Emotional control

So I just read Timex's blog where he is thinking about quitting poker. Its interesting because:

1. poker is emotional game - when you are winning you are invincible, when you are losing you feel terrible and doubt how good you are and sometimes if you should be even playing at the level you are playing.

2. the online poker grind is hard work - people who travel to work, work 8 hours then come home in crap traffic must laugh at this concept that its hard to stay home and work on the PC for 11-12 hours multi-tabling 8-12 tables of online poker, but it IS mentally exhausting. And you have to put in the volume to overcome the variance in the game.

3. the live poker grind is also hard work - if you travel for business you know its initially fun but gets old very quickly. Imagine you are doing the poker tournament circuit (WSOP, WPT, EPT etc.) travelling 9 or 10 months of the year constantly upping and moving to new hotels, living out the suitcase, arranging all your own flights and hotel bookings, dealing with large money transfers in different countries/currencies to buy in to events, not knowing if you will last 1 day or 7 days etc. Initially this is fun, but very quickly it becomes hard work....

4. poker is a loners game - especially if you are at home grinding online for 10-12 hours each day. When do you see people and chit-chat like you would in a normal job? Although you may have online friends and instant message/texting conversations most of the time you are working at home alone. Or travelling alone. Maybe you can travel with some poker friends some of the time but often you are alone in your hotel room or at home playing online. If you are not comfortable with your own company you will struggle playing poker.

5. poker is socially isolating. Although you can mix with other poker players 90% of people do not understand the game and probably see you as a degenerate gambler. They cannot really discuss it at a level where it makes sense to them. Often weekend events with friends can clash with the Sunday grind for the big online poker tournaments. Also your weekend talk becomes quite boring - "Whats new with you? Errr, just playing poker, same as last week, at home on my computer, same as last week, grinding, same as last week...." Quite boring!!

I think Timex is somewhat sensible to recognize he needs other choices in his life outside of poker. Even though you can earn crazy amounts of money playing poker, money is not everything. An old saying comes to minds - do everything in moderation. I think a lot of poker players play way too much and do not have time for other things.

My final point is poker is a hard game to play and stay in a relationship. I am lucky to have a very understanding wife but I think a LOT of poker players are single or in very flexible relationships (as in I might make the date or I might not depending on how I do in the tournament). An example - I was out last night playing a tournament and did not get home to early hours of the morning. If I did this 3 or 4 nights a week...I think the wife would get rid of me. While I was at the casino a chap was playing cash games. His girlfriend was sitting behind him - suggesting quite strongly that it was time to leave...he wanted to play just a few more hands....I see this again and again - how many of those girlfriends are going to stick around?