How teenage poker prodigy Steven Silverman won, and lost, millions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100105833.html

by cwan • 16 years ago

71 57 16 years ago

edanm4• 16 years ago

Interesting article, although it kinda reinforces a false dichotomy - just because this player had an unhealthy lifestyle playing poker, doesn't mean you can't play poker professionally while living a perfectly healthy and otherwise normal life. In fact, the article keeps mentioning the "lavish" lifestyle of the poker players as a given, when that is also just a choice they make.

I've always enjoyed playing poker. I'm pretty sure I could make a decent living at it too, if I put my mind to it. But only after reading Paul Graham's articles on Wealth, I realized why making a fortune from poker always seemed "empty" to me: you're not really creating wealth that way.

evansolomon• 16 years ago

There actually are several aspects of being a poker player (online) that make it really hard, though surely not impossible, to live a normal life. You have very little interaction with other people, your working hours are partially out of your control, and it is incredibly stressful/tiring. I know a few people who managed to combine poker with a normal life, but I know way more who utterly failed.

Sincerely, A guy who used to do this

InfinityX0• 16 years ago

Ditto. I also attempted to do this full-time but only managed to squeak out a moderate living, and eventually grew sour with those points of intense rage (going on tilt) that would crush weeks (and sometimes months) of work.

It's strange how poker works but I imagine Buddhism and poker to be the most complimentary religion-to-profession complement on the planet.

And I agree with the first point - poker is an empty job. You do not create wealth - you make another poor soul, likely a gambling addict, further burdened by that addiction. Meanwhile, the only person you're "creating wealth" for is the guy with his feet up that owns the poker room.

edanm4• 16 years ago

"You have very little interaction with other people, your working hours are partially out of your control, and it is incredibly stressful/tiring."

Sounds exactly like my current situation as an internet entrepreneur :)

matt1• 16 years ago

I also used to play a ton of online poker and it was my ability to balance it all that ultimately convinced me I'd be better off trying to found a startup.

A lot of the skills overlap, which is why many of the successful high stakes players also have profitable side businesses.

If you're looking for an excellent discussion by a bunch of very successful online players on what they want to do with their lives, check out this thread, which is titled Poker vs Law School vs Trading:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/nc-my...

andrewljohnson2• 16 years ago

The stresses of being a pro poker-player are roughly the same as being a start-up founder. My problem was it just got to be too much poker - poker for work, poker for fun, and I couldn't talk to anyone about anything but poker. The same thing happens with start-ups, but the conversation doesn't always start, "So I had KK in the big blind...," so it's more interesting.

heyitsnick2• 16 years ago

I agree many people utterly fail, because I think that's largely because the past-time itself attracts those who have difficulties with addiction, time-management, and social interaction.

You list some things that make it really hard to live a normal life, but I disagree with some can offer counter-points to others.

You say there is little interaction with other people. This is true for many but doesn't have to be the case. I spend a lot of 'work time' talking with like-minded professionals, studying together or just daily banter. I probably have more social interaction through work than the time I worked in a small development company, and certainly more during my periods of (failing to) run startups.

You say working hours are partially out of your control, but with most forms of poker you can work any time of the day (literally any time in 24 hours, 7 days a week) - some times may be better than others, depending on the game you play. There's a lot to be done away from the table if the games are quiet. Compare this to the lack of flexibility with any other job: either a rigid 9-5, or at least restrictions on when business is to be done (conference calls, deadlines).

It can be stressful and tiring, but listening to some start-up stories here on HN, it can hardly compare! Some of you guys are working yourselves to death! Certainly you can put in long hours in poker, but it's a daily choice. The more hours at the table, the more money. I also believe that poker is actually fairly low-variance compared to other jobs, such as a running a start-up: Long days with long nights, hacking at weekends, all for a very high risk of failure months or even years down the line. With poker you can't count on a weekly (or even monthly) pay-check but in the long term, you cash in with regularity

Personally I like to work around 3 hours a day, 7 days a week. I might put in a short morning session, and a short evening session. Doing this it feels like I have all the day off to spend socialising, hacking on some pet project, relaxing. You don't have to hit the high-stakes to make a living from poker. In the "5-hour-work-week" concept of salary you earn very high, because I have no commute and flexibility to live anywhere in the world. I have moved continent 3 times in the last 3 years. I can jump on a plane and visit friends anywhere, and as long as I have an internet connection I know I can be there, on holiday and making money at the same time. And if you manage your time correctly, you should have time to fully develop other projects, be they startup ideas, or just other, more life-fulfilling hobbies.

There are certainly negatives to the job, but - at least to me - there's an overwhelming number of positives that many (including a lot of professionals) just don't focus on. If you take advantage of what the job has to offer there's no reason it should be the lonely, frustrating grind that many feel; quite the contrary.

adw• 16 years ago

One thing you've got to accept, though, is that if you're in this to make a really good company, you're going to hurt people.

You're going to make people redundant. Your company is going to destroy someone else's value. It might create more in total, but you're going to cause damage.

It can't be avoided.

bapadna4• 16 years ago

Poker is an education and entertainment product.

Entertainment, because professional players are allowing amateurs to pay to meet better players, and test their skills against them. There really aren't many other games where this is the case.

Education, because there are huge numbers of available lessons (in both hard and soft skills) for players who decide to think about the game deeply.

I don't see anything "empty" about it. But then again, I'm a winning poker player who ported lessons from poker into everything from business to my golf game. It's had such a positive impact on my life that I can't view it negatively.

andrewljohnson2• 16 years ago

I made good money playing online poker - that's what I did for money the last year of college and the first year after I graduated.

My group were some of the first people to adopt player databases to get stats on opponents. Some kids at my college made the first of these types of programs, and we knew them.

Any smart person can make money playing online poker. But there's more money in making software, by many orders of magnitude.

jdietrich• 16 years ago

Playing for a living is nothing like playing for fun. The psychological pressure to stay on form, the fatigue of playing hour after hour of poker, the uncertainty of chasing fish, the knowledge that your only career prospects are to play for higher stakes - it can be absolutely crushing.

The great paradox of poker is that the more you care about the money, the less you are able to think rationally and impartially. There's a strong argument that the only real difference between world class tournament players and averagely profitable semi-pros is the ability to keep playing your 'A' game when there are millions of dollars on the table. Plenty of skilled pros end up blowing their money because it just doesn't mean anything to them - the obvious example is Stu Ungar, who earned millions at poker and lost millions betting on golf.

It doesn't matter one jot how well you play at your best, what matters is how well you play when you're stressed and upset and ill and exhausted and it's 2am and the fish whose money you need to take is calling your mother a whore. That's the real job of playing professional poker - you're on a tightrope where an hour of perfect poker earns you $80 but an hour on tilt can lose you $800. The skills that allow you to turn pro are learned as an amateur, but there's a whole other set of skills required to stick it out without losing your mind. I had the former, but not the latter. I walked away from poker because I am absolutely certain it would have killed me.

nostrademons• 16 years ago

Sounds a lot like starting a company...

mattmaroon4• 16 years ago

I thought the same thing going in (I played for a living for almost 6 years) but discovered that you can't lead a perfectly healthy and otherwise normal life. And I'm pretty sure it isn't just that I couldn't, because once you get to know them you realize not one of the hundreds of successful professional poker players (much less the thousands of unsuccessful ones) have managed it. Some have gotten part of the way there, some have become sad junkies, but nobody's ever anything that even remotely resembles normal.

My theories as to why would be too long for this forum, but the two big ones are the losing streaks and lack of respect for money.

Losing streaks are like nothing you can understand until you've been a professional poker player. Imagine if you went to work, performed flawlessly, far better than all of your coworkers, and instead of getting paid your bank account got debited and your boss told you "you really sucked today". Then that happens every day for a month.

Humans (and especially poker players, who study probabilistic decision making as a hobby) are conditioned through life to believe outcomes are a direct result of actions. Do a good job at something and work hard at it, you succeed. Do a bad job at something and slack off, you fail.

While this is true in poker in the long run, the long run can be a long time. I broke even for a year at one point, and that's at cash games. Meanwhile donkeys without the slightest clue what they were doing were lucking ass backward into multimillion-dollar tournament prizes.

You can't even fathom what this does to you emotionally until you've lived through it. It engenders self-doubt, which gets you off your game, which probably makes you play worse, which you know you're doing but aren't sure exactly how, or what to do about it, which in turn prolongs the losing streak. There is no end to it.

The lack of respect for money is universal in a world where thousands of dollars change hands in minutes. It's impossible to think "I shouldn't buy that Lexus I've had my eye on" when you just made enough to do it in the last 4 hours. Everytime I played a pot I was risking far more than I was playing credit card roulette for dinner for 4 at Craftsteak. (BTW, my luck at credit card roulette is legendary. If my luck at poker had been half that good I'd have won the WSOP.)

tsotha• 16 years ago

This comment brings back memories. I was pretty serious for a decade or so, and I remember how long the losing streaks can be ("Oh my God. This is my first set in a week and you just cracked it with a one-outer on the river.")

I had a girlfriend for most of that time who went pro. She was pretty good, too, but she had that lack of respect for money in spades (heh). She'd spend a whole day grinding out $3000 in the $40-80 game and then lose $20,000 in an hour at the Pai Gow table.

One day she decided to skip the Pai Gow and went to the mall instead. Bought all kinds of designer clothes and perfumes and electronic gadgets. She practically filled up the car. When she came home there was this shocked look on her face. I asked her what the problem was and she said "Look at all the stuff you can buy for only $5000! I'm so used to using money as ammunition I forgot you can trade it for stuff."

budman• 16 years ago

Such a great post.

I have played live medium stakes poker in Vegas for 14 years now. Have witnessed the boom firsthand. Before the poker tv "boom" it used to be sort of embarrassing when family and friends from back home would ask about poker and what not because it always had a negative mystique about it. During the boom everyone was all of a sudden interested and wanted to listen about how exciting it must be. But the boom completely skewed reality and perspectives unlike anything I have ever seen, even compared to the housing boom.

I can't count how many times in past 7 years I'd be at table full of early 20 somethings claiming they are or am thinking about going "pro" (quiting job/college for poker FT). For every Tom Dwan type of story there are probably 1000x the stories similar or WORSE to the Washington Post article. It was never my business so I never made it my biz, but I used to be sad seeing so many talented/bright and charismatic kids be so lost and throwing away years chasing the rush and shot at being famous. Gambling, in any form, takes a very special tough minded character to do in long run since, like matt says, the losing streaks will come. I have told my wife one thing I wish I could erase from my mind would be poker. And I am a long-term winner! It just wears you down and matt mentioning how most can't fathom the emotional swings is true. It becomes worse the more early success one has because the resulting crash will be harder.

The smoke and mirrors of poker created by TV is FAR from real. Away from the lights and camera while they hype most of these guys up is mostly a collection of low lives grinding 60hrs a week on their asses just to pay the bills. Many of the big names the world has come to know have also gone broke at times. Not always because of poker but it just harbors other bad habits.

Anyway, enough of that. I do want to say Matt that during it time I was an avid follower of your blog. I could always tell you were one of the more grounded and mature young players that was having success and always knew you wouldn't let your head get too big. Sorry it took a tragedy of that magnitude to get you out but in the end it was probably best.

happy4crazy2• 16 years ago

Yeah, I quit playing professionally after finally deciding that my human/lizard brain was just not wired correctly to deal with the swings. Which is too bad, because the game is so interesting! And the fantasy--of making money with your mind, on your own schedule--is very seductive.

I think that a very, very small percentage of the population can happily play poker for a living; but for everyone else, I think long-term exposure to poker will almost literally melt your brain. The sheer amount of stress I used to experience during high-variance poker sessions was just absurd--I sincerely hope there's nothing else like it.

steveklabnik• 16 years ago

I find the "I wonder what his future will be like without a college degree" vs "upswings of $160,000 at a time" to be interesting.

bl4k2• 16 years ago

A lot of investing (esp trading) is a game of incomplete information between two or more parties, so yes.

kroger• 16 years ago

One-page version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10...

nfriedly• 16 years ago

In case it hits anyone else with a "login required", here's an account to use:

  Username: getjiggly@sogetthis.com
  Password: bugmenot

[Edit] Actually.. the log in worked for me, but it didn't give me the one-page version :/

rospaya• 16 years ago

Did I miss the part where he lost his fortune?

alexhanh• 16 years ago

I was wondering this myself.

huangm• 16 years ago

I don't think Silverman (aka Zugwat) is broke -- the article's title is just a reference to the magnitude of the stakes that he played.

bapadna4• 16 years ago

http://www.pokertableratings.com/fulltilt-player-search/zugw...

http://www.pokertableratings.com/stars-player-search/Zugwat

http://www.pokertableratings.com/absolute-player-search/ZUGW...

bl4k2• 16 years ago

So typical - you see this all the time. Moving up too soon thinking they are the best in the world, only to lose it all.

(For non players, this means that you are a winner at lower stakes, say $5/10 - but a common trait is that you become bored with that level because the most you can win each day is ~$1000-3000. As you move up levels the play is a lot harder (exponentially so). Players like this guy crush the small levels and think they are good enough for the higher levels, and just end up losing it all - often blaming their luck in the process. If you look at his chart, you will see that he won it all playing medium stakes, and lost it all (in a lot shorter time) playing high stakes).

zandorg• 16 years ago

I read it this way: He 'lost' further millions by quitting and foresaking that money. And they were millions that other players made instead of him.

Ganthor• 16 years ago

Can anyone point me towards some good online resources about getting started in online poker?

happy4crazy2• 16 years ago

www.deucescracked.com

I played online for a living for about a year and a half, and they're awesome.

bapadna4• 16 years ago

I've never been on deucescracked, but as a long-time acquaintance (and poker foe) of Joe Tall, DeathDonkey and Jay Rosenkratz, I'd be surprised if it wasn't good.

I can still remember the exact moment back in 2002 or 2003 where I realized just how much than me better Joe Tall was. We were having a cigarette near the Foxwoods poker room and he reviewed the action on a few hands we'd just played in a 20/40 game, and he remembered them in more detail than me, but he also processed the detail differently to emphasize different aspects of my game.

I was a winning player but after that night I stopped playing for a month, did nothing but study books, analyze hands and sessions, and grind out math to see if some of my assumptions about lines against various hand ranges were correct.

After that I got a lot better, jumped limits, and ended up meeting DeathDonkey in a 100/200 game at Commerce and again realized I was outclassed.

I'd say I owe them a debt of gratitude, but I'm pretty sure I already paid it at the tables.

waterlesscloud• 16 years ago

Two Plus Two forums are not a bad place.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/

steve192• 16 years ago

What are some good (cross platform, decent clients, low cheating, good for n00bs) online poker websites?

EDIT: I mean poker playing websites.

aquateen2• 16 years ago

By websites I'm assuming you mean places to play poker. Full Tilt and Poker Stars are the most common if you're in the US.

Two Plus Two is probably the most popular poker forum. There's also a few subscription based training sites like CardRunners, Deuces Cracked, etc. Steve Silverman is a coach (although he doesn't put out many videos) at leggopoker.com.

sz• 16 years ago

Mentioned in the article, and applicable to more than poker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt_(poker)

mkramlich• 16 years ago

Wall Street reminds me of poker done on a much larger scale.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Not really. Sure, people make money on their market bets... but the real money is made by sitting in the middle of other people's transactions. That way, you get money when they open their bet, and you get money when they close out their bet. It doesn't matter whether they won or lost, because they have to go through you.

brisance• 16 years ago

And that's why high-frequency trading should be deemed illegal because it is technically insider-trading; the intermediary makes a commission and masks the true positions of buyers and sellers, profiting at the expense of both.

bullseye• 16 years ago

You just described a poker room's rake perfectly.

jeffepp• 16 years ago

I know quite a few online professional poker players. They have won & lost several million combined. Many were 'born' out of a home game we had at Michigan State in the early 2000's. To the average person the swings are insane; for anyone playing high limits online (multiple tables to boot) it is generally expected. Those who cannot afford the swings, or are emotionally effected by them, are generally not winning pros for long.

In some respects, those who do really well (millions won & lost) are akin to athletes or celebrities. They work strange schedules -- for poker you can work whenever -- and have much more money than they could have ever imagined. You can afford to do almost anything, go out 7 nights a week and travel the world. Money is easy come, easy go.

It's rather fascinating. It is a tough lifestyle to maintain a balance when you can lose thousands upon thousands and be playing well. I recall a friend telling me with a dead straight face he lost over 100k the past 2 days and had played some of his best poker...

In the end of the day, I would have to imagine it would be a lot tougher on the spouses. Although, in many respects, we as founders are taking similar risks (uncertainty).

mattmaroon4• 16 years ago

This article does a pretty good job. Much of what you read about poker misses the mark. Also the credit card roulette caused me a large bit of nostalgia.

I got a lot of the busto rumors when I quit too. In fairness, it's a lot more frequently the case than someone successful walking away, but I'm always glad to hear of other people doing it. A really young kid named Jason Strasser became one of the best tournament players around and then gave it up to go back to school.

It's a seductive lifestyle, but often not a healthy one, and rare is the poker player who realizes there's much more to life than money while they still have some of it left. Unfortunately in my case it took my mom dying to put it in perspective for me. I hope for him it was something less traumatic.

jiganti• 16 years ago

The way the poker economy works among the high stakes regulars is generally such that if you go 'busto', you'll inevitably be able to get staked from buddies if you are legitimately good. This results in players playing with extremely aggressive bankroll management.

In addition, there's no real visualization of the value of what you're playing for. It's just numbers on a computer screen. By far the most legendary story of a young player who's completely detached from the money is the Isildur1 phenomenon. [1]

I played high stakes online at a young age and felt the same sort of detachment- the appeal of "getting to the top" was too much to pass up to grind steadily at lower stakes. One of the problems is that over the past ten years, the dynamics of online games have changed considerably. Even an 18 month difference shows a dramatic development in the style of play you see- I'd contend that poker training sites like cardrunners play a large part in this. So a lot of players go on a tear for nine months, then have a big downswing as a result of moving up stakes too fast and failing to adjust their game.

One thing you see sometimes is tournament players like Zugwat trying to play high stakes cash games. It's well understood that in poker, the deeper the chip stacks are (defined by the number of big blinds players have) the more technically demanding the game will be. As tournament poker tends to be played with stacks of 10-50 big blinds, and cash games with 100-500 big blinds, the former requires less decision making. This is for a few reasons, but the main one is that on average you'll have fewer decisions to make with a smaller chip stack since you will be all in earlier in the hand.

Tournament players who are admittedly great at what they do often try to dabble in cash games because they've made enough to bankroll themselves for it. I remember watching Zugwat play Tom Dwan (who goes by the alias 'durrrr', [2] and talking to a few of the other high stakes regulars who had played him previously. The consensus was that he was pretty solid (which is saying something- many cash game players have a somewhat condescending attitude towards tournament players because of the supposed simplicity of tournament poker) but he had bit off much more than he could chew and would inevitably lose a good chunk of his bankroll before realizing it. I think he played four or five tables of 200/400 ($40,000 buyin per table) and lost about a quarter million that session. To his credit he was surprisingly mature in the chat box, something that can be hit or miss after large losses.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isildur1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durrrr

maloalto• 16 years ago

I know, I hate my life. 6 years ago I had 2 degrees and so much enthusiasm for poker, life, and the future... Now I wonder how a resume with nothing on it is gonna look in a job market I know nothing about... The habits of this oft toxic lifestyle will be harder to break than many of the good parts of my routine were to establish... Plus, for me at least, 17k months and 5k days have never translated to actual wealth... On the otherhand, my 'job' has cost me relationships and years (plus two inches of hairline) I will never have back...

How teenage poker prodigy Steven Silverman won, and lost, millions

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