Pontification, Dilemmas and Poker

Hey guys,

I know the internet is saturated with online poker player diaries. Hopefully this one will have some value to it however, its main purpose is to keep a log for myself to look back on in the future, as well as for those who are interested.

Anyway opening gambit aside, as you have guessed I have decided to become a professional poker player. This was perhaps the hardest decision of my life due to the downsides associated with this choice. I guess a good analogy of poker as a career vs conventional employment would be: if we imagine a horse race, with the race track start to finish representing the different stages of life. In the race of horses (people) who are employed conventionally the loser gets to race again another day however, in the horse race of poker players the loser gets shot. Unfortunately this is the grim reality of pursuing poker as a profession and is one I am obviously aware of along with dilemmas stemming from not being a productive member of society. 

Hopefully if all goes to plan I have ideas for the future that I believe poker will give me the financial flexibility to achieve things in the future that I can be proud of, such as setting up an NGO for issues I care about or making charitable donations of money/time to good causes. However, I believe it is easy to pontificate about ethics and morality once financial security is obtained and unfortunately this is something that most people never truly achieve. For now though this is an issue I will have to put on the back burner and address at a later date.  

To me work is something people do in order to get money, soft benefits are also associated with work. However lets assume you won the lottery- most people say they would continue working and are motivated by the pursuit of soft benefits. The reality is that most do not if they actually win.

I believe balance is key in obtaining happiness regardless of your chosen profession- if we work too hard we get unhappy, the same I believe is true if we don't work enough, your brain goes stale and this to leads to dissatisfaction. So I have decided the most important thing in this journey will be to make money and find my balance in life. For the first year or so social balance is probably going to be a little neglected, I’m really lucky I have some really smart friends to talk to about poker and others for moral support. However, I see the first year or so as laying the groundwork which will require working really hard, which I guess is the same as any career. However, I do have plans to take up a hobby or two in the future to meet some real world people and obtain life balance through that. Ultimately the goal is to is to I guess lead two separate lives one as the poker player and the second as a normal human with a firewall separating the two.

In terms of other life balance things, eating healthily and exercising are going to be key and are aspects I think many people whatever their profession overlook. To be a poker ninja you obviously have to be in shape, feel good, study hard, put in the hours in online land and leave aside time to spend with significant others/ friends and pursue the things in life that make you happy. The optimum blend of these aspects is to me what balance is.     

So I guess this bring me onto the last question of why pursue poker as a profession? After all chasing dreams has lead many a man to ruin. This we see in the world of self employment a lot with the majority of start-ups ultimately going bust and bankruptcy ensuing. I guess a combination of factors lead to ruin such as deluded self evaluation of ability, luck, unsustainable work ethic and lack of balance in life. After playing poker for 5 years I think I have a realistic evaluation of my absolute and relative skill level, which is always increasing due to study. This has lead me to the conclusion that pursuing poker is a viable option.

So what is luck? I think that this is a concept that is largely misunderstood, and really it is the manifestation of random events occurring. Although there is a luck element in poker and we cannot separate the two totally in a life time- this is however smoothified to a certain extent due to the number of hands we play: giving us a “luck range”. I don't think many people in the real world realise how much luck there is, in part this is due to the fact that humans do not like to feel out of control. Everything is the result of cause and effect that was determined by what I think of as “semi-self-determined chance”: if this choice and others leading from it are good this is what we term luck.

Anyway sorry for the long ramble (more poker stuff next time).

Take care