Actually, does anyone know any good resources for getting up to speed on poker strategies? I’m smart, I’m good at math, I’m good at doing quick statistical math, and I’ve got a lot of experience at avoiding bias in the context of games. Plus I’m a decent programmer, so I should be able to take even more of an advantage by writing a helper bot to run the math faster and more accurately than I otherwise could. It seems to me that I should be able to do well at online poker, and this would be the sort of thing that I could likely actually get motivated to do to make money (which I unfortunately need to do).
Anyway, if anyone has any recommendations for how to go about the learning process and getting into playing, I’d love to hear them. I’ll try to comment back here after doing some independent research as well.
The main reason you don’t hear much about it IMO is that the number of hours you wind up putting in makes it only commensurable with normal decent paying jobs. You only exceed that at high levels. This is just based on searching around for info a few years ago and speaking with people who made a living at it. I myself did it part time for pocket money for awhile, but the stress got to me.
If I can do something fun, from my house, on my own hours, without any long-term commitment, and make as much money as a decent paying job, then that sounds incredible. Even if it turns out I can’t play at high levels, I don’t mind playing poker for hours a day and making a modest living from it. I don’t really need much more than basic rent/food/utilities in any case.
I would just warn that variance is way more stressful than most people predict. It is really really hard to keep doing something when you get very strongly negatively reinforced. And things have a way of not being as fun when they are a job.
WOW. I predicted that I would have a high tolerance for variance, given that I was relatively unfazed by things that I understand most people would be extremely distressed by (failing out of college and getting fired). I was mostly right in that I’m not feeling stress, exactly, but what I did not predict was a literal physical feeling of sickness after losing around $20 to a series of bad plays (and one really bad beat, although I definitely felt less bad about that one after realizing that I really did play the hand correctly). It wasn’t even originally money from my wallet; it came from one of the free offers linked elsewhere in this thread. But, wow, this advice is really really good. I can only imagine what it’s like with even worse variance or for someone more inclined to stress about this sort of thing.
Actually, does anyone know any good resources for getting up to speed on poker strategies? I’m smart, I’m good at math, I’m good at doing quick statistical math, and I’ve got a lot of experience at avoiding bias in the context of games. Plus I’m a decent programmer, so I should be able to take even more of an advantage by writing a helper bot to run the math faster and more accurately than I otherwise could. It seems to me that I should be able to do well at online poker, and this would be the sort of thing that I could likely actually get motivated to do to make money (which I unfortunately need to do).
Anyway, if anyone has any recommendations for how to go about the learning process and getting into playing, I’d love to hear them. I’ll try to comment back here after doing some independent research as well.
I don’t, but: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2qp/virtual_employment_open_thread/2oay
The main reason you don’t hear much about it IMO is that the number of hours you wind up putting in makes it only commensurable with normal decent paying jobs. You only exceed that at high levels. This is just based on searching around for info a few years ago and speaking with people who made a living at it. I myself did it part time for pocket money for awhile, but the stress got to me.
If I can do something fun, from my house, on my own hours, without any long-term commitment, and make as much money as a decent paying job, then that sounds incredible. Even if it turns out I can’t play at high levels, I don’t mind playing poker for hours a day and making a modest living from it. I don’t really need much more than basic rent/food/utilities in any case.
I would just warn that variance is way more stressful than most people predict. It is really really hard to keep doing something when you get very strongly negatively reinforced. And things have a way of not being as fun when they are a job.
WOW. I predicted that I would have a high tolerance for variance, given that I was relatively unfazed by things that I understand most people would be extremely distressed by (failing out of college and getting fired). I was mostly right in that I’m not feeling stress, exactly, but what I did not predict was a literal physical feeling of sickness after losing around $20 to a series of bad plays (and one really bad beat, although I definitely felt less bad about that one after realizing that I really did play the hand correctly). It wasn’t even originally money from my wallet; it came from one of the free offers linked elsewhere in this thread. But, wow, this advice is really really good. I can only imagine what it’s like with even worse variance or for someone more inclined to stress about this sort of thing.
http://tynan.com/playpoker-2 is a decent article on learning it.