The Best In The Business

[Rexas]

The biggest problem with this for me is realising the motivations. I want to write something longer as a response, and I probably will at some point, but for me the biggest issue here is judging whether you actually have what it takes to handle playing poker for a living. You say that people who are already really clever and already making a good amount playing, but you're basically going to have to trust your own judgement on whether you can sustain that. Let me put it differently - Say you do ok online, grind your way along, make a bit of profit, whatever. Then you hit a heater, ft some big stuff, maybe win something live. You try telling that person that they aren't good enough to just move up and crush, or even keep playing at the same level and win more. The majority of people who are playing lots of poker and are still at university (myself included in this) are still pretty young and pretty naive to their own ability. When I was playing like 4 years ago, there wasn't a person in the world who could have got through to me that I was shit and couldn't make it playing full time. Not one, I had to lose a ton to find that out for myself.

People have a tendency to overestimate their own ability, and if you say to them "if you're one of the crushers quit uni and play full time" you'll get a whole load of people who don't understand what it means to play for a living, because they're simply not old/experienced enough to have properly seen variance, or properly taken their mental game apart to see if they can cope. For someone like you, or someone like Gilly, it makes loads of sense to quit and commit yourself with your ability and your work ethic. Lots of others would put themselves in the same sort of bracket as you in terms of ability and dedication but not actually be there, just think they are. I don't think I'm explaining this very well, but I hope you get what I'm trying to say :p

[cambridgealex]

Try telling a 21 yo poker sicko that even tho he may earn 100k+ for next 5-10 years, over his lifetime he will earn less going down the poker route so he should give it up and stick to uni...

[Rexas]

Try telling a 21 yo poker sicko that even tho he may earn 100k+ for next 5-10 years, over his lifetime he will earn less going down the poker route so he should give it up and stick to uni...

Try telling a 21 yo poker player that he isn't a sicko.

[cambridgealex]

Not sure I buy this stuff about top graduates pissing on poker earnings also.

My classmates at school are oxbridge graduates in big finance jobs in the city, all super motivated and hard working, and at 27/28 I'd be surprised if they're clearing £70k a year before tax. Maybe that number will go up to £100k at 35 and £200k+ at 45? This is all taxed. So net of tax lucky to take home 6 figures in their forties.

The top poker players are pissing on those numbers.

It might not last for ever, but they say every year it's getting tougher and it is, but you've just gotta work harder or look harder for the spots. And I'm sure it's the same in the business world, competition gets tougher and tougher, margins smaller and smaller.

[cambridgealex]

Try telling a 21 yo poker sicko that even tho he may earn 100k+ for next 5-10 years, over his lifetime he will earn less going down the poker route so he should give it up and stick to uni...

Try telling a 21 yo poker player that he isn't a sicko.

True. Every 21yo that I have this conversation with (quite a lot) like this I always tell them to stick with uni. They say they're winning at 1/2 in the empire and had some success online, but 99% they will not make it as a poker pro so stick to Uni. Doubt any of them listen.

But if Fedor Holz (22?) asked the same question am I going to tell him to go to Uni? No, because he's a proven crusher at the highest stakes, with earnings that dwarf what he could earn in a normal job ($15m+ in cashes this year...) and with his natural intelligence and work ethic, he'll be able to apply that to other walks of life and be a huge success regardless of ticking some boxes getting a degree.

[cambridgealex]

http://www.bitb-staking.com/2016/11/10/what-if/

I wrote this on the plane. What do you guys think? Bullshit? Agree?

Life is a long, long, road. I'd bet all the tea in China that you'll not be able to earn much money in poker after you reach your, say, mid-forties. By which point you now need an income for the next 30 or 40 years

With all due respect, if able to make minimum of 3x (5x+ when you consider no tax)for 25 years why would somebody need an income for the next "30-40 years"

Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to make money when I'm 40 playing poker by if I can I certainly wouldn't be searching for alternative income streams at 50.

Well you asked for opinions, & I gave them.

I know a decent number of 45, 50 & 60 year old poker players who have been relatively successful. Not "pleno successful", but, you know, did OK. I am struggling to think of more than a handful who don't need an outside income now. Poker players, for the most part, are gamblers, & I doubt many have squirelled away money for the future.   

A decent % of the long term poker payers I know are skinto, & always have been. Nature of the beast.

Sounds like they were among the best in the 90s and 2000s and then got lazy, didn't study, didn't improve and the game past them by and now they need other jobs to support themselves.

Being skint is not the nature of the beast, it's just being a degen. Managing your bankroll is a major part in being a pro.

[Doobs]

Doobs - assuming Pads lived in the U.K. for three years continuously at some point prior to living abroad he can make voluntary Class 3 NIC contributions now and one day draw on his future UK state pension from Uruguay if he so wished...

Class 3 contributions I believe are currently £14/week, state pension is currently c £120/week - seems a no brainer to me, but I'd welcome your views.

Evilpie - I take your point, I guess my overriding theme is having some form of future savings scheme in place, particularly with a poker career...which I would suggest has similarities to that of a professional footballer in terms of peak years, and a likely tail off as mental faculties and drive diminish. I would suggest the drop off in income (or loss!) for poker players at that stage is incomparable to that of your average middle aged employee.

How long is Pads paying £14 a week for? and how the heck do you know what Pads will get for it and for how long?  And who knows what state pension arrangements will look like in 40 years? and particularly for those overseas in 40 years time.  There is a none zero chance he could get absolutely f all for his £14 a week. 

It is the oposite of a no brainer, it is really quite complicated and and calculation is going to involve some pretty heroic assumptions. 

[DMorgan]

Being skint is not the nature of the beast, it's just being a degen. Managing your bankroll is a major part in being a pro.

So much this.

Your profession is whats putting money in the bank. You can be the best player in the room but if the money doesn't make it past the roulette table or you tilt off your roll after some beats then by definition you're not a very good pro poker player.

In the scenario that pads describes I think its a no brainer. If the guy is gunna 100% put in the hours and he's gunna be surrounded by great people then his lifetime expectation from playing poker now vs going to uni, getting a graduate job and then revisiting the idea and starting from scratch $$ wise in 5 years time I'd be confident that poker is ahead.

I think the main question you need to be asking yourself in that spot (although ofc its hard to know at the time unless somebody tells you and you actually listen) is 'Is this the right time to be asking that question?' In Alex's example beating 1/2 live its absolutely too early to be asking the question and anyone thats been pro for a while will tell you that. If you're beating midstakes online and you're gunna commit to the programme you've got a great shot to be absolutely set in 10-15 years maybe less so lets get stuck in!

Even if the high stakes stuff doesn't work out you're gunna be able to get a student loan and you'll have made enough in that time from the midstakes stuff to put yourself through uni. For a highly motivated mistakes online winner to end up broke with no prospects 5 years in you're gunna have to have a lot of things so pretty catastrophically badly.

The 99th percentile earners in the UK made £107k after tax in 2012/13

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax

[Rexas]

Being skint is not the nature of the beast, it's just being a degen. Managing your bankroll is a major part in being a pro.

In the scenario that pads describes I think its a no brainer. If the guy is gunna 100% put in the hours and he's gunna be surrounded by great people then his lifetime expectation from playing poker now vs going to uni, getting a graduate job and then revisiting the idea and starting from scratch $$ wise in 5 years time I'd be confident that poker is ahead.

Problem is, the only one who can make that judgement is you. And there are so, so, so many people who will wildly overestimate there ability and come down very hard for it if they follow this advice.

Cant we just get some high stakes pros to come in here and comment?

[youthnkzR]

Im certainly not a HS crusher but my recommendation would be to stay in school kids.

Unless your one of the few who can find the perfect balance, being a poker player - especially online, is a terrible lifestyle. Unsociable hours, unsociable setting, stress/bad for your health, no respect for money, immaturity... the list goes on. My daughter being born 8 months ago was the best thing that could have possibly happened to me (both in and for my life) - it got my life back on track by giving it structure, something alot of players dont and wont ever have.. It made me become an 'adult' at 25.

For me being a poker player is a means to an end.. I want enough money to be comfortable in my future endeavors. I've honestly thought about quitting a few times these past couple of years (whilst clearing 6 figure profits in both) and thats playing cash games where I have alot more flexibility than the regs who grind MTTs daily. The one thing from stopping me quitting playing full time is the money. Both that which I can roughly expect to achieve, and the potential there is out there, in forms of MTT binks and the US coming back into the online market... steps have already been taken.

However there are a few key differences between me and the kind of person your aiming your article at (with $50k yearly being an achievable aim):
   - It's pretty hard to pass up the opportunity to earn 6 figures when your already earning something around that, however your not going to miss what you haven't had; especially when its not guaranteed and takes a lot of effort and motivation which you may / may not have in coming months after you've been downswinging.
   - The games are much tougher than they we're years ago (MTTs maybe slightly less to an extent, as your always gonna get fish attracted by guarantees, whereas cash game money gets hoovered up, but theres alot of cash regs reverting to MTTs). Therefore its harder to progress, even with the amazing work ethic your talking about.
   - You waste your youth.... I'm happy at 25, I've got a family/house now and I went to and graduated university alongside playing poker / going out / seeing friends / playing football...etc and I'm glad I did all this. (FWIW I didn't get a 2nd class degree nor have a shit winrate; 36% ROI over ~10k games at ABI ~$60 - ok so ~40% of this came post uni (I dont have a SS sub to know the exact numbers), but it was inkeeping with trend). Maybe grinding fulltime I could have achieved a lot more, but surely this shows that both can done if you apply yourself correctly. I'd never advise someone to sacrifice life experiences when they're young to sit and grind unsociable hours at a PC 6 days per week.

One final thing I feel is slightly false in the article you wrote is that 'university will always be there' and 'poker may not be'.... University isn't just about the degree. Its about the experience, growing up...etc. My dad went to Uni about 8 years ago as a mature student (part time alongside work). He said he really regretted not going when he was young and making the most of it then. Luckily he was in a position with work where he had the time to go. A lot of people in future, when poker is no more, may not be that lucky and may not have the time to. Poker on the other hand will always be there, at least for the foreseeable. NLHE is far from being solved, if its even possible. However there will be some variant and format of the game that exists. Even if online dries up (of which MTTs most certainly wont if the guarantees remain), Live poker will always be there - and this will be in a time where the people who have graduated and got jobs are more financially secure and would potentially have the option to play unbacked - unlike the majority of 21 year olds who play games even close to what your suggesting.

I really do respect your opinion on everything poker, however I've gotta disagree with your article. You've got to remember your at the top of the game (having worked extremely hard to do so). However theres people out there who don't have a chance of achieving even 5% of what you have, and would have to have similar drive to get anywhere close to that 5%. Your one of the lucky ones that not only had the potential to get where you are, you also had the mental strength / balls and rungood to overcome all the shit out there. Not many people would have that - I certainly wouldnt have.

[moustache]

The things you have said are both brave and accurate, and it is a well written article, definitely not bullshit. However I think it is bad advice to give to tell someone to leave uni to gamble full time. Coming from a man who left uni early to gamble full time and was successful at it.

This is because the target group you are talking to is so small and so similar to yourself that they already know what the path is.  Advice to take gambling as a career over completing a university degree can only target people who it is unsuitable for, the ones who are likely to do well probably already know and just need support.

I'm very sceptical of the upsides of the working world, and very focused on the negatives, I know I am biased because of my experiences both my own and my father's, I accept that most people are happy being told what to do and accept a wage for doing so, some are driven to rise to a position where they make some decisions and tell others what to do for a larger wage, some want their own business where they provide a good or a service in exchange for money and thrive off competing with the other businesses in their field for their customers money.

Winning money at poker long term is achievable (caveat 999/1000 due to variance), more so than anyone who doesn't do it will ever know. It doesn't require a super smart brain, it just requires the willingness to accept that most of what you know is wrong. Winning at poker is often counter intuitive e.g. Calling on the river when you are likely to lose in a cash game due to pot odds, folding a set because your opponents range is unusually weighted to strong value, or folding AA on the bubble of a satellite as a mid stack because you are more than 85% to win a seat. These all 'feel' wrong but if you can't accept that they are right then you will never succeed.

The risk of ruin at poker is something most business men are unhappy with, my opinion however is that the risk of being unsuccessful at business is higher and has a more devastating downside than simply running out of money. Spending your whole life aiming for senior management when the whole time you may have had no chance because the boss's nephew is going to join the company 5 years after you and then take the top spot when he finally retires means you have spent your whole life deluded and being used for the profit of someone else and being paid 20% of what you bring in for the shareholders and told to be grateful for it. That doesn't sit well with me at all. For most people it's fine, and that's fine, but occasionally people are unwilling to do that, and some of them find poker a suitable career.

There is a big big difference in the mental makeup of poker pros and degens, the fact that degens and luckboxes who win a big comp early or who run above expectation for a year or two call themselves pros does us no favours at all. The real pros treat gambling as a job, manage their time and bankroll effectively and achieve great success and are happy with themselves for doing it.

Uni and just before or after it the best time to follow your dreams, there are usually few responsibilities at that time, money isn't a problem because you aren't tied in to the routine of having it yet, and if you win enough to buy a house and lose it all again then so what, you are just where you started again and have gained a stern lesson in perspective even if you don't realise it for a while. Money is only important when you need it to get something you need. If you chose to buy that house with 90% of your roll then you are "set for life" and the grind is less of a grind, you have more expendable income out of your 30k than you do  if you pay rent or a mortgage.

There are serious downsides to playing poker professionally, like other careers, but the scary ones like debt and addiction really don't affect this kind of person, they affect the degens and addicts who should never even try to go full time in the first place. They are usually lying to themselves about how good they are or using too small a sample size.

The first time I did this it was piss easy, not because the games were softer, that's relative to the hero's skill anyway, but because the losses, the chance of not earning for a few months and the pig headed, one tracked, time consuming obsessiveness didn't matter, I could do what I liked with few consequences. I'm trying again now and it is a huge mountain to climb, I need to build a roll, build a cushion of living exes, develop my skills, earn a living in the mean time and try to maintain some sort of balance in my life. And all in 16 hours per day.

I say if you have the skills, mental makeup, bankroll and freedom to do it and really want to then go for it, travelling the world with plenty of money and challenging yourself to beat some of the best players in the world at a great and complicated game is a great way to live your youth, after all, playing 5 a side and shagging loads of birds will always be there when you are 30.

Final point is that some of the best paying and highest job satisfaction jobs don't require a degree, and startups defo don't, so unless you are at uni to study rather than just as an entry point for a job then it is overrated, and because so many people go to uni these days it is getting to the point that even with a degree you can't get the job you were hoping for anyway.

[Longines]

Great posts by EvilPie and youthnkzR.

It's easy to pick outliers and compare them to the median and make it sound like the norm e.g. Holz and Heath vs your grad mates but it works the other way too. One of my clients is a law firm and they pay new grads around £70k and they're not the highest payers. If you're a quants guy going into the City then you can double that number. One of my colleagues is a grad, early thirties, salesman in a tech firm and earned around £400k this year. Compare that to a diary on here where someone is putting in the study, part of a stable, doing the piosolver thing and their recent income over several months appears to be -£5k.

The BITB stable are just that, the BITB. You have an insane work ethic and OCD approach Pads. The 2% outliers are always going to excel irrespective of what they apply themselves to. For the guys in the middle, uni is the better choice IMO.

[POWWWWWWWW]

YOLO

[redsimon]

Doobs - assuming Pads lived in the U.K. for three years continuously at some point prior to living abroad he can make voluntary Class 3 NIC contributions now and one day draw on his future UK state pension from Uruguay if he so wished...

Class 3 contributions I believe are currently £14/week, state pension is currently c £120/week - seems a no brainer to me, but I'd welcome your views.

Evilpie - I take your point, I guess my overriding theme is having some form of future savings scheme in place, particularly with a poker career...which I would suggest has similarities to that of a professional footballer in terms of peak years, and a likely tail off as mental faculties and drive diminish. I would suggest the drop off in income (or loss!) for poker players at that stage is incomparable to that of your average middle aged employee.

How long is Pads paying £14 a week for? and how the heck do you know what Pads will get for it and for how long?  And who knows what state pension arrangements will look like in 40 years? and particularly for those overseas in 40 years time.  There is a none zero chance he could get absolutely f all for his £14 a week.  

It is the oposite of a no brainer, it is really quite complicated and and calculation is going to involve some pretty heroic assumptions.  

He'd have to pay in for 10 years to get anything and 35 years to get the £155.65 State Pension under the scheme for those retiring after 6 April 2016 and that's if they don't change it again in the next few decades!

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/state-pensions

[POWWWWWWWW]

Doobs - assuming Pads lived in the U.K. for three years continuously at some point prior to living abroad he can make voluntary Class 3 NIC contributions now and one day draw on his future UK state pension from Uruguay if he so wished...

Class 3 contributions I believe are currently £14/week, state pension is currently c £120/week - seems a no brainer to me, but I'd welcome your views.

Evilpie - I take your point, I guess my overriding theme is having some form of future savings scheme in place, particularly with a poker career...which I would suggest has similarities to that of a professional footballer in terms of peak years, and a likely tail off as mental faculties and drive diminish. I would suggest the drop off in income (or loss!) for poker players at that stage is incomparable to that of your average middle aged employee.

How long is Pads paying £14 a week for? and how the heck do you know what Pads will get for it and for how long?  And who knows what state pension arrangements will look like in 40 years? and particularly for those overseas in 40 years time.  There is a none zero chance he could get absolutely f all for his £14 a week.  

It is the oposite of a no brainer, it is really quite complicated and and calculation is going to involve some pretty heroic assumptions.  

He'd have to pay in for 10 years to get anything and 35 years to get the £155.65 State Pension under the scheme for those retiring after 6 April 2016 and that's if they don't change it again in the next few decades!

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/state-pensions

If you've got spare savings and can afford to be without the cash in the short-term, it's possible to replace some missing NI qualifying years - up to £733 for each gap year.Those retiring after 6 April 2016 can buy up to 10 years' contributions.