very legitimate cause for concern). And for what it's worth, I'm not a poker player at all.

Misplaced concern?  Almost every single professional poker player has gone broke at least once in their careers.

Here's the problem with the math argument.  It works fine in a theoretical model over millions of hands.  It also works fine if you're not a human being.  The math argument says that if you have a 3% chance of winning a hand, the proper play is to make a bet that is any amount less than 3% of the pot as long as you have at least a 3% chance of winning. 

So, if someone makes a bet that is 2% of the pot size and your hand has a 3% chance or better of winning, you HAVE to call to play by the math.

If the pot is a $5,000,000 pot, to play by the math, you'd have to put up $100,000 even though you have a 97% chance of losing!

Unless you have money to throw away, you're never going to make that call, and you shouldn't.  Well, unless you're playing math theory, then you definitely should. 

Let's say if you sell all of your assets, you had $500,000.  And I offered you a one-time opportunity to make $5.5M.  You have a 90% chance of losing everything you have but mathematically, you should still make that call.  But no reasonable human would.

This is why you need a large enough bank roll to cover the bets.  The same reason you don't retire when you only have 10X your spending accumulated.  You might end up ok, but what if the market crashes hard the first year of FIRE? Then your retirement is ruined because you only have 10X your expenses, and that just dropped to 5x because of the market crash.  To use that as an example that retirement is impossible because you could potentially lose half your stache is absurd.

I need to restate it because it's critical to long term success in poker.  You must have enough money in your bank roll to ride out the bad beats, and streaks of bad cards, just like you need enough money in retirement accounts to ride out bad markets.  Placing a significant fraction of your stache or bankroll on a single bet is a bad move even if you have +EV.  It's +EV, but you can't afford to take that bet in the first place.

Yep, agreed.  That's why in my original reply, I said that it's not a horrible idea if you have a) money you're willing to potentially lose and b) the discipline to walk away if that money should go depleted.

The math argument, as you pointed out, only works well in theory because poker/math theory discounts the factor of personal finance.  There are even scenarios in poker where it makes more sense to fold a favored hand such as AA pre-flop than to play it.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on April 30, 2015, 08:59:08 AM
You build your own bankroll management into the maths underlying poker. They're not two unrelated considerations. There are things you can do with a large bankroll that you cannot with a small but that doesn't change whether or not you can play poker safely, it changes how you can play.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on April 30, 2015, 09:04:37 AM
You build your own bankroll management into the maths underlying poker. They're not two unrelated considerations. There are things you can do with a large bankroll that you cannot with a small but that doesn't change whether or not you can play poker safely, it changes how you can play.

Though I will say -- if you're playing poker based on the math, you should be making the same plays regardless of chip stack size since poker theory only applies on a hand to hand basis.

But I agree with what you said.  I'd much rather buy in with more chips coming in to the table.  Gives me more opportunities to bluff at pots, play various hands, etc which to me, is what makes the game fun. 
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on April 30, 2015, 09:16:49 AM
Re: Poker as "gambling." Some people understandably and reflexively equate playing poker with "gambling," but they should understand that poker and other games where you can gain a small statistical advantage over opponents will very reliably (with mathematical certainty) provide positive returns, as promised by the Law of Large Numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers).

In that sense, one is not "gambling" at all if they have a statistical advantage through their skill. In the short run there may be ups and downs, but in the long run they will reach their expected value. This is the very premise of how casinos earn billions of dollars every year, by exploiting small statistical advantages over the masses of players and lots of time. So, for those of you worried that skilled poker players are gambling away their futures, it's likely misplaced concern (unless they are unskilled, then it is very legitimate cause for concern). And for what it's worth, I'm not a poker player at all.

Misplaced concern?  Almost every single professional poker player has gone broke at least once in their careers.

Here's the problem with the math argument.  It works fine in a theoretical model over millions of hands.  It also works fine if you're not a human being.  The math argument says that if you have a 3% chance of winning a hand, the proper play is to make a bet that is any amount less than 3% of the pot as long as you have at least a 3% chance of winning. 

So, if someone makes a bet that is 2% of the pot size and your hand has a 3% chance or better of winning, you HAVE to call to play by the math.

If the pot is a $5,000,000 pot, to play by the math, you'd have to put up $100,000 even though you have a 97% chance of losing!

Unless you have money to throw away, you're never going to make that call, and you shouldn't.  Well, unless you're playing math theory, then you definitely should. 

Let's say if you sell all of your assets, you had $500,000.  And I offered you a one-time opportunity to make $5.5M.  You have a 90% chance of losing everything you have but mathematically, you should still make that call.  But no reasonable human would.
You're saying this as if this is some amazing new idea that poker players aren't aware of which disproves everything when really it's about as basic and easily solvable as anything in poker gets. If you practice bankroll management you will never be in a situation in which any decision represents a threat to your bankroll.

You shouldn't talk about poker with people who know more about poker than you which in this case means literally everyone.  MOD NOTE: Forum rule #1.

Hey, relax.  We're in agreement.  If you go back, you'll see that I said that as long as you're playing with money that you are willing to lose, then I think it's fine.  Poker is one of the few ways you can be social and make a profit!

And what makes you think I don't know anything about poker?  I've been playing it for over 15 years.  I'm well aware of how to calculate hand strength against a flop, pot odds, etc.

And my point from the beginning was I'm a big fan of playing poker with a fixed bankroll that you're willing to lose.  My post you quoted was in response to someone else who pulled out math theory which, if you follow it, always pays off in the end.  But as I've stated, math theory doesn't apply because we don't play poker in a vacuum as there are other variables that need to be factored in such as personal finance that math theory doesn't consider.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on April 30, 2015, 09:46:22 AM
Those variables are part of the maths that you do which means if you factor them in then it will always pay off in the end. You're assuming that the maths being done isn't accounting for bankroll management and therefore that the maths doesn't work because of bankroll management. It's like assuming that physicists refuse to work outside of frictionless vacuums and therefore they can't make ballistics calculations on earth. The maths any halfway competent poker player does accounts for bankroll management and it works.

Hell, take a super basic like the 20 buyin rule, don't sit down unless you have 20 buyins. If you drop below 20 buyins for a table with a $100 buyin then you have to go sit at a table with a lower buyin where you now have more than 20. If you keep losing there then you drop down again. That rule alone means that you can literally never, ever go bankrupt, even if you never win a hand. All you can do is approach bankruptcy, Xeno style, as you find smaller and smaller buyin tables forever.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: DoubleDown on April 30, 2015, 11:37:44 AM
My post you quoted was in response to someone else who pulled out math theory which, if you follow it, always pays off in the end.  But as I've stated, math theory doesn't apply because we don't play poker in a vacuum as there are other variables that need to be factored in such as personal finance that math theory doesn't consider.

I'm beating a dead horse here, but I disagree (I'm the person who pulled out the math theory). You are correct that if you don't follow the strategy, then the strategy will not work. To wit: If you get drunk, get lazy, lose control of your betting or playing discipline because you're behind (or ahead), or any other way to not follow the mathematical strategy, then the strategy won't work. But that's an indictment of the player, not the strategy. It is possible to be a disciplined player and then the mathematical advantage will play out every time, with mathematical certainty.

To use the investing analogy others have drawn: If someone gets scared in a market dip and sells all their index funds, that does not mean index investing is a sham since people don't operate in a vacuum; this means the person blew it by letting their emotions overwhelm good sense. The strategy is sound, but it has to be followed to work. You're throwing the baby out with the bath water in saying "we don't operate in a vacuum."

That said, I'll repeat that your point is well taken if a player cannot be disciplined. In the same vein, an investor who cannot stomach inevitable market dips better not have a heavy stock allocation, or they're likely to panic and ditch the strategy at precisely the wrong time.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: TheGrimSqueaker on April 30, 2015, 12:19:36 PM
I see how it's mathematically inevitable, over a long enough period of time, that an advantage player with a sufficiently large bankroll (like the "house" in a casino) will win often enough to provide a reliable income.

The math clearly works in a closed system, where the players you've got are all that there ever will be, and nobody will ever join or leave, and nobody will ever improve. But it doesn't seem to me that the poker-playing community at large is all that closed. People start playing, or retire, all the time. Also, people's skill levels change as they get more experience and learn more about the game. Not everyone progresses equally.

What I don't see is exactly how a person determines that *they* are the advantage player at a given table or series of tables, unless it's a group of people they've consistently and soundly defeated in the past. A winning track record is a good and convincing description of past performance, but nobody controls who sits down at the table *next* time. Best case scenario, it's a complete beginner who has no clue. Worst case scenario, it's a bigger shark than me, with an equally sufficient bankroll, and if that happens often enough I'm dinner.

How does a person determine whether a given loss is the result of ordinary chance, or a result of an encounter with a superior player?

I've got a hefty ego, so it seems to me that, if I were to play poker, I would repeatedly think that I'm the advantage player in situations when I'm actually not. This happened to a guy I met, who ended up losing $150k in retirement savings and his house, plus ending up about $75k in debt. He started out with a very nice winning record in online poker, and he was a very skilled and disciplined player, but there were bigger sharks. Admittedly he wasn't wise in terms of managing his losses. But it makes me wonder, how can a person believe they're that good, if they really aren't? Are they just out of their league?

If there are five people at a poker table, only one of them is the advantage player. Of the other four, are they *all* there with the intention of most likely losing? Or are 80% of them confused about who the advantage player is?

Maybe those of you who play poker as a form of income can enlighten me on this. Would you actually sit down and play with a table full of finalists from a recent ESPN televised poker tournament? I mean, besides for fun just to say you'd done it.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on April 30, 2015, 12:39:08 PM
You have $20. You sit at a table with a $1 buyin with people who don't give a fuck and are just gambling with pennies for fun and you choose not to gamble. Congratulations, you are now a profitable player who can beat people who are deliberately playing suboptimally. You learn what you can from that experience and you slowly grind up to $40. You now sit at the $2 table (remembering to drop back down to the $1 if you ever hit $39) and you repeat. You learn more about the maths that underlies the decision making, you read about the game theory and you practice a lot. You evaluate your decision making on hands you lost, and hands you won, and you invite fellow players for feedback.

At this point you either improve as a player, get $80 and move up to the $4 buyin table or you've hit your limit and stay at the $2 buyin table. If you improve the process repeats.

If you're an idiot you start right at the top and go "it can't be that hard, I'll pick it up as I go" on a table you can't even afford. If you're not an idiot you find out where your limits are and work out what it is you're playing for. If you're playing for the challenge and love of the game you could quite easily justify taking the winnings at the lower table and losing them having a shot at a higher table you've never beaten because you know that's what you need to do (along with a lot of study) to really improve your game and develop as a player. If you're playing for easy money you find out where the cutoff for you is, where you can maximise the money people donate to you, and you relax at that level confident in the knowledge that the people who view you as a donor are busy eating the bigger fish at the next table.

Sure it's possible that Elky might sit down at your pennystakes table and ruin your day but it's pretty unlikely. People generally stay within a range that they can sustainably afford because the people who cannot sustainably afford it aren't there anymore. So no, you don't think "I play solid poker, I can take anyone". You think "I play better poker than the people who typically play at this level so I can take their money" or you think "I play about as well as these people but I need to play with them to develop".

The guy you met was a gambler who couldn't control his losses. He had no business playing poker. He was not a very skilled and very disciplined player, very disciplined players don't lose their houses and very skilled players don't play with people they know are better with them for money they can't afford to lose. Table selection is a skill. Hell, there are even tools in online poker which will tell you which tables have the fish on them based upon the statistical records of the players.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Iron Mike Sharpe on April 30, 2015, 12:41:22 PM
You can have more than one player at a table that has an edge.  I've moved to tables where I've seen two really bad players at even though there were several decent to good players in the game already.  Because I knew the bad players were the type to gamble it up and rebuy several times. 

How do you determine if you have an edge in a particular game?  You pay attention.  You watch how every hand plays out.  You watch the cards on the board, you pay attention to how much people bet / raise.  You pay attention to when players call.  Hopefully you get to see a few hands that go all the way to a showdown at the end so you can actually see what cards they were holding.  You get as much information as you can and you assemble the pieces to the puzzle.

I get a general feel for the game I'm in.  If it doesn't seem like a game in which I have +EV, I will leave or at least ask for a table change. 

I only play casino poker (as opposed to online) and I only play at the 1/2, 1/3 or 2/5 limits.  At these limits, you are going to have bad players in just about every game.  Heck, even winning players at these limits have holes in their games that can be exploited.  You just need to pay attention to the playing styles of everyone in the game and know good strategies on how to exploit them. 

Analyzing play is a huge skill in this game.  You can play really well and lose a lot of money in a night.  You can play really poorly and win a lot of money.  Or the exact opposite of those.  It's definitely a skill that takes time to develop - having the awareness to know if you actually played well or not.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on April 30, 2015, 12:49:00 PM
The amazing thing about poker is that the guy you met who lost his house, retirement and life savings probably thought he was a good poker player, in spite of those things. That confusion is part of the reason it keeps the gamblers coming back, it doesn't simply give you the statistical outcome of your decisions, it gives you a long term approximation of them which causes short term variance which protects the ego.

Imagine if someone said that they were a very successful stock picker, they knew which companies would go up and which would go down and they had an excellent understanding of diversification. Then they told you they cashed out their retirement at a 10% penalty, mortgaged and remortgaged their house and borrowed a shitton of money to buy Radioshack shares. You would most likely identify a disconnect between their self image and claims of their knowledge and investment strategy and what they actually proceeded to do. That guy was the poker equivalent of the Radioshack investor who still believes that they have a working understanding of diversification and still believes they can pick stocks.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on April 30, 2015, 01:12:33 PM
(http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/funny-pictures-auto-Homer-Simpson-stupid-472698.jpeg)
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on April 30, 2015, 07:33:39 PM
Those variables are part of the maths that you do which means if you factor them in then it will always pay off in the end. You're assuming that the maths being done isn't accounting for bankroll management and therefore that the maths doesn't work because of bankroll management. It's like assuming that physicists refuse to work outside of frictionless vacuums and therefore they can't make ballistics calculations on earth. The maths any halfway competent poker player does accounts for bankroll management and it works.

Hell, take a super basic like the 20 buyin rule, don't sit down unless you have 20 buyins. If you drop below 20 buyins for a table with a $100 buyin then you have to go sit at a table with a lower buyin where you now have more than 20. If you keep losing there then you drop down again. That rule alone means that you can literally never, ever go bankrupt, even if you never win a hand. All you can do is approach bankruptcy, Xeno style, as you find smaller and smaller buyin tables forever.

Of course I am assuming that if you play by math theory that bankroll isn't factored in.  You can't factor it in because the mathematical model doesn't actually factor bankroll in.  The math model requires that you MUST call if you have pot odds to do so regardless of your bankroll.  (Basically, if the chance of you winning is greater than or equal to the price to play relative to the entire pot, then the model requires you to play).  I'm no statistician, but I'm quite certain an EV calculation for a poker hand does not factor in bankroll in anyway.

A person can't have it both ways.  A person can't say that they're going to come out on top because they play the math, and then, not actually play the math.

There's a human element.  There's a finite floor the math model doesn't account for.  The math model allows for a loss of a million hands in a row but requires that you keep playing because over time, you'll win a million and one hands (so to speak).
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on April 30, 2015, 07:55:20 PM
My post you quoted was in response to someone else who pulled out math theory which, if you follow it, always pays off in the end.  But as I've stated, math theory doesn't apply because we don't play poker in a vacuum as there are other variables that need to be factored in such as personal finance that math theory doesn't consider.

I'm beating a dead horse here, but I disagree (I'm the person who pulled out the math theory). You are correct that if you don't follow the strategy, then the strategy will not work. To wit: If you get drunk, get lazy, lose control of your betting or playing discipline because you're behind (or ahead), or any other way to not follow the mathematical strategy, then the strategy won't work. But that's an indictment of the player, not the strategy. It is possible to be a disciplined player and then the mathematical advantage will play out every time, with mathematical certainty.

To use the investing analogy others have drawn: If someone gets scared in a market dip and sells all their index funds, that does not mean index investing is a sham since people don't operate in a vacuum; this means the person blew it by letting their emotions overwhelm good sense. The strategy is sound, but it has to be followed to work. You're throwing the baby out with the bath water in saying "we don't operate in a vacuum."

That said, I'll repeat that your point is well taken if a player cannot be disciplined. In the same vein, an investor who cannot stomach inevitable market dips better not have a heavy stock allocation, or they're likely to panic and ditch the strategy at precisely the wrong time.

I guess my point was that the mathematical advantage only plays out over long periods of time.  How many times do you have to flip a fair coin to get to 50% heads and 50% tails?  Sometimes twice.  Sometimes a trillion.  Sometimes more.  But the model requires that you keep flipping that coin and you keep going and going and going because eventually whether it is two times or a trillion times, or even more than that, you will get to 50%.  In reality though, sometimes you can't keep going because the math model requires infinite iterations to guarantee success.

And I never said playing poker is a sham (and if it is, then consider me guilty as charged).  I was simply saying that people should keep in mind that the only way to guarantee success in poker is playing the math, and the only way to play the math is with an infinite bankroll because the math assumes corrections over infinite iterations.  The math model could mean you lose every hand for 100 years but then win every hand after that for another 100 years.  Unfortunately, again, finite quantity, you probably won't live for 100 years and you might run out of time or money before the correction kicks in to get your model to play out.

So use some fun money and if you make money doing it, awesome, and if not, oh well, that's ok too.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on April 30, 2015, 09:35:26 PM
Those variables are part of the maths that you do which means if you factor them in then it will always pay off in the end. You're assuming that the maths being done isn't accounting for bankroll management and therefore that the maths doesn't work because of bankroll management. It's like assuming that physicists refuse to work outside of frictionless vacuums and therefore they can't make ballistics calculations on earth. The maths any halfway competent poker player does accounts for bankroll management and it works.

Hell, take a super basic like the 20 buyin rule, don't sit down unless you have 20 buyins. If you drop below 20 buyins for a table with a $100 buyin then you have to go sit at a table with a lower buyin where you now have more than 20. If you keep losing there then you drop down again. That rule alone means that you can literally never, ever go bankrupt, even if you never win a hand. All you can do is approach bankruptcy, Xeno style, as you find smaller and smaller buyin tables forever.

Of course I am assuming that if you play by math theory that bankroll isn't factored in. You can't factor it in because the mathematical model doesn't actually factor bankroll in.  The math model requires that you MUST call if you have pot odds to do so regardless of your bankroll. (Basically, if the chance of you winning is greater than or equal to the price to play relative to the entire pot, then the model requires you to play).  I'm no statistician, but I'm quite certain an EV calculation for a poker hand does not factor in bankroll in anyway.

A person can't have it both ways.  A person can't say that they're going to come out on top because they play the math, and then, not actually play the math.

There's a human element.  There's a finite floor the math model doesn't account for.  The math model allows for a loss of a million hands in a row but requires that you keep playing because over time, you'll win a million and one hands (so to speak).

You factor your bankroll in by not putting yourself in situations that would require a large portion of your bank roll to be at stake.  If you offered me a bet that gave me the edge by 1%, I would take that bet, all day everyday.  Unless it required a significant fraction of my bank roll. If I only had enough to place 5 bets with you, I probably wouldn't take that bet because what are the odds I survive with only a slight edge?  My advantage would have to increase significantly to compensate for the fact that there is a real probability of going bust.  Or I would lower the amount of the bet until it was small enough relative to my bank roll that I could ride out a reasonable streak of bad luck.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: arebelspy on April 30, 2015, 10:35:10 PM
Look up the kelly criterion for more info on bet size.

It's actually mathematically figured out the optimal amount to maximize returns and minimize risk, based on your edge (it's edge over odds).

Fortune's Formula is a fascinating book on it.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on May 01, 2015, 08:09:48 AM
Those variables are part of the maths that you do which means if you factor them in then it will always pay off in the end. You're assuming that the maths being done isn't accounting for bankroll management and therefore that the maths doesn't work because of bankroll management. It's like assuming that physicists refuse to work outside of frictionless vacuums and therefore they can't make ballistics calculations on earth. The maths any halfway competent poker player does accounts for bankroll management and it works.

Hell, take a super basic like the 20 buyin rule, don't sit down unless you have 20 buyins. If you drop below 20 buyins for a table with a $100 buyin then you have to go sit at a table with a lower buyin where you now have more than 20. If you keep losing there then you drop down again. That rule alone means that you can literally never, ever go bankrupt, even if you never win a hand. All you can do is approach bankruptcy, Xeno style, as you find smaller and smaller buyin tables forever.

Of course I am assuming that if you play by math theory that bankroll isn't factored in.  You can't factor it in because the mathematical model doesn't actually factor bankroll in.  The math model requires that you MUST call if you have pot odds to do so regardless of your bankroll.  (Basically, if the chance of you winning is greater than or equal to the price to play relative to the entire pot, then the model requires you to play).  I'm no statistician, but I'm quite certain an EV calculation for a poker hand does not factor in bankroll in anyway.

A person can't have it both ways.  A person can't say that they're going to come out on top because they play the math, and then, not actually play the math.

There's a human element.  There's a finite floor the math model doesn't account for.  The math model allows for a loss of a million hands in a row but requires that you keep playing because over time, you'll win a million and one hands (so to speak).
There is no pot that can exist at a table you are sitting at which can endanger your bankroll. If there is you are sitting at the wrong table and playing the wrong game.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on May 01, 2015, 09:01:41 AM
Look up the kelly criterion for more info on bet size.

It's actually mathematically figured out the optimal amount to maximize returns and minimize risk, based on your edge (it's edge over odds).

Fortune's Formula is a fascinating book on it.

I'm familiar with the Kelly criterion though I can't say I've read the book.  What I will say, is that once again, strictly applying KC in real world poker isn't practical, realistic or probably even at all feasible.

For starters, you don't know the actual winning and losing odds of your hand since that number requires you to know a) what the other person(s) has and b) which cards are now "dead".  The probability of winning is entirely dependent on that variable --  if you hold, let's say, 34 offsuit.  Then you have about a 30% chance of winning pre-flop versus 32 offsuit, a 15% chance of winning against AA and something like an 18% chance of winning against KK.  In order to properly utilize KC, you have to know what your actual chance of winning is and you can't because you don't know what the other guy has.

Additionally, KC doesn't factor in blind size either.  Let's say you're short stacked and are now down to 4x the big blinds.  If you're holding AA, and a better raises the pot to 100% of your stack, the correct non-KC move there is to go all-in.  But if you strictly utilize KC, then you can't ever bet your entire chip stack pre-flop because it won't allow you to (it won't allow you to bet 100% of your chips for any situation that isn't a 100% guaranteed payout).  If I was short stacked to 4x BB and got raised all-in, KC would require me to fold!

What about human factors?  For instance, if I know a guy I'm playing scratches his nose almost every time he is bluffing (though not always), how can I apply that knowledge in to KC?  I guess I can't.  What if there's a cheater at the table?  (Unlikely but math theory does require that there not be in order to work).

Bottom line, I think incorporating elements of math theory in the game of poker is extremely helpful.  And I do believe that those who incorporate math theory in to their games are probably going to do better than those that do not (though, 'better' could mean losing less).  And I'm definitely not saying one shouldn't incorporate it either.  You should!  My whole point is that the justification of playing poker because aligning your play to 'the math' means you'll come out on top every time and thus poker is a reliable source of income is a fallacy.  You can't ever truly align your play to the math, most people could never afford to play enough hands to actually see the math play itself out in a favorable way, and there are far too many human variables that have to be factored in.

It's a game.  Have fun with it.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on May 01, 2015, 09:08:30 AM
That's a completely different argument to the one you were making. You were arguing that the existence of variance makes it inevitable that everyone goes bust, even if they have a mathematical edge. That was disproved by one of the most basic concepts of poker, bankroll management, whereby you prevent yourself from ever risking a statistically significant portion of your bankroll on any given hand and adjust your stakes according to your bankroll. Which is pretty much poker 101, nobody trying to play poker well is ignoring bankroll management, it's really at the foundation and it's incredible to me that you would attempt to talk about poker without knowing about it, let alone accusing those who clearly do know about poker of not accounting for it.

You're now arguing that even if you make bets limited in size to account for variance you can't win at poker because you can never really know if your play is mathematically optimal. And you can't know but you can make very good guesses and the people whose guesses, informed by an awful lot of information and analysis, typically prove true win at poker. If we're going to start dismissing things because of a lack of absolute knowledge about the state of things then particle physics would like a word with engineering.

A good poker player will make an informed guess and because he's a good poker player he'll be right often enough to justify the bets he places on those guesses.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on May 01, 2015, 09:11:55 AM
Those variables are part of the maths that you do which means if you factor them in then it will always pay off in the end. You're assuming that the maths being done isn't accounting for bankroll management and therefore that the maths doesn't work because of bankroll management. It's like assuming that physicists refuse to work outside of frictionless vacuums and therefore they can't make ballistics calculations on earth. The maths any halfway competent poker player does accounts for bankroll management and it works.

Hell, take a super basic like the 20 buyin rule, don't sit down unless you have 20 buyins. If you drop below 20 buyins for a table with a $100 buyin then you have to go sit at a table with a lower buyin where you now have more than 20. If you keep losing there then you drop down again. That rule alone means that you can literally never, ever go bankrupt, even if you never win a hand. All you can do is approach bankruptcy, Xeno style, as you find smaller and smaller buyin tables forever.

Of course I am assuming that if you play by math theory that bankroll isn't factored in.  You can't factor it in because the mathematical model doesn't actually factor bankroll in.  The math model requires that you MUST call if you have pot odds to do so regardless of your bankroll.  (Basically, if the chance of you winning is greater than or equal to the price to play relative to the entire pot, then the model requires you to play).  I'm no statistician, but I'm quite certain an EV calculation for a poker hand does not factor in bankroll in anyway.

A person can't have it both ways.  A person can't say that they're going to come out on top because they play the math, and then, not actually play the math.

There's a human element.  There's a finite floor the math model doesn't account for.  The math model allows for a loss of a million hands in a row but requires that you keep playing because over time, you'll win a million and one hands (so to speak).
There is no pot that can exist at a table you are sitting at which can endanger your bankroll. If there is you are sitting at the wrong table and playing the wrong game.

Sure there is.  In theory, there are table limits approaching zero.

In reality, there aren't.  What's the smallest actual table limit in the world?  Let's say for the sake of argument it is $0.01/$0.02.  Using your 20 BB rule, you buy in for 40 cents.  You limp and fold to a raiser.  Now there is no table you can possibly sit at.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: shotgunwilly on May 01, 2015, 09:16:40 AM
There is no pot that can exist at a table you are sitting at which can endanger your bankroll. If there is you are sitting at the wrong table and playing the wrong game.

Sure there is.  In theory, there are table limits approaching zero.

In reality, there aren't.  What's the smallest actual table limit in the world?  Let's say for the sake of argument it is $0.01/$0.02.  Using your 20 BB rule, you buy in for 40 cents.  You limp and fold to a raiser.  Now there is no table you can possibly sit at.

"Time to hit Bitcoin poker!" *Buys in for 0.0015 BTC*
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on May 01, 2015, 09:17:18 AM
That's a completely different argument to the one you were making. You were arguing that the existence of variance makes it inevitable that everyone goes bust, even if they have a mathematical edge. That was disproved by one of the most basic concepts of poker, bankroll management, whereby you prevent yourself from ever risking a statistically significant portion of your bankroll on any given hand and adjust your stakes according to your bankroll. Which is pretty much poker 101, nobody trying to play poker well is ignoring bankroll management, it's really at the foundation and it's incredible to me that you would attempt to talk about poker without knowing about it, let alone accusing those who clearly do know about poker of not accounting for it.

You're now arguing that even if you make bets limited in size to account for variance you can't win at poker because you can never really know if your play is mathematically optimal. And you can't know but you can make very good guesses and the people whose guesses, informed by an awful lot of information and analysis, typically prove true win at poker. If we're going to start dismissing things because of a lack of absolute knowledge about the state of things then particle physics would like a word with engineering.

A good poker player will make an informed guess and because he's a good poker player he'll be right often enough to justify the bets he places on those guesses.

My argument hasn't changed.  My argument has always been that you can't really say you're playing based on math theory, when you can't play based on math theory.  You can certainly incorporate it in to your game, but you can't play strictly to it. Which is why, IMO, statements such as "it plays out every time" don't really apply (I can't remember if it was you or someone else who said that).  It only applies when you play STRICTLY to the math theory and you do so over a substantial (and probably unrealistic for most especially in live play) number of iterations.

It's a game.  Sometimes, you're going to call down a bet with only ace high because you had a hunch.  And sometimes you'll be right, and sometimes you'll be wrong.  And the best poker players are the ones who incorporate the math, and have really, really good hunches.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on May 01, 2015, 09:21:15 AM
Those variables are part of the maths that you do which means if you factor them in then it will always pay off in the end. You're assuming that the maths being done isn't accounting for bankroll management and therefore that the maths doesn't work because of bankroll management. It's like assuming that physicists refuse to work outside of frictionless vacuums and therefore they can't make ballistics calculations on earth. The maths any halfway competent poker player does accounts for bankroll management and it works.

Hell, take a super basic like the 20 buyin rule, don't sit down unless you have 20 buyins. If you drop below 20 buyins for a table with a $100 buyin then you have to go sit at a table with a lower buyin where you now have more than 20. If you keep losing there then you drop down again. That rule alone means that you can literally never, ever go bankrupt, even if you never win a hand. All you can do is approach bankruptcy, Xeno style, as you find smaller and smaller buyin tables forever.

Of course I am assuming that if you play by math theory that bankroll isn't factored in.  You can't factor it in because the mathematical model doesn't actually factor bankroll in.  The math model requires that you MUST call if you have pot odds to do so regardless of your bankroll.  (Basically, if the chance of you winning is greater than or equal to the price to play relative to the entire pot, then the model requires you to play).  I'm no statistician, but I'm quite certain an EV calculation for a poker hand does not factor in bankroll in anyway.

A person can't have it both ways.  A person can't say that they're going to come out on top because they play the math, and then, not actually play the math.

There's a human element.  There's a finite floor the math model doesn't account for.  The math model allows for a loss of a million hands in a row but requires that you keep playing because over time, you'll win a million and one hands (so to speak).
There is no pot that can exist at a table you are sitting at which can endanger your bankroll. If there is you are sitting at the wrong table and playing the wrong game.

Sure there is.  In theory, there are table limits approaching zero.

In reality, there aren't.  What's the smallest actual table limit in the world?  Let's say for the sake of argument it is $0.01/$0.02.  Using your 20 BB rule, you buy in for 40 cents.  You limp and fold to a raiser.  Now there is no table you can possibly sit at.
Firstly the 20 buyin rule doesn't mean you put all your money at a table and you can only sit at tables when you have 20 big blinds. It means you have enough to lose your initial buyin 20x over.

Secondly if you can't find a table so small that you can afford 20 buyins then you know you're not in a position to play with your bankroll and that's totally fine. You just don't play. You still don't go bankrupt. Sometimes in life there is no table you can possibly sit at and what separates good poker players from gamblers is that they don't decide to sit down and play anyway.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on May 01, 2015, 09:21:40 AM
Those variables are part of the maths that you do which means if you factor them in then it will always pay off in the end. You're assuming that the maths being done isn't accounting for bankroll management and therefore that the maths doesn't work because of bankroll management. It's like assuming that physicists refuse to work outside of frictionless vacuums and therefore they can't make ballistics calculations on earth. The maths any halfway competent poker player does accounts for bankroll management and it works.

Hell, take a super basic like the 20 buyin rule, don't sit down unless you have 20 buyins. If you drop below 20 buyins for a table with a $100 buyin then you have to go sit at a table with a lower buyin where you now have more than 20. If you keep losing there then you drop down again. That rule alone means that you can literally never, ever go bankrupt, even if you never win a hand. All you can do is approach bankruptcy, Xeno style, as you find smaller and smaller buyin tables forever.

Of course I am assuming that if you play by math theory that bankroll isn't factored in.  You can't factor it in because the mathematical model doesn't actually factor bankroll in.  The math model requires that you MUST call if you have pot odds to do so regardless of your bankroll.  (Basically, if the chance of you winning is greater than or equal to the price to play relative to the entire pot, then the model requires you to play).  I'm no statistician, but I'm quite certain an EV calculation for a poker hand does not factor in bankroll in anyway.

A person can't have it both ways.  A person can't say that they're going to come out on top because they play the math, and then, not actually play the math.

There's a human element.  There's a finite floor the math model doesn't account for.  The math model allows for a loss of a million hands in a row but requires that you keep playing because over time, you'll win a million and one hands (so to speak).
There is no pot that can exist at a table you are sitting at which can endanger your bankroll. If there is you are sitting at the wrong table and playing the wrong game.

Sure there is.  In theory, there are table limits approaching zero.

In reality, there aren't.  What's the smallest actual table limit in the world?  Let's say for the sake of argument it is $0.01/$0.02.  Using your 20 BB rule, you buy in for 40 cents.  You limp and fold to a raiser.  Now there is no table you can possibly sit at.

You keep saying this and I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of bankroll management.  If I have a million dollar bankroll, and i'm sitting at a $0.01/0.02 table with only 10 cents left, I don't make my calculations based on 10 cents, I make them based on $1M.  If I get AA, I am going all in, even though i'm risking 100% of what I have on the table.   Even though i'm risking 100% of what is on the table, I am only risking a tiny fraction of my overall bankroll.  I could be in that situation thousands of times and lose and still not end up bankrupt. 

If you are eve in a situation where a single bet is staking a large percentage of your overall bankroll, then you are playing at too high of stakes in the first place.  Your bankroll can't support those stakes, so you shouldn't ever be in that game to begin with.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Psychstache on May 01, 2015, 09:55:09 AM
Those variables are part of the maths that you do which means if you factor them in then it will always pay off in the end. You're assuming that the maths being done isn't accounting for bankroll management and therefore that the maths doesn't work because of bankroll management. It's like assuming that physicists refuse to work outside of frictionless vacuums and therefore they can't make ballistics calculations on earth. The maths any halfway competent poker player does accounts for bankroll management and it works.

Hell, take a super basic like the 20 buyin rule, don't sit down unless you have 20 buyins. If you drop below 20 buyins for a table with a $100 buyin then you have to go sit at a table with a lower buyin where you now have more than 20. If you keep losing there then you drop down again. That rule alone means that you can literally never, ever go bankrupt, even if you never win a hand. All you can do is approach bankruptcy, Xeno style, as you find smaller and smaller buyin tables forever.

Of course I am assuming that if you play by math theory that bankroll isn't factored in.  You can't factor it in because the mathematical model doesn't actually factor bankroll in.  The math model requires that you MUST call if you have pot odds to do so regardless of your bankroll.  (Basically, if the chance of you winning is greater than or equal to the price to play relative to the entire pot, then the model requires you to play).  I'm no statistician, but I'm quite certain an EV calculation for a poker hand does not factor in bankroll in anyway.

A person can't have it both ways.  A person can't say that they're going to come out on top because they play the math, and then, not actually play the math.

There's a human element.  There's a finite floor the math model doesn't account for.  The math model allows for a loss of a million hands in a row but requires that you keep playing because over time, you'll win a million and one hands (so to speak).
There is no pot that can exist at a table you are sitting at which can endanger your bankroll. If there is you are sitting at the wrong table and playing the wrong game.

Sure there is.  In theory, there are table limits approaching zero.

In reality, there aren't.  What's the smallest actual table limit in the world?  Let's say for the sake of argument it is $0.01/$0.02.  Using your 20 BB rule, you buy in for 40 cents.  You limp and fold to a raiser.  Now there is no table you can possibly sit at.

You keep saying this and I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of bankroll management.  If I have a million dollar bankroll, and i'm sitting at a $0.01/0.02 table with only 10 cents left, I don't make my calculations based on 10 cents, I make them based on $1M.  If I get AA, I am going all in, even though i'm risking 100% of what I have on the table.   Even though i'm risking 100% of what is on the table, I am only risking a tiny fraction of my overall bankroll.  I could be in that situation thousands of times and lose and still not end up bankrupt. 

If you are eve in a situation where a single bet is staking a large percentage of your overall bankroll, then you are playing at too high of stakes in the first place.  Your bankroll can't support those stakes, so you shouldn't ever be in that game to begin with.

I agree with FrugalNacho, you only seem to be considering buy-in and not bankroll.

To give a practical example, a few posts back someone mentioned playing poker and starting with a bankroll of 15-20k. Let's say 20k for easy math.

Given that bankroll, he should probably sit down at a $1-$2 NL. He can buy in for 100 Big Blinds, or $200. Let's say he get's into your scenario where he has a small edge and the appropriate pot odds to call, but it puts him all in. You make the mathematically correct play, but lose anyways. You have two options at this point.

1. Take a break and leave the table.
2. Buy back in for 200, bringing your current bankroll down to 19,600.

Assuming you can play correctly and play well all the time (fairly big assumptions) and managing your bankroll correctly, you would have to be the unluckiest person of all time to lose it all.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on May 01, 2015, 02:04:12 PM
Those variables are part of the maths that you do which means if you factor them in then it will always pay off in the end. You're assuming that the maths being done isn't accounting for bankroll management and therefore that the maths doesn't work because of bankroll management. It's like assuming that physicists refuse to work outside of frictionless vacuums and therefore they can't make ballistics calculations on earth. The maths any halfway competent poker player does accounts for bankroll management and it works.

Hell, take a super basic like the 20 buyin rule, don't sit down unless you have 20 buyins. If you drop below 20 buyins for a table with a $100 buyin then you have to go sit at a table with a lower buyin where you now have more than 20. If you keep losing there then you drop down again. That rule alone means that you can literally never, ever go bankrupt, even if you never win a hand. All you can do is approach bankruptcy, Xeno style, as you find smaller and smaller buyin tables forever.

Of course I am assuming that if you play by math theory that bankroll isn't factored in.  You can't factor it in because the mathematical model doesn't actually factor bankroll in.  The math model requires that you MUST call if you have pot odds to do so regardless of your bankroll.  (Basically, if the chance of you winning is greater than or equal to the price to play relative to the entire pot, then the model requires you to play).  I'm no statistician, but I'm quite certain an EV calculation for a poker hand does not factor in bankroll in anyway.

A person can't have it both ways.  A person can't say that they're going to come out on top because they play the math, and then, not actually play the math.

There's a human element.  There's a finite floor the math model doesn't account for.  The math model allows for a loss of a million hands in a row but requires that you keep playing because over time, you'll win a million and one hands (so to speak).
There is no pot that can exist at a table you are sitting at which can endanger your bankroll. If there is you are sitting at the wrong table and playing the wrong game.

Sure there is.  In theory, there are table limits approaching zero.

In reality, there aren't.  What's the smallest actual table limit in the world?  Let's say for the sake of argument it is $0.01/$0.02.  Using your 20 BB rule, you buy in for 40 cents.  You limp and fold to a raiser.  Now there is no table you can possibly sit at.

You keep saying this and I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of bankroll management.  If I have a million dollar bankroll, and i'm sitting at a $0.01/0.02 table with only 10 cents left, I don't make my calculations based on 10 cents, I make them based on $1M.  If I get AA, I am going all in, even though i'm risking 100% of what I have on the table.   Even though i'm risking 100% of what is on the table, I am only risking a tiny fraction of my overall bankroll.  I could be in that situation thousands of times and lose and still not end up bankrupt. 

If you are eve in a situation where a single bet is staking a large percentage of your overall bankroll, then you are playing at too high of stakes in the first place.  Your bankroll can't support those stakes, so you shouldn't ever be in that game to begin with.

I agree with FrugalNacho, you only seem to be considering buy-in and not bankroll.

To give a practical example, a few posts back someone mentioned playing poker and starting with a bankroll of 15-20k. Let's say 20k for easy math.

Given that bankroll, he should probably sit down at a $1-$2 NL. He can buy in for 100 Big Blinds, or $200. Let's say he get's into your scenario where he has a small edge and the appropriate pot odds to call, but it puts him all in. You make the mathematically correct play, but lose anyways. You have two options at this point.

1. Take a break and leave the table.
2. Buy back in for 200, bringing your current bankroll down to 19,600.

Assuming you can play correctly and play well all the time (fairly big assumptions) and managing your bankroll correctly, you would have to be the unluckiest person of all time to lose it all.

Ahhh, I was considering bankroll to be the chip stack you're buying in for.  I can see where you guys are coming from but using that method means playing some very, very unconventional poker (which I'll happily concede MIGHT be the point of using the mathematical model).

You have a bankroll of $20,000.  You buy in for $200 at a $1/$2 NLHE table.  You look down at your hand and you have 72 offsuit and one player goes all-in for your $200 and shows you his pocket aces.  (72 off wins 12% of the time against AA).

You're seriously going to call that?  Relative to your bankroll, that is an insta-call using Kelly Criterion or nearly any model factoring in total bankroll (vs current chip stack).
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: frugalnacho on May 01, 2015, 02:13:43 PM
Ahhh, I was considering bankroll to be the chip stack you're buying in for.  I can see where you guys are coming from but using that method means playing some very, very unconventional poker (which I'll happily concede MIGHT be the point of using the mathematical model).

You have a bankroll of $20,000.  You buy in for $200 at a $1/$2 NLHE table.  You look down at your hand and you have 72 offsuit and one player goes all-in for your $200 and shows you his pocket aces.  (72 off wins 12% of the time against AA).

You're seriously going to call that?  Relative to your bankroll, that is an insta-call using Kelly Criterion or nearly any model factoring in total bankroll (vs current chip stack).

Uh...Your $20,000 bankroll only determines the limit of the table you are going to sit at.  You wouldn't sit at a table where you could potentially lose a significant chunk of that.  So sitting with $200 at a $1/2 NL table is fine. You could bust several times and barely dent that bank roll. Now that you've determined you have a sufficient bank roll to play at that table the calls you make going forward have nothing to do with your bank roll and everything to do with EV.  If you have 72 off then you have a -EV from calling AA.   I would go a step further and say you have -EV calling almost no matter what.  You shouldn't be playing 72 off or suited unless you got blinded in.  If it's raised you should be out (because you most likely have a -EV situation at that point since 72 is so shitty).
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on May 01, 2015, 02:16:10 PM
I don't think you know the rules of poker based upon any of these posts.

Your bankroll is the money you have not at the table to protect the money at the table from the impact of variance. The buyin is the money at the table. The most you can risk on any one bet is the buyin, not the bankroll. This isn't unconventional poker, this is standard, you're simply completely unfamiliar with the subject.

In your example of course you fold 72o against AA face up. You have your $200 to bet against his $200 and you know you're seriously behind. You make the decisions based upon the money at the table, not the bankroll. The bankroll is a completely unrelated factor to the money at the table, it's against the rules of poker to bring more money onto the table or to take money off the table during hands in progress. The bankroll is what protects you against variance when his 72o beats your AA allin. The bankroll is what allows you to sit down with $200 and play with that $200 but only the $200 in play are in play. The bankroll is not in play.

Even if they bet $20,000 on their 72o face up preflop and you had AA you wouldn't be able to call for more than your $200 buyin because that's all the money you would have in play. The bankroll isn't involved.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on May 01, 2015, 02:29:25 PM
I think I can see the confusion here.

Okay, if he goes allin for $200 and you have $200 at the table and a bankroll of $20,000 you don't actually win $20,000 when you call with $200. If you did win $20,000 when your 72o beat his AA and the cost to call was only $200 then you should absolutely do it but that's not in the game. The most you can win is the $ he put in that you matched at a 1:1 ratio (along with any other money other people put in). This means that if he puts in $200 the most you can win is his $200 (and again any other money others put in) so as your 72o is behind and there are no other considerations in terms of pot or implied odds (because it's a random allin preflop) you can safely fold.

Now if you could for whatever reason win all of someone's bankroll while only risking one buyin of your own then you should naturally call any 2 with any 2 as long as their bankroll was at least 10x larger than your buyin but that would be an incredibly silly game. That game would be incredibly rigged against one player and wouldn't be called poker.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on May 01, 2015, 04:57:01 PM
I think I can see the confusion here.

Okay, if he goes allin for $200 and you have $200 at the table and a bankroll of $20,000 you don't actually win $20,000 when you call with $200. If you did win $20,000 when your 72o beat his AA and the cost to call was only $200 then you should absolutely do it but that's not in the game. The most you can win is the $ he put in that you matched at a 1:1 ratio (along with any other money other people put in). This means that if he puts in $200 the most you can win is his $200 (and again any other money others put in) so as your 72o is behind and there are no other considerations in terms of pot or implied odds (because it's a random allin preflop) you can safely fold.

Now if you could for whatever reason win all of someone's bankroll while only risking one buyin of your own then you should naturally call any 2 with any 2 as long as their bankroll was at least 10x larger than your buyin but that would be an incredibly silly game. That game would be incredibly rigged against one player and wouldn't be called poker.

The confusion is, in part, because I'm having different conversations with different people.  arebelspy brought up the Kelly Criterion which tries to optimize betting size but it is relative to your stack, not your bankroll.  And then I'm trying to have a conversation with you about bankroll.  Phew!  Believe me, I'm completely aware of what a bankroll versus stack is.  If you really think otherwise, then that's what we'd call in the poker world ... a bad read.  (So let's hope you read better in live play than online!  Ha! =P)

My whole premise has been that math theory can only be utilized as a general guideline, not a strict, hard and fast rule because the dynamics of the game don't allow for it.  To break it down to its simplest form, you never actually know what true chance your hand has of holding up because you don't know what the other person(s) have nor which cards are dead.  You're guessing.  Or assessing as some might call it, trying to determine opponent hand strength through tells, betting patterns, etc.  Additionally, over time, you're going to encounter situations which occasionally require you to veer from the model (i.e. tournament play strategy vs cash game strategy).

Like I've said countless times.  Everyone should incorporate different elements of math theory in their game.  No one is dismissing math so your analogy of particle physics would be considered invalid.  The only thing being dismissed, by me, is the idea that a human poker player can actually play utilizing a poker strategy that is not only STRICTLY mathematical but also wins in the long run.  If you don't play in accordance with the math 100% of the time, you can't claim to play in accordance with the math nor can you possibly receive the benefits of a model that requires it be played 100% of the time (that is, the advantage that nets out over time).  There is no model that says it will pay out X amount with Y hunches included.

So great, you utilize a mathematical model.  You should.  Keep it up.  You'll improve as a poker player.  But don't be that guy that claims to have figured out how to guarantee profits from playing poker because while that guy is still a couple rungs above the guy whose got a winning roulette system, that guy is still a couple rungs about the guy whose got a winning roulette system.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on May 01, 2015, 07:57:17 PM
I really believe that nobody with even a moderate understanding of poker could be as confused as you about the difference between a buyin and a bankroll and whether a bankroll is at risk in a hand of poker. There's only so many times you can make completely inaccurate claims about a subject before you don't get to claim to be an authority on the subject anymore.

Bankroll management is built to guarantee a sample size sufficient to limit the impact of variance. As long as you can find a game small enough for your bankroll you can literally never go bankrupt with good bankroll management, all you can have is a bankroll sufficient for a very low buyin. Now obviously in practice you might struggle to find really tiny games but pennystakes exist where one hour of minimum wage work will get you 20 or so buyins. The law of very large numbers can be meaningfully applied to poker and the impact of short term variance can, with good bankroll management, be dismissed.

Which brings us to "can you have a statistical edge?". The answer is very obviously yes. Some people have fun playing poker by going allin preflop blind on every hand for example. This is online pennystakes bullshit but it does happen. If you're playing heads up then you can play successfully against that by folding the bottom 80% of hands and calling the top 20%. It won't be a statistically perfect game but it will have an edge against someone who is playing 100% of hands allin preflop. Your play doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be statistically superior to their play. You can identify probabilities and patterns about their play, make educated guesses and profit from those.

So, if a statistical edge can exist, and it certainly can, and if variance can be dismissed, and it certainly can then is profit guaranteed. The answer is unequivocally yes. In a game where you have a statistical edge and a sufficient number of hands you will always come out ahead. If you can't practice bankroll management you will go bust at some point due to the law of very high numbers, even if you have a statistical edge. Likewise if you have bankroll management but suck at poker then you'll fail to make any money. Good poker players have both, that's why they're called good poker players.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Marko34 on May 01, 2015, 10:13:55 PM
I see how it's mathematically inevitable, over a long enough period of time, that an advantage player with a sufficiently large bankroll (like the "house" in a casino) will win often enough to provide a reliable income.

The math clearly works in a closed system, where the players you've got are all that there ever will be, and nobody will ever join or leave, and nobody will ever improve. But it doesn't seem to me that the poker-playing community at large is all that closed. People start playing, or retire, all the time. Also, people's skill levels change as they get more experience and learn more about the game. Not everyone progresses equally.

What I don't see is exactly how a person determines that *they* are the advantage player at a given table or series of tables, unless it's a group of people they've consistently and soundly defeated in the past. A winning track record is a good and convincing description of past performance, but nobody controls who sits down at the table *next* time. Best case scenario, it's a complete beginner who has no clue. Worst case scenario, it's a bigger shark than me, with an equally sufficient bankroll, and if that happens often enough I'm dinner.

How does a person determine whether a given loss is the result of ordinary chance, or a result of an encounter with a superior player?

I've got a hefty ego, so it seems to me that, if I were to play poker, I would repeatedly think that I'm the advantage player in situations when I'm actually not. This happened to a guy I met, who ended up losing $150k in retirement savings and his house, plus ending up about $75k in debt. He started out with a very nice winning record in online poker, and he was a very skilled and disciplined player, but there were bigger sharks. Admittedly he wasn't wise in terms of managing his losses. But it makes me wonder, how can a person believe they're that good, if they really aren't? Are they just out of their league?

If there are five people at a poker table, only one of them is the advantage player. Of the other four, are they *all* there with the intention of most likely losing? Or are 80% of them confused about who the advantage player is?

Maybe those of you who play poker as a form of income can enlighten me on this. Would you actually sit down and play with a table full of finalists from a recent ESPN televised poker tournament? I mean, besides for fun just to say you'd done it.


Hey there, basically my short answer is this comes with years of experience.  It is very easy at times at the lower levels to within a first few orbits of play in a live poker game to have remarkably accurate reads on which player fits into which categories of player types.  Whether they are a solid recreational player, someone who plays for a living, someone who is just there to have fun, someone who has a gambling problem, someone who thinks they are good but they aren't, and so on.  I think the reason i am a successful live poker actually stems from my observation abilities being better than the standard person, which has helped me tremendously. 

You would also be surprised to learn that the mental game of poker, and ego itself are a HUGE part of the game.  Your emotional control, and spotting the leaks in the ego's and emotional control of other players is important.

I would say sitting at a decent 2-5 table anywhere in America based on MANY factors i would quickly realize who is good and who isn't in less than 20-30 minutes for sure.  How the bet, how they act during hands, the poker lingo they use, the way they pitch their cards, what they are wearing, how they act when they win or lose a hand, if they pay off a bet when it was clear they weren't good, or if they check on the end when its clear they should have value bet, if they do things they have "seen on tv" like checking in the dark and so on.  I mean I could rant endlessly on things that will tip you off to a skill level of a character, but just trust me, if you are a good player you can spot the other good players and more importantly the bad ones.

What you said about your friend is something that happens to tons of players.  Not for as much money in the games I play, but yes when bad players go on heaters, they often don't think logically and come to expect their run to continue.  And many times their run happened in the first place not because of solid disciplined play but because they ran above EV (expected value) and didnt realize it.  Then all of a sudden ego comes into play when you start leveling off or losing but instead of reevaluating your results and going over hands and studying and discussing strategy with friends and so on and dropping down in stakes if needed they blow through all their winnings instead.  These players don't have discipline or strong mental games, and probably aren't winners overall. 

The final thing you mentioned about bad players being confused is very true.  I've been playing for years in one area with people who are losers year after year but keep coming back.  Most of these guys are well off and its recreation to them.  They are playing for fun, and don't see a huge difference between poker and black jack, they never study, their games never improve.  They understand who some of the better players are, but they often times will talk about how the better players are luckier and so on, when they don't see that the better players just find better spots then they do.  As a winning player, it certainly boggles my mind that people can play as long term losers, but the HUGE majority of players in live poker rooms are losers.  I would estimate over a year span, the people who play more than once a week at their local casino, i would say 90% are losing money over time. 

This thread is very funny to me.  And poker is a much much deeper beast of a game then most people give it credit for.  You need to have quite the stomach for it, and I don't even play the biggest stakes, I mostly stick to 2-5NL.

Anyway, it's a great game, and a great source of income, but its like anything else, you have to be obsessed with it and put in the work.  I have a friend/coach who I talk to everyday about poker.  I have a subscription to a live poker site, Crushlivepoker.com that is specific to improve your live poker game and so on. 

April was my best month of the year so far! +9.5k.  This calendar year I'm up about 35k so far.  Its just like a normal job for me, i put in real job hours.  My hourly is about 63/hour. 

But again its not easy, the emotional roller-coaster can be brutal on the bad days.  I wouldn't recommend it unless you love it. 
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: zurich78 on May 02, 2015, 08:12:57 AM
I really believe that nobody with even a moderate understanding of poker could be as confused as you about the difference between a buyin and a bankroll and whether a bankroll is at risk in a hand of poker. There's only so many times you can make completely inaccurate claims about a subject before you don't get to claim to be an authority on the subject anymore.

Bankroll management is built to guarantee a sample size sufficient to limit the impact of variance. As long as you can find a game small enough for your bankroll you can literally never go bankrupt with good bankroll management, all you can have is a bankroll sufficient for a very low buyin. Now obviously in practice you might struggle to find really tiny games but pennystakes exist where one hour of minimum wage work will get you 20 or so buyins. The law of very large numbers can be meaningfully applied to poker and the impact of short term variance can, with good bankroll management, be dismissed.

Which brings us to "can you have a statistical edge?". The answer is very obviously yes. Some people have fun playing poker by going allin preflop blind on every hand for example. This is online pennystakes bullshit but it does happen. If you're playing heads up then you can play successfully against that by folding the bottom 80% of hands and calling the top 20%. It won't be a statistically perfect game but it will have an edge against someone who is playing 100% of hands allin preflop. Your play doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be statistically superior to their play. You can identify probabilities and patterns about their play, make educated guesses and profit from those.

So, if a statistical edge can exist, and it certainly can, and if variance can be dismissed, and it certainly can then is profit guaranteed. The answer is unequivocally yes. In a game where you have a statistical edge and a sufficient number of hands you will always come out ahead. If you can't practice bankroll management you will go bust at some point due to the law of very high numbers, even if you have a statistical edge. Likewise if you have bankroll management but suck at poker then you'll fail to make any money. Good poker players have both, that's why they're called good poker players.

I think we're just going to need to agree to disagree here.  You're right in that we're talking about two different aspects of poker.  The actual play and the factor of bankroll management.  To me, the distinction between those factors is somewhat irrelevant because my argument from post 1 in this thread has been the same.  No human being can play a game requiring human elements strictly to any mathematical model.  They can certainly get close if they are disciplined.  FWIW, blackjack is a game where I believe you can play 100% strictly to the math.

Bad players disregard the math entirely.  Good players factor it in to their play.  I'll repeat that I have no issue with relying on math to improve poker play.  The only issue that I have is the idea that someone can play strictly to it, 100% of the time and play enough iterations/hands in order to realize (and lay claim to realizing) the statistical edge of the model.

So no, I don't think the best poker players are the ones who are the most disciplined in terms of sticking to purely mathematical play since I don't think anyone can actually do that (for a variety of reasons already discussed).  I think the best players are having success in large part because they've incorporated a mathematical elements to their game, but also in large part because they just have really good instincts and hunches.  And by that I mean, the ability to read other players' hands and play, the ability to pick up on tells, the ability to hide tells, knowing when to fold (even if the math says to call), knowing when to call (even if the math says to fold), knowing how and when to bluff (which varies by opponent since some are calling stations and others aren't), etc.

So if you're the good player you claim to be, then I think you're misguided into thinking your success is a result of aligning to some mathematical model.   You're not playing nearly enough hands to be able to realize that edge and you're not playing 100% of your hands to that model which is required to realize that edge.  If you are having success, then there are other factors you should be crediting:  incorporating the math, having a great feel for the game, and a little bit o' luck.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Marko34 on May 02, 2015, 08:43:45 AM
I am a serious and "good" player and your last post makes complete sense to me Zurich! It is definitely not a pure math based game. That is just one of the many factors and variables that helps you make the best decisions.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: DoubleDown on May 05, 2015, 12:55:27 PM
I think we're just going to need to agree to disagree here.  You're right in that we're talking about two different aspects of poker.  The actual play and the factor of bankroll management.  To me, the distinction between those factors is somewhat irrelevant because my argument from post 1 in this thread has been the same.  No human being can play a game requiring human elements strictly to any mathematical model.  They can certainly get close if they are disciplined.  FWIW, blackjack is a game where I believe you can play 100% strictly to the math.

I don't think anyone here has argued that they are playing a strictly mathematical game. They have said they need to understand their opponents' behavior, and they use math to determine the needed bankroll, odds of winning various hands, etc. That is, they're basically saying what you are saying.

But still, you seem to be under a misguided perception that the math cannot accurately predict outcomes. For example, you said earlier that math doesn't matter on any one hand, because you don't know your opponent's cards. But that's precisely the point of the math: You don't need to know what their cards are, you just need to know the odds of YOUR cards winning against any unknown hands when the simulation has run 10,000,000 times. That's what determines your odds of winning that hand. And, if you have other information about your opponent or their playing style, that can be used as well (like their "tells" if any, your x-ray vision of his cards, whatever).

To bring it all back, I brought up the math argument long ago because there were some early naysayers who were comparing playing poker to "gambling," as though it's a venture destined to result in failure/bankruptcy/eviction/etc. Hopefully we've demonstrated by now that skilled cards players (poker, advantage systems in blackjack, etc.), are not "gambling", per the usual meaning of the term. That is, they are not playing a game where the odds, by design, are stacked against them.

Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: DoubleDown on May 05, 2015, 01:11:39 PM
Speaking of "tells", here's my story for fun...

I don't play poker, but I used to play blackjack quite a bit. One facet of the system I use is to tip the dealer when the odds are favorable, and not tip them when it's unfavorable. The idea is that hopefully in some subconscious way, the dealer will recognize that you are an advantage player and that when you bet big and win, they win big as well.

Of course, dealers are trained not to give tells, and they certainly are not allowed to give information to the player or they will lose their job plus possibly even get invited to talk to the Gaming Commission. Anyway, in all the years I played, I encountered only one time a dealer at a single-deck game around 2:00 am in Laughlin, NV where the strategy seemed to overtly work (beyond just regular ol' dealer gratitude and professional courtesies).

With this dealer, as I was tipping him heavily and asking the usual questions, he started giving me super-specific feedback. Like, you may know that the dealer will check his hole card when he has a ten or an ace showing to see if they have a blackjack. After checking his card, I'd ask him, "Should I hit this?" (not in a serious-sounding way, but in a light-hearted "whaddya think?" way). But he would answer yes/no outright, and he was right Every. Single. Time.

Lol, I made a lot of money with that dealer. Good times.

That's one example, by the way, of ditching the "strictly math" plays in favor of other (much more valuable) information.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on May 08, 2015, 11:08:08 AM
Sports betting you're playing against the house. Poker you're playing against the sucker sitting next to you with the house taking a cut. Completely different. The people succeeding at poker here are talking about millions of hands, this is not short term positive variance.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: Psychstache on May 08, 2015, 04:20:33 PM
Sports betting you're playing against the house. Poker you're playing against the sucker sitting next to you with the house taking a cut. Completely different. The people succeeding at poker here are talking about millions of hands, this is not short term positive variance.

This is what most people seem to miss. You are not playing against the casino industrial complex. At low limit tables (1-2, 1-3, 2-5) you are playing against retired people looking to entertain themselves by wasting their SS check, townies who want to blow off steam by drinking and throwing money around, gamblers who just know that spade is coming, and psuedo-pro wannabes who tell the whole table that they just made an impossible lay down. None of these people have a built-in micro advantage like a casino and most can be beaten with some brainpower, study, and practice.
Title: Re: Supplementing Income with Poker?
Post by: dsmexpat on May 08, 2015, 07:49:37 PM
I played poker full time for about two years if that counts for anything. 8 hours a day, 5-6 days a week.