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Poker Pro: Increasing My Financial Literacy to Create the Life I Want

Jerrad Pawar

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Hello all,

My name is Jerrad and I'm an online professional poker player living right outside of NYC. A little about me, I am a 25 year old college graduate who lives with his girlfriend and pup. I graduated in college in 2011 and coming out was unsure of what I wanted to do professionally. However, I was sure that I didn't want to work up the corporate ladder ; freedom has always been my passion with money a distant 2nd.

Enter Poker.

Gambling has always been around my life coming from a big irish family. Yet, I never played Poker til my Senior year of college, where I dabbled making enough to buy a case of beer every weekend.

After Graduating, I took a Sales Job that I hated to get off my feet. It was awful as I'd come home every day miserable. At this point of time, I started to fall in love with the game of poker. I knew I wanted to give it a shot. So for 4 months straight, I got up at 7 AM for work, got home at 6 PM and then just studied/played poker until I had $10k to my name to give being a pro a shot.

That was about 2.5 years ago. Today, I am a successful Poker Pro playing Mid/High Stakes Poker while also coaching students from around the world.

THE REASON FOR THIS THREAD:

While I've had success in Poker and feel very lucky that I get to do something I love every day. I have a few pitfalls.

1.) I'm not financially literate, I have good spending habits, but as far as making my money work for me and growing what I have, I could not be more clueless.

2.) There is a cap to Poker. Even the best players in the world find it difficult to make over $1million dollars per year

3.) I'm in the biggest losing streaks of my career so motivating myself with something outside of poker might help

4.) I have no outside revenue streams outside of poker, I want to be making money without using my time

5.) The profitability of Poker is somewhat out of my control (AI, games getting tougher etc.) As MJ states, we always want to be in control


Short Term Goals:

Read 5 books on Financial Literacy
Set up 1 revenue stream by the end of the year



I need your help!

Please give any constructive feedback or concern with anything you read; whether it be a thought process that maybe brought up a red flag or where to start on my journey.

Any books/podcasts that will help me improve in this area? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

I'm heading off to the WSOP in a week but I still can get a lot of learning done while I'm out there.

Thanks for reading and I'm looking forward to updating this thread as I progress.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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Welcome Jerrad!

I'm afraid I don't have any recommendations on literacy books. I've heard some folks say Ramit's book is decent on the matter, as well as Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey.

Maybe even Tony Robbin's book, Money: Master the Game.

These are SLOWLANE books, but they do have some education in them.

Book - Ramit Sethi - "I TEACH YOU TO BE RICH" - how legitimate?
 

The EL Maven

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Going from 0 to MSNL in 2.5 yrs in this day and age is impressive. I quit poker around the time you started. Way to go. Coaching is giving you the variance free money as well, but it's linked to your time.

And well, downswings suck.

The common way to decouple your time from revenue is to produce a book/video/package. It's been done hundreds of times. I don't know how viable that would be these days as I'm not really plugged into the poker community any longer.

Vegas this time of year is awesome, games are everywhere, the comradery is excellent. This year, take a copy of Unscripted with you and read it during your downtime. That's the only book I'd recommend if you haven't read it already.

Finanical literacy is sort of nebulous and therefore unhelpful term. It's too vague. You may as well talk about bankroll management to some ploppy at the table. The concept is fine, but the application is misplaced.

In your case, it all depends on what exactly you're trying to do. It sounds like you need a place to put/invest your money. If that's the case, you're actually looking for investment strategies and ideas. MJ mentioned Tony Robbin's book - it has some general rules of thumb as to asset allocation which are fine, but again, it's slowlane stuff designed for joe average. Those rules of thumb are a great start though if its something you're looking for.

Get clear on what you want to achieve and go from there. I'm sure there are several people around here that can then help guide you in the right direction.
 

Maxboost

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Hello all,

My name is Jerrad and I'm an online professional poker player living right outside of NYC. A little about me, I am a 25 year old college graduate who lives with his girlfriend and pup. I graduated in college in 2011 and coming out was unsure of what I wanted to do professionally. However, I was sure that I didn't want to work up the corporate ladder ; freedom has always been my passion with money a distant 2nd.

Enter Poker.

Gambling has always been around my life coming from a big irish family. Yet, I never played Poker til my Senior year of college, where I dabbled making enough to buy a case of beer every weekend.

After Graduating, I took a Sales Job that I hated to get off my feet. It was awful as I'd come home every day miserable. At this point of time, I started to fall in love with the game of poker. I knew I wanted to give it a shot. So for 4 months straight, I got up at 7 AM for work, got home at 6 PM and then just studied/played poker until I had $10k to my name to give being a pro a shot.

That was about 2.5 years ago. Today, I am a successful Poker Pro playing Mid/High Stakes Poker while also coaching students from around the world.

THE REASON FOR THIS THREAD:

While I've had success in Poker and feel very lucky that I get to do something I love every day. I have a few pitfalls.

1.) I'm not financially literate, I have good spending habits, but as far as making my money work for me and growing what I have, I could not be more clueless.

2.) There is a cap to Poker. Even the best players in the world find it difficult to make over $1million dollars per year

3.) I'm in the biggest losing streaks of my career so motivating myself with something outside of poker might help

4.) I have no outside revenue streams outside of poker, I want to be making money without using my time

5.) The profitability of Poker is somewhat out of my control (AI, games getting tougher etc.) As MJ states, we always want to be in control


Short Term Goals:

Read 5 books on Financial Literacy
Set up 1 revenue stream by the end of the year



I need your help!

Please give any constructive feedback or concern with anything you read; whether it be a thought process that maybe brought up a red flag or where to start on my journey.

Any books/podcasts that will help me improve in this area? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

I'm heading off to the WSOP in a week but I still can get a lot of learning done while I'm out there.

Thanks for reading and I'm looking forward to updating this thread as I progress.

To beat the micros is tough, even Doug Polk can't win on his live streams LOL. Why not switch to live games? Thats where the money is in poker....
 
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Jerrad Pawar

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Welcome Jerrad!

I'm afraid I don't have any recommendations on literacy books. I've heard some folks say Ramit's book is decent on the matter, as well as Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey.

Maybe even Tony Robbin's book, Money: Master the Game.

These are SLOWLANE books, but they do have some education in them.

Book - Ramit Sethi - "I TEACH YOU TO BE RICH" - how legitimate?

Thank you MJ! I will definitely check out those recommendations out along with Unscripted .

Going from 0 to MSNL in 2.5 yrs in this day and age is impressive. I quit poker around the time you started. Way to go. Coaching is giving you the variance free money as well, but it's linked to your time.

And well, downswings suck.

The common way to decouple your time from revenue is to produce a book/video/package. It's been done hundreds of times. I don't know how viable that would be these days as I'm not really plugged into the poker community any longer.

Vegas this time of year is awesome, games are everywhere, the comradery is excellent. This year, take a copy of Unscripted with you and read it during your downtime. That's the only book I'd recommend if you haven't read it already.

Finanical literacy is sort of nebulous and therefore unhelpful term. It's too vague. You may as well talk about bankroll management to some ploppy at the table. The concept is fine, but the application is misplaced.

In your case, it all depends on what exactly you're trying to do. It sounds like you need a place to put/invest your money. If that's the case, you're actually looking for investment strategies and ideas. MJ mentioned Tony Robbin's book - it has some general rules of thumb as to asset allocation which are fine, but again, it's slowlane stuff designed for joe average. Those rules of thumb are a great start though if its something you're looking for.

Get clear on what you want to achieve and go from there. I'm sure there are several people around here that can then help guide you in the right direction.

Thanks for the well written out advice. It's nice to hear from someone who has gone through the trials of a pro! I have known a lot of the well-established pro's recently move on to different career paths (usually finance related). How has transitioning from poker gone for you; any advice on the matter?

While I'm not looking to move on from the game and have no burnout I know that I don't plan on playing forever and would guesstimate my time playing professionally to cap out between 5-8 years.

Strong point on financial literacy. I know where I want to go (When I'm done with poker, have the same financial freedom and ability to do things on my own time) I just feel like I'm very green when it comes to any financial education, my thoughts were that a little education would help form a direction on how I wanted to allocate my money.

As far as moving up to MSNL quickly, I was lucky to network well and am friends with some of the world's top players who have been an immense help. As far as poker content, I've thought about it but feel the market is too saturated with content (great content, to be fair) to make it worth the time.


To beat the micros is tough, even Doug Polk can't win on his live streams LOL. Why not switch to live games? Thats where the money is in poker....

I get my live playing in during the WSOP to mix it up; however, my hourly rate is higher online unless I get in a fantastic live game.
 

Maxboost

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What is your poker name? What site do you play on?
 

Martin Boeddeker

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Hi,

since I've been a poker pro myself (though probably not as successful as you are) I want to share some thoughts.

The most important question you have to answer for yourself is what do you want out of life? You're in a great position right now. You probably have a $100k+ bankroll and can decide how you want to live your life.

You're young.

You can learn things quickly.

For you, it's not about the financials although it might seem like this.

The most important question is what would you do if money was no object?

The biggest problem with poker is that despite your skill, chance can still hit you with a major downswing. There is nothing you can do about this. That's the biggest downside of being a poker pro.

As MJ said you basically have two options:

Create some kind of sidewalk life. That's okay. Slowly transfer money from your bankroll over to index funds etc.

Great book for this is Tony Robbins: Money Master the game and create some kind of the Portfolio that Ray Dalio advises.

That's probably the book you are looking for.

Another book you might want to read is "Anti-Fragile" by Nicholas Nassim Taleb.

However, it does not stop there for you.

The biggest problem with poker is the lack of control.

Besides finding the purpose of your life, what you can do right now is to find a way to make yourself and your finances "Anti-Fragile".

To do this you have two options:

1. Create an anti-fragile investment portfolio and passive income (-> read money master the game)

2. Create a high in-demand skill that is in line with your values and "passion" (Same as being poker-pro but without the risk of downswings or the government regulating the market). Here I cannot make any recommendations since I don't know anything about your life situation. In the beginning, this is also "Time for money" but that does not matter if you really like what you are doing.

3. Long-Term, you might be thinking about starting some kind of business. You can even look into this right now, but at least for me playing poker facing all the variance and building a business was too much. You're better of building a skill that is highly valued in the marketplace and complimentary first if you want to go this route.

I would stay away from Ramit Sethi's book. Other great books that teach the basics are "The richest man in Babylon" (great read on principles, easy to read) and "Rich dad, poor dad". But you probably already know this stuff.

If you want to talk this over skype just PM me and I'm happy to help.
 
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Jerrad Pawar

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What is your poker name? What site do you play on?

I play on the NJ sites under the alias "bbissick". I have a somewhat popular poker thread on 2+2 where I go more in depth with my poker journey.

Hi,

since I've been a poker pro myself (though probably not as successful as you are) I want to share some thoughts.

The most important question you have to answer for yourself is what do you want out of life? You're in a great position right now. You probably have a $100k+ bankroll and can decide how you want to live your life.

You're young.

You can learn things quickly.

For you, it's not about the financials although it might seem like this.

The most important question is what would you do if money was no object?

The biggest problem with poker is that despite your skill, chance can still hit you with a major downswing. There is nothing you can do about this. That's the biggest downside of being a poker pro.

As MJ said you basically have two options:

Create some kind of sidewalk life. That's okay. Slowly transfer money from your bankroll over to index funds etc.

Great book for this is Tony Robbins: Money Master the game and create some kind of the Portfolio that Ray Dalio advises.

That's probably the book you are looking for.

Another book you might want to read is "Anti-Fragile" by Nicholas Nassim Taleb.

However, it does not stop there for you.

The biggest problem with poker is the lack of control.

Besides finding the purpose of your life, what you can do right now is to find a way to make yourself and your finances "Anti-Fragile".

To do this you have two options:

1. Create an anti-fragile investment portfolio and passive income (-> read money master the game)

2. Create a high in-demand skill that is in line with your values and "passion" (Same as being poker-pro but without the risk of downswings or the government regulating the market). Here I cannot make any recommendations since I don't know anything about your life situation. In the beginning, this is also "Time for money" but that does not matter if you really like what you are doing.

3. Long-Term, you might be thinking about starting some kind of business. You can even look into this right now, but at least for me playing poker facing all the variance and building a business was too much. You're better of building a skill that is highly valued in the marketplace and complimentary first if you want to go this route.

I would stay away from Ramit Sethi's book. Other great books that teach the basics are "The richest man in Babylon" (great read on principles, easy to read) and "Rich dad, poor dad". But you probably already know this stuff.

If you want to talk this over skype just PM me and I'm happy to help.

First of all, I appreciate the in-depth response to my situation. I wrote down a lot of your recommendations and have a growing list of books to read while I'm in Vegas.

Your reads have been pretty spot on. After this downswing, I've about 80k in my bankroll, with no debt. I do believe I'm in a enviable situation since I'm currently making more than I'm spending by a large margin; giving me the potential to really catapult myself into financial freedom. However, I'm very aware that potential is a dangerous word!

If money would be no object, I would definitely want to travel the world and provide for my parents. I enjoy materialistic things, but they do not fuel me. Freedom fuels me. Competition fuels me. (This may be a major reason why I've done well).

Creating a passive income stream is a high priority on my list. I do eventually want to start my own business; but I don't believe I can give the appropriate amount of effort and dedication to that goal until I move on from poker.

If there were no speedbumps, I would create multiple streams of passive revenue play poker for another 7 years and retire with a few million in my bank account before moving to the entrepreneurial side.

Of course, life never goes to plan, so this is something I want to start putting into motion in case if something happens I don't have my hand down my pants.

Thanks again for your response. Will send you a PM now with my info
 

JasonEP

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There isn't much to be said in here that hasn't already been said, but I would like to add that the first time I ever really thought about investing/creating other sources of income outside of poker was from an old DeucePlays podcast. It was one of the Limon episodes. I'm not sure which one but Abe goes into a lot of detail on how he knew he didn't want to play poker as a main income forever and suggested plenty of ways to create additional income at the casino such as playing as a prop and hosting games. I'm not sure what kind of connections you have but if you are able to get a consistent specialty game going (such as a higher stake than usual PLO game) as the host a few times a week you will make your hourly winrate look tiny from the percentage of rake you get as a host. I know you play online, but if you have enough people in your rolodex it's an option if you're near NJ.

Another thing he brought up was that younger players are so obsessed with "balling out" that they just want to focus on moving up in stakes. He found that he didn't need more than the $100/hr he was making at 5/10 and 10/20 and instead of moving up in stakes started buying up rentals.

His whole point that changed my view back in like 2013 was that he wanted to craft a life for himself where he could wake up whenever he wanted and go play golf everyday and then run a poker game at night and not be in a position to worry about whether or not he won or lost that day. So he just started propping/hosting/investing in rental units and businesses until he was in a position to do just that.

I don't know how you feel about Abe since 2+2 seems to either totally love him or completely despise him. He seemed to have some sort of breakdown after the election, but I've talked to him before and he was a super cool guy and was very good about teaching poker players ways outside of the game to put their bankroll to good use. I would highly recommend listening to all of his features on DeucePlays (I think there are 4) and his early episodes of the Limon Show from when he was with crushlivepoker. He gives the exact type of advice you're asking for here and it's just as applicable to online players as it is live players.

Also, can you go into a bit of detail about your WR? Not specific numbers, but are you getting a higher winrate solely from multi-tabling? I haven't played any of the NJ sites so I don't know how soft they are but it is super hard for me to imagine getting a higher WR online than any live games in NJ. Even Vegas has some very tough 5/10 games but an $80-$100/hr WR isn't some crazy number. It would be hard for me to picture that from an online 5/10 game. I'm just curious. Those online games have to be SUPER soft.
 

ZCP

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since you have a little bank roll, look into buying some small online / local cashflowing businesses to get your feet wet and start you on the 'other income' journey. start in the $5k to $10k range and see what is available. just going through the process will be good. PM if you need help.

best of luck! have a poker tney tonight..... just need to stay +EV :)
 
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Martin Boeddeker

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Had a call with Jarred today.

I think given his life situation it's best for him to stay out of any passive income models for now and keep things super simple (e.g. bonds or just storing the cash on a bank account).

He needs to create some kind of roadmap first and define his financial goals.

Tapping into "passive income" models at this point in time will just be a distraction and will not be worth the effort.

Passive income is not the holy grail at this point in time.

I suggested that he should focus on building another valuable skill first that might fit his Fastlane ambitions and be a substitute for poker when he wants to quit.
 

Jerrad Pawar

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There isn't much to be said in here that hasn't already been said, but I would like to add that the first time I ever really thought about investing/creating other sources of income outside of poker was from an old DeucePlays podcast. It was one of the Limon episodes. I'm not sure which one but Abe goes into a lot of detail on how he knew he didn't want to play poker as a main income forever and suggested plenty of ways to create additional income at the casino such as playing as a prop and hosting games. I'm not sure what kind of connections you have but if you are able to get a consistent specialty game going (such as a higher stake than usual PLO game) as the host a few times a week you will make your hourly winrate look tiny from the percentage of rake you get as a host. I know you play online, but if you have enough people in your rolodex it's an option if you're near NJ.

Another thing he brought up was that younger players are so obsessed with "balling out" that they just want to focus on moving up in stakes. He found that he didn't need more than the $100/hr he was making at 5/10 and 10/20 and instead of moving up in stakes started buying up rentals.

His whole point that changed my view back in like 2013 was that he wanted to craft a life for himself where he could wake up whenever he wanted and go play golf everyday and then run a poker game at night and not be in a position to worry about whether or not he won or lost that day. So he just started propping/hosting/investing in rental units and businesses until he was in a position to do just that.

I don't know how you feel about Abe since 2+2 seems to either totally love him or completely despise him. He seemed to have some sort of breakdown after the election, but I've talked to him before and he was a super cool guy and was very good about teaching poker players ways outside of the game to put their bankroll to good use. I would highly recommend listening to all of his features on DeucePlays (I think there are 4) and his early episodes of the Limon Show from when he was with crushlivepoker. He gives the exact type of advice you're asking for here and it's just as applicable to online players as it is live players.

Also, can you go into a bit of detail about your WR? Not specific numbers, but are you getting a higher winrate solely from multi-tabling? I haven't played any of the NJ sites so I don't know how soft they are but it is super hard for me to imagine getting a higher WR online than any live games in NJ. Even Vegas has some very tough 5/10 games but an $80-$100/hr WR isn't some crazy number. It would be hard for me to picture that from an online 5/10 game. I'm just curious. Those online games have to be SUPER soft.

I came into poker fairly late, so I never really got into Deuces cracked (Run It Once was all the rage once I got started!) but I'll definitely check it out; I've only heard good things from Limon.

Not sure what you're referring to regarding winrate. I am winning at 5 EVbb on midstakes for an hourly of around $130 this year. Live games as a consistent source of income is close to impossible for me as the closest casino is 1.5 hours away and I don't have a car.

I definitely use a lot of the money I win to move up in stakes, but it's more of a competitive mentality than me trying to ball out.

The games in America in general are pretty soft but I like to think I'm pretty good as well :)


since you have a little bank roll, look into buying some small online / local cashflowing businesses to get your feet wet and start you on the 'other income' journey. start in the $5k to $10k range and see what is available. just going through the process will be good. PM if you need help.

best of luck! have a poker tney tonight..... just need to stay +EV :)

Hope the tournament went well!

Had a call with Jarred today.

I think given his life situation it's best for him to stay out of any passive income models for now and keep things super simple (e.g. bonds or just storing the cash on a bank account).

He needs to create some kind of roadmap first and define his financial goals.

Tapping into "passive income" models at this point in time will just be a distraction and will not be worth the effort.

Passive income is not the holy grail at this point in time.

I suggested that he should focus on building another valuable skill first that might fit his Fastlane ambitions and be a substitute for poker when he wants to quit.

First off, a shout out to Martin for taking a good chunk of his day to talk to me about everything. A simple back and forth conversation had me thinking a ton about what I want out of life and to start planning a roadmap.

The next month or so I will be heavily focused on poker; however, I'll post a brief outline of books and things I want to accomplish (sort of like a roadmap) before I leave.
 

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