Poker doesn't scale. The goal is to increase your hourly rate. Spend your time coding.
"Andrew: What kind of things does an entrepreneur do to fool you into thinking that they’re really determined?
Interviewee: Well, being seeming really tough and calm during the interview. I mean, why am I telling people about this guy?
Andrew: Because you guys are going to get better, and as long as this information is out there, you might as well get it all the way out there in even playing field.
Interviewee: There’s the danger of life. Matt Maroon of Blue Frog gaming. He was a professional poker player, talk about pokerfaced. So, he came in for his interview and he just seemed like absolutely unflappable. We thought, ‘Boy, this guy is tough. This guy is not a wimp.’ Actually, we were right, he was really tough. But, to this day, he is genuinely unflappable. I probably would want to fund more people who are really good poker players. I’ve noticed, empirically, there seems to be a high correlation between playing poker and being a successful startup founder. That’s how he seemed tough."
Playing poker with PEOPLE, at least (not online) has enormous benefits. Learning how to read people in-depth is incredibly valuable. Also learning how to stand your ground and unflinchingly bluff (or deliberatly avoid telegraphing your hand) is also a great skill to have.
There's so much more to poker than the money. Unless you're talking only about online poker.
You think that playing poker teaches you how to read people past the poker table? In what context? This sounds very delusional to me. In business, if you are doing anything with a lot of money at stake (that is not illicit), then the cards are always face up if you do enough work.
> Also learning how to stand your ground and unflinchingly bluff (or deliberatly avoid telegraphing your hand) is also a great skill to have.
You think this is a "great" skill? I think its valuable, but not as valuable as learning code or understanding how the economy works.
Also, you didn't even mention discipline or emotional control. Those are real values that poker will teach you. Bankroll management, dealing with long term variance, and getting bad beats make you either toughen up or break.
How old are you? How long have you been playing poker? I don't mean it derogatorily. I've played A LOT of poker and I've done a lot of other things. Poker has given me less skills than organizing soccer games.
I failed to convey this, though. I totally agree with your points about disciple and emotional control. I just can't help but feel the skills I've gotten from playing poker with people are valuable. Who you play with matters a great deal, of course. I've gotten job offers based on my poker game not because I was a star or anything, but because I successfully illustrated my ability to execute strategy well. Etc. Etc. I turned down the jobs, by the way.
End of rant.
If anything, I've learned not to get emotionally attached to day-to-day swings and try to rationally focus on the bigger picture.
Sure poker teaches you a lot, but you could get the same thing running a lemonade stand. You have to realize that the "skills" poker teaches is nothing but marketing fluff. This is why you see people coming from other skills and going into poker. I haven't heard a lot about going the other way (of course I am sure it exists). The fact is it is just about money.
Anyone curious enough should check out http://code.google.com/p/openholdembot/
that eliminates all the nuts and bolts of botting (screen scraping, action-taking, etc.) and leaves you time to figure out strategy. About a year ago I made a bot that 12-tabled at low stakes and made about $10 an hour...and then I realized I could be doing more interesting stuff with my life instead of staring at a screen, making minimum wage to make sure my bot didnt crash and lose my whole roll
I spent quite some time reading about poker bots / strategies and doing a base implementation, but never actually ran it on a live poker site. Some other project (also with a higher $/hr ratio) caught my interest and I abandoned it.
Still, I'd be very interested in discussing what tactics you used. For example, did your bot play a generic strategy, or adapt it based on the person(s) it was playing against?