Say goodbye to the dream

[Annies_Beaver]

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give it a couple weeks or months. the party fish are still probably opening accounts at new sites and such. something that good players do right away, which is probably why the games are tight right now.

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I don't know man. That Party message that flashes on your screen when you first login makes it sound like all poker sites are affected. Plus, Party has a nice interface. I tried playing on PokerStars the other day and could only tolerate about 20 minutes of that crap.

To the traders here, how come when I try to hit a bid or ask on a NYSE-traded stock through my direct access broker the trade never goes through? Is that a by-product of "price improvement?" I thought price improvement was supposed to benefit the traders, not the crooked market makers.

As far as the OP, I'm sure he will be successful as long as whatever market he is trading in goes up. How many Wall Street folks were laid off in 2001?

[Your Mom]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
give it a couple weeks or months. the party fish are still probably opening accounts at new sites and such. something that good players do right away, which is probably why the games are tight right now.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know man. That Party message that flashes on your screen when you first login makes it sound like all poker sites are affected. Plus, Party has a nice interface. I tried playing on PokerStars the other day and could only tolerate about 20 minutes of that crap.

To the traders here, how come when I try to hit a bid or ask on a NYSE-traded stock through my direct access broker the trade never goes through? Is that a by-product of "price improvement?" I thought price improvement was supposed to benefit the traders, not the crooked market makers.

As far as the OP, I'm sure he will be successful as long as whatever market he is trading in goes up. How many Wall Street folks were laid off in 2001?

[/ QUOTE ]

Retail investors are screwed regularly by the NYSE and the AMEX. I see it every day. The market makers hate those guys because they end up eating the losses.

[KingDan]

Say you could go back to HS. You decide your goal in life is to make a boatload of money. What path would you choose? Assume you would have to relearn how to invest/play poker etc.

My first few thoughts, might not make sense but I have no experience in almost all of this [censored].

1) Study a lot, make impressive resume, go to Harvard, Yale etc. Make contacts/good grades/grad school etc until you get a good job a lot get good job. Continue work and eventually be rich.

2) Get good at poker/makes lots of money while in school then learn how to invest or get a real job afterwards.

Maybe just learning investing outright is better longterm bc though it would take longer to make first couple hundred grand, once you learn what you are doing no real cap.


3) Make few hundred k in poker, open business, if busto more poker and repeat. Try to find next fad myspace/milliondollarhomepage etc

Some of these things seem pretty [censored] obvious after the fact, but I guess everyone thinks that.


Looking at this probably overestimating use of poker into long-term plan, but I know more about it than most of the other options.

[Bolivia]

Hey strassa,

Congrats on ur decision. If i was younger i'd prob. do the same. Good choice.

For those who may question his decision, trading is a lot like playing poker but the stakes are bigger, casino is bigger, and it's not ur money (at least when u start). You can make a hell of a lot more as a successful trader.

You can stay in the poker world, and if you're the best end up like Phil Ivey and drive a mclaren. Or go into trading and wind up like Danny Shak flying to each WPT event in ur own Jet. (for anyone who doesn't know Danny watch season 3 of GSN's high stakes poker).

regards,

-ed

p.s. I still wanna profile you, i'll PM you my number give me a call.

[TheWorstPlayer]

Play poker in HS/college bec there is no way even close to comparable to making money. Get out of college, work at i-bank for two years. Go to b-school. Graduate and start a company.

This path seems like best route to making ridiculous sums of money. Without a job/b-school has potential to make sick cash faster, but it will be harder without contacts/pedigree which can open financing doors. And you will have less to fall back on if you struggle to get your company off the ground. But starting a company (or companies) is certainly the best way to get sick rich in this country.

[Big Poppa Smurf]

[ QUOTE ]
All,

Just as an FYI, here's the sort of upside opportunity for those who get to the top of this field:

SAC Capital, Stephen Cohen

Last year he reportedly made about a billion dollars.

There was an excellent WSJ or NYT profile of him a month or two ago.

He manages somewhere in the neighborhood of $10B. Some of his funds he takes management fees of up to 3% and takes up to 35% of the profits. His last $2B fund he waived the management fee and took 50% of the profits.

This guy of course is a superstar and few people will ever have the consistent success he has had that has allowed him to grow his funds to this scale. A more typical arrangement is someone taking a 1-2% management fee and then 20-30% of the profits. So, even if you aren't quite Stephen Cohen, but can get people to invest $50M in your fund and can make a 20% return for them, that's a pretty nice payday to get you started. There are tons of smart guys in this business who have managed to put together funds of a few hundred million at a pretty young age.

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jesus christ 1 billion isn't an income it's a GDP. what do they even do with that much money?

[KingDan]

TWP

The two years as an I-Banker are basically specialzied eudcation. Also a great chance for contacts.

Am I missing anything?

Edit: oh and for the previous post I prolly shoulda mentioned something about real estate, but might be a few years too late on that one.

[chisness]

starcraft player?

[Scuba Chuck]

Strassa, can you share a little bit about the interview process and how poker was a part of it? What kind of detail did you go into? Did you discuss bankroll, stakes? What kind of questions did they have about your poker background?

Thanks in advance. This is very interesting to me.

[theBruiser500]

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my blog sucks

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that's cause you shouldn't have your own, you should do it on y site www.destinyboy.com that way you don't have to force al lot of entries of low quality, just do it once in a while along with others and have just the best