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October 31, 2006
An Interview With Me
A college student emailed me with a list of questions for a paper he is writing, and I thought I'd post them, with my responses (with his permission) here for y'all to read.
1. How has the passing of the UIGEA affected you so far?
It seems to have decimated the action at limit hold'em tables above $10/$20. It's dropped the total number of tables in every game to be sure. It hasn't made it any harder to play per se, but it's definitely reduced the number of places to play at.
2. How do you think it will affect you in the coming years? Do you feel it will unfairly affect your livelihood and the livelihood of many of your friends and other poker professionals?
It remains to be seen. Personally my guess is that online poker will soon be legalized and regulated, I'd say in the next few years, but in the short term how detrimental it will be is anyone's guess. I'm pretty optimistic though because the bill is actually somewhat impotent. If it criminalized playing poker online I'd be much more concerned.
It certainly has already had some effect on my livelihood, by virtue of reducing the number of available tables, and it might have much more of one in the future. Whether or not the sites can find easy ways for people to get money into and out of accounts and whether or not they can advertise to potential new players will be what determines the future.
People haven't been able to use credit cards for quite some time, and they've always been willing to expend a little effort to work around that. And because of the amount of money involved I'm pretty sure they'll find ways in the future. This bill might make it a little harder to get money into an online card room, but not much.
The advertising is the part that I think is the biggest concern. All poker rooms, online or off, have a large churn rate. People go broke or tire of the game and stop playing all the time. To maintain current levels of action card rooms have to constantly bring in new players. The bigger sites seemed to have hit the wall months ago, getting to the point where the influx of new customers was roughly equal to the rate at which old ones stopped playing, and the level of action stagnated.
So now it will be interesting to see if poker sites are still going to be able to place ads on television and billboards and in magazines. If not I think we're going to see a tremendous drop in the level of non-professionals playing the game and along with that a lot of the professionals will go broke. Personally I and most of my friends who play for a living are very far up the food chain, but a lot of people in the lower and mid levels might soon be looking for jobs. And everyone who survives might find themselves earning significantly less money.
3. Dumb Estimate Question: How many online poker pros do you think their are out there?
I've thought a lot about this. It depends on your definition of a pro, but I'd guess 250-500. I'm defining a professional as someone able to make the bulk of their income from playing poker and maintain a decent standard of living over a long period of time. There are probably tens of thousands of people for whom it is a side income, but I think, at most, only a few hundred who can earn a healthy living at it.
4. What got you started in online poker?
Efficiency. I started playing back when there was really only one site, Planet Poker. They were pretty poorly run, but eventually Paradise Poker opened and revolutionized the industry. Living in Ohio I didn't have access to many games. We had Vegas Nights, charity games that alternated venues around town, four nights a week, and at them there were maybe three or four tables. Once online poker started picking up steam (about 5-6 years ago) I was able to play any game at any time. It took me a long time to adapt to it, but once I did I realized that the profit potential there was just so much higher than in brick and mortar games that I never really went back.
5. What other business ventures has online poker opened up for you?
I've gotten into rakeback, which is referring players to sites and receiving a cut of the profits, then giving some of those profits back to the players. I've given over a million bucks back to players in the last couple years that way. I also have the exchange site, TheStarsExchange.com, where we exchange w$ and t$ for cash and vice versa, which I'm guessing must be a little out of the scope of your paper.
And there's my blog. I sell ads on there. I don't make any large sum of money from it but I make some. And the main benefit is the writing practice and the people I've met through it.
6. What is your favorite thing about being an online poker professional?
The freedom. Just last weekend I decided that I wanted to go visit some friends who live in New York, so I did. I travel a lot, which I love, and mostly to Las Vegas, my favorite place in the world.
There's also working for myself. I like knowing that every cent I earn goes directly to me. When you work for someone else some of it goes to them. I don't have to deal with malicious coworkers, corporate politics, and, my biggest pet peeve, being bossed around by people less qualified than me.
7. What is your favorite poker experience?
I guess I would say the first two days of this year's World Series of Poker. Being followed around by ESPN, playing my best and working magic at the table, having a three day break and knowing that I was going back with a huge stack and in a position to do something. That was a blast. The ending was as anticlimactic as they come, but the first week was a lot of fun.
8. What negative effects has online poker had on your life/lifestyle?
Well, playing poker for a living certainly has a lot of negative effects. You lose any sense of the value of a dollar when you routinely win or lose thousands of them in a day. The inevitable losing streaks are beyond depressing. And watching unskilled players get lucky in tournaments and win millions can make you bitter. But that's all poker in general, and not really online poker.
As far as online poker specifically there's this strange tendency we players get to view our time as money far too often. We know that at any time we could be online earning money. I've talked to a lot of people about this and it's nearly universal. For instance whenever I'm doing something I dislike I think something like "Let's see, I could clean the house for three hours, or I could pay someone $100, which is half of my hourly rate, work for 30 minutes, and then spend the other 2.5 hours doing something fun." Which wouldn't be that bad, except I then hire the maid and don't work at all.
9. What are the most positive effects?
Never having to set an alarm clock, the ability to make insane amounts of money while still in a robe and slippers, and the freedom of working for yourself. In fact even most self-employed people that I know can't just pack up and leave for weeks at a time if they want to. There's a level of freedom you get from online poker that just can't be found almost anywhere else.
10. What is your opinion on how online gambling affects American families and values?
I don't think it has any effect whatsoever. Somebody who wants to gamble away their mortgage can just go to a gas station and buy scratch-off tickets until they are in the poor house. 48 states have some legal form of gambling. Millions of people visit Las Vegas each year and most of them come back poorer but not so much so that they can't pay their bills.
People like to gamble, it's what separates us from monkeys. But, like anything other than breathing, moderation is the key. I certainly believe there are gambling addicts, but online gambling just saves them a trip to the convenience store. We as a country should have learned long ago that making something illegal doesn't at all combat addiction or any other social ills. It just makes it harder for the sufferers to get help.
11. Assuming you think so, why should online gambling be legalized in the United States?
Here's a list of reasons in no particular order:
A. Making it illegal is a clear violation of our agreements with the WTO. It's unfair to foreign countries. We've signed treaties and have an obligation to live up to them.
B. It will make it easier for addicts to get help and for sites to prevent minors from playing.
C. It will provide tremendous tax revenues.
D. Regulation will make online gambling safer and more convenient for players.
E. Making it illegal is an attempt to legislate morality, which should never be the purpose of a modern government.
F. It can't really be stopped without violating many civil liberties. And if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
12. Any other general comments on the subject of online poker/online gambling and the UIGEA bill and the people involved with it?
I think that adding this legislation into a port security bill makes a mockery of the idea of representative democracy. I realize that stuff like this happens all of the time and I find it just as insidious regardless of topic. Online gambling is an issue that needs its own careful research and debate. The stakes are high and the civil liberties of Americans are too important to bypass discussion in that manner.
Posted by themaroon at October 31, 2006 3:18 PM
Comments
Ive already let Matt know how thankful I was for his responses. He is a very nice guy and I just wanted to let everyone know that who may not have had the chance to interact with him in any way. Within hours he agreed to allow me to "interview" him and he got the answers to me in much less than 24 hours.
Sorry about the sloppiness of some of the questions everyone as I did not originally know they would be posted online
Posted by: Jordan C at October 31, 2006 5:18 PM
3. Dumb Estimate Question: How many online poker pros do you think their are out there?
I've thought a lot about this. It depends on your definition of a pro, but I'd guess 250-500. I'm defining a professional as someone able to make the bulk of their income from playing poker and maintain a decent standard of living over a long period of time.
Given y our definition, I'll take over 500 for a zillion dollars. I mean, I guess it depends what you define as "decent", but if we call that say, $50000/a, then I suspect the number is somewhere closer to 3000.
Posted by: Terrence at October 31, 2006 7:13 PM
Really? You think 3000 people can make 50k per year or more sustainably? I'm sure at least that many people do make that much in one given year thanks to tournaments, but can they do it year after year? And is that based on some insider information?
Posted by: Matthew Maroon at October 31, 2006 7:48 PM
Sorry, just my guesses here, no insider information. But a player who makes $50k/year may have done so through any of the following:
Beat 10/20 for 2 BB/100 and play 10416 hands/month.
Beat 15/30 for 1.5 BB/100 and play 9259 hands/month.
Beat 50/100 for 1 BB/100 and play 4167 hands/month.
Even a player who largely sucks and can only make 2 BB/100 at 5/10 only needs play 21000 hands a month to achieve this. You don't think there are probably a couple thousand people capable of doing this?
Posted by: Terrence at October 31, 2006 8:41 PM
Well, I think there are lots of people intellectually capable of beating games for 50k a year. You could even do it at 3/6 if you played 4 tables I think.
But a lot of people aren't emotionally equipped to handle the swings. And a lot of people have jobs that they are scared to quit, or just plain don't want to, or are bad at bankroll management and wind up broke. Only a small fraction of people capable of winning end up playing poker for a living for any length of time.
My estimates were just based on the numbers of real money games I found when data mining and the percentage of people winning significant amounts at them. I only datamined Party and made some assumptions about how many of those people were the same ones playing on other sites, etc. They're far from conclusive but I'd take the under on 1k if there were any real way to get an accurate count.
Posted by: Matthew Maroon at October 31, 2006 9:05 PM
I agree with Matt's comment.
A lot of people are "intellectually capable," but what percentage of this "capable" group actually does it?
I think every fat person is capable of losing weight, because it's no secret that all you need to do lose weight is expend more calories than you consume over an extended period of time (the "long run," if you will).
But how many fat people are actually going to lose weight? It's just easier to sit on your ass and eat pizza and not go jogging than it is to get up off your ass, not eat pizza, and go jogging. Just like it's too easy for a player to make a loose call when he absolutely knows he should fold.
I know that's kind of a weird analogy.
I do agree with Matt, though, that the number of people who make enough money from poker to live comfortably is a lot lower than people think.
Posted by: Steve at November 1, 2006 10:44 AM
i'd take the way over on 1000.
you know there are people who make a living playing NL100 right?
Posted by: mike at November 1, 2006 1:50 PM