X-Post: poker pro - hardest job there is?

[NicksDad1970]

I am the manager of a dispatch department for a concrete company. While it's not as tough as some jobs I dare say it's much harder in so many ways than any decent poker pro could have it.

There's not one hour in the day where I havn't started my day out. Sometimes I go in at 11 at night sometimes 3 in the morning but for the most part I start around 6 am.

I go home when it's time to go home. Sometimes it's after 10 hours work, 16 hours, every once in a while 8 or 9.

My job is to pretty much be disliked by everyone. I have 50+ drivers that every day I have a few mad at me for sending them home too early while a few others are furious with me for keeping them too long. Our salesman and customers get pissed at me when I don't have trucks just sitting around for them because they forgot to call their order in early. I have upper management mad at me if I have too many trucks sitting around. At times my dispatchers get mad when I work them long hours or have to have them come in on a Saturday when they aren't normally scheduled to work.

I've taken butt chewings that a human shouldn't have to take on a weekly basis.

It is also VERY stressful when you have so many jobs with a limited number of drivers. Then even with that limited number of drivers some of them have to leave for apoointments, getting sick, hurt, etc.

Like I said there are harder more stressful jobs but I'd say usually they're compensated a little better and there's no way a pro poker player is unless they're a terrible player .

[Belok]

Cliff Notes:

Prof. poker is easy.

OP trying to glorify himself and only gives half-assed sarcastic responses to people who didnt bother to think out their posts. Completely disregards anything that doesnt support his point.

[drexah]

have you ever even had another job?


probably not because you are stupid.

[Michaelson]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm thinking something like a surgeon might be difficult... there's the emotional aspect of playing with someones life, but I'm sure once you get the experience that goes away. And then there's the old favourite of comparing a poker pro to an air-traffic controller...

[/ QUOTE ]

OP is obviously a level, right?

[limon]

defn the hardest job ive ever had...thats not saying much considering most of my other jobs envolved golfing or consulting or collecting rent or booking bets. playing poker everyday would kill me.

[Voltaire]

The old guys used to say that poker was "a hard way to make an easy living." The psychology implied in this statement is the essence of OP's problem--well, aside from the fact that he isn't getting enough respect from his girl friend.

When we first start playing poker as young people we have enormous amounts of energy and resiliency. I used to play until the wee hours of the morning, come home out a couple of thousand dollars (which was a lot of money for me in those days), but catch the midday traffic the next day and be on the freeway home before the ten o'clock news up five or six dimes.

But as the years passed it became obvious that I missed the sun and the greenery. I recall watching some middle level professional (and some of my old buds as well) years later when I was just played recreationally. And what I would see was rather depressing. This guy, I'll call him Rick, still played eight and ten hour days. He still came in with all his jewelry and his styled hair (to look like a tourist) and he sat tall and bought a couple of racks of chips. But you could see that Rick absolutely hated to play. He constantly berated the other players and the dealers. He whined a lot. He seemed to get his good hands cracked a lot more than chance would allow. He had more losing sessions than he used to, and he played without spark or ingenuity. Sharp amateurs and up and coming pros took shots at him. He was sinking and he knew it. He was up tight and miserable.

Now that IS a hard way to make an easy living, and the hard part is the expectation that it should be easy. When it's not and it's no longer fun, then, yes, professional poker is tough, very tough.

Don't let it happen to you. Take some time off. Play different games. Take time to study. Go back to basics. See the sun and the ocean and the rivers and the trees and get laid regularly. That will help your game. And above all don't take it as your god-given right to an easy win. It's not easy. You have to constantly renew yourself because if you don't, they WILL be gaining on you.

[joop]

[ QUOTE ]
have you ever even had another job?


probably not because you are stupid.

[/ QUOTE ]

Is this question and statement aimed at me? Or the person who's post you replied to? (Belok)

[daveT]

Don't feel like quoting:

Minimum wage in Australia is like $15 per hour, and does not equal poverty wages as it does in America.

To become professional poker, you must be in the top 5% of all players. There is no way you can be less than that good. There is no other profession that limits it's person that much. So no, professional poker is not easy.

[CardSharpCook]

On one hand, it is a very cushy job. The last two weeks I have flown to VA to celebrate my brother's 30th birthday, flown to LA to see UCLA-CAL game, planned a trip to Arizona to see game 6, planned a trip to Denver to see game 4, spent 4 hours leaning to speak Thai, spent 15-20 hours playing video games, spent 8-10 hours reading novels, spent 15-20 hours playing bridge with friends, watched about 40 hours of football and baseball, spent more time hanging out with friends, possibly drinking, and oh yeah, spent 15-20 hours playing some very stressful, anti-profitable, oddly boring poker.

So... yeah, the times I'm actually working it can really suck, but the lifestyle is pretty effing cool, no?

[gbporkpie]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't feel like quoting:

Minimum wage in Australia is like $15 per hour, and does not equal poverty wages as it does in America.

To become professional poker, you must be in the top 5% of all players. There is no way you can be less than that good. There is no other profession that limits it's person that much. So no, professional poker is not easy.

[/ QUOTE ]

This doesn't make any sense at all. You can't compare a poker pro to all of the poker-playing crowd. Tons of people play poker recreationally. People generally don't perform surgeries or rescue people from burning buildings as a hobby.

To make a living as a poker player you really don't have to be better than the average winning pro, and you can probably get by being quite a bit worse even.

There's a ton of easy money in poker for someone relatively intelligent, but to be able to grind long hours day after day without burning out probably does require a special kind of personality.