En su muy recomendable blog (NPA), Ed Miller nos recomienda la lectura del artículo escrito por Matt Maroon en su blog (The Poker Chronicles), artículo que lleva el siguiente título: Why I Quit Playing Poker For A Living, Pt. 1 (que se podría traducir como: ¿Por qué deje de jugar al póquer profesionalmente?, entendiendo 'profesionalmente' como jugar al póquer como fuente de ingresos para vivir).
Ed Miller, que durante cierto tiempo también estuvo jugando al póquer a tiempo completo, dice sentirse identificado con bastantes puntos del post de Matt Maroon y recomienda la lectura a todo aquel que se haya preguntado en algún momento qué motivos pueden llevar a un jugador de póquer ganador a dejar de jugar tanto.
Personalmente he leído el artículo y me ha parecido muy interesante. Antes de poner algunos quotes del mismo (negritas mías), dejo el enlace al artículo: Why I Quit Playing Poker For A Living, Pt. 1
Da igual lo bien que juegues, a menudo, pierdes:
The most important is that no matter how well you play, you often lose. It's just part of the nature of the game, and, for that matter, any game largely subject to random events. Even the best poker players can lose for a very long time. Depending on the variant you're playing that could mean months, or even, in rare cases, years. Losing streaks are an unfortunate fact of life. In fact, for a professional poker player, they're the most unfortunate.
También habla bastante acerca de las exigencias del póquer. En niveles altos no vale con estar al 90%. En cualquier trabajo si tienes un mal día no pasa nada, no te van a dejar de pagar, sin embargo, en el póquer no vale tener días malos, porque en esos días estás perdiendo dinero (dice que sería mejor no jugar en esos casos). Y si perder dinero cuando no lo estás haciendo bien puede ser comprensible, lo que sí mina la moral son las malas rachas. Pone un símil bastante representativo acerca de lo que significan para él las malas rachas (losing streaks):
Imagine you go to work every day and do your absolute best. You work as hard as you can, do everything perfectly, or at least as close to it as humanly possible, and throughout the day, every 15 minutes, your boss comes over and tells you that you are an idiot. Each time he tells you that everything you do is wrong, even if you know it's not. Then instead of paying you, he forces you to write a check to the company.
No puedes probar que eres ganador, sólo que lo has sido:
Because of the variance, poker is also a game in which very little can ever be known for certain. (...) You can mathematically examine your past results and prove that you are a winning player or a losing player to a high degree of certainty, but it takes such a large sample size that once done, it's entirely useless. (...)
But that was last year. The game has changed. You've made changes to your game, and aren’t playing the same way anymore. Your opponents are different. Maybe you moved up a limit or two so they're a little tougher, or maybe you stayed at the same game but the field changed. You can't prove that you are a winner, only that you were. So on a losing streak, you can't simply turn to math or logic to console you, because it can only help explain the past. Ask it if you are playing well right now and the only answer you get is "I don't know. Play a year and ask me again."
Y quizás se pueda resumir el artículo en la gran cantidad de estrés que genera el póquer, comparado con el resto de los trabajos (aquí pone un ejemplo de un controlador aéreo que dejó su trabajo para jugar al póquer y acabó volviendo):
This is, in a nutshell, why playing poker is often referred to as a "hard way to make an easy living." It's all the stress of the losing streak. To put it in perspective, I once met someone who quit a job as an air traffic controller, long considered the most stressful job in existence, to play poker for a living. He did it for a year and claimed to have made about 25% more than he would have at his job, but went back to his old career because, as he said, it was "far less stressful".
Lo escrito aquí no pretende substituír al artículo original. Si os parece interesante: Why I Quit Playing Poker For A Living, Pt. 1
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