Poker and Me

Welcome to the 6^th floor.

Today's contributors are: Frank

Subject: How I Earn A Living

I've been asked a bit about my job so I figured I'd talk about what I do, and how I do it.

I'm generally a cash game player. Which means that I play in games where you exchange money for chips, and I can walk away whenever I want and change any of the chips I have for their value in money. The alternative is tournament play, which is what you see on television where you buy-in to the tournament, and you play until you either have all, or none, of the chips. I've played a tournament occasionally, but I generally stick to cash games. The big difference is with a tournament, you have to beat everyone to make money, in a cash game you only have to beat one person, and it can be the worst player at the table.

One of the biggest reasons my parents basically kicked me out of the house is because they didn't believe I could make a living playing poker, they considered it gambling with my future. Now poker playing does contain a lot of gambling situations, but it's not like rolling a dice for my dinner. What happens is when I get into situations where I need a certain card to win the hand, I calculate the odds of getting that card. If it's only going to come 25% of the time, I make sure that if I win I'm winning more than 4 times what I would be betting in that situation. If I'm consistent and play that hand the same way every time the situation comes up, in the long run I'm going to win money, even though each individual situation may be a gamble.

The trick to that is being able to play for long enough that you get enough of those situations before you run out of money. You should never run out of money while playing poker or you're playing at too high a level. Even if that means you're playing with nickels for months.

I'm not going to say how much money I make or what level I play at, but it's enough to get by. I've been banking money, and I have some loans to pay off, but I haven't made the push yet to play at a higher level. I like to have some extra money to do things with, and often times I splurge and spend the money that I'd need to bankroll to move up to a higher level. I always make sure I have enough saved, and can pay the rent though, I'm not stupid.

I've never been to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker, but I hear even the cash games during those weeks are great. I suppose a lot of amateur poker players come and want to play. I may go and check it out this year, I'll have to look into it.

While it's always great to not have to get up for work, or have set hours, it's not all flowers and sunshine. I still spend a lot of time working, and I can get very stir crazy never leaving the apartment. Even if I did have a regular job, I don't imagine I could have one where I work from home. It's nice to get out and see the world sometimes, which is why I occasionally find a wireless hub and play from there.