[upupupandaway]

Yesterday I read a post here on HN about gambling and online casinos and went "pffft, people can't control their actions, isn't there accountability anymore?". Then I remembered that in 2006, while employed at the world's top company in 2006 I got into the poker craze and more than once a week worked from home so that I could multi-screen work e-mails with poker.

It was great that I noticed this before degenerating into a full-time addict. I used to grind at $15 9-player STTs and the variance was downright depressing. I cannot imagine what people playing at higher stakes go through. Just out of curiosity, I looked up many of the hotshot professionals of the day, almost none are still playing today. The games became tough and eventually everyone gets surpassed by the new guy using real-time assistance.

People starting this grind today simply shouldn't do it. Odds are that the game will become zero-sum at planetary scale given everyone and their mother is using GTO solvers now.