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I used to play Poker for a living from 2018-2021. These days whenever I recount my past with new people, everyone inevitably asks me why I stopped playing the game (full time) if it was profitable to do so. Its understandably hard to comprehend why anybody would stop pursuing a money making endeavour. So, I want to write this post to summarily answer most questions around this topic and mostly because I am tired of repeating myself again and again.

I was working as a product manager at Flipkart.com back in 2020 and around that time, I quit my job to pursue the game for two main reasons:

• The lifestyle and the freedom that comes along with playing Poker full time. You aren’t answerable to anybody. You set your own schedule. You can play from anywhere, travel all the time and visit casinos in cool places.

• Financial incentives. Poker has the best hourly rate for any job in India. The money is simply un-comparable to any job a 20 year old can get and is close to VP+ level in unicorn/FAANG companies

I stopped playing full time because both of the above premises turned out to be false. Let me explain

• Imagine sitting in front of a screen for 12-16hrs a day, clicking buttons (without tilting) for a living. Money has lost its meaning long time ago. You don’t care about the wins anymore and the losses still hurt. Winning is not fun because by now you are very conscious of the fact that you can lose 10x that amount any week/day. Your net worth is swinging everyday and variance can be brutal. In fact, you are at the mercy of variance on a day to day basis. I have seen fellow top notch Poker players running below EV for 5-6L hands which is a year worth of effort. Imagine doing everything correct(studying, playing well, not tilting etc) and still end up negative for the entire year and have nothing to show for the work. This is entirely normal in certain high variant Poker games like PLO6. especially when relative edges are lower and rake is high (Indian high stakes basically)

As a Poker player, the main fundamental thing is putting volume(no. of hands played / hour/day/week whatever). Now, you can’t be jet setting around the globe and putting in the required hands.

There is a reason professional Poker players are called grinders. Its a grind.

Moreover, its not at all enough to just play Poker. You need to be at the top shape mentally and physically as the game takes a heavy toll on yourself. This means getting mental coaching session 3x a week, getting theory coaching, hand reviews, etc which is upto 20hrs a week. Its actually way way more hectic schedule than working a simple day job especially given there are no breaks/weekends/festivals etc.

But all of the above sacrifice is worth it because you are also making 10x your day job. Right? Not really. Let me explain in the next section.

• The 95th percentile Poker income is about $200-250k. While this number looks big on paper(relative to what they pay at Flipkart), there are some caveats. Also, when you suddenly start making 10x your previous income, it clouds your judgment

This figure doesn’t grow with time. Sure you can move up the stakes but then you will also be playing vs really good players and your relative edge goes down. Beating the rake is hard and you have to constantly study/work on your game everyday. Your skill curve will plateau hard after a point and its super hard to become the world best. Its basically professional athletics at that level.

However, tech salaries grow with time. Your experience compounds. You get equity. 95th percentile financial outcome in tech is much much bigger. Flipkart is actually a good example of a top percentile outcome for its employees. 50+ folks supposedly made $10mil + which is super hard to make in Indian Poker in 15 years

And finally and this was one of the biggest reasons I shifted back to product management is because I missed:

• Working with smart folks. Sure, I was lucky to study/learn from some really smart folks but most days I am playing against randos and its not intellectually stimulating. (remember winning money has stopped being stimulating as well and now you are searching for something better).

• Building something tangible at the end of the day. I want to have something to show at the end of 10yrs and not just numbers in my bank account.

• Poker is a very lonely game. You are solely responsible for your outcomes. While this is intoxicating as a naive young kid, you soon realize that all worthwhile stuff is built through collaboration and bunch of smart folks working together

• Mental health goes for a toss as you are swinging for a % of net worth everyday. You results are sometimes out of your hand and that sucks. Your base dopamine levels get screwed and you no longer get excited by stuff which you used to enjoy before. Its actually a pretty commonly acknowledged problem in the poker/trading community.

• Politics and networking. While some Poker players argue that this is part and parcel of being a professional, I was personally uncomfortable sucking up to whales/big fishes to get access to their games. I was unwilling to fake my persona/feelings just to get a juicy chance to play in a game. I just wanted to put in my hands, play my game style, move on and not deal with the politics. With that attitude and disinclination towards bum-hunting, I was anyway not cutout for the highest stakes (its a compulsory now to do this as highest stakes in India are all private games). One of my Poker and life heroes Phil Galfond writes a lot about this on his blog. Do check it out.

TBH, in-spite of all the reasons stated above, I was totally confident in my self to become one of the top pros in the world if I grinded for another 10-15 years. But after meeting them, their lifestyle, earnings, swings etc, I wasn’t sure I wanted that life for myself when I am in my early 40s or late 30s. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be playing cards for a living for 20-25% of my lifespan which felt wasteful to me personally.

The above were my personal reasons for moving away from Poker. There are some other things like changing life priorities, achieving financial security, long-term sustainability concerns and regulatory/compliance challenges which I haven’t elaborated much on. While bidding farewell to a successful career in professional Poker is undoubtedly a significant decision, it is essential to recognize that life is a dynamic journey, and priorities evolve. I would like to think that I evolved and can judge decisions better.

In conclusion, I was extremely short sighted about Poker as a career. Didn’t think through the minor caveats of the career path and was fascinated by the competitive aspect(you play something for a living which I still find fun) and the money. However, I am still extremely grateful about my journey. I learned another skill and I probably can always find a way to support myself in dire situations. Poker has taught me a lot of life lessons and has immensely shaped how I view the world on a day to day basis. I am better at quantifying risk , looking at decisions from a EV perspective(instead of being results oriented) and overall having a good idea of how to manage risk. Things like bank roll management, the mental stamina, (propensity to take immense amount of stress repeatedly), grit etc are also things that Poker teaches you and I probably should write another post about my life lessons from the game if enough people ask me that question IRL.🤣

Wow what an insight!
I never understood card games.
But to read this is like reading the ‘Confessions of a High Roller’! Its an interesting new perspective on this thread.

There's a great book that people might want to read. It's called Thinking in Bets, by Annie Duke - a champion Poker player herself.

Very unique perspective. Thanks for jotting it down.

All i know about poker is from watching the movie "Rounders" :D

If we replace 'poker' with 'derivatives trading' (as a professional trader), everything you explained fits! Except for the 'politics and networking' bit.

Perhaps once you retire, you can get back into poker playing - with less focus on money making and more focus on exercising your brain/enjoyment.

Very well written. The hustle portion of getting good games where the odds of a higher pot win is better can be straining on oneself as well as their immediate family. Its hard to convince your wife that you are a professional poker player as the mindset is its gambling and you will loose all this in a couple of bad decisions.

What was the peak of your poker playing career? Was it a tournament victory or a big pot win or was it the thrill to beat a good player?

Is it better to be a pro in a different country?

My wife and I play poker socially; we have separate businesses we run and this is strictly for entertainment only. We set our stop losses accordingly; basically, it shouldn't cost us more than a good weekend out eating and drinking at the most. Any wins are a bonus.

We've played with a bunch of different groups, and it is always fun. As it isn't a main income stream, we can relax, play and enjoy the games we play.

For someone who has played professional poker successfully for 6 years I can very well understand and resonate with the original post. Along with other factors my primary factor was the toll it was taking on my mental and physical health. Been a decade I left it and now just occasionally play it with friends for small stakes just for fun. Won't say I don't miss those days but there is no way I am going back to them. Nice write up and great content Crazy Coyote :thumbs up

PS- whoever plays it may agree with me. The sound and feel of Poker chips moving around your hands is quite cathartic and exhilarating.

You are spot on. One of my early coaches used to trade sugar futures for Futures First. He used to tell me stories about his wild trading days and the mental struggle is very similar.

Well, it was initially hard for me to convince my parents (I was 20 yrs old quitting a well paying job at Flipkart) as well. However, during lockdown I moved back home for 3 months where they saw me study, talk about variance and take coaching everyday. They understood that the game was anything BUT gambling in the long run and let me pursue it. From the girlfriends POV, I had explained her pretty early on about the skill aspect in the game and she did some reading herself to understand the concepts.

Beginner luck played a role and I won a huge tournament pretty early on. I also got lucky in the sense that I was surrounded by smart folks who made me understand that it was pure luck and that I was a bad player. I joined a poker stable, took coaching, tried my hand at different variants (moved from MTTs to PLO cash) and eventually started a stable myself. I was winning at allin. adj 11bb/100 over 5L hands at the highest stakes of PLO available in the Indian sites. I don't want to quote too many numbers and sensationalise the post. My main point was to make people understand my thought process quitting poker. Maybe in DMs I can help you understand the monetary side of things.

Was thinking this when I read this.

Would be good to summarize the skills you developed and how they are useful in real life.

Wow, that's like something out of a movie! Never had any talent for cards, so have no idea of what that sort of life would be like. Always imagine something out of a Bond film, with high stakes and a table!

Any more details and anecdotes that you guys would like to share would be very welcome and very interesting reading for people like me. Thanks!

Have you tried your hands at Bridge? It is an extremely intelligent and stimulating game without the stress of Poker.
There are individual, group, team and country championships. The men's world cup is known as Bermuda Bowl and the women's Venice Cup.

Just a thought.

Thanks for the honest response here. Its good you got the guidance and were able to keep a balanced head in your approach. Friend of mine got hooked early on but it was terrible on his personal finances and career as he was aggressive and went full Tilt/Bluff his way to basically recover his losses.

Just one suggestion to keep your interest in the game is to try some live tournaments like the WSOP or so to keep your game fresh.

Lastly - Could you explain what PLO, Allin, Abj 11bb/100 are for the wider audience (some of this is new to me too).

Did you just stick to Texas hold em or played the Omaha too? The game like rounders or Bond fantasises the game a lot, but reality is its a lot of hours grinding or holding off for one good hand at times and sometimes the table never produces anything interesting for a really long time.

Yes, I did some play some live tournaments to switch it up every couple months.

PLO is the game format. I specialised in Pot Limit Omaha - 4card which was under studied back then. Most Indians were studying tournaments and I found my relative edge to be higher in PLO4.

Allin.adjusted bb/100 is how you represent winrate in poker. Allin.adjusted denotes that its adjusted for variance (you lose an allin pot which you were supposed to win 70% of the times) and bb/100 is basically how many big blinds you win per hundred hands. This number is relevant and sensible only over big hand samples. Check this thread to know about this further: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/3...100-a-1736623/

I played everything a little bit but I specialised in PLO4 cash game format. Back then the highest stake cash games used to be all PLO.

I also built a small analytics tool for studying PLO preflop game. You can read about my experience here: https://rnikhil.com/2022/06/15/gtoin...r-startup.html

That was an interesting read. I did not even know there are professional poker players in India, especially online ones! Are there similar rummy players too?