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Comment by Calist0 | Hacker News Reader

I'm embarrassed to say that I've been making a living playing online poker for the past 5 years. I have never had a typical job before. I took web development courses at a community college for one year, while self-learning through sites like codecademy. I learned html, css, javascript, jquery and a little bit of php and sql. I know enough to build a front-end web dev portfolio with practice projects.

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If you can make a living playing online poker maybe you have what it takes to be a trader.

Hah. I'm always surprised by how many times someone suggests this. I've known people who moved into trading, and the skill set definitely seems similar. But I know nothing about trading, and I think I would rather enjoy building things and being creative. I guess it's something I should research (I wonder what the learning curve is like?).

Why is it embarrassing?

Because he probably had to deal with people to whom you can't explain that there are variants of poker that are more than beatable with the right circumstances (rake %, player pool, fish-reg ratio, etc.)

I don't exactly feel proud for being 28 and having no formal education and work experience. Online poker was good while it lasted, and it helped me grow independently. But it hasn't really granted me skills that I can translate to a real world career. I'll have a huge gap on my resume, and I know that some people tend to hold low opinions towards poker players. Many ignorant people dismiss the 'professional poker player' as a degenerate gambling addict.

I'm going to have a tough time making my resume look good!

Fair enough, seems like valid concerns.

But the media, with the movie 21 and the huge amount of poker tournaments on TV, seems to make is quite a 'cool' thing to do.

Maybe reality isn't as romanticised as the TV, but I guess playing poker takes a lot of skill and loads of hours, multitasking and so on that could translate to 'willing to put in work + smarts' that some recruiter could enjoy?

Maybe you should compile these facts, time spent, focus on the 'number aspect' of it. And such things. Put this and 'self sustained/employed?' on your resume etc.

Honestly I have no idea what hiring managers would think, and maybe I am far from their mindset.

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