How many young players out there actually make it???

[Zele]

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Also, I'd just like to say that those poker players with >$1 million that are investing in stocks and stuff are morons.


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you seem smart, but this is a tremendously foolish statement.

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ROI at poker is orders of magnitude better than in the stock market (for an expert player). A player who could make good use of the $1M at poker but invested it instead would be giving up significant (expected) money.

Of course, if a player with a million bucks can only beat a 30/60 game, there's plenty of non-BR money left over for stock investments

[lapoker17]

his implication is that there is no better money making opportunity in the world than poker ("stocks and stuff" - stuff means any other type of investment given his tone). this is silly. poker is completely unscalable.

[Colonel Kataffy]

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Personally, I think the most important idea to learn is to never touch your bankroll. So many times during the first semester back after playing poker I was eating ramen and staying in on weekends because I didn't have 10 dollars for the cover for some party my fraternity would be hosting. I had a few friends who had the potential to play 100/200 by now, but instead they took their bankrolls and spent it on car repairs or bills, and now they don't play poker anymore or play low stakes.

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I had to spend about $6k last year on 'life expenses' that came out of my poker bankroll. If I hadn't, I'd probably be playing much higher than I am now.

... however, I would have had to take out loans for some of the expenses. Would that have been a better choice? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Well, if you could beat the 100/200, then yeah.

[MicroBob]

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I certainly wasn't implying that ZJ didn't work hard or that he wasn't a fantastic player to begin with, which he obviously is, just that some MTT scores really aided his roll and let him 12 table the 215's comfortably...am I wrong here??

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yes. to my knowledge he was killing the 215's BEFORE he hit those big MTT scores.

I think he was killing them WAY before the big MTT scores (but I could be wrong here) and was already known around here to be a rapidly improving and really good SNG player.


In short, his MTT scores did NOT launch his career.
He grinded his way up there.....and I believe his success in the other tourneys ALLOWED him to take his shots at the big buy-in tourneys where he had even more success obviously.

[stinkypete]

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Also, I'd just like to say that those poker players with >$1 million that are investing in stocks and stuff are morons.


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you seem smart, but this is a tremendously foolish statement.

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ROI at poker is orders of magnitude better than in the stock market (for an expert player). A player who could make good use of the $1M at poker but invested it instead would be giving up significant (expected) money.

Of course, if a player with a million bucks can only beat a 30/60 game, there's plenty of non-BR money left over for stock investments

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even if you're playing $500/$1000, a million dollars is 1000BB. why would you need to have more than 500BB immediately accessible? even in this extreme case, it's stupid not to put at least half that money to work for you. and if that 500BB somehow isn't enough, you can keep it in liquid investments that you can get onto the poker sites within a few days if necessary.

[stinkypete]

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or is variance just too great??

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variance has nothing to do with it, at all.

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not true. nice try though. however, i give you credit for almost making a contribution to a thread.

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are you still mad that i was right about folding 85o? get over it. you'd do much better for yourself if you'd listen to those who are smarter than you and trying to help instead of refusing to admit you're wrong and crying about it for weeks on end.

and beyond being the only reason the games are profitable in the first place, variance has nothing to do with not being able to "make it". if you can't make it despite being persistent, its because you're not smart enough or disciplined enough. it's not because variance is too great.

[dibbs]

Many, many, many kids make it. Few "make it" for long.

[TStoneMBD]

if its possible that variance can make you never win a hand again for the rest of your life, then its clearly possible that variance can hinder your chances at making it as a pro. the op asked how likely it is to "make it" starting out with $200. that isn't much of a bankroll for any limits and there is likely a stronger then average chance that he will go broke. i appreciate you shedding some insight on the matter however. i try to listen intently to the people who are smarter then me.

[tongni]

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you seem smart, but this is a tremendously foolish statement.

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When you're young, it's all about earned income, not unearned income. Hoping to earn another 3-4% with even slight risk is not really worth the time and effort when you don't really have a ton of money.

Consider this: You are a young kid with 500k. You can invest in tbills for 3%, or you know of a place where you can invest at 6% with no risk, but a decent amount of work involved. How much can you really invest? 300k? Probably a little less, especially if you are playing high limits. That means you made 9000 dollars for your time. That might be 2 days of poker playing to someone who plays at the 100/200 level or 25/50 NL level regularly.

Also, there is some risk involved. So the chance you could have a downswing in both and then suddenly feel very, very uncomfortable playing at your usual limits or that the combination of the two factors could tilt you is not worth the return in my opinon. There's a lot of value in reduced variance, as well as avoiding the hassle of dealing with that stuff, especially when your hourly rate can be astronomical.

I'm very cautious by nature (I usually have at least 1000 BB's for whatever limit I play) and it would pain me to have to pass up a really good game just because I was dicking around with stocks and didn't feel comfortable.

Personally, I keep most of my money in 3 month treasury bills and the rest as a bankroll, but I'm lucky in that if I run bad I can barrow whatever I need until they roll over.

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even if you're playing $500/$1000, a million dollars is 1000BB. why would you need to have more than 500BB immediately accessible? even in this extreme case, it's stupid not to put at least half that money to work for you. and if that 500BB somehow isn't enough, you can keep it in liquid investments that you can get onto the poker sites within a few days if necessary.

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Well, as you get more and more money the utility of investing increases, of course. When you have 1 million, it's worth it to invest. But my original post was not trying to dissuade people with 950k to invest, but rather those guys with like 100k who are putting half their money in stocks and not playing higher like they should. I'm reasonably sure (I might be wrong) that there's no one under 25 that posts here with more than a million, and most of the young high stakes players here have somewhere between 400-800k that they could reasonably get at. Very few high stakes players post here, but it's easy to see why when more fruitful poker discussion can always be had through AIM/MSN.

[tongni]

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tongni im not really sure if i agree with this. if youre good enough to beat 100/200 then you should be good enough to make $250-$300/hr playing 15/30 or 20/40. at that rate you should have a bankroll for 100/200 in only a few months. i think living off ramen noodles just so you get a chance to play in the big game is kinda silly. besides, for most people 30/60 is going to be far more profitable then 100/200 anyway. id rather live well and play 30/60 then be poor playing 100/200 hoping im good enough at that level to make money. to each his own though, but i think recommending that people live this way is poor advice.

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I couldn't disagree more. They say that like 90% of people who experience some significant financial windfall lose it within 3 years, or something. This is just a random statistic, but it relates to poker quite well.

If you're a young college kid with what seems like unlimited money when you were just scraping by before, things totally change. No matter how mature you are, no matter how financially savvy you are, it's very difficult to not inadvertently screw yourself over. Where do you draw the line on taking money out? Well, you need new clothes, that will be $800. You have to take this girl out on a date and impress her, another $200, etc. If you pretend like you're just playing some computer game all day and at the end of the day nothing has changed, money accumulates so much quicker.

Don't believe me? Think about all the mid stakes players you know who are capable of playing much higher but due to poor decision making aren't. Probably around half will say "running bad when taking shots." This always makes me laugh, especially when I know they just spent a ton of money on other stuff they didn't need. The other half can usually admit their own bankroll management inefficencies.

For me, no amount of money is ever enough, and no stakes will be too high to play eventually. All I care about is winning. In a sense, I think that's helped me the most because it's just a game to me. The money doesn't enhance my life very much. I live underneath a laundromat, in an almost completely unfurnished apartment shared by me and a friend for $275 a month, and drive a 91' toyota. My life would be almost exactly the same if I didn't play poker.

If you want to live well, at least wait till you've made it. Thinking you're the man because you just made 100k last year is a joke.

I have two friends under 25 who play similar limits. Either one of them could have wrote the above post.