Poker Is a Challenge, a Hobby, a Great Way to Earn Some Easy Money. But It's Not a Stress-free Career.
Ed Miller says:
"...a few years ago I played poker for the majority (and for some time 100%) of my income. Today most of my income comes from writing and other projects, and playing is a part-time thing for me. I’m happier now."
"...I didn’t go busto. Nor did I rack up millions of dollars as a full-timer. I quit playing full-time with a moderately bigger bankroll than I had when I started"
So why would a winning poker player switch from playing full-time to playing only as a hobby? In an article by Matt Maroon recommended by Ed Miller, Maroon writes:
"I once met someone who quit a job as an air traffic controller, long considered the most stressful job in existence, to play poker for a living. He did it for a year and claimed to have made about 25% more than he would have at his job, but went back to his old career because, as he said, it was 'far less stressful'."
The Fan knows about this stress. Poker players, the ones who have souls at least, tend to get a little down on poker every now and then. It has to do with a lot of things (cheaters, poor card room management, fewer fish, politics/poker criminalization) but variance coupled with loneliness is a big reason winning poker players quit.
When you play poker for a living, you don't just work for yourself, you work by yourself. Everyone else at your table is working against you*. (If someone at the table is working with you, that's cheating.) The dealer is the only one who doesn't have an interest in seeing you fail, but they have no interest in seeing you succeed either. The poker world is a lonely world.
Variance, the randomness of the game, is very difficult for many people to deal with. Humans have a natural tendency to find patterns and uncover/create reasons/meaning for things. The mind has trouble handling random luck. Lucky people tend to feel they deserve their luck and unlucky people tend to think the same thing, even when it's not the case.
That's why poker is easier in small doses. Poker as a hobby is better on the psyche than poker as a career.
Miller plays poker now only as a hobby. He plays about one day a week for fun, to test out theories, and to keep his hand in the game. But he earns most of his income from his books and his website, though he's fundamentally an entrepreneur. Miller, in The Fan's estimation, will always have his hand in a few different pots, earning money from a variety of sources.
The Fan thinks the best poker players are entrepreneurs who play poker sometimes, but not all the time. They are people who desire personal freedom, conquering challenges, and creating wealth in various forms. They're not the kind of people who think lots of money is worth lots of stress. When poker gets too stressful, they find a new gig.
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*Not all the time, though. There can be multiple winners at the same table and they can root for each other, but when they've all got money in the pot they want to win, it's every player for him or her self.
