And the step I just took to do that
I picked up online poker at the start of the pandemic.
I had played (free) Zynga Poker on Facebook, and thought that I was good enough at that to profit in online cash games.
What I didn't know at the time was that people play very differently when there's real money on the line.
It doesn't matter that the “real money” was only a $0.25 buy-in to a six-person knockout tournament.
So I learned playing weekly freeroll tournaments and micro-stakes.
For five years I played. Sometimes several hours a night.
Over 3,100 games.
I will say it was fun. This was always play money. If I lost it, I wouldn't be in trouble.
For the playing I did, I usually could withdraw $50 a month, maybe $100 or more if it was a good month (or if I played a lot).
There's a reason it's called a grind, though.
People who make a living playing poker call it “grinding at the tables.”
They're playing much higher stakes than I ever did.
At the end of the day, it's a job. You show up and play cards.
You might end up for the day, or the week, or you might be down.
But nothing good will happen if you don't show up.
You don't lose any money, but you don't gain any money, either.
You're trading time for (the possibility of earning) money.
Well … maybe you don't.
But I did.
And that's exactly why this kind of side hustle isn't scalable.
There are only so many hours in the day.
The stakes only go so high, and it gets harder to be profitable each time you go up in stakes.
Fifty bucks a month worked out to less than a buck an hour.
I had moved up to slightly higher-stakes games ($5 range) and was about breakeven.
By playing more, studying more, I could probably become profitable.
Even then, I'd be looking at $300/month income. Still really small.
And I have to keep playing to make that.
The math isn't really mathing.
I finally saw it for what it was.
It wasn't a side hustle.
It was a distraction.
It was an appealing, fun, slightly profitable dopamine factory.
So … I cashed out my chips.
Last night I cashed out my accounts.
Fifty bucks from one site, and around $170 from another.
There's nothing left.
I'd either have to pay in again, or slowly build up things with free chips each day.
Either way, I don't have the funds in the accounts to play much.
I'll probably miss it.
But I'll be getting an hour a day back.
I'll have an extra hour to work on things that are scalable.
Things that have the potential to earn even when I'm not present.
Photo by Michal Parzuchowski on Unsplash
