The most important point that you made is that poker brings nothing to the table for a player except money. You learn little that can be monetized away from the table, and spend your time building a bankroll instead of building a business that has value other than the money it brings in.
Poker doesn't scale. The goal is to increase your hourly rate. Spend your time coding.
Actually, being a good poker player can help you get into YC. From Andrew Warner (of Mixergy.com) interview with Paul Graham (pg is the interviewee below):
"Andrew: What kind of things does an entrepreneur do to fool you into thinking that they’re really determined?
Interviewee: Well, being seeming really tough and calm during the interview. I mean, why am I telling people about this guy?
Andrew: Because you guys are going to get better, and as long as this information is out there, you might as well get it all the way out there in even playing field.
Interviewee: There’s the danger of life. Matt Maroon of Blue Frog gaming. He was a professional poker player, talk about pokerfaced. So, he came in for his interview and he just seemed like absolutely unflappable. We thought, ‘Boy, this guy is tough. This guy is not a wimp.’ Actually, we were right, he was really tough. But, to this day, he is genuinely unflappable. I probably would want to fund more people who are really good poker players. I’ve noticed, empirically, there seems to be a high correlation between playing poker and being a successful startup founder. That’s how he seemed tough."
Playing poker with PEOPLE, at least (not online) has enormous benefits. Learning how to read people in-depth is incredibly valuable. Also learning how to stand your ground and unflinchingly bluff (or deliberatly avoid telegraphing your hand) is also a great skill to have.
There's so much more to poker than the money. Unless you're talking only about online poker.
> Learning how to read people in-depth is incredibly valuable.
You think that playing poker teaches you how to read people past the poker table? In what context? This sounds very delusional to me. In business, if you are doing anything with a lot of money at stake (that is not illicit), then the cards are always face up if you do enough work.
> Also learning how to stand your ground and unflinchingly bluff (or deliberatly avoid telegraphing your hand) is also a great skill to have.
You think this is a "great" skill? I think its valuable, but not as valuable as learning code or understanding how the economy works.
Also, you didn't even mention discipline or emotional control. Those are real values that poker will teach you. Bankroll management, dealing with long term variance, and getting bad beats make you either toughen up or break.
How old are you? How long have you been playing poker? I don't mean it derogatorily. I've played A LOT of poker and I've done a lot of other things. Poker has given me less skills than organizing soccer games.
I'm 24. I'm certainly not a pro, either. I'm not arguing these skills are the best skills anyone could have, I'm trying to convey that the intuition and instinct built up over time playing with people has some value, and that value isn't insignificant.
I failed to convey this, though. I totally agree with your points about disciple and emotional control. I just can't help but feel the skills I've gotten from playing poker with people are valuable. Who you play with matters a great deal, of course. I've gotten job offers based on my poker game not because I was a star or anything, but because I successfully illustrated my ability to execute strategy well. Etc. Etc. I turned down the jobs, by the way.
It also depends what you need to learn. Personally, as someone who avoids conflict and always second guesses my decisions, I found poker helps a little to train me out of these traits.
Yeah, there's not a ton I can say I've applied from my years gambling to other parts of my life, but this was the biggest takeaway: Shit happens; Trust the math; Don't let a big win get to your head, either.
If anything, I've learned not to get emotionally attached to day-to-day swings and try to rationally focus on the bigger picture.
I think you may be romanticizing things slightly. While it seems like this may be the case, the reality is people who play like this are both rare and glamorized such that they attract others to the game. The glamorization of poker was nothing but a marketing ploy by online sites. Is there more to poker then money? Sure, but this could be said about industry that is primarily about money, to the point were it loses all meaning.
Sure poker teaches you a lot, but you could get the same thing running a lemonade stand. You have to realize that the "skills" poker teaches is nothing but marketing fluff. This is why you see people coming from other skills and going into poker. I haven't heard a lot about going the other way (of course I am sure it exists). The fact is it is just about money.
that eliminates all the nuts and bolts of botting (screen scraping, action-taking, etc.) and leaves you time to figure out strategy. About a year ago I made a bot that 12-tabled at low stakes and made about $10 an hour...and then I realized I could be doing more interesting stuff with my life instead of staring at a screen, making minimum wage to make sure my bot didnt crash and lose my whole roll
I spent quite some time reading about poker bots / strategies and doing a base implementation, but never actually ran it on a live poker site. Some other project (also with a higher $/hr ratio) caught my interest and I abandoned it.
Still, I'd be very interested in discussing what tactics you used. For example, did your bot play a generic strategy, or adapt it based on the person(s) it was playing against?
Maybe your goal is to increase your "hourly rate", but I find it crazy that you think increasing your "hourly rate" is the only valuation for self worth.
Poker doesn't scale. The goal is to increase your hourly rate. Spend your time coding.