[kcodey]

He also lost me at poker. A lot of us entrepreneur types love poker because we just love risk, IMO. To say that you can comfortable make 85k a year playing poker is the most outlandish statement I've ever heard.

I also hate how people try and tell me poker is a skill. Yes to a degree it is, but it's more luck than anything once you understand the game, let's be real.

Seemed like a good blog post until he became delusional about poker.

[coryl]

If its about luck, than why do we see the same familiar faces deep into WSOP finals?

Luck is only relevant if you're playing for the short run. Professionals generally make decisions that favor them in the long run against natural statistical deviations. That's why playing against a beginner is incredibly hard; they make poor choices that don't necessarily result in poor results. But put compare the results of that beginner vs a pro after 1000+ hands, and you'll see how much luck vs skill matters.

[htmltablesrules]

But how much money does a poker player burn through before he/she is "good enough" to play in big tournaments and win decent money? A couple hundred thousand? A couple million?

It's like when someone wants to trade stocks/derivatives. They may lose massive amounts of money before getting their sea-legs and that is a price that is far too high for most people (and their families) to endure without gaining anything tangible.

And I wouldn't think that "Professional Poker Player" is a title that would land a high paying job like a university degree might. If someone is spending all their time learning to be a pro poker player, it might back them into a corner where now that's all they're are capable of doing for the rest of their life whether they win or not.

Variable reward systems, like gambling, are damn hard addictions to break once conditioning has set in.

[ptmx]

Pursuing poker as a career is usually a poor decision for a variety of reasons, but the cost of learning is not one of them.

The overwhelming majority of poker hands are now played online, and the limits go as low as $0.01/$0.02 -- in today's poker landscape, the winning players tend to be those who initially invest a small amount of money and gradually climb the ladder with careful bankroll management.

The opportunity cost, on the other hand, can be very high. Many people waste a lot of time trying to become good at the game without experiencing any meaningful degree of success.

[bjourne]

Playing poker, like Texas Hold-Em is definitely a game of skill and not luck. It is absolutely possible to still make big bucks on it if you are skilled enough.

My brother used to live a fairly decadent life thanks to his poker winnings from a few years ago. However, that was at the peak of the world wide poker craze where everyone thought they could be millionares by playing Paradise Poker a few hours per day. But the times have changed in online poker and there aren't enough whales around that the poker sharks can exploit for profit anymore.

The only way to consistently make money playing poker is if the skill differential between you and your opponents is high enough and in your favor. The lower the difference, the more time it takes to make a profit, the lower your hourly wage gets.

On top of that, you can suffer fluctuations or "bad beats" as they call it. One week you may win 100k only to lose it the next week. It is a very stressful situation if poker is your work and you need to win. There is a definite risk of burning out.

85k isn't a lot when it takes 8-10h per day of really boring online poker playing.

[Nate75Sanders]

Poker is unquestionably a game of skill.

You need be able to separate the orthogonal components of EV and variance.

Over a large sample of hands, a professional poker player will wipe the floor with you.

There is a great deal of variance in poker, but that doesn't mean that one person can't be significantly better than another in the long run.

[hhabgood]

I absolutely disagree. Poker is not a game about taking risk, it's a game about managing risk. This is an incredible important distinction that separates winning players from losing players.

Looking at another industry, take the extremely 'risky' business of a VC partner; if you look at one investment of his, you might say the odds dictate that his investment is more luck than anything, because he is investing $10,000 and has done so in a way which gives him a 10% chance to make $1 million. However, if you look at his track record of the 250 investments that he has put $10,000 into, you would see that for the $2.5 million he has invested, it has made him $25 million in return.

Is playing poker and investing in VC risky? Absolutely. Does it involve more luck than skill? In one iteration of the game, yes, but in 150 or 250 iterations? Not likely.