Online Poker = Work?

[Junior]

Sure, that's right, the reason I don't think you have to be extremely intelligent to do well at online poker must be cos I suck at it. SMH.


I never said any idiot could do it as my reasons listed above obviously require certain levels of intelligence. It was the use of extremely intelligent that got me. Learning mathematical systems doesn't necessarily make you a genius no matter what films like 21 suggest and most of the other stuff you mention seems less relevant to playing on a monitor than in real life.





Anyway I suspect I have too much emotional involvement here so should step away.

 

[Tuff_Gong]

I'm not saying you have to be super intelligent to play poker and do well at it, but I also don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the top players have impressive educational backgrounds. Chris Ferguson has a PhD in Computer Science from UCLA. Andy Bloch has two electrical engineering degrees from MIT and got his law degree from Harvard. Annie Duke double-majored in English and psychology at Columbia and was working on her PhD in psycholinguistics when she left school to get married. Phil Gordon got a degree in computer science from Georgia Tech. Barry Greenstein got his BS in computer science and was working towards a PhD in mathematics but never defended his dissertation. Many, many players drop out of school to play poker professionally and a lot of them were pursuing degrees in fields like computer science and math. Basically, mostly fields where analytical though is crucial. It's not surprising to me that people with a knack for that kind of things tend to excel in poker. That's all I'm saying. An idiot can get lucky one time and win big but over the long haul will not win consistently because odds dictate their luck will not hold.