Know Your Retirement

[Thorin]

And then the wankers crash the market again and all of your investments tank.


My mom lost over half of her RRSPs.

That sucks.  One of the early gems of investing I picked up was put a third of your money in low-risk low-return investments, a third in medium-risk medium-return, and a third in high-risk high-return.  Re-balance every six months; if your high risk stuff is paying huge dividends right now, sell the extra high-risk investments and use all that money to buy the low- and medium-risk stuff because the market will self-correct soon.  If the high-risk stuff is tanking and your low-risk stuff is quickly becoming over half your portfolio, sell some of the low-risk to buy high-risk because now you're buying low, selling high.  Never try to ride it out, just keep adjusting every six months.  Oh, and make sure your six month adjustments don't fall in January or February where the mutual funds are artificially inflated due to last-minute RRSP buyers.

It's a real simple rule; it will not give you the biggest possible return, but it _will_ give you a fairly stable return.

Oh and Darren, you really ought to figure out how much you get from the GoA pension - there may be no need at all to sock money into RRSPs if you're willing to work for GoA for another 20 or so years.  Government pensions are, unsurprisingly, quite good!

[Darren Dirt]

Gambling as expected income - your plan here is based on you trying to make a slow and steady profit while the other players are not.  If everyone at your table adopts the same strategy as you, the math says you will leave the table poorer than when you sat down.  Compared to a job that pays you a guaranteed wage, this is not a good idea.  Really, honestly, truly, this is something you should stop considering as a viable source of income.  Sure, over the long term you might come out ahead, but what if you just lost today's money due to a stroke of bad luck, and now you don't have any money to buy supper?  Are you gonna go ask people for a couple dollars to buy a sandwich?  Now as a viable source of entertainment, sure.

Typical gambling is entering in an investment proposition that has the math stacked against you; a good poker player avoids the pit games which are exactly that -- gambling ... but he also tends to avoid situations which are too wild or out of his control as it essentially reduces to a kind of gambling (e.g. a 10-handed table where everybody raises/caps preflop and calls all the way to the river every single hand... sure long-term you will be very profitable vs. each of your opponents, but having to beat 9 players every hand makes the "long-term" extremely long.)


But ignoring that, one thing I've noticed is that even the players that I described as clearly playing for entertainment (i.e. never folding any pair, or betting/raise with nothing, etc.) are usually playing with money that was not earmarked for food/rent/utilities ... and if they're not, sorry to say but it's a choice that they, as an adult, are entitled to make and nobody else is responsible for their bad risk-taking... As I said, those who sit down and do not know the math/probability are, longterm, going to be donating to those who DO know those numbers (and act in discipline in accordance with it). I am just saying that I have seen first-hand folks who are taking advantage of this repeatable scenario -- by playing LIMIT holdem (where the rare "2 outer on the river" still doesn't cost them their entire stack) and by playing extremely "tight" preflop and "aggressive/honest" post-flop.



"If everyone at your table adopts the same strategy as you, the math says you will leave the table poorer than when you sat down."
Agreed --  even if you do the above tight-aggressive plan, sitting at a table with 9 other just-as-knowledgeable players is a longterm losing proposition -- the folks who offer the game have to be paid to do so aka "rake". A good player risks only what he can afford to lose (short-term) and has multiple buyins to handle those downswings in order to "survive" until the long-term math comes to pass, but a good player also exercises good "game selection" which even includes moving into a better seat at the table (i.e. having the looser/wilder players on your right, having the strongest/trickiest/solidest opponents on the exact opposite side of the table). Based on considerations like that, if the table is clearly not profitable (or too high-risk, short-term) a good player sits out for the moment (or the day). It's not different than a MF/stock investor deciding to "sit out" from a wild day, waiting for those days where it's easier to see the odds are stacked in his/her favor.

Anyway, /hijack, have a good night/morning folks. Apologies to those to whom gambling/poker/greyareainbetween leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

[Tom]

and if they're not, sorry to say but it's a choice that they, as an adult, are entitled to make and nobody else is responsible for their bad risk-taking..

Then we should all stop funding the healthcare system, welfare, and the AADAC ASAP!

[Thorin]

Okay, as to what Tom pointed out, if an adult is responsible for the outcome of what they choose to do and risk, why are they allowed to claim bankruptcy (thus cancelling debts) instead of being forced to work in a debtor's prison or sell body parts to pay the bills they racked up?

As for the whole gambling-as-income bit, I'm really not buying it.  Here's the problem: if you count on it as a reliable source of income there will be times where you lost instead of won, and you won't have the money to pay the bill that's due tomorrow.  If instead you consider it gambling-as-entertainment and assume that you'll lose the money, then you can budget for losing X amount per paycheque and any winnings are a windfall, extra income that can be used for whatever.

The other part I noticed is that you seem to imply that you're an above-average, or "good" poker player.  I would suggest you take a long, hard look at this opinion, because underestimating your abilities is much less likely to land you in hot water than overestimating them.

[Mr. Analog]

I didn't quite catch the actual gambling part until this morning (sorry, life's been a bit topsy turvy lately), there's a major difference here between actually investing, while risky is ultimately designed to benefit both the investor and whatever they're investing in, casino gambling is a business where the average customer pays in more than they get out. Ultimately, gambling is a distraction.

Yes, there are professional gamblers but they have sponsorship deals/backers/booking agents/etc, they are hired to put on a show for their backers. It's not gambling as most of us would think about it and they get their income from playing the game not winning it.

Anyway, we play cards just for the fun of it right!

Speaking of which, anyone interested in getting a game going sometime soon? D&D is pretty much on hold for a while and I wouldn't mind doing another get together, maybe a friendly game of cards or some team Minecraft haha

[Darren Dirt]

I'm adding to this thread because it came to mind when I read this post: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/need-convince-wife-poker-not-really-gambling-please-help-me-1227871/index16.html#post34033395

There are at least three different debates going on ITT:

Is poker gambling?

Live cash poker, legally, certainly is, as no amount of skill can overcome chance every single hand, and since there is a prize/purse/pot paid out every single hand, poker is legally gambling.

Is a professional poker player gambling when he sits down at his desk (poker table)?

If all of the other players at the table are as skilled as he is, since after the rake he has a negative long term expectation, then yes he is gambling, but as long as he knows his limitations and picks his spots at the table (or leaves when there are none), then no.

Is a professional poker player who intentionally seeks out lesser skilled competition to avoid 'gambling' doing something immoral?

No more than Sheldon Addelson or any other casino owner (or the governments that license them or sell lottery tickets) is, as long as one doesn't seek out compulsive gamblers, I believe that a professional poker player is giving the recreational player the same entertainment value for his money that a casino does, a chance to beat the odds.

It kinda sums up what I was trying to say early in this thread.

But also want to respond to something:

Yes, there are professional gamblers but they have sponsorship deals/backers/booking agents/etc, they are hired to put on a show for their backers. It's not gambling as most of us would think about it and they get their income from playing the game not winning it.

Actually there are plenty of poker players who are by definition "professionals" (i.e. fulltime income is entirely from playing the game consistently skillfully and emotionally in control, against worse opposition as much as possible). The vast majority of them are not well-known names/faces to Joe Public, so they have no sponsorship deals or backers/stakers. Unlike the Phil Iveys and Phil Hellmuths many of you would recognize, most of these pros are online cashgame "grinders" who aren't looking to ride the rollercoaster of high variance and potential fame/glory/ego that comes from playing the big-buyin multitable tournaments (which is where most of those "well-known" players get known from -- although most of THEM are indeed unable to sustain a bankroll without sponsorship/backers etc.)... Other poker pros put in huge volume usually at single-table "sit and go"s, 9-man or 6-man or even Headsup** -- and as a result many have graphs like this:

^ but even with those solid results the reality is there's obviously downswings (as you can see in the graph). But bankroll management and emotional control = the way to handle that reality.

There are also a few "known pros" who for decades have made a great living play live cashgames, these are smart, patient long-term-strategy-focused grinders who never play the "pit games" (i.e. house advantage) and in fact they choose to travel to the locations of the larger tournament circuits and sit down only (or mainly -- some of them have success in MTTs too) at the side cashgames that fill up with tournament bustouts who are too inexperienced/wild/aggressive/gamble-y to beat them at the cashgames.



I guess the whole direction of this RW thread comes from that word, "gambling".

As this other post mentions, with even a little thought it's pretty clear that there are really a few distinct "sub-groups" within the group of "gambling" games.

The categories you break various games down into, which could maybe be called "dumb luck games," "market games," and "sequential action strategy games," or something along those lines make a lot of sense. A world in which people were more concerned with those categories than with "gambling" vs "not gambling" would be a smarter, more rational world.

However, that's not the world we live in and the solution is not to pretend that "gambling" is meant to be synonymous with "dumb luck game" when that's simply not the way the word is used. Arguments that poker isn't gambling will always ring false to people who understand the word in the traditional way.

In the long run, I think the pro-poker cause is better served by arguing that games and gambling should be viewed and legislated on differently than they currently are than by arguing that poker is simply miscategorized as a gambling game.

(not to mention much of life is a "gamble", i.e. outcome is not guaranteed, requiring a risk of something of value upon the results which are at least partly outside of your control ... but philosophical debates != what this RW thread should be about )


Anyway, I honestly hope that some of these other "voices" help to clarify/illustrate/correct some of the things I was trying to say, for anyone who was interested in more than just a surface-level emotional-reaction type of exchange of ideas here.


And now, back to discussing retirement numbers... (might look into / talk to HR next week maybe)



** heck, even me personally, most of my time on Full Tilt Poker (before they got shut down) was playing Razz Headsup SnGs (small buyins of $5 or $10 a shot) and my graph (link if you care) was overall heading skywards (though early on pretty ugly; I was playing a lot of different types of games back then)

[Mr. Analog]

I've been sitting here trying to figure out exactly how to phase this, but I'm going to have to PM you about it first and I hope you're going to be honest with me.

[Tom]

I didn't quite catch the actual gambling part until this morning (sorry, life's been a bit topsy turvy lately), there's a major difference here between actually investing, while risky is ultimately designed to benefit both the investor and whatever they're investing in, casino gambling is a business where the average customer pays in more than they get out. Ultimately, gambling is a distraction.

Yes, there are professional gamblers but they have sponsorship deals/backers/booking agents/etc, they are hired to put on a show for their backers. It's not gambling as most of us would think about it and they get their income from playing the game not winning it.

Anyway, we play cards just for the fun of it right!

Speaking of which, anyone interested in getting a game going sometime soon? D&D is pretty much on hold for a while and I wouldn't mind doing another get together, maybe a friendly game of cards or some team Minecraft haha

I wouldn't mind some poker or something. I'll probably be playing a lot of MC at fraga though

[Mr. Analog]

I wouldn't mind some poker or something. I'll probably be playing a lot of MC at fraga though

Yep, unless the power goes down, but that hasn't happened in a long time.

[Darren Dirt]

I've been sitting here trying to figure out exactly how to phase this, but I'm going to have to PM you about it first and I hope you're going to be honest with me.

Well-articulated my friend -- both ITT as well as in the IM. Answered (sorry for the verbosity )

I wouldn't mind some poker or something. I'll probably be playing a lot of MC at fraga though

Yep, unless the power goes down, but that hasn't happened in a long time.

I'm up for ... whatever!

[Mr. Analog]

Haha

Well I'm glad it's all above board, I still don't know about goin' pro though, but if you got the chops something to look at I guess!

[Darren Dirt]

Haha

Well I'm glad it's all above board, I still don't know about goin' pro though, but if you got the chops something to look at I guess!

Oh in case it wasn't clear, "pro" ain't "in the cards" for me ... I only brought up the possibility that when I'm "retired" it might be something I do as part of my recreational time -- with a reasonable expectation of small-ish profits to boot.


As I believe, and as many of the posters in the 2+2 thread above said, it's best to keep a "day job" and just play on the side for extra cash ... thus no pressure to have a consistent return on your investment (i.e. I never budget for an expectation of poker profits).


For now I'm happy just being happy when I play -- whether it's on a Friday/Saturday night at the local card room for a few hours against laughing and drinking folks of all ages and races, or on my phone with Play Chips while waiting for the train. No pressure either way (other than on myself, to keep it in balance )


So speaking of playing for the happy of it, let's make specific plans in a new "Edmonton + Area" thread mkay? Not this weekend though (and when is Frag again?)

[Mr. Analog]

OH yeah, I'm outta the picture between Aug 4 thru 14th or so...

[Darren Dirt]

OH yeah, I'm outta the picture between Aug 4 thru 14th or so...

weird "out there" reference buddy!


and it got me to this Michael Landon 1980 Kodak commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOVRIRN9NEQ

wow, 32 years ago, THAT was the "new" camera technology. I wonder if you compared that to what a 1948 "new" model was like... (but Mr. Landon's tie will NEVER be outdated!)

(and then one click away from Kodak = "Film vs. Digital" which is pretty timely considering Instagram has blown up so big, so fast!)

[Mr. Analog]

Heh, hard to believe Kodak is dead (I'm not dead yet) *looks at watch*