Poker = A legitimate profession - please help PROVE this!!!!

[Lepoppet]

Professional Poker: The Essential Guide to Playing for a Living by Mark Blade.

[good2cu]

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Do you all consider traders/brokers/hedge funders etc. leeches/hustlers etc.?

Because these people are extactly the same as poker players.


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God, I was waiting for someone to say something stupid like this. Let's take the most simple example of stocks in a company - why do companies sell stocks? In order to gain more capital to increase research, production, marketing or any of the hundreds of other fundamental needs. Is buying a stock net positive or negative EV for the economy as a whole. Obviously positive, as these transactions allows companies to grow and evolve much more quickly than they otherwise could.

What do the people you listed do? Ultimately, they provide the intermediary between the public masses and the companies who want to sell their own stock. They are absolutely no different than the local grocery store or restaurant employees (except for the obvious difference in salary).

How abous sports stars and singers and authors and all those other entertainers (I'm going to exclude mimes from this group, as they are obviously evil and deserve to be burned over a large mass of open water so they don't return from the dead to continue their desruction of our society). These people provide a product - a product that really does not differ at all from, say, toys or video games. It's a product that is created solely to improve the quality of our lives. Admittedly, some do this better than others and some actually fail completely and make our lives worse (yes, you, Courtney Love).

Now, what exactly does an internet pro provide others in exchange for his money earned? A service? No. A product? Well, maybe you could argue that, but I rather doubt it. The average joe doesn't need a single internet pro to play against, at least no more or less than the internet pro needs the average joe to play against. Since the two are essentially providing the same "service" to each other, neither "deserves" to profit off of this interaction. If anyone is providing an actual product here, it is the online cardroom. This is why some people object rather strongly to poker (Again, people come up with lots of crazy and not so crazy reasons to oppose poker, this is just one reason). The entire job of a poker pro is to outplay his opponents and give nothing back in return. It's as simple as that.

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What your explaining explains less then 1% of stock tades. The rest is all specluation.

[good2cu]

Actaully, I changed my mind as it explaims about 0% of the trades that happen by the people your talking about since IPOs rarly happen on major exchanges anymore.

[swingdoc]

Mmmm, you're partly correct, G2CU. I would strongly argue that ALL stock trades are speculation on the part of the public investor. I previously dealt with why buying stocks is useful for the companies involved and, consequently, the economy as a whole. Here I'll try to explain why buying stocks is a useful activity for the individual investor and why trading stocks owned by individuals or financial institutions is actually NECESSARY for the success of IPO's - where the company issuing stocks actually makes their money.

First, why is buying stock good for the individual investor? At least in part, my previous post touches on this. When the entire economy benefits from a series of transactions, the individuals within said economy will also benefit. For instance, by going public a pharmaceutical company may be able to increase their R&D budget by 500%. Newer and better drugs reach the market 5x faster. But again, this is really just rehashing my previous post. Individuals ultimately buy stocks because they either plan to profit from the company's revenue sharing directly, or by selling the stock when it increases in value (indirectly due to increased revenue). I can see asking here, "How is this different than poker?" It's different because you are buying something that has an intrinsic value and the trader to trader trades are necessary in order for a company to sell their stock in the first place (more on this to come). In poker you are buying the possibility that your cards form a better hand than your opponents (or will in the future). This does not have ANY intrinsic value.

Okay, now I'm going to try to show you why allowing public individuals to trade shares of company X's stock is necessary for the company to initially profit. If each individual were only allowed to buy a stock from the company and only allowed to sell that stock back to the same company, then shares would be worth considerably less than they are under the current policy. Under such a system, the individuals would profit only by 1) receiving revenue sharing (no real difference than current system) or 2) by selling the shares back to the company, which, as the only possible purchaser of these shares of stock, would only pay the investor his initial cost + appropriate share of revenue since the stock was purchased. I hope you can see why this would cause the stocks to have far less value, as #1=#2.

Again, this only deals with stocks in companies. Wholly different arguments would have to be used if we were talking about trading futures, foreign exchange, etc. Please don't misunderstand me, I love playing poker and I have a great deal of respct for those who play it especially well. I just don't think any of us should delude ourselves into thinking that playing poker is at all beneficial to the society or economy or world as a whole. It's beneficial to the person playing. Period.

[OrangeCat]

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You're a professional gambler. Get used to it.

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[Grandezza]

How come there has been almost no discussion in this thread about the fact that poker players exploit other people's unhappiness e.g gambling addicts. sure they can get professional help yada yada but realize they have an addiction and can't seek professional help.

If not the gambling addict then just the average player who sees WPT on TV and wants to win a tournament then goes and looses his spending money. Poker players are basically making money of his dreams. And sure it's his own choice but should you really be allowed to earn more money because you're smarter than someone? It's kind of like the lotto. they take money from people who don't know math or who wants to cash in that big score. If you think they should be allowed to do that then sure go ahead and feel fine about playing poker.

I think this question is much more interesting than whether or not poker contributes to society.

[DpFrydHef]

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should you really be allowed to earn more money because you're smarter than someone?

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Yes. Competition is the whole point of the capitalist system. Managers of Business 1 are smarter than managers of Business 2, a competitor. Therefore, Business 1 is more profitable than Business 2. Same thing with the poker economy.

[Hince]

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I started playing professionally 2 years ago. I have made 50K+ each of the past two years, yet I still hear "your just a hustler", etc... from one particular family member. Furthermore, I am on pace to triple my income this year.

Is there a good book, etc... that offers some backing for the legitimacy of poker. After all, I spent more time learnig/studying this game than I did getting a masters degree before I truly started to "beat the game".

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Who really gives a [censored]? You make a living doing something you love. That is way more important than making a difference in society.

[malorum]

Yup as a pro-poker player you are destructive parasite preying on peoples addictions. No good being proud that you studied hard to take some grandma's life savings.


So here's my solution:
I repent every Sunday and put extra money in the collection plate.
I do charity work in the community.
One day when I have enough money I'll quit poker buy a church hall and preach Bible.

[Capt. Busto]

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How come there has been almost no discussion in this thread about the fact that poker players exploit other people's unhappiness e.g gambling addicts.

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Statments like these assume that the majority of opponents are addicts, have no control over thier own spending money, yada yada. Come on, whatever happened to personal responsibility? These are adults you're playing against, if they are going to make poor decisions in life, they will do it whether you're willing to play poker with them or not. Sigmund Freud hypothesized that gambling addicts are inherently self destructive and gamble compulsively to punish themselves. This is akin to cutters who slit their wrists as a cry for help. I suppose we should prohibit the sale of knives and stop using them to protect them to. We should also reinstate alcohol prohibition so that alcoholics won't feel the urge to drink, etc.