|
Going Pro-Debunking The Myths
By AJ "The Triple Threat" Martino
SO YOU WANT TO GO PRO?
You’re stuck in an unsatisfying entry-level or mid-level position. You slave away each day, working 50-70 hour workweeks hoping to get ahead and squeeze an additional quarter out of your boss for your next raise.
You see amateurs winning millions on TV, or many pros consistently finishing at final tables and getting all the fame & glory. You think how great your life would be if you could play poker instead of working for “the man”.
Well my friend, the poker media has pulled the wool over your eyes, but I’m here to help you see clearly again. Don’t get me wrong, I quit my job to play professionally and wouldn’t change that decision. I grew tired of my “superiors” making triple or more my salary while I did most of the grunt work. Tired of the middle management rat-race.
In Dec 2005 I went semi-pro, to see how well I could do, and if poker would be a viable alternative to being a wage-slave. In Sep 2006 I quit my job to pursue poker full-time. But I’m here to debunk some of the myths you’ve been led to believe about playing poker professionally.
TOURNAMENT VS CASH GAMES
So you’ve seen the Daniel Negranues, the Doyle Brunsons and many other favorite pros on television. Making final tables, winning millions. Getting fame, glory and sponsorship deals up the wazoo.
Hell, if some of those amateur schmoes you’ve seen taking down bracelets can do it with such awful play, why not you, right?
Here’s the truth of the matter. The path for the majority of poker pros is NOT the tournament circuit. I believe it was Chris “Jesus” Ferguson who said that even “the best” poker pros can go a year or two years without any significant cashes against the large fields of today.
You see, tournament poker requires more luck (or features more variance) than most cash games you can play. In a cash game, you can play against a bad player and he can’t bust you off the table. You can lose your chips to that bad player and just rebuy and keep playing against someone you have an edge against.
In a tournament, the weaker players can and will get lucky against you. And that can send you to the rail with nothing but a bad beat story to tell. The constantly rising blinds & the introduction of antes both combine to reduce your edge over the weaker players. You wind up forced into situations where you have to gamble and take relative coin-flips or 60/40 shots.
I know you’re probably thinking “but I’ve seen so-and-so win multiple events in the same year!” Yes, there are a number of poker players who have some amazing years, but many of them also suffer dry times as well.
The nature of tournament poker requires that you must suffer many losses in order to hit one big score to carry you through the dry times again. Think of it this way:
In the 2007 WSOP the 10th place finisher snagged around $477,000 for their efforts. First place was awarded eight and a quarter-million dollars. There were 6,358 entrants into the WSOP Main Event.
Let’s do some math here. If you were to finish in 10th place out of a field of 6,358 players for seventeen years in a row, you would win eight-million one-hundred and nine-thousand dollars. That’s right, you would win less money than Jerry Yang snagged for his single first-place victory.
Think about how unbalanced that is. You bested over 6,300 players. The guy in 1st place only beat out a handful of players more than you did. You snag around 48 times your buy-in. He wins 825 times his buyin. You both beat around the same number of players, you both put in around the same amount of days in the event.
It would take more skill to come in 10th place out of over 6000 players, and do it seventeen times in a row, than it would to come in 1st once and bust the other sixteen times. But that first place is rewarded more for their short-term variance.
That’s why the majority of tournament professionals place so much emphasis on busting early or chipping up and making a run for first place. It takes a lot of fortitude to play tournaments for a living. Because the majority of the time you experience disappointment and loss. You have to suffer through many losses to win that one big event to carry you through more losses to your next big win.
The majority of poker professionals are cash game players. You don’t hear about them on tv. They don’t get the glory and fame. They don’t become millionaires overnight. Poker may still be fun for them, but it’s probably not as fun and exciting as it is to you. To them, it’s a job. They have to put in the hours at the tables to make their expected earn rate over the long run.
They may suffer setbacks. The bad players can get lucky in cash games too. So you may outclass them by quite a bit, but still walk away a loser. That could be for a single session. It could be an entire week, or perhaps a month of losses or break-even stretches.
With poker, unlike a “real” job, you can’t count on a paycheck at the end of the week. Sometimes you put in the hours and it costs you money. But if you maintain good bankroll management skills, you’ll be able to weather the storm and make a good living doing it.
It’s nice not having to punch a clock. But you also have to play at undesirable hours. As a cash game professional, my task is to find the weakest table. I want players who are drunk, tired, stuck and chasing their losses, etc. That is how I make money. So that means usually I’m going to have to play very late at night to catch them at their weakest. And that also means I might get stuck sitting next to some smelly or obnoxious people. I don’t have the “luxury” of a cubicle wall between myself and the nasty folks I want to separate from their chips.
My job here isn’t to discourage you from considering poker as a profession. It can be an extremely rewarding career. But I want you to remove those rose-colored glasses and see that it has to be taken seriously for you to succeed. You must be ready for the constant stream of losses in tournament poker. You have to be prepared for the environment and people you’ll surround yourself with at the tables.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SOME TV PROS
Wow, look at (insert random pro name here), they just won two million bucks! They’re set for life!
You’d think so, right? I mean, if any average Joe won that kind of money they could pay off their home, live debt-free, etc. Such is not always the case with many of the TV pros you see.
Many of the top televised pros are able to succeed at the highest levels because they lack an attachment to the value of money. Here’s an example:
An average working schmoe sits down at a 100/200 limit poker cash game. Pre-flop there is a raise and three-bet. So that’s $300 right there. On the flop there’s another bet of $100. The turn brings a bet of $200 and a raise of $200. So now you’ve just put in $800, and you haven’t even reached the river yet.
For the majority of people in the world, when they see numbers like that, they think “wow, I could’ve bought a new refrigerator, or put that towards a new flat-screen plasma tv”. They assign a material value to the money being wagered.
This is not the case with the highest level of poker pros. They are detached from the value of the dollar. Many of them have been completely broke before, and likely will be again. Some of them could win 50 million dollars tonight, and tomorrow the high would be gone and they’d be looking to get into action again.
The money means nothing to them; they are addicted to the thrill of action. That’s why many of them gamble outside the poker table. They get involved in proposition betting, sports betting, playing craps and other –EV casino games.
You take a guy like Mike Matusow, when he’s on his game he’s very successful. But everything I’ve read about him shows that he’s generally being staked, in debt to other people, etc. So even if he wins millions, he’s still broke!
TJ Cloutier is supposed to have a big gamble in him, craps being his biggest weakness I believe.
Hell, I’ve even heard rumors of some of the most glorified and revered players (Daniel Negranue and Jennifer Harman) being “cash poor”. This meant they were essentially broke but had equity in real estate, investments, bonds, etc.
If you’ve ever watched High Stakes Poker, you’ve seen Eli Elezra and Sammy Farha playing like maniacs. They’re calling raises with K2 s00ted and all sorts of garbage. This is because poker is not their sole source of income. They own businesses that make them money on the side. They don’t need to win, so they can have more fun playing
I’m not saying you can’t be successful and make your living entirely off of poker. Just don’t be blinded by the glorified image of poker pros you see on television. There’s a lot the media doesn’t tell you about their leaks and vices off the felt.
It’s always good to have an out. Make sure you have an education or skills that can allow you to do something else if poker isn’t going well for you. Have other sources of revenue on top of poker to help supplement your income and take some of the pressure off.
THE PRICE OF FAME
Here’s another reason why many of the long-term poker pros stick to cash games. Have you ever heard the stories of people who win the lottery and become overnight millionaires? Yeah, people start hitting them up for money, expecting gifts from them, family members and friends turn on them, etc.
Well, the same can happen with a big tournament win as well. Once people know you have money, they think you’re just going to share it with them. This doesn’t even have to be friends and family members. Sometimes random strangers who saw you on TV will approach you and ask you to stake them, buy them into events, give them a loan, etc.
They think because they saw you on TV winning a million or two that “ten-thousand is no big deal” and that you can just throw hundred dollar bills at anyone who asks. Friends and family may be jealous of you too. Many of them are still stuck in the rat race. Working unsatisfying jobs for meager wages, and seeing you be so fortunate, they despise your success. They feel they deserve it more than you do.
Not to mention all the gold diggers, scammers, etc. who will also attempt to hit you up. Everyone has some proposal, some offer, something to sell you on.
I enjoy my privacy. I’d hate to have people constantly railing me online, making comments, distracting me, criticizing my play in internet forums, in the chat box or on the rail of a live event. I don’t need or desire that drama.
CONCLUSION
I hope I haven’t been too negative here. My objective was to help you understand that the surface of poker you see on TV doesn’t necessarily represent the realities of the game. Many players have found success, fortune and fame. But many more have had their lives thrown into disarray.
I want you to recognize that poker is a serious profession, that requires careful though to succeed in. You not only have to be good at the game, but you have to practice bankroll management, discipline, table selection, etc.
Oh, and leave your ego at the door. Your goal as a poker professional is to make as much money as easily as possible. Don’t worry about being “the best” player in the world. If you are the 5th best player in the world, but can’t be bothered to play against anyone weaker, you’ll find yourself at a table with #1-#4 and they’ll be taking your money because your pride got in the way.
|
|
