| Ex poker player here (never particurarly a good one but still a winning one). My first point is stress: Poker is extremely stressful - you have to think hard and deep to outsmart your opponents, you need to learn a lot (as mentioned in the article) and constantly improve. However what you make in a particular hour, day, week or month is never completely in your control. Certainly it can be fun to a beginner but being a pro and playing upwards of 5-6 hours a day is extremely tough while you try to make best decisions possible constantly and being constantly punished by luck is not entertaining at all, yet this will happen every day. It's quite easy to lose a couple of big hands in a row, having a losing day is give or take a coinflip and a loosing week is nothing special. If you only play live tournaments you will have loosing years! (just a matter of number of tourneys you can possibly play and the variance involved in tourneys [you can check the odds with some online variance calculators]). Hope that paints the picture of the bruising your psychology will endure even if you manage to get yourself to the level needed for making a decent living out of it as far as finaces go. Statistics also shows that vast majority of people are losers in this game via rake and other players being better. See for yourself by getting some hands database from online poker sites. Rake can even make certain games unplayeble for everyone! My second point is poker marketing: Yep, this is how marketing for poker works they sell you the image of (supposedly) successful pros making money and an image of a game of skill. (I mean a freaking scientist is telling you that you can make money, it's gotta be real!) -Even though most people lose money and are just gabmling.
-Even though being a poker pro is an extremely difficult profession.
-Even though it is not especially fun for anyone involved and is at best an emotional roller coaster.
-At worst leads people to losing everything they have (like in any other form of gambling), or ending up in debt. And even winning pros turn to losing pros with time because others catch up to them.
-Oh, and yes, as mentioned we can't actually know if this woman is making money since losses at live tourneys aren't tracked by poker results tracking sites.
-Oh oh and major poker sites, including the one mentioned in the article, are raising the rake making even more people lose money, people who previously were winning and were considered professionals. To conclude, this is just a disguised marketing article for a gambling site, featuring a PR officer of the site. (english translation for "sponsored poker pro") It's just a gross misrepresentation of the reality aimed at serving the gabmling industry. Oh oh oh and AI did beat best poker players in the world. So professional online poker has no future really. Live then I guess? Well it's safe to say that there is no way to input chips stacks and bet sizes into a computer, that kind of device has not been invented yet! (And for those saying only HU by AI, wouldn't be so sure. Poker snowie was able to make money at 6-max midstakes, there are non AI poker solvers that are considered even better then it. Thus be sure that winter is coming for poker and that the non living will conquer poker, even before the magical living AI come in 2030 [if the prophecies are to be trusted]) |
I was curious about your conclusion since the article doesn't mention anything, but a quick search returned this piece
BREAKING: Author and journalist Maria Konnikova becomes PokerStars Ambassador https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/2018/author-journalist-ma...