Turning Poker Pro: A 51 year-old's perspective

Today is the day.  As I type this, I can feel the resistance to becoming a Professional Poker player in my chest, and I feel greater reluctance to making it public. 

For a few years, I’ve been part time Professor, part-time writer, part-time entrepreneur and part-time Poker player.  Although I’ve 500k in cashes (300k live, 200k online) in two years, the ‘pro’ bit was always hedged.  

Partly this is because of family and societal pressures and partly my ADD likes to do lots of things.  However, it has become increasingly clear to me that I cannot do everything well.  I’m 51, have two kids, live a long way from Las Vegas. My Poker performance has been exceptional, but I don’t yet think I’m that good.

There is a great scene in the old Karate Kid movie.  Miyagi says:  ‘Walk one side of street, fine; walk other side of street, fine; walk middle of road, squash rike glape.  Same karate. Karate do, fine; karate not do, fine; karate half do, squash rike glape’.

This means a shift in my identity: how I see myself, or, the story (narrative) that guides my life.  Now that I’m fully pro:

-        Super late sessions when I play horribly will end.  Not what a pro does.

-        A renewed attention to study – at least ten hours a week.  That is what a pro does.

-        My body and mind have to be treated like money making machines. (They are in every discipline, but in other areas it is easy to get away with being tired, out of shape, or in a sugar-coma.)

-        A much more disciplined approach to the game.  No more ‘f^%# it, I call’, less randomly shoveling chips in, randomly jumping up three stake levels  in cash games because I’m bored.

-        Approaching each hand with all the care, attention, mindfulness and concentration I can.  No more missing the previous action (at least once a live tournament), no more forgetting the blinds are up and being forced to min-raise, no more ‘insta’ calling and then saying ‘why the f*#k did I do that’ – patience grasshoppah….

One old coach used to say I could treat each day as a Samurai, disciplined, peaceful and focused in every interaction, lethal with a sword.  I never ever made it, but was a lot closer than now.

I’m old to be doing this.  I have to think what my competitive advantages are over young pros that eat, breathe, and shit poker 24/7.  Few to be sure, but perhaps this old head can bring some wisdom in its approach to the game to make up for less stamina and lower testosterone levels.  (Yes, I am still talking about Poker.)

I have been wildly successful in everything I've tackled in life.  My old father said to me yesterday, 'you have a habit of stopping just before you make it huge'.  I graduated college at 19, made a million a year by 24, quit consulting before becoming a partner, exited the firm I founded after six years when it would have been really valuable after a few more, abandoned a subject on which I literally 'wrote the book' before real fame took hold, and moved to the US when more or less at the apex of my career in the UK.

I can no longer afford to half do anything.  I have two kids who depend on me (and they are 15 years from college), and am under-invested for my autumn years and constantly stretched for cash today.

Time to get serious.

HUDs and Data Mining: Moral? Mandatory, or Unfair?

To my amazement, I read fairly often in forums of people objecting to HUDs and to Data mining.


If you have been living under a poker rock, a HUD is a heads-up display - when you play online, it shows you for the hands you've played against everybody how loose/ aggressive (and much much more) they are.  Data mining is using the billions of hands played on sites, and extracting information about a player (profitability, and looseness/ aggression) and selling it to people who use it to play better.

Both are fine with me. (And would be if I were an amateur or pro.)

Here is why.  Online poker is a lot like securities trading.  There is some math, there is some psychology, and there is balancing risk and security.  When I traded stocks and bonds online, I had data on all my companies/ securities, as well as information about who was buying and selling a given stock, as well as market analyses, graphs, trends, and 'forecasts'.

Some people don't.  Some buy 'tips'.  Some do what their broker says. Some play hunches.  All are valid strategies.  But to INSIST that I, who take things seriously, have to play hunches, or seat of pants, and use only my memory to remember thousands (tens of thousands) of stocks, profit and losses, charts, news events, and 'math' is daft.

I maintain that online poker is morally exactly the same pursuit as day trading.  Duh, it is not the same thing - but they differ in ways that are not relevant morally.

A poker day-trader can sit with a few beers, gambol-gambol, and vaguely remember that IamaHUGEfish likes to get it in light, whereas Immasuckyoudry is a solid reg.  It is his money, and I hope he can afford to lose.  He would get better odds in roulette, but he likes poker more.  He plays for fun.

Our other day trader (poker pro) dropped out of MIT where he was a Math and Finance major.  He treats poker as if he were trading stocks.  He could no more buy a stock on a 'hunch' than he would put 10k on a roulette table.  He could work at Goldman analyzing stocks easily enough, but he prefers poker.  He has three monitors, and securities (player) data, market data (table and game selection), and analytical tools (Stove, SnG Wiz, Flopzilla, etc).  He records and studies his hands and opponent hands.   He loves the game, but he plays to make money.

Both are valid. To insist that both people play like the first (beer drinking, hunch following, barely remembering) is completely absurd.

Just like poker, there is a trading equivalent of live poker. (Most stock trading is in offices now.)  You remember the scene from Trading Places (Murphy and Nolte) - where they traded on the 'floor'.  No computers, no databases, no math - just hunch, psychology, fear and greed.  They probably knew that when the guy from Lake Forest came to the front of the crowed he was going to sell a ton (and move the market downward), but they kept no 'player notes'.

In trading,both forms (live and 'online') co-exist.  In trading there are math guys, and there are intuitives; there are 'regs' (pros) and fish.

I'm no libertarian (more socialist), but in this instance interfering with the market would be absurd.  The market will rearrange itself so fish can play anonymously (Bovada), and some fish will learn to use the tools (it isn't very hard!) and get better.

Data mining will wait for another day - but the same sorts of principals apply.

For those who care, I'm a poker pro, former investment banker, former entrepreneur, with a Masters degree in Moral Philosophy (among others).