If you have a job you should just invest the money into playing higher limit poker if you think you can beat the game. It is silly to spend time playing $1/2 when you have the money around and the skill to beat the higher games. It is an exponential problem, too-- if you spend like the next year playing like $1/2 and $2/4 you will have enough to play $5/10, let's say and be making $10 an hour or whatever. But had you been playing $5/10 or $10/20 the whole time, $10 or $20 an hour and at the end of the year you can bump up and be making $40 or $50 an hour or whatever. It is an extra year of 'loss' due to draconian bankroll requirements imposed on yourself. And it mounts up.
You would think nothing of taking your money and sticking it in a mutual fund or something to grow it. Investing in your poker playing ability is the same thing. You are wasting your time playing $1/2 if you have money around you can play higher limits with and costing yourself money.
$1,000 for the $10 max buy in is a ridiculously large amount. I forget where I saw it, somewhere on 2+2, but they were recommending 20 buy ins for a limit. Of course if your friend knows jack about poker, a million buy ins isn't going to be enough until he learns how to play properly. I am wary to get anybody into poker, simply because while it seems easy to become a winning player, in reality it is a lot more difficult and requires a lot more self-discipline and knowledge to beat the games than is readily apparent at first. I don't know about you, but I have spent an enormous amount of time thinking about, writing about, reading about and playing poker in the past few years. And I am still only a mediocre player. 90% of the people you see playing poker don't beat the games, but almost all of them think they do. Getting someone involved in poker is just putting a bunch of responsibility on yourself for another person's financial well-being. My advice now to everyone is to "not get involved" whenever they find out I play cards.
It seems fun and innocent and cool to be teaching someone until one of the people you get into playing cards completely destroys their life with it. Then you will understand why you should just tell people not to play. 90% of the people are suckers in the games, and more likely than not if you get someone playing, they are going to be a sucker. And some of those suckers go broke broke. All the way broke. Bank account draining broke. Sucks to do that to a friend. So just save yourself some hassle and tell them not to get involved and that it is a brutal, frustrating game.
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Date: 2005-05-16 23:48 (UTC)You would think nothing of taking your money and sticking it in a mutual fund or something to grow it. Investing in your poker playing ability is the same thing. You are wasting your time playing $1/2 if you have money around you can play higher limits with and costing yourself money.
$1,000 for the $10 max buy in is a ridiculously large amount. I forget where I saw it, somewhere on 2+2, but they were recommending 20 buy ins for a limit. Of course if your friend knows jack about poker, a million buy ins isn't going to be enough until he learns how to play properly. I am wary to get anybody into poker, simply because while it seems easy to become a winning player, in reality it is a lot more difficult and requires a lot more self-discipline and knowledge to beat the games than is readily apparent at first. I don't know about you, but I have spent an enormous amount of time thinking about, writing about, reading about and playing poker in the past few years. And I am still only a mediocre player. 90% of the people you see playing poker don't beat the games, but almost all of them think they do. Getting someone involved in poker is just putting a bunch of responsibility on yourself for another person's financial well-being. My advice now to everyone is to "not get involved" whenever they find out I play cards.
It seems fun and innocent and cool to be teaching someone until one of the people you get into playing cards completely destroys their life with it. Then you will understand why you should just tell people not to play. 90% of the people are suckers in the games, and more likely than not if you get someone playing, they are going to be a sucker. And some of those suckers go broke broke. All the way broke. Bank account draining broke. Sucks to do that to a friend. So just save yourself some hassle and tell them not to get involved and that it is a brutal, frustrating game.