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

[BrandiFan]

[ QUOTE ]
depends how good you are at poker.

[/ QUOTE ]And we have a winner.

[joop]

Good enough to make 150+/hr. But not good enough to feel it's easy, obv.

[GambleAB]

Is it tough to be a poker pro? Yes, but it's tough to do anything for a living for a long period of time. Anything gets boring and stressful, and if you are good at it there is a compulsion to play as much as you can. That, imo, is the toughest part of playing poker for a living. Once you find a balance of being serious while you are working, and also leading a life outside of poker, the poker part becomes pretty easy. There are decisions to make, but those decisions come pretty easy if you are paying attention. Once you are good at poker, it really isn't harder than any other job you may have that requires a certain skill set.

[Daddys_Visa]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Jesus I hope this is a gimmick. Poker harder than surgery? Get over yourself. If you can't get used to swings, what makes you think surgeons get used to losing patients? And yes I am a pro.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not a gimmick [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

When I was comparing it to a surgeon's job, I was accepting that a surgeon has an emotional aspect to his job.

What I consider more difficult, is making new complex/difficult decisions each time I play... unlike a surgeons who are doing the same procedure they've probably done 100x before (vasectomy, remove appendix, install breast implants, etc).

If I could come to play poker today and get dealt the exact same hands I was dealt yesterday, and my opponents the same - and just follow the same process I'd done before... wow, it would be easy.

[/ QUOTE ]

I played poker fulltime for 4-month stretches when I was in undergrad, so I have an idea what it is like to wake up everyday and grind poker for 6-12 hours. Sure the money is nice, but really, you cannot compare it to the difficulty of being a doctor.

It's not all the diseases and diagnoses and drugs you have to know as a doctor that makes it tough. Even the long hours are not that bad. It's the fact that all the really tough decisions you have to make have real and significant impacts for OTHER peoples' lives. Thats the big distinction IMO. In poker you have tough decisions, yes, but the outcome is simply money. Money which can be rewon by a winning player. You are the only one that pays the consequences for your decisions, and that is a liberating thing. After playing for a while you start to shrug off the losses and the bad swings (the long-term pros have to....those can't take the swings bail early).

Doctors have to make tough decisions all the time. They are constantly surrounded by the worst that society has to offer. Every surgeon eventually loses patients, and some of those are going to be because of a mistake the doctor made. They missed a diagnosis, they didn't resect all of the tumor, they couldn't stop the unexpected bleeding, the patient died of post-op complications like infection or stroke. If you don't think these weight heavily on the surgeons you are deluded. Why do you think doctor's are overrepresented as far as depression, divorce, substance abuse and suicide?

You say you are constantly worrying about getting outplayed or leaking, and I can remember having those thougths too when I was losing. But doctors don't have it easy, believe me. Every headache that comes into the office could be a tumor, every kid with a fever could have meningitis, every female with abdomenal pain could have ovarian cancer or an lethal ectopic pregnancy. The fact that these are rare but deadly conditions makes it necessary to be constatly vigilant and somewhat paranoid. When you miss one of these things and someone dies, it affects you way more than that bluff of yours that got picked off or that river card that ended your tournament.

And I expect that a lot of the other jobs you mentioned are a lot more difficult and stressful than you think.

[ImNotSoGood]

I have a solid argument against the OP's claim that "Being a Poker Pro is the hardest job there is."

I'll try to make this as quick as possible for those in need of cliffnotes.

Assertions
-A job's function is for a society to work most productively.

* People with good physical skills do physical labor, those with mental skills work using their brains predominantly(ie. Lawyers, Doctors, Accountants, and...... in our society - poker players - though grinders in a rough sense are not really contributing to society, but that doesn't really come into play here)

<u>A Hard Job Can Be:</u>

- One that you are poorly suited to. ie. A very weak person who must do arduous labor, or someone not mentally capable doing mentally challenging tasks.

- One that involves a great deal of pain.
* Pain in this case has a very loose meaning, it can mean physical pain or other forms of pain such as: Having work that is extremely stressful, having work that constantly endangers your livelyhood (Not enough money to pay bills/eat), and other forms of pain are abundant.

<u>Conclusion</u>

- A winning poker player cannot in theory be that poorly suited to his job, since in order to be a winner, you must have mental capabilities.

- A winning poker player does not face a great deal of pain in his/her profession, however a losing/breakeven player can since they are often endangering their livelyhood. However a losing player cannot consider his income poker, because there is none in the longrun.

---- Therefore a professional poker player cannot in realistic terms have "The hardest job there is".



P.S. You can think about it in a practical sense as well, pro poker players generally enjoy what they do, make a decent living, and make their own hours.

[EmpireMaker2]

[ QUOTE ]
Are you a moron? Police, Fire Brigade, minumum wage workers doing [censored] jobs. GTFO poker pro is a lucrative hobby. Are you living in the real world?

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Yea staying up till 4am, waking up at 2, drinking and doing drugs alot of the time, poker players have terrible lives?

[Al Mirpuri]

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Jesus I hope this is a gimmick. Poker harder than surgery? Get over yourself. If you can't get used to swings, what makes you think surgeons get used to losing patients? And yes I am a pro.

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT.

[Scansion]

Sorry but 40k hands a month seriously is nothing. I play HU cash part time, usually just 1 or 2 tabling and I am able to get 20k hands a month without much difficulty.

6-tabling 6max LHE? Are you working like two hours a day?

[Bulletproof Monk]

fire jumpers

/end thread

[Kevin Browne]

the pros that find poker the hardest are the ones who shouldn't be playing fulltime to begin with, and should probably do something else with there lives.

yes there are swings in poker, but if your good player who has played millions of hands (and have been throught it ALL) they shouldn't bother you that much.