potential downsides of a poker lifestyle - Page 2

On September 15 2012 13:54 NewbSaibot wrote: Ask Joe what the downsides are.

this.

I'd only worry about improving my poker game and dating game. Rest is not that important

hmm, i think the biggest trouble for me is the fact that when i play poker it becomes very routine-sort of like an addiction. Going out and doing something new just seems to require such an effort, i'm just always putting it off my mind because my organizational skills are really awful and for everything but poker it just seems impossible for me to be able to string bits of thought together to come up with a plan. last year i told myself i was going to apply for some courses at university but i kept putting it off all the time, until i did apply but was too late.

i have a lot of trouble handling the freedom poker gives me, and i'm much too obsessed with trying to get X amount of money for my own good.

yeah the hardest part of poker to me is balancing my poker drive and other activities.

On September 16 2012 06:36 MiPwnYa wrote: - ppl who lack social interaction from poker were already introvert to start with - if you don't use that freedom to go out there and do stuff, that's your own choice but you can't really blame it on poker. Oh well I just repeated everything twisted said : )

^ This pretty much. Unless your grinding every minute awake, there is time for you to go out every single day. Most will blame it on fatigue or whatever, but you can make a choice to go out and meet people.

I think as people get older and hopefully a bit wiser they tend to ask better questions of themselves and have a more experienced view on what they want to be doing for the rest of their lives. It's not uncommon, especially these days for people to get a little bit of experience and then decide <insert occupation> isn't for them. I've witnessed this quite a few times over the years and it has always been interesting to hear the reasons or thinking behind the changes (or at least desired changes).

While I don't agree with the statement that if you are successful at poker you can do anything, the people who do succeed in poker tend to obviously be intelligent and will maybe take a critical look at what they are doing more so than less successful players. They may see wasted potential in themselves or a limited/constricted career path etc.

Also co-workers for the most part are terrible. I can work and get on with pretty much anyone but the percentage of people who you end up liking is so small I wouldn't worry that you are missing out on some amazing social development.

TL:DR
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This topic fascinates me as I always seem to be posting about it on here. A lot of good insight from everyone.

Some quick thoughts that come to mind:

One thing to consider is poker can be pretty damaging to other facets of life and development.

I wrote this in the context of that thread. To take it further:

One thing to consider is poker can be pretty beneficial to other facets of life and development.

One thing to consider is that any endeavor can be pretty damaging to other facets of life and development.

One thing to consider is that any endeavor WILL be damaging to other facets of life and development.

The damage will always be there it's just a matter if it's a positive or negative.

Smuft's post originally comes to mind and I completely agree with him (ESPECIALLY for poker players) so I will use it as an example:

Phillip spends 15-20 hours of focused energy on x video game. It completely comes down to what Phillip values in life but for besides a handful of Koreans and maybe some Europeans (no idea of the current egame market) any excessive focused time and energy spent towards video games is a complete waste.

Basically, Phillip has a lot of options with that 15-20 hours of focused energy that could lead to a better and more vigorous life. If Phillip instead starts making money, exercising, reading, w/e with that time he will be damaging his video game skills but unless those video game skills are a valuable asset who cares?

As far as poker and being sociable:

Again a lot of good insights. I am of the opinion that poker has a lot of potential to improve a social life if desired. There is a lot of potential in poker for money, autonomy, and freedom. There is a lot of potential in free time and status with money, autonomy, and freedom.

Nolan pointed out med school. Really any advanced degree. Really any employment. Everything is the same but different. Everyone is the same but different.

On a different note:

Habit, consistency, homeostasis, moderation can either be a human's greatest friend or a human's greatest foe.

The Practice of Practice is Important.

The Discipline of Discipline is Important.

Knowledge is Power.

Never been a pro, but I saw various pros posting it including Nolan (before changing his mind in a topic) saying it : being a poker pro, some feel useless to the society considering you don't give to others/ to society.
I don't want to attack poke players on this point, and to launch on other debate on this specific part of the possible downsides, just wanted to state this as this is imo the first thing that would prevent me from being a pro (actually second after not being good enough).
I remember k2o4 who explained he was working on a chariety or something like that to "give back".
About social interactions, I know friends who work on a platform 6 weeks straight and then have 6 weeks off, obviously they have to tackle the same kind of problems. This is not restricted to poker players.

X-Post:

As for the second thing, I don't think it's optimal to necessarily make all life decisions from such a rational economics standpoint. If he seriously enjoys his playing then his quality of life is pretty high while investing a little time in poker on the side of school, and likely higher than if he were to invest the same time/energy resource into something that maximises his future longterm extrinsic rewards. It's important to always remember that the purpose of those extrinsic rewards themselves are to increase quality of life (the thing we should be trying to maximise) and don't have a linear relationship with utility.

Yeah, I made a post in the other thread (*this thread*) that can be overlooked at seeing everything as an economic/utility decision. I don't know. It's more like a try and set your life up in a way that discipline and practice is natural and automatic and non of this stuff is actually on your conscious unless you are consciously writing about it.

I know like 10 years ago or so cards was like the most fascinating, curious shit ever (which I do think the money/power involved is a factor in 100% of the cases regardless of what anyone says). 10 years later many card games still are pretty fascinating and curious if you think about. However, if I saw a friend or family member sitting in his dorm room alone on a Friday night getting frustrated over 25 NL I would probably take at least some action to steer them in a different direction and hope they asked me for feedback so I could feel better at being potentially more forthcoming.

Just playing some cards can be fascinating and enjoyable just as lounging in a hammock and reading a good story or having a beer and shootin the shit or anything. I guess the main point (as it always seems to be with me) is subjective, individual, honest reflection. It's not easy. Feedback from domain experts, people who know you really well, and totally bitchin' rockstars from mars is always going to help but it's never easy. Discipline isn't always easy. Practice isn't always easy. Listening isn't always easy. Being coachable isn't always easy. Avoiding rationalizing and deceiving one's self isn't always easy. At least from my observations I see almost a direct correlation with these attributes and quality of life.

I totally agree Ket. I dont think its completely fair to blame the downfalls in my personal life on poker as I always could have tried harder and made more of an effort but I cant ignore the change Ive experienced in these last few years. I would be lying if I said I didnt consider many times had it not been better if I never picked up poker in the first place.

that post was pretty fucking emo

Don't have much to add to the social aspects of poker. There have been tons of threads like this, and the fact is if you want to be the best in your field, you don't have time for making friends in other fields. I have some friends outside of poker, but 90% of the time, I am thinking about poker, so most of my friends are poker players. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Ok, time for a tangent, semi-non-related but I've been wanting to talk about the concept for a while:

Breadth of experience will be sacrificed for great depth in one limited area, which can have all sorts of suboptimal consequences on personal development and therefore ultimately, happiness and quality of life

I think specialization, which is sacrificing depth in multiple skillsets to become great at one skill (such as poker or any other job) is evolution at work. One of the BIGGEST reasons that humans have accelerated as quickly as they have is through specialization. I've seen arguments in some books that people should broaden their skillset and become proficient in a lot of different skills, and others which preach the importance of intense specialization. I agree with the latter.

I happen to think that specializing is important, and allows for the exponential growth of technology and dramatic increases in quality of life for everyone. I also think that when a lot of humans are specializing in different tasks, it makes people MORE dependent on on each other, allowing for less isolation, and forced interaction with people (a good thing imo). According to an excellent book that I suggest people read called The Rational Optimist, specialization was the reason that society began to evolve, and it was the cause of the first "trades." The concept is that it "clicked" for the first humans when they realized that they could either:

A: Learn to fish in his home town AND learn to hunt X miles away
B: Fish for 3 months and collect more than he needs and trade for deer meat.

The result is that they spent much more time fishing and thus developed specialized fishing techniques that couldn't be learned if they had to waste time hunting. This allowed him to collect MUCH more fish and trade for advanced tools to collect even more fish and trade for even more things. They also allowed for another person to become an expert hunter, learning hunting techniques he could never learn if he had to waste time fishing. This increased both of their productivity to where they were working together by offering each other a useful skill without spending the time to learn it. Multiply X millions of trades and skills in the world, and the world is one big unit that functions as a giant conglomerate of people saving millions of hours not having to learn each others' skills, but still enjoying the benefits of all of the skills by learning a skill themselves to earn something to trade (money).

Just some interesting specialization thoughts I've been thinking about lately.

Also, a tangent to the tangent, humans have this sick desire to "keep their options open." I read an interesting study recently in which people were subjected to a simple test. There was a computer program with 3 doors. When you click on a door you get 10 points, but when you press any door, the other 2 doors shrink in size. If you fail to press a door after 5 clicks, the door disappears. The catch is, with each press of a larger sized door, you get slightly more points. You get a set amount of clicks (say 25). Instead of just clicking one door and just clicking it 25 times and letting the other doors disappear, a majority of of participants would press a door 3 times, and then click the other two doors to bring them back to starting size. This phenomenon is so prevalent in society in regard to choosing a career, I thought I'd mention it.

Will Smith said it best: "There's no reason to have a Plan B because it distracts from Plan A."

Alright done blog hijacking, but sort of the things I think about from a financial standpoint when people ask me if they should focus on poker or "keep their options open" with a college education. If you have a backup plan, you have no reason to succeed.

Using the fish analogy:

What happens if where you live gets overfished and there are not enough healthy fish to reproduce?

What happens if the fishing area gets contaminated in some way and is no longer useful?

What happens if someone invents a better way to fish or a better tool to fish and fishes all your fish?

I would at least want to know how to hunt deer so I don't starve to death. I would at least want to have good relationships and trust built up with good deer hunters. I would want to know where there is an abundance of sustainable fish or potentially even better, a superlative abundance of lobster, bison, or wild edible plants.

Will Smith said it best: "There's no reason to have a Plan B because it distracts from Plan A."

That quote is baffling. Will Smith, to me, is a perfect example of someone who did the opposite of specializing and constantly adapted and progressed and out willed and pivoted wisely to get to where he got.

If you have a backup plan, you have no reason to succeed.

There are always reasons for success. I think you are underestimating humans' vanity and will for power.

I agree that putting yourself in a more sink or swim situations will improve motivation but in today's world: options and information change by the second. It is wildly sub-optimal not to be tinkering with improvement in similar or different areas with potential or at least a worst case scenario outlined.

I relate to this a lot and this is something that I've struggled with a ton.

One thing I always remind myself is that I really don't have to be accountable to anyone and if anyone tries to tell me what to do I never have to do it--something very very few people in this world can say they are able to do. I never eat shit from anyone. How many people truly live off of their own beats and don't need anyone but themselves to earn their living? Very very few.

I guess this all really just depends what's most important to you. I've always liked being by myself even before poker, it's more like poker chose me rather than I chose it. Not that I plan on being only a pro forever, but I can't imagine a year going by that I wouldn't choose to play or wouldn't want to play.

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Also, the moment I started playing poker I quit all other strategy games altogether and haven't played a game of starcraft since. I realized it was totally counter-productive and a waste of time, I can't imagine playing a strategy game just for fun, I don't have enough mental energy to focus for that much time ... I barely get in 20 hours a week.

Agree re: strategy games. They take just as many mental faculties you use to process/think about poker, yet it yields zero $, and can cause stress and tilt. Having said that I don't mind turning off my brain just to enjoy a casual non-strategy game here and there but I went from trying to be a competitive player at BW, War3 until I got into Poker, to playing SC2 only casually and never planning on buying HotS. Either that or maybe I'm just getting older

As for me, I've found playing live has definitely helped me with my socializing. Originally I only socialized because I believe it to be +EV financially but now really enjoy just being nice, talking to people, and learning from them; it helps you avoid being an emotionless poker robot (which is a horrible image to have for the live games imo). It's also a bonus because "fish" on the poker table tend to be successful businessmen, doctors, lawyers and to them, mere pro poker players are life fish.

There's been a lot of good posts in here btw, thanks guys.

With poker I realized that at the very best my life would be sth like Durrrr's or other poker "greats". And I think that life is a total disaster and doesn't satisfy me. If you look at history of the world you will know that great great things was done by people that were not smarter than me or lots of people that I know.

It all comes down to sth like what Steve Jobs asked John Sculley (CEO of Pepsi co. when he wanted to get him on board and help Apple): "Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

I am not saying that I will change the world. But I am saying that the very best case of "poker players" life is a total disaster. We all have seen it. On the other hand if I do something "productive" I can change the life of at the very very least a dozen people. To me that is more satisfying than partying everyday and waking up next day trying to take other ppl cash in a "game"

Playing poker has made me tend to think about everything else in life within the context of EV and exact decision making, and it's taken a little of the art out of things, a little of the humanity. I miss that. The other day I played a board game with friends and I just couldn't help being obsessed with making perfect +EV decisions when the real nature of our evening was socialising and the board game was just the context. I miss being a fish!

I never tried to play poker professionally for a living however I have a close friend that has been doing it for a long time. I had other opportunities when I was younger to make obscene amounts of cash doing "other things" while he focused on poker and was fairly successful. My opportunities came to an end earlier then the Black Friday hit but its a sick realization that one day you might not have 20K just sitting around to spew on a couple nights/days of drinking. Its pretty sick the amount of money some of the successful players I have met just throw away. On the other side making 10K plus a month and living like a total nit probably isn't good for you either. Everything is relative you make 20K a month playing poker and then spend 5K going out for a couple nights it seems like nothing but then when you look back over a couple years and realize that you spent over 100K a year in drinking alone. And then think hey I could of bought a house with that money instead I drank a bottle of grey goose in one shot it messes with your head. I think being successful at poker allows people that would otherwise be fairly normal productive members of society the chance to turn into the sickest drinking degenerates.

I think if anyone, who is playing poker at top level, would have spent same time and focus on a professional occupation he would have been equally successful. But in a professional occupation its not only yourself that benefits. You got all the clients, co-workers and other stakeholders would massively benefit from your work. While in poker you are just a "method of transfer of money" to the society.

(If you can't tell I am actually for massively taxing poker and other stuff like High frequency Trading and such.)

On September 17 2012 14:21 FarmMylife wrote: I never tried to play poker professionally for a living however I have a close friend that has been doing it for a long time. I had other opportunities when I was younger to make obscene amounts of cash doing "other things" while he focused on poker and was fairly successful. My opportunities came to an end earlier then the Black Friday hit but its a sick realization that one day you might not have 20K just sitting around to spew on a couple nights/days of drinking. Its pretty sick the amount of money some of the successful players I have met just throw away. On the other side making 10K plus a month and living like a total nit probably isn't good for you either. Everything is relative you make 20K a month playing poker and then spend 5K going out for a couple nights it seems like nothing but then when you look back over a couple years and realize that you spent over 100K a year in drinking alone. And then think hey I could of bought a house with that money instead I drank a bottle of grey goose in one shot it messes with your head. I think being successful at poker allows people that would otherwise be fairly normal productive members of society the chance to turn into the sickest drinking degenerates.

sick drinking degen?, hey man you just described my life lol, without poker i wouldn't have been able to bang all the hookers, and engage in all of the illicit drugs that i've been able to, some may call it a downside, but hey to each his own

^LOL the downside isn't so much the drinking, hookers and drugs it is more so the money spent think about all of the real things you could have done with that money

If you find yourself thinking about this stuff way too often then it's definitely a good time to start making plans for your future, an exit strategy of sorts.
If you're just into making money and don't give a fuck then poker is fine, still you have to be completely honest if indeed you don't care - that part is really hard though.