Online Poker

Poker was always kind of about the money. I liked it because it’s a strategy game with a clear reward — if you understand how to play better, you earn money. In college it was clearly better than any job I could get, both in enjoyment and dollar per hour.

I don’t know if I’ve ever loved poker. I always wanted to get better at it, but I don’t think it was ever really part of my identity. It was just my job.

College

It started in high school during the Chris Moneymaker boom. Everyone was playing. I had an edge because I actually studied — Two Plus Two forums, hand analysis threads, equity calculators. By Michigan State, poker was paying rent, food, and spending money.

I played mostly Pot Limit Omaha cash games. Started with No Limit Hold’em like everyone, spent a while grinding sit-and-gos and tournaments at 12 to 16 tables, then switched to PLO 6-max. Most common stakes were $0.50/$1.00, multi-tabling 6-12 tables at a time.

Junior year I cashed a tournament for about $25,000. I was studying finance and hated it. My motivation was already extremely low. I’d been considering switching to social work — felt like a better fit — but switching meant extra money, extra time, and I only had one year left. I took a year off, played online, then came back and graduated in 2011 with a finance degree.

Latin America

After graduation, poker funded about four years of traveling. Panama first, then a motorboat to Colombia for six months. Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico.

The income was modest: $20,000 to $35,000 a year. Enough for slow travel in affordable countries. I’d set up in a new city, find a place with decent internet, and grind sessions on a tiny travel monitor. Sometimes the internet was bad and that was a pain.

I also tried other things during this stretch. Volunteered at a social business incubator in Colombia that I cold-emailed my way into. Volunteered at a social enterprise in Cusco. My interest in social enterprise led me to AmeriCorps in Cleveland for a few months, but I pretty quickly decided to move back to Latin America instead.

What I took from it

The games got worse over time. The edge narrowed. Eventually it stopped making sense as a career, and I moved to China to teach English.

Results and quality of decisions are different things — that’s probably the biggest thing poker gave me. You can play perfectly and lose. What matters is the process over a large sample. That maps pretty directly to building businesses, where short-term outcomes are noisy.

The other part is the grit. Losing streaks can go on for months — not just not earning, but actually losing money. You still have to show up every day. But you also need the self-awareness to know which days you really shouldn’t show up. Both of those things transfer.

Poker got big when I was in high school, I wanted to travel, and it gave me the opportunity. I can still enjoy playing, but it’s not something I want to go back to.