Head Games: Managing Yourself as a Professional Poker Player

The Pros: Galen Hall, Chris Sparks, and Taylor Caby

Craig Tapscott: What are a few of the mistakes you’ve seen players make when they decide to turn professional and leave their current job behind?

Galen Hall: A lot of people get too lost in the game, and poker consumes their life. They can’t be happy if they aren’t winning, and that creates a downward spiral of depression and downswings. When I first started playing professionally, none of my roommates played poker. I joined a rugby team, and I still worked at startups part time;  having a lot of different things going on at once really smoothes out the variance in your emotions. Even if I had a bad week in poker, I had a lot of other things to be happy about or look forward to. A second pitfall I’ve seen far too often is that players can become complacent once they start winning. I always pushed myself to play in harder and harder games, and to find some way to improve every single day. It’s easy to become comfortable once you start to achieve decent results, and to “not mess with what got you there.” But as games get tougher over time, you’re only going to hurt yourself by not taking on new challenges, learning new games and playing against players who are better than you. In order to make poker a career over the long run, you can never lose the hunger to compete and improve.

Chris Sparks: If you have a difficult decision on whether to leave a job to play poker professionally, the answer is no. You turn professional only when your hand is forced as you are doing so well that staying in your current job makes no sense. Being a poker pro is similar to being a solo entrepreneur. The default state is failure and it takes an abundance of focus, sweat, and luck to change that. The lack of structure makes personal discipline paramount to success. If you don’t win, you don’t eat. Your daily results are affected by many variables outside of your control and many people who are used to consistency find this especially difficult. You must be decision oriented rather than results oriented. You can approach poker however you wish, but at the end of the day the only person you can hold accountable is yourself and the main metric you have (your cashier balance) is flawed. Why? Because short term results don’t mean anything. Poker is more of a lifestyle than a career. There is no punching the clock at the end of the day. Once you play for a living, you won’t enjoy poker the way you used to. You will still want to play, but your relationship with the game will become increasingly complicated from day to day. One day you will think you might be Lou Gehrig, the luckiest person on the earth, able to compete at a game and make a living at it. The next, a three outer will make you question your very existence. When you sleep (if you can sleep) you’ll have more dreams about Chris Ferguson than about Kristen Bell. Hard way to make an easy living is just the tip of the iceberg.

Taylor Caby: The biggest mistake I see players make is that they assume playing poker professionally is all about being a great poker player and getting in a ton of hands. They’ve studied training videos, read forums and books, and have played enough poker to be confident they have an edge. However, they don’t realize that so much of being a professional poker player is about small other things that add up to being very important. For example, game selection. If you’re a pro, you should always have options when it comes to playing poker. Have a bankroll on a few online poker sites, learn a few different games, or be willing to quit a game if you aren’t playing well or there just aren’t enough weak players. Failure to do this will result in a smaller win rate, bigger swings, and it won’t be because you weren’t good enough at poker to make playing professionally work. Avoid stupid “investment” opportunities. So many poker players have a dream of winning big, investing in some business, and then living the rest of their life carefree with no concerns. Making this happen is so ridiculously unlikely, and it’s got a great chance at causing you stress on your next big downswing. Put your money in safe, liquid investments that you can easily access when the going gets tough – because it will.

Craig Tapscott: As a poker professional how do you believe you should handle yourself both on and off the table in regards to managing your life and your finances to be successful and balanced?

Galen Hall: As trite as it sounds, the way that you treat other people shapes the world that you live in. If you treat people with respect and courtesy, people will be nice to you in return, people will want to be around you and your life will be brighter and happier. You’ll think clearer, make better decisions and be more satisfied when you play well. With regard to finances, it saddens me to say that I think that most poker players just don’t “get it,” especially those without math or finance backgrounds who do not understand things like expected growth or bankroll management. The marketplace is starting to evolve, but until recently people didn’t really understand how to sell optimized packages, and don’t really grasp how absurd the variance in poker can be even for reasonably good grinders. If you’re ever playing for amounts of money that make you stressed, you should drop down in stakes or spend some time learning how to manage pressure and stress. If you’re motivated by money, it’s going to be tough to stay sane with the swings in this game. I have always been driven by the competition and intellectual challenge of the game, and that makes it a lot easier to make correct decisions with a lot of money on the line.

Chris Sparks: Everything in your life is interconnected – success at the table is created with the decisions you make off the table. It is essential that you have positive things going on in your life besides poker that you can fall back on when poker goes badly – because sometimes it will go badly. Poker can be very frustrating and isolating at times and maintaining healthy relationships will make coping possible. Just like in business, it is impossible to be successful in poker “going it alone”, you must network. I think talking with and learning from other top players was probably the biggest factor in my overall success. At the same time, get out of the poker echo chamber. Being a poker player can be like living in a bubble sometimes and despite the mainstream appeal of poker, many areas of the game still operate on the fringes. “Normal” within the poker world takes on a completely different definition. Actively pursue outside interests and make an effort to build and maintain relationships outside of poker – these people will help keep you grounded and exposed to new ideas. Finally, and I can’t over exaggerate this enough – take care of your body by eating healthy, staying in shape, getting the right amount of sleep, and managing your stress levels (I highly recommend yoga!) Maintaining a regular schedule will be very helpful in this area. You are only as good as the habits you keep.

Taylor Caby: You should handle yourself professionally at all times. When you are in a casino or in a poker environment, you should be constantly thinking about what is the best course of action that will allow you to make the most money. Sometimes that decision could be going out and having a few drinks so you can blow off some steam, but most of the time it’s about playing good solid poker in games that you have an edge in.