Poker – BettingIsCool

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Q & A #1 – Questions from Tim & Benjamin

BettingIsCool January 8, 2019

Tim and Benjamin asked the following questions on twitter.

@t_i_m_1_3 What’s your academic background? Have you worked in the betting industry before turning pro gambler? Are you only living from your gambling winnings or any side jobs etc?

@PinnacleBen I understand you played poker for a living before moving into sports betting. How different is the lifestyle of a professional poker player vs. professional sports bettor?

I chose these questions to tackle first as they serve as a good entry point and a little bit of an introduction to myself. Also I enjoy talking about poker back in the days which was an absolutely weird and almost self-destructive experience…

So, yes I have an academic background. Studied maths, physics & statistics, however didn’t graduate in any of those subjects. 4 years into university I was introduced to poker and I sensed I could be successful using my statistics/maths background. I didn’t see the benefit of a degree anyway so I abandoned university to pursue playing poker full-time. It was a bit of a gamble as I didn’t know what to expect. But I was young and free and had nothing to lose. And I was never afraid of gambling anyway if the odds were in my favour… 🙂

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Gambling Investing Poker Sportsbetting

What Can We Learn From Expert Gamblers?

BettingIsCool July 18, 2018

Professional gamblers have developed a very impressive way of thinking and it’s proven that they possess a specific kind of intelligence other people don’t.

Check out this fascinating TED talk on risk intelligence by Dylan Evans, PhD in Philosophy.

Research

ParetoPrinciple Poker Sportsbetting

The 80-20 Rule

BettingIsCool December 22, 2016

When it comes to poker, sports betting or any other game of chance your profits are almost never determined by your skills alone, but also by your opponents’ skills.

I was merely in the upper middle class of poker players and needed to be in a game with some bad ones to be a favourite to make money. Fortunately, there were plenty of these bad players – what poker players call fish – during the poker boom years.

There is a learning curve that applies to poker and to most other tasks that involve some type of prediction. The key thing about a learning curve is that it really is a curve: the progress we make at performing the task is not linear. Instead, it usually looks something like the figure below – what I call the Pareto Principle of Prediction.

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