Slaving Away At Online Poker

from the maybe-he-should-unionize dept

Fri, Aug 4th 2006 12:40pm — Mike Masnick

It appears that the online poker bubble keeps growing. However, rather than high school dropout millionaires or startups funded by execs playing online poker, now we're finding out that playing online poker full time is kind of a drag as a job. Wired has an article looking at a former eBay employee who figured he could make a living playing poker online just as his wife was about to have their second kid. However, it turns out that past performance doesn't necessarily equal future success in online poker. While the article suggests the guy is doing okay picking on drunk online poker newbies (mixed in with the occasional extra trip to Reno), the actual numbers suggest things aren't going that well at all. He hasn't been able to play as much as he expected, and he hasn't been winning nearly as much as he expected either. His average winnings have dropped 33% since he started playing full-time. That doesn't exactly seem like a recipe for success. And, oh yeah, let's not forget that some folks in Congress still believe that just playing online poker deserves five years in jail. Maybe he should start a union and send some lobbyists off to Washington DC.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

10 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

crystalattice (profile), 4 Aug 2006 @ 1:16pm

Loser!
Okay, I'll admit it would be cool to quit a job to "play games" all day. But IMO this guy was an idiot for doing this when a baby is on the way.

I'm sure he had great benefits while working at eBay (he should based on his position and salary). Now he has no benefits and has to pay for everything out of pocket. And since he's making $5 less per game than he expected, he's probably not making any more than he did when he had a real job.

I'm sure it's nice being home to "help out", but many of us know how that really ends up. The family always butts into your "party time" and you end up w/ less time to do your own things. For him, that means less $.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2006 @ 1:18pm
  
  Re: Loser!
  I heard a radio interview with him, he made 120k at ebay as a product manager
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don, 4 Aug 2006 @ 1:23pm

Techdirt, the most miserable site on the internet
Submittor, you need to crack a smile or get laid. something. Every post on this site is just dripping with sarcasm, like it's written by a person who thinks he's the only person smart enough to "get it". You say "it's not going well", yeah he's currently running at $80/hr vs $120 an hour, whoop de doo, it's called variance. You call it a drag of a job, yet the article says he still loves the game. Nice interpertation.

But go on, think you know everything and let us know how smart you think you are in every summary. Great way to build a community.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2006 @ 2:23pm
  
  Re: Techdirt, the most miserable site on the inter
  he is still a loser...
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Dot, 4 Aug 2006 @ 2:01pm

Slash
I love /.
Much better
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2006 @ 2:38pm

hey screw you guys
this site is good, so he is negative on this guy, big deal. this site still brings up alot of interesting news
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
charlie potatoes, 4 Aug 2006 @ 3:28pm

online investing
Well....i sunk all my money into toilet paper and revolving doors...i got wiped out before i could turn around..
online poker is looking better and better.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Dave, 5 Aug 2006 @ 5:24pm

online poker = job I don't think so
My brother-in-law makes about $2000 a month playing online poker, I would lose my shirt in an instant. He doesn't want to quit his job and play full time but it does seem to help with their debts.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
|333173|3|_||3, 6 Aug 2006 @ 11:44pm

How to really make money
I have a friend who is under 18, but his boss is over 18, and they play fun games for "play money" against each other. then when the boss has won a lot of play money off my friend, who deliberatly plays badly, he switches to a real game, and due to a bug in the software it thinks he has put in that much money from his credit card. he palys one game, but does not use all his money, and then cashes in whatever he has left. for the sake of a few hours of sitting in thier shop (it is a computer shop) in between working on computers or serving customers., a large amount of money can be won. My friwend's boss splits the money with him, and everyone's happy, except the Poker company when they figure out what was happening. Here in S Aus, it is perfecly legal for them to do this, and they have never been cought anyway.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yeah Right, 8 Aug 2006 @ 5:25am

Re: How to really make money
Yeah right... I'm guessing that your friend and his over-18 boss are not using any of the major players in the online poker industry.

Let's take Partygaming - the company behind the #1 rated Party Poker site. Partygaming, in Nov '05, had revenue of $437 million, an increase of 80% compared to their previous year. Their profits came in at $186 million, compared to $146 million for the previous year.

Although Partygaming has been phenomenally successful in such a short time, their results are pretty much indicative of the entire industry. It's not just a case of one company getting lucky whilst all the others flounder.

Now, any company generating that sort of revenue is going to have a pretty damn good team testing every facet of their product. Do you honestly expect us to believe that they wouldn't have thought of checking that any "play money" earned whilst using the free tables isn't mistakenly transferred to "real money" when a user switches to the pay-to-play tables?

Even if that really was the case, your friend's boss would simply close down the shop they're running and play the system for 8 hours per day, generating way more money than they'd be getting from running a PC store.

I think your friend has been telling you porky-pies. ;-)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]