Professional Poker Player?

I was talking to someone online I am playing a game with, and he tells me he plays poker for a living - online poker. To me, this does not seem like a productive or legitimate job, because all it does is transfer wealth, with maybe very minimal "entertainment" value. While I don't think it should be illegal, what do you think of this as a way to make a living? I am not too fond of it, as I don't see it as even remotely productive, though at least it is not quite as bad as being a looter.

Post 1

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 2:51pm

Good idea! I might try it.

Post 2

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 5:05pm

I don't see it as being much different from professional sports. Excluding online games, alot of high profile poker tournaments are televised.

Post 3

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 5:37pm

I agree with Jonathan.

Being a good poker player takes great skill, as does chess, or any of the "mental" games.

There are professional video game players, too.

As for the productive aspects, being productive doesn't necessarily mean producing a good or service of value to others. If you produce something of value to yourself, that's productive enough, in my book.

No looting involved with two or more people willing to compete against each other for money.

Post 4

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 5:56pm

maybe very minimal "entertainment" value.

I, for one, find it very entertaining. I love to play and I love to watch. Don't forget a value implies a valuer and plenty of people value this form of entertainment. And, by the way, entertainment is what is being produced.

Post 5

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 6:07pm

While I certainly do not consider it something to be forbidden, let me play the devil's advocate and ask -

WHY is this entertainment to you?

and -

WHY [and HOW] is this adding to the flourishing of your life? or is it? and if it it is not -

WHY is it of value to you?

Post 6

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 6:15pm

Look at it this way. Let's say that you wanted to play online poker with others for entertainment value, and were willing to make a deal that whoever played with you was entitled to keep whatever money that he or she won. What is the value that is being exchanged here? It is entertainment with the chance of winning some money. The game requires players, so each player, by participating, is producing the value of entertainment for the other players.

It's the same as an entertainer, say a musician, who offers to perform for others, provided they pay money for the entertainment. Is he or she being productive? Yes. The product is entertainment for the audience. People enjoy hearing the musician perform. In the same way, people enjoy playing poker, and competing against each other for the chance to win some money. It is something they are willing to pay for, i.e., to offer the other players a chance to win their own money, in order to have a chance of winning theirs.

Suppose two tennis players put up a certain amount of money, which the winner is entitled to keep. Is this a "productive" activity. Yes, because in addition to the entertainment of playing the game, there is the added opportunity of winning some money. The opportunity to win some money is also a value, which each player by agreeing to participate, is providing the other player.

There is a tendency to think of production as simply the physical manufacture of a material good. But suppose someone gives me a work of art, which I don't happen to like. So I look for someone to buy it, and let's say that because I advertise it on the internet with a picture, I find someone who really likes the painting and is willing to pay a lot of money for it. Have I "produced" a value? Yes, because even though I didn't create the painting, I created the opportunity for someone to buy a painting that he liked better than the money that he paid for it. He liked it better than the money he paid for it; otherwise, he wouldn't have given up the money in exchange for the painting. He's better off now -- wealthier, if you will -- than before he bought the painting.

Any time two people make a trade, they increase their wealth. If I give you a baseball glove in exchange for a baseball bat, we are both wealthier than before the trade, even though neither of us produced the items that we exchanged. What we did produce, however, was an increase in our respective wealth, because each of us is better off than before.

- Bill

Post 7

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 6:27pm

For me, it comes down to the trader principle. Are you offering value for value? Your best for their best? Are you promoting a harmony of interests? Are you creating a relationship where people will want to continue to trade with you, or are you surviving by blending in the crowd and not catching too much attention?

Part of it depends on exactly what kind of "professional" gambler he is. If he just gambles online, taking his money from other people in the matches, I don't think he is following the trader principle.

If his source of income is not the other players, but the spectators, it's different. This latter case is more like professional sports. He is offering value for value with the spectators who are paying him, even if indirectly.

In the former case, he may be entertaining himself and even some others. But that's not the source of his revenue. It's a side-effect. His source of income is parasitic. He only gains by taking away from others.

In the latter case, the entertainment is the source of the wealth creation. I'm imaging a TV show where sponsors pay for advertisement. They trade that for access to the viewers time. The viewers trade access to their time for entertainment. And the gamble is trading the entertainment for the money from the sponsors. His source of income is productive.

Post 8

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 7:08pm

Joe gets profound (again)

In the former case, he may be entertaining himself and even some others. But that's not the source of his revenue. It's a side-effect. His source of income is parasitic. He only gains by taking away from others.

I never thought of it that way. Is it really parasitic, though? Is he "taking" from the other player? I think that would be true if a player was hustling, and looking to make money from inferior competitors, but I can't see that as being true with real competitors, holding similar skill sets and knowledge. The idea of personal competition as being some kind of looting just doesn't seem right to me. Of course I'm taking it for granted that each player can afford to lose whatever they're betting, and knows it.

Ever watch "Pinks?" Is that a form of looting, racing for the other guy's car title? No secret as to what the stakes are. Everyone knows the rules.

Post 9

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 7:53pm

Teresa,

The assumption that both players can afford to lose may be true in a friendly game, but not so for the professional gambler. Winning is his source of income.

Don't get me wrong. My criticism is direct at those who's source of income is gambling, not the occasional gambler. The former lives off of the productive efforts of others. The latter lives through some productive process, and the gambling is recreational. The former's life depends on taking from others without offering value in return. The latter lives independently, and isn't dependent on the winnings.

Haven't seen "Pinks", or even heard of it.

Post 10

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 8:25pm

Hmm. What about a Day Trader on Wall Street? They're making their money by buying things that they wager are undervalued, and selling when they calculate them to be overvalued. It's basically placing bets for a living. Isn't this a form of professional gambling?

Post 11

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 8:31pm

I mean, I might try playing online poker as a hobby.

The former's life depends on taking from others without offering value in return.

The value provided to the money losers is in the form of being able to play the poker game as it was (including the better player). One is always free to choose whether or not to join a game or continue playing. Why would these people play if they were not gaining values?

Well, the losers aren't gaining life generating and life sustaining values (unless they are learning to win money). But anyways the game itself doesn't create anything life generating and sustaining.

The money won of course could go towards something that both the winner and the loser wants. So maybe the loser doesn't really loose much, maybe even gains health wise or whatever.

But for me, lets say I can make $40 an hour working as a software developer. And lets say I can make $100 an hour playing poker (That's a high guess to what might potential might be after gaining lots of experience). And lets say I want to start a business, which requires $1,000,000 to start off successfully and become profitable for me at $300 an hour. I could start that business off earlier by playing poker.

Post 12

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 9:08pm

Exemplars of Virtue

I have a close friend who works as an IT contractor, he has also been a dealer in Atlantic City, and was an avid on-line poker player, until the Congress butted in, because they could. Now, if he wishes to engage in a consensual activity, which both he and his opponents enjoyed, he must do so both without the protection of the law, and also at the risk of prosecution for a non-crime.

To criticize gamblers as not operating on the trader principle is to mistake personal value for monetary value. Just because gambling is a zero-sum activity monetarily does not mean that it is a zero-sum activity spiritually. Indeed, if the participants truly enjoy their actions, they are trading paper for happiness. It is not for some third party to say that their joy or happiness is invalid. If you spend your money on truffles, when potatoes are just as nutritive, should one call the truffle hunter an exploiter or you the gourmand who enjoys truffles a wastrel? If people spend their money watching pay-per-view boxing or sports-car racing, when the spectacle is over, they have "lost" their money and they have no material benefit to show for it. Does this make putting on such spectacles a form of theft or enjoying them a vice?

(I myself do not gamble, but I do enjoy watching Texas hold'em tournaments.)

Remember in Atlas Shrugged that the government banned certain forms of entertainment as wasteful as the economy tanked. One wonders whether those who criticize gambling and other such activities as vices are simply materialists who deny the possibility of a non-material joy, or ascetic anti-life mystics who admit the existence of the joy, but simply hate it nonetheless.

Obviously, no economy could exist if everyone were a gambler and no one worked as a farmer or a manufacturer. A gambler must both have a stake to begin with, and a skill to fall back on if he loses. But so long as he can earn a living based on his skill, interacting with others on a voluntary basis, where each acts motivated by his own joy, his action is an exemplar of virtue.

Ted Keer

Post 13

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 10:58pm

Eric, if they're truly gambling, they'll probably lose all of their money. If they're intelligent and do some research and really think that it is valued incorrectly, they are providing a service by taking money away from poor investments and putting it into better investments, and affecting the price accordingly.

Dean asks "Why would these people play if they were not gaining values?". One answer is that they're hoping to be the ones who take the money from the others.

As far as opening a business with your profits, it's possible, but there are downsides. First, because you'd be rejecting the trader principle, under the premise that someday you'll get back to it but for now you'll take as much money from other people as you can, you learn little mental habits. Like thinking of other people as chumps to take advantage of. And looking for ways of tricking or manipulating them. Looking for suckers. And instead of looking for ways to expand your market, you get used to trying to fight with your competitors over the zero-sum world. Spend a decade doing this, and then see how hard it is to stop viewing people as suckers who you can trick into parting with their hard-earned cash.

Ted, you don't seem to understand the trader principle at all. You've missed the whole part about trading. Unless you really think people are so interested in the game, and not on the chance of winning, that they're paying the other person just to play with them. Is this really what you think? That they're just paying someone to play a game with them? Like paying to watch a boxing match?

If that was the case, then sure, everyone's a winner. But if they aren't simply paying for game, and actually want to win, they're not going to be happy with losing. This notion that people are paying for the entertainment of the game, just the same as paying to watch a boxing match, is a distortion of the facts. It's some weird parallel universe view where gambling is converted into a productive activity. And that's without mentioning the other "professional" gamblers who certainly aren't paying for the joy of losing to their competitors, as that is their source of income.

I'm shocked that you could even think this is "an exemplar of virtue". Since when did anything that's voluntary suddenly become virtuous?

Where's the value for value? Enough rationalizations about how spiritual values may exist. Of course they do. But that's not the basis of the trade. It's not like if you paid some great chess master to play a game with you, which you would be paying for the spiritual value and it would be a proper trade. But these spiritual values are typically only incidental.

Post 14

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - 11:00pm

Now turning to a real life example, I know a guy who is a "professional" gambler. He enjoys the challenge. He goes to casinos all over the country. And he always has some system of winning. But his goal is to take money from the casinos. He has excuses that would make some Objectivists rationalize it all away. For instance, casinos profit when people are winning, because it makes others feel like they have a chance too. So his taking money from the casinos is actually a form of trade. Of course, they're not so enlightened. When they recognize what he's doing, they throw him out. Sometimes literally. Guess they don't see the value.

Of course, he tries to hide the fact that he's winning, or they'll get suspicious. So he doesn't generally even offer that much value.

As far as I know, it started off honest. He counted cards, which they don't like, but isn't against the law. And when new games came out, he figured out ways of beating the system. Again, he offered that by milking them for so much money, they were informed that the game was flawed and made an adjustment. How generous. Of course, they'd kick him out, which shows they just aren't enlightened.

But then, why be honest? After all, casinos are tricking people into gambling, aren't they? So various forms of cheating began. Sometimes it was finding a weak dealer who showed their hand accidentally. Sometimes it was more involved.

And it doesn't stop there, of course. Other professional gamblers would be out there as well. And it's zero sum. So if he was taking advantage of a new game that had a flaw, they would be upset cause they couldn't take advantage of it as much. Everyone would take as much as possible, greedily grabbing all they could, before it ended. And so you start to have this dark underworld of people who hate each other. They would be enemies. And they'd consider the others a threat to their livelihood.

And so he started having to carry weapons to protect himself. But it doesn't stop there. Gamblers rarely pay all the income tax they're required to by law, so sometimes their be an anonymous tip to the IRS. Or even better, since you couldn't exactly put all this money into the bank and out each time, they have to keep a bunch of money (and chips) on them and at their place of residence. And so direct theft was okay. And hey, it's not like they really earned it, right?

And then there's the disguises, sneaking around, etc. You get kicked out of places, right? So you have to search for new targets, and try to deceive people. No more treating people with respect and honesty. Now it's whatever it takes to get by.

Exemplar of virtue. Yup. Virtue of honesty. Oops. Virtue of productivity. Oops. Virtue of integrity. Oops. Virtue of justice. Oops. Virtue of pride. Oops.

I guess you can draw some line where you promise not to cross, but the lifestyle draws you to the very edge of that line, and further. If part of virtue is to not place yourself in situations where your values require unsavory actions, then this is not virtuous living.

Post 15

Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 3:06am

Ah, I see. Professional gambling isn't a "value for value" method of production.

I can't argue with you Joe, looking at it like that. A professional gambler would take advantage of an inexperienced player, or a glitch in a game.

Thanks for offering a view I probably never would have seen otherwise.

Post 16

Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 4:32am

Still no explaining WHY it is supposedly entertainment - and to equate it to a musician is grotesque, demeriting all but the lowliest most inept one, to say nothing of the nature of art itself....

Post 17

Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 6:18am

I agree with Joe, but to be fair to Ted I think he was pointing out the "banning" was not right, and I agree - no one here is saying it should be banned at all. However, making money by looking for "suckers" is not trading, and not really entertainment either.

Post 18

Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 8:39am

This falls into line with the observations of Frank Wallace in his books on neocheating and Neo-Tech I described in my article on the subject published on this site some time ago. Wallace called poker "the wasted world of cards" and wrote an entire book on how to engage in "invisible" cheating of suckers with no sleight of hand required. His use of poker as an analogy for religion and statism as "zero sum games" and "black holes" proved apt.

I recall seeing a cover of Liberty magazine featuring a blurb about an article called "Place Your Bets: Gambling Is Rational and Productive" in which the author claimed that gambling amounted to a "poor man's cattle futures." I did little more than scan the article because I considered the premise preposterous. Perhaps someone who studied the article in detail would care to corroborate or refute my casual assessment.

I always considered the work required to gamble and win more onerous and less fun than doing engineering so I never bothered to learn. I can say the same of role playing games like "Dungeons and Dragons" but that will no doubt offend some of the creative types here. If I have to expend that much effort, I want something to show for it!

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 11/28, 8:41am)

Post 19

Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 10:50am