Micro stakes poker

[thejuice]

Anyone into that? Was thinking of learning the game properly, playing some 1 cent/ 2 cent games for a little extra income. I enjoy the game anyway..

 

[Outdated]

That's a really quick way to lose money and feel depressed. The house always wins, yes it's rigged. They're there to make money.

 

[thejuice]

I agree the house always wins, yes. I'm talking about playing other people. The house will take a cut for sure.

 

[tree]

If you lived where I live, you could collect returnable bottles and cans
for the deposit money. But you don't live where I live.

That seems like a less risky, more reliable source of income.
And you'd get some exercise.

 

[Aspychata]

Or get one of those metal detectors, lots of walking and lots of loose change.

 

[jsilver256]

I'll have the contrarian opinion. Lots of people in the USA make a living playing poker. They clean out the tourists. It's a pretty stable living, provided you can discipline yourself and stick to the hard math.

However, "reading" others might be challenging with autism...

 

[thejuice]

If you lived where I live, you could collect returnable bottles and cans
for the deposit money. But you don't live where I live.

That seems like a less risky, more reliable source of income.
And you'd get some exercise.

I could gamble with the bottle caps

 

[thejuice]

I'll have the contrarian opinion. Lots of people in the USA make a living playing poker. They clean out the tourists. It's a pretty stable living, provided you can discipline yourself and stick to the hard math.

However, "reading" others might be challenging with autism...

Thats what I was thinking. Apparantly its harder nowadays to make any money because people are using youtube to learn the game. And a lot of the maniacs have migrated to betting on sports instead.

 

[MNAus]

I'll have the contrarian opinion. Lots of people in the USA make a living playing poker. They clean out the tourists. It's a pretty stable living, provided you can discipline yourself and stick to the hard math.

They also clean-up with the "watched 'High Stakes Poker' and decided to become a professional poker player" crowd. Those shows are basically marketing for the casinos, and the handful of old pros feed on the newcomers like sharks.

I had a friend a long time back who decided he didn't want to work. Said he was going to be a poker player. Ran a blog on it too. Took themselves pretty seriously, and had a ups and downs at the start. In the blogs they wrote about the different regulars, different characters, and the idea he was making some friends there. A couple of the stories were real "earned their respect as I took their money" types. Of course they cleaned him out. Let him get confident, upped the stakes, he took a big loss, but they let him win half of it back, so he chased the losses harder, and so on. He didn't have a ton of money to waste, but I'd guess he lost about $100K in all.

 

[Au Naturel]

It is not uncommon to gamble with toothpicks. Or monopoly money. Or just chips. Hand them out to everyone equally, no money required. If you really insist on money, you could play penny ante with a table limit of a quarter and a game limit of ten dollars. But that's only if you can afford to lose $10 with no remorse.

The only time I have ever enjoyed playing cards was at lunch in high school. There was a very small "smart kids" clique. We'd play hearts or spades or eucher. It wasn't the game I enjoyed, it was the company.

 

[thejuice]

Yes never gamble more than you're prepared to lose. I'd only ever do it as an online hobby, with pocket change so people play rationally and it's fun. I wouldn't hang out at casinos, not my kind of people.

 

[Au Naturel]

They also clean-up with the "watched 'High Stakes Poker' and decided to become a professional poker player" crowd. Those shows are basically marketing for the casinos, and the handful of old pros feed on the newcomers like sharks.

I had a friend a long time back who decided he didn't want to work. Said he was going to be a poker player. Ran a blog on it too. Took themselves pretty seriously, and had a ups and downs at the start. In the blogs they wrote about the different regulars, different characters, and the idea he was making some friends there. A couple of the stories were real "earned their respect as I took their money" types. Of course they cleaned him out. Let him get confident, upped the stakes, he took a big loss, but they let him win half of it back, so he chased the losses harder, and so on. He didn't have a ton of money to waste, but I'd guess he lost about $100K in all.

Intermittent rewards are how casinos grab you. Some people are super vulnerable to that sort of thing.

The dopamine rush doesn't come as the result of the win. It comes from the anticipation of the win. It is straight out of Pavlov. If you never ever win, you won't stick around. But if you win occasionally, each gamble is a possible win, and you get jazzed by thinking about it. Then, when you lose, it's "Next time for sure!" A vulnerable person will be hooked.

I am fortunate not to be interested in gambling. I have been in casinos, card clubs, and betting parlors with NTs, and I know the house always wins. And casinos are insanely loud. They quickly drive me to madness. Even earplugs can't keep the noise to a tolerable level.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Instead of gambling, why not learn for fun? It doesn't have to be about money. I love poker. I'm kinda good at it. I even play poker solitaire. You lay down your hand on the table and exchange cards for others from the deck, just trying to improve strategy. It's quite fun.

Blackjack is another fun one. I also like beggar my neighbor. Which is a card game similar to war, but with more action. It can get intense.

I never play cards for money. It's all about the fun.

 

[Outdated]

Intermittent rewards are how casinos grab you. Some people are super vulnerable to that sort of thing.

It's not just the casinos, there's all sorts of gambling. There was someone else here about a month ago who described the amount of debt they're in and then almost in the same paragraph asked if it was a good idea to borrow money and speculate on the stock markets. Everyone else dived in with investment advice and links to sites for them.

Gambling addiction is insidious, most gamblers will swear black and blue that they don't have a problem and that they never bet more than they're prepared to lose. They usually end up lying cheating and swindling their own families to put more bets on. In that respect they're worse to have around than a heroin addict.

 

[jsilver256]

They also clean-up with the "watched 'High Stakes Poker' and decided to become a professional poker player" crowd. Those shows are basically marketing for the casinos, and the handful of old pros feed on the newcomers like sharks.

I had a friend a long time back who decided he didn't want to work. Said he was going to be a poker player. Ran a blog on it too. Took themselves pretty seriously, and had a ups and downs at the start. In the blogs they wrote about the different regulars, different characters, and the idea he was making some friends there. A couple of the stories were real "earned their respect as I took their money" types. Of course they cleaned him out. Let him get confident, upped the stakes, he took a big loss, but they let him win half of it back, so he chased the losses harder, and so on. He didn't have a ton of money to waste, but I'd guess he lost about $100K in all.

Oof. I guess the natural extension would be fishing the less experienced fellow professionals, and so on all the way to the top. Sounds like "know your place" is everything in the professional poker player world.

Anecdotally, I've heard that it is about $15/hour in Las Vegas. Not great but if you're good at math and you don't want to work an actual job for whatever reasons, it's probably better than other options.

 

[thejuice]

Even bad poker players win short term

 

[Mary Terry]

Or get one of those metal detectors, lots of walking and lots of loose change.

We had a metal detector. All we ever found was old nails and screws, horseshoes, tractor parts, metal cans and other junk. But it entertained the kids for hours on end. (Yay!) I always wanted to take it to the beach and look for jewelry and coins but never did.

 

[Forest Cat]

One thing about micro stakes, it can be more difficult to learn when playing micro stakes because people play different than they would at higher stakes. If you stand to lose 10 cents, you take it much less seriously than if it was 100 dollars. So people just play much looser and less seriously. They will for example call you on hands they would never call at higher stakes and make bets they would never do at higher stakes. Because the cost to call your hand is so low.

But you can learn some things there of course, just keep in mind that micro stakes and higher stakes is played differently. If you are going to learn poker, my advice is to read and learn the math first of all. All the poker math. It's not very difficult and you need to follow the math to win, knowing the odds of every hand, how much to bet and so on. It might sound like a chore but it's pretty basic, not complicated, just a little boring to learn. But the math is very important to play well.

Or get one of those metal detectors, lots of walking and lots of loose change.

I have one of those, a White's detector. It's a great hobby.

 

[Stuttermabolur]

I'll have the contrarian opinion. Lots of people in the USA make a living playing poker. They clean out the tourists. It's a pretty stable living, provided you can discipline yourself and stick to the hard math.

However, "reading" others might be challenging with autism...

I read an interview a professional poker player. It's similar to what you say in the second comment. You can make a living on it, but you still aren't getting rich from doing it. However, it was absolutely soul crushing to play the same game day in and day out, and a lot of the losers would get quite emotional, so you can't let what you are doing affect you. It also helps to be good at social engineering. The interviewee mentions deliberately having 2000 dollars in cash on him so that people would think he was a blasé criminal throwing money around.

 

[Forest Cat]

However, it was absolutely soul crushing to play the same game day in and day out, and a lot of the losers would get quite emotional, so you can't let what you are doing affect you.

That's exactly why I don't play poker. Too much repetition and it stopped being fun or interesting.