poker pro - hardest job there is? - Page 4

john kane · #31 10-21-2007, 04:53 AM

i woke up this morning and wanted to play more online poker.

no matter how good the day before has been at accountancy, i will never want to go to work (my brother would testify this and he's been working a bit over 4 years).

and yes, the above quote is completely incorrect.

sweeng8 · #32 10-21-2007, 05:21 AM

This debate really centres upon what is meant be "hard". I think the poster makes a pretty decent effort to explain that he is talking about the mental difficulty of poker rather than physical. Trying to compare what is a harder job, working in a mine or being a surgeon is of course totally dependant upon which of these definitions you are discussing. In many jobs you are paid for your knowledge, rather than length of hours or physical demands- academia for example. Being an acedemic isnt too difficult if thats what you do (its what i do), but many people would find it tough. Put a bunch of professors down a mine and they probably couldnt take the work, but stick a bunch of miners in a lecture hall and they couldnt either. Very tough to compare the two.

Getting back to the initial point, I still disagree with the post. I would say the difference is that the work you do playing poker is heavily rewarded (i assume) financially, but if you didnt aim for that kind of money you could play less tables, drop down limits, and still earn far more per hour than most people. Doing this does not need nearly as much focus, especially with experience behind you. Dunno how much you earn but there are probably not many jobs out there that you could earn the same wihout 7 or so years of study and a whole lot of effort. If youre after the big money then stressing out playing higher limits and 6 tables is just what you have to do. You have a choice to lessen your work load, lessen your stress levels, and still grind a steady profit to live on, and still earn as much as most low level professionals. Of course, this is totally dependant on where you live and what you can do outside of poker, but there arent many jobs where you are your own boss like that. I would say im a semi-pro but wouldnt want to spend my days grinding on a computer screen. If you can handle doing that then good luck but I dont think you can compare its difficulty to some 'real life' jobs

11ofhearts · #33 10-21-2007, 09:44 AM

i get the feeling youve never done any real work in your life. as far as my comment on lucky, i meant it in the sense that if you are capable of playing a game for a living you are one of the lucky few. in all sincerity, if its so tough for you maybe you dont like it, try getting a dayjob and see how you feel in a year, perspective helps.

Henry17 · #34 10-21-2007, 10:55 AM

I think the problem is OP is isolating the act of poker itself to a meaningless level. He wants to strip away all the elements of employment and compare just the bare act of the job.

As such he is right to judge that poker is difficult. It has stressful periods when it is running bad, it requires a special skill etc. Being a greater at Walmart is thus much easier.

This is a meaningless exercise. The way he has set it up digging a ditch for $9/hr is the same as digging a ditch for $700/hr. He is just comparing the act of ditch digging and so everything else doesn't matter. In reality it does matter.

orlov · #35 10-21-2007, 11:58 AM

any kind of medical doctor working in a hospital has a harder job than a poker pro (esp. surgeons), working ungodly hours, night shifts, having ppl die in your hands, killing ppl by tiny mistakes, fear of law suits etc... is alot worse than anything a pro poker player could face...

wire · #36 10-21-2007, 11:53 PM

FWIW, the hardest job I ever had was door-to-door selling.

It was sort of like poker. You could pitch 100 people in a day and make no sales. Or you could blow up and make $500 in commissions.

I think jobs where your everyday performace is tied directly to reward are harder. Employees who get a bi-weekly paycheck can slack off (or lose focus) a day here and there. But there paycheck is still the same amount.

You can't slack off at the poker tables at all and expect your paycheck to remain the same. Maybe this is what the OP is getting at.

garcia1000 · #37 10-22-2007, 02:17 AM

Prop traders

aislephive · #38 10-22-2007, 04:07 AM

Don't know why everybody is giving OP so much greif. What he said definitely has some merit even if it's not entirely accurate. On the surface, yes online poker pro sounds like a breeze. Playing a game for a living that doesn't even require pants sounds pretty sweet, but it's not quite that easy. Maybe for some people it is, mostly those that absolutely love playing poker, but for most it isn't quite so fun.

I also think it's a little hypocritical for some people to compare their job to being a professional poker player, given they have no experience as a pro, and only imagine it as fun and games.

There is no doubt that most jobs are tougher in terms of lifestyle. You have to put in way more hours making literally a fraction of what a good online player makes. However, when you're playing poker there is no downtime like 99% of jobs. You are constantly making decisions where as almost all jobs have significant downtime, and a lot of people only work hard enough to still earn a paycheck every week. That attitude doesn't work for professional poker. Playing bad will not make you money, in fact quite the opposite.

I would also say that putting in a lot of hours playing poker is much harder than putting in the same hours at practically any other job.

Henry17 · #39 10-22-2007, 08:33 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I would also say that putting in a lot of hours playing poker is much harder than putting in the same hours at practically any other job.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem is you can't compare hours. You have to compare earnings. Stocking store shelves after hours is pretty easy and if you compare 4 hours of that vs 4 hours of poker then obviously poker is harder. But poker also pays 50 times as much. If you compare 200 hours of stock shelves vs 4 hours of poker then poker is much easier.

That is the problem with OP's post. He wants to just look at the actual job without any of the other relevant information. That is why he is getting so much grief since everyone else is looking at the complete picture.

brian64 · #40 10-22-2007, 11:06 AM

If you really think your job is hard then you need to take a step back and examine what you are doing. You say you want to make the highest hourly rate, but why? If someone would pay you $100 an hour to walk or $110 to run, and you choose to run, then you will probably think you have a tough job: "man, every day I work for 4 hours and I'm completely exhausted!". There is also a fable that goes something like this: a king tells a peasant that he can run in a circle until sundown, and the man can keep all of the land inside the circle he makes. Naturally, the man runs as fast as he can to make a big circle, and just as he finishes at sundown, he collapses and dies.

I would suggest that you read some books on sports psychology or self-hypnosis. Figure out what your motivation is, what your goals are. Even 30 hours a week doing something you find so stressful isn't good for your health in the long term.