To be fair, 1k hands is a pretty meaningless sample - I think most pros would say you need at least 50k if not 100k hands for the results to be any reliable signal as to whether or not a player is actually winning or losing in the long run.
Turns out most day traders are eaten alive. There's one study a few years ago that looked at Brazilian day traders and found 97% of traders that traded for more than 300 days were unprofitable [1]. I imagine this is due to a combination of factors which include 1) no real edge against the market and 2) fees. Of course unclear if their results generalize to other equity markets, but I think this is some evidence that the average day trader will have a difficult time beating the more sophisticated market participants over a large sample.
I think it depends on the audience. I have some closer friends that I would be comfortable taking a more aggressive communication style because they know my intent is to help them and sometimes people do need someone to shock them into making a change.
For internet strangers, at least in my experience, I think putting people on defensive footing through more aggressive language makes it more difficult to get your point across to most folks. Your goal, however, might be to talk to a group out there that does respond to a more "tough love" angle.
I do find it can make productive discussion with those who are going to perceive the language as insulting more difficult if not impossible. Just something to keep in mind depending on your communication goals.
I think it's great that you had the conviction and risk taking appetite to find success and in retrospect be able to say it was the "right" choice for you. I also think there's some great advice in there about benchmarking the road that you're headed down and asking yourself if it is the right road for you.
However, I think this comment veers off into a tone that, for me, is a bit judgmental and prescriptive. Even out of the group of people who are single and childless people have different life situations, people have different risk tolerances, and there's not a one size fit all solution to quitting your job and chasing your passion for everyone. Not to mention unfortunately some people sacrifice a lot in pursuit of what they want and end up with nothing or very little to show for it in the end.
Again I think your comment comes from a good place and there's some useful advice here, but the unnecessary name calling is a bit of a turn off at least for me and overall reduces the effectiveness of communicating your advice.
Yeah, agreed, love the Plain Bagel and the generally sane takes from that channel.
"Get rich" is definitely too broad of a target and probably has too many connotations with "mansion and luxury cars" when, as you identified, what I meant with that statement is closer to "financial goals" or, more tangibly, something like "comfortable retirement".
This is a point worth clarifying. I think a lot of people actually do get rich investing. It just turns out the "good process" in this case is leaving your money in a diversified portfolio for decades. This leverages making a bunch of bets that on average have a positive expected value over a long enough time horizon that you are able to realize the gains.
There are also certainly other ways to have an edge in investing (quant firms come to mind), but I think the most realistic option for "anyone" is readily available in the form of low fee index funds and a long time horizon.
Reminder for folks who go to concerts or other events / areas that regularly have loud sounds - invest in ear protection! It is probably not worth it to risk your hearing for a slightly "better" listening experience. You will also avoid that partially deaf feeling after being exposed to loud music / sounds. There are a ton of reusable ear plugs on the market that you can easily keep on your person.
I found this one [1] pretty interesting - finding a raise with top pair weak kicker is not intuitive. There is some solver work in this video which is probably overly technical for a casual observer, but will give a bit of flavor on how poker is studied at a high level.
Why does anyone choose to play any game instead of another? Catan has a chance element to it, isn't that gambling to try to win the game? Why not play something completely deterministic? For the record, we also do play Catan and other games.
We play poker because we enjoy the structure of the game and it is different to other things. Personally I'm uncomfortable with your insinuation that I, and the friends I play with, are somehow culturally brainwashed to be gamblers because we enjoy poker.
I'll end the conversation by repeating what I said above. If you look down on this type of activity then there's nothing I can do to change your mind.
The vast majority of people who play poker do not play it for the "high stakes, smoky rooms, and martinis". Speaking for myself, I regularly play for very low stakes with friends in my own place of residence and we enjoy it as both as an intellectual pursuit and something to socialize over.
Obviously your viewpoint is perfectly valid - there are plenty of people who have been irreparably harmed by gambling culture and the way that poker is marketed largely does itself no favors in that regard. My point is that degenerate culture and poker can be separated and there are absolutely healthy ways to enjoy a hobby which, yes, has a luck element to it, but also requires precise study and meticulous decision making to excel at.
From what I've read I think you are conflating the predatory nature of casinos with the game of poker. Those two things are certainly linked, but I would argue that it would be a mistake to write off a game like No Limit Texas Hold'em as irredeemably harmful due to the association.
I enjoy chess and Formula 1 too! I think poker is broadly misunderstood to be a game of luck disguised as a game of skill when in reality it is very much a game of skill in the long run. The "long run" here being hundreds of thousands of hands.
There are absolutely brilliant plays in poker at its highest levels when a player finds an interesting line with a particular hand. I agree that most poker "highlights" are not of this variety, but instead highlight the gambley nature of the game, but that is not the whole story. To me, studying and understanding the dynamics of good poker strategy has the exact same beauty and elegance which you use to describe football / chess / Formula 1.
I'd fully agree that the way poker markets itself in many contexts definitely leans into the degenerate nature of it and does itself no favors. However, there is a very complex beautiful game of skill behind all of it.
I meant zero sum in the closed loop of the game itself. Only one team can win, the reason why they are paid so much is because they have built an audience and the sponsors/teams are effectively built around advertising revenue and/or sales of merch.
Agreed on the distribution of who wins and who loses, most people don't lose money playing basketball. However, the point I am trying to make is writing off poker as "not productive" simply because it is monetarily zero sum (or negative sum in the case of raked games) is a disservice to the game itself.
For poker it's actually negative sum at most venues outside of private games due to the fees taken by the organizer (i.e. the rake). But yes, point taken that at least within the closed system of the game poker is zero/negative sum.
My comment was more directed at the OP's assertion that poker is not 'productive' because it is zero-sum. I personally don't see how injecting corporate sponsors into otherwise zero sum games (only one team in sporting events can win, only one chess player can win the tournament) elevates competitive pursuits outside of poker to what can be considered 'productive'. OP's view could be that all of these pursuits are equally unproductive and that would be fair enough.
Is this not also true for many sporting or competitive pursuits that are also effectively zero sum? For sports I suppose one could argue there are benefits to exercise and for other competitive games with professionals like chess there are mental benefits from getting good at them.
However, neither seem particularly "productive" outside of all the money that is funneled into events for marketing purposes. There is, of course, perhaps some inherent aesthetic and community building around a common interest that is valuable, but I'd argue that the same is true for poker - I personally find the game of no limit hold'em interesting from a theoretical perspective and have met a lot of people that I would not have otherwise through playing it.
Poker doesn't seem that much different to other abstracted competitive pursuits to me besides that it has a larger luck factor to it.
As a part time live tournament grinder who has a full time job it's always sobering to hear from full time grinders who end up quitting due to how tough the grind is. A couple of observations to add:
1) There is absolutely a huge edge to be had playing live tournaments, even for buy ins in the $1k - $5k range. If you are playing outside of Vegas it is very common to end up at a table where at least half the table are "recreational" (i.e. players who are bad and are likely to make large mistakes).
2) The downside to playing live tournaments is that it is difficult to get reasonable volume in and the variance can be brutal. It is not that unlikely to go on a 20+ buy in downswing even with a decent edge.
3) Having an income source not tied to poker is huge and allows you to not have to be conservative with bankroll management. If you're pulling in mid 6 figures from a day job you don't have to worry about selling action or going down in stakes when you go on a downswing because you can always supplement the bankroll with your income. This, obviously, can be taken too far, but you don't have to be as worried about the variance from shot taking a higher buy in tournament where you know you have an edge like the $10k WSOP Main Event which is by far the softest $10k that exists.
As the saying goes, being a professional gambler is the hardest way to make an easy living.