Moving On From Poker - 1 Year On

I ran into a friend/ex-student in a pub the other night, and he asked me if I wasn't missing playing poker - having thought about it there's stuff I miss and stuff I don't.

1. For a long time, I really missed the feeling of giving my absolute best to something and of doing a thing truly well.

When I was playing poker, even till what turned out to be the last days, I really enjoyed the security of knowing that if I ticked off the things I needed to tick off (reviewing hands, playing hands, being deliberate about mental game etc), I could go to sleep knowing that I'd done what I needed to do to move myself closer to the top of the heap. After taking the big leap and starting from the bottom of a different, much more massive mountain, I struggled a little with the feeling that I'd made a mistake, that I was wasting my time down the wrong rabbit hole, and most of all about not being confident that the plan I'd made would deliver the results I hoped for.

2. I miss the $ :D

Now that the work I do is basically paid in future equity or in crypto, I'm in a lame situation where when I want to pay for stuff (like a wedding..), I basically have to sell crypto I don't want to sell to pay for it. I'm obviously not suddenly poor, but I am kinda broke in a way I'm not very used to after years of being very liquid/actively adding to savings rather than eating into them.

That said though, this was always going to happen - you can’t move from near the top of one profession to the absolute bottom of another without your monthly earnings taking a substantial dip. I guess the decision to move on from poker was made almost instinctively/by accident, such that I didn’t really plan out/appreciate that this would happen. Whether or not the decision ultimately pays off is (a lot like poker) basically 100% up to me in the long run, and now that I’ve started to get a little traction I’m confident that it will.

3. I miss the boys

Though things are starting to change now, I started this journey completely on my own (much like I did with poker) and that really took some getting used to. It’s another thing I didn’t really think about at the time, but I definitely miss jumping on/hosting study calls a few times a week and talking spots/regs/whatever with my poker friends. It’s weird because I feel like I’ve kinda lost the main thing I had in common with basically all the best friends I’ve made since I left school - I’d love to just get the crack with everyone every now and then, and I guess I still could, I’ve just kinda lost that pretext for initiating.

4. I’m enjoying building

Though I enjoyed playing a poker a lot, one of the things I didn’t like about it was the every month/session/hand, you essentially start again from 0. With the stuff I’m doing now, the things I’m doing today build on the things I did yesterday (or a month ago, or both), which gives a nice feeling of semi-steady progression, more like a hobby in terms of the dopamine payoff structure than poker, where sometimes it’s easy to feel like you’re going backwards.

5. I’m enjoying variety

Obviously related to above, but the cool thing about programming is that once you’ve solved a problem, it essentially stays solved such that you don’t have to solve it again, or if you do you can do it in a fraction of the time.

Poker was great to me - it allowed me to live a fantastic life, see a lot of the world, and remain in charge of myself and my time throughout my twenties, which is a thing very few people manage to achieve. I learned analytical and counter-factual reasoning skills that will serve me well for the rest of my professional life, plus a framework for creating emotional coping strategies that I continue to use daily. I think that learning to play poker, even in 2022, is one of the best ways to get from 4-5 figure to 7 figure net worth, though it might be a quite poor way to get from 7 to 8+.

Though I'd never rule out returning to the streets, at this point I think it's quite unlikely - I have a fairly long (and growing) list of ideas I'd like to pursue relating to coding and crypto, and while that remains the case I don't think I'll go back to playing poker full time. Even a part time return is unlikely, as I know it would be harder to lose money while being aware that I've been playing and studying considerably less than all my opponents in the last year.

So - we continue down the rabbit hole.

Keep building and GL out there!