Sklansky thread

I just meant you were never a top player. I don't think there should be any question about that.

I don’t think Mason ever cooked a meal.

Amazing. I used to be criticized for not hosting & preparing extravagant six course dinners.

I just meant Mason was never a three star Michelin chef.

Deuce, you might’ve Just made the stupidest pair of posts in the history of 2p2. First of all, you’re apparently saying that beating midstakes makes you a “top player”.

Second, Mason played by my estimation at least 5000 hours of 20-40 LHE in the Mirage during the Doug Dalton/Donna Harris era (this was before you were born, I’m guessing). I probably saw him play close to 10% of that.

If you know nothing about what Mason was playing thirty years ago, how would you know what David was playing fifty years ago, or why Doyle considered David an “expert” on par with Chip Reese & Bobby Baldwin?

Someone was saying how far they have fallen. I said Mason was never a top player, which there should be no question about. Sklansky may have been a top player 50 years ago, but it isn't clear that he was a big winner or top player 20 years ago.

I would think Sklansky would still be a decent mixed game player. NLHE and PLO have become bigger since televised tournaments.

Yeah but there are "professional players and professional level players". Remind you of anyone?😃

With that definition I could be break-even (or worse) at poker and still be a very successful "professional poker player".

Let’s look at Mason’s author bio on Amazon. Who wrote this?

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B09KZ9D2Q7/about?ccs_id=46720d8f-1644-47c6-9e3a-347d4ba49e2d

About the author

Mason Malmuth was born and raised in Coral Gables, Florida. In 1973 he received his BS in Mathematics from Virginia Tech, and completed their Masters program in 1975, also in Mathematics. While working for the United States Census Bureau in 1980, Mason stopped overnight in Las Vegas while driving to his new assignment in California. He was immediately fascinated by the games, and gambling became his major interest.

After arriving in California, he discovered that poker was legal and began playing in some of the public cardrooms as well as taking periodic trips to Las Vegas where he would play both poker and blackjack. In 1982, he went to work for the Northrop Corporation (now Northrop-Grumman) as a mathematician and moved to Los Angeles where he could conveniently pursue his interest in poker in the large public cardrooms in Gardena, Bell Gardens, and Commerce.

In 1983, his first article “Card Domination — The Ultimate Blackjack Weapon” was published in Gambling Times Magazine. In 1987, he left his job with the Northrop Corporation to begin a career as both a full-time gambler and a gambling writer. He has had over 600 articles published in various magazines and is the author or co-author of 20 books. These include Gambling Theory and Other Topics where he tries to demonstrate why only a small number of people are highly successful at gambling. In this book he introduces the reader to the concept of Non-Self-Weighting Strategies and explains why successful gambling is actually a balance of luck and skill. Other books he has co-authored include Hold 'em Poker For Advanced Players with David Sklansky, Seven-Card Stud For Advanced Players with David Sklansky and Ray Zee, and Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big with Expert Play with Ed Miller and David Sklansky. All of these are considered the definitive works on these games.

Mason has also written a book on poker psychology titled Real Poker Psychology and is a co-author with Antonio Carrasco on a history book titled The History of the World from a Gambler’s Perspective. Both of these books are among Mason’s more recent works.

His company, Two Plus Two Publishing LLC, has sold over two and a half million books and currently has 46 titles to its credit. These books are recognized as the best in their field and are thoroughly studied by those individuals who take gambling seriously.

I mean it’s safe to assume Mason was a huge winner during the 80s-2000s in LA cardrooms where very few people knew how to play due to the lack of educational material available and the game wasn’t mainstream so it wasn’t pursued as much by educated white collared professionals who took the game seriously as a hobby. The games were rife with degenerate gamblers like the whales you see on HCL and you could crush them easily by being an ABC nit.

How is breaking even or losing going to pay the rent, groceries or fuel for you car, let alone do this very succesfully? Or do you mean making money out of poker but not playing like writing books, software etc.? Because the the guy I quoted specifically said "professional player" and thats what I meant as well. I mean Bill Perkins plays poker for a lot money and loses although he remains very rich, I wouldnt call him a professional poker player. He's a professional account hedge fund manager or trader.

Or just to quote a dictionary, the meaning of professional is "engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime."

Breaking even or losing doesnt qualify as (main) paid occupation

If you’re retired with a $6000/mo pension, and play 1-3 40-50hrs/wk winning 20bb/100, are you a professional poker player?

Are Hellmuth & DNegs professional poker players? Are the Foxen’s? Was Jack Keller a professional poker player? Was Annie Duke?

If thirty years ago you made $60/hr playing poker, and now you make $20/hr, have you fallen a long way?

Thirty years ago was Mason as good a LHE player as David Chiu, Ralph Perry, Roy Cooke, and Mike Halford? Was Sklansky as good a O8 player as Mark Gregorich, Frankie O’Dell, and Jeff Pierce? (This paragraph is obviously pedantic or whatever the right word is for the they weren’t top players youngsters)

Is Texas Mike a professional poker player? Is Will Kassouf?

I saw Sklansky playing 5-10 NL at Bellagio a few weeks ago.

I would say 40 hours a week beating 1-3 with 20bb/100 would earn you a nice living yes, so even without the pension you could live nicely of poker. Therefore the term professional applies

If they are still able to make a living from actually playing poker, yes
If they did in the past, they were
Would you say David Beckham is still a professional football player because he once was and made enough to sit back in his chair? No right.

In term of being able to be a professional poker player... Yes, clearly.

I wouldnt be able to tell you nor do i see the exact relevance. Could they provide for themselves playing poker? If so, they were professional poker players. I dont have a power ranking for these people.

More names, but they can all be answered by answering the question "can they live off playing poker to pay the bills?"
An accountant that also plays the guitar, maybe sometimes even in a local pub where he gets paid a bit, is not a professional musician. I would say Eric Clapton is.

At least, that is by my logic and standards. Maybe im too literal in this and its fine to disagree, I just think players who arent beating the games in a matter that they need no other source of income shouldnt call themselves professional players.
But I also think this discussion might not have been the intention of this thread :p

I think you should realize that a professional in a given field has many ways of earning money.

And someone who is paying 50% of his "bills" with a pension and the remainder with poker earnings would not be called a professional based on your definition.

Thats correct, that is my definition/opinion. I would call that semi-professional, which is defined as "receiving payment for an activity but not relying entirely on it for a living" so that would fit perfectly with what you are saying

But could you clarify this

Because how does losing or breaking even supplement a pension or any other source of income?

If you play, on average, 25 hands per hour in a typical live poker game, that means, according to your figures, you'd win about 5bb per hour. So at a $1/$3 NL game, you would be earning $15 per hour. Is that a nice living? Don't get me wrong though, I'm not judging anyone. 😀

LOL in some countries perhaps
But I had online in mind, not the 25 hands per hour typical live setting you just described. JFC is live so slow?? No wonder I only play online :p

FFS can we move this boring as chit hijack derail of “what is a professional” to a new thread? Fn get a room already guys lol!

Are you saying games were more difficult to beat in the 90s-2000s by the average person compared to now? Sorry u got offended. Were you just another ABC nit who waited for aces and sets and bumhunted the droolers who would pay you off? Those days are long gone. :(

Talking pre-boom and in public poker it maybe wasn't tougher but comparable. Once 2003 hit holy crap lol no. Those games were just asinine and they were selling 2+2 books in supermarkets. In 1997 it was basically Conjelco or nothing and a lot of the stuff they sold read like satire now.

good books were at the supermarket in 2005 but also a lot of insanely horrible stuff, more people were buying "play poker like the pros" than TOP and there was no way to know the difference if you weren't already an experienced very intelligent player. the people saying they would have crushed then, while they toil at $1-3 now, would have been the clowns buying TJ cloudier books. But information wasn't the only barrier between then and now, there was also a massive stigma then that the mediocre low IQ "middle management" types who think they would have been crushers back then could not have overcome. In the 90s nearly every other "pro gambler" i met was some sort of deviant. Almost No one was telling their mom they were gonna play poker as a job, it would have been like saying you were gonna rob banks. Now these type of "gig jobs" for college grads are commonplace with gambling as every other advertisement on television.

anyone who says they are a professional poker player, is a professional poker player and should be treated as such. period. DUCY?

Sklansky is arguably a Mt. Rushmore level character in the history of poker. Mason is a literal OG legend of poker. Any arguments to the contrary are laughable.

But can they beat 2/5 NL at the Bellagio today?

This conversation about who's a real professional and who wrote the best pokey books is really distracting from the original topic of this thread - why did they close the thread about Sklansky beating up women?

Personally I think they got a request from the DOJ.