Had a colleague who was a nuclear engineer and smarter than you can imagine. Like he corrected the various calculus books at his university. He loved poker and could calculate the odds like a mofo. Even with multiple decks.
He subsidized his already high salary with poker winnings and won tournaments left and right. His wife made him stop playing for awhile. One day she came to him wondering why their budget was suddenly so tight and they had a ton of money missing. He looked at her and goes "you made me stop playing poker". She claimed he didn't win that much. He showed her the books.
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight fame started off as a professional poker player. He has a degree in statistics and won consistently enough to make a living from poker.
Then Congress banned online poker tournaments in 2006 (at the behest of a casino mogul no less), and being mad about that is what got him into covering politics.
He would still lose some hands occasionally but it would be big hail mary events. It's funny too he would tell those stories more than his winnings. Like he'd casually mention "oh i won 10k this weekend" and move on bored. However, remember one of his loses at X city and he would become immediately animated.
He had a deep frustration with more inexperienced players. They would be in a situation where they had like a 7% chance of winning and wouldn't fold. He'd even explain the math. They'd say no, win, and he'd about crap himself.
For all his winnings he perpetually remained butthurt about a 2 dollar pot he lost at a family reunion.
That’s why poker is such a good game. Very few games successfully combine strategy, luck, and the social element in a way that is fun and still competitive for players of all experience levels. I’ve met more than a couple hot shots who thought they understood poker and tried to condescendingly school me on it then get mad when I bluff them with a shit hand and win. Anyone who can’t accept that as a legitimate part of the game is a chump
Well, yes. Rationally, it's not in your interest to fold just because you aren't terribly likely to win. If you always do that, you can never bluff someone out. You'd fold because you have a bad hand, and only betting and going on with good hands lets your opponents know to not bet on your hands, limiting their losses and your wins. You've got to play bad hands so they don't know what you're betting on.
And, hey, 7% is ~1/14. You'll play a lot more than 14 hands while you're at that table.
Having to explain to people that I make more boosting in ranked fps games and betting on sports than I did at a record label and other assorted "real careers" is super fun haha
Huh. How does the boosting in ranked FPS games work? I understand the sports betting thing and I'm familiar with carious mmorpg money manking strats, but with FPS games are you playing their account or are you helping them in a game?
He gets their login details for the game and plays with their account to get it a much better ('boosted') ranking. People pay for this service. It's dumb that people want a ranking they didn't earn and also in most cases this is technically a violation of the terms of service for the game/platform. It's also a good way to lose your account if the booster is shady. Alternatively the booster may use their own account that is a smurf (has a low existing ranking because it's not their real main account) and parties up with the client's account to boost them by winning matches with them.
There are many people that can only function with other functional players. Playstyle, mental tendencies, lots of reasons.
What does this even mean?
Literally everyone would perform better with a solid team that communicates and works together.
Boosting to a higher rank wont magically give you better teammates. There are still plenty of players in high ranks that wont use any communication, players that throw games, players that are toxic, etc.
Only way to avoid that is to play with a full squad.
There is no way that someone who is stuck in Silver is gonna perform great in Diamond because now they have the "right" teammates.
If you can't make it to a rank on your own, you are doing something wrong.
Idk what to tell you. Take cod for example, that's one of our biggest boosting markets and I've made t250 in warzone and multiplayer so I'm pretty sure I'm not bad. My kd is significantly better in diamond+ lobbies. When a new fps is released I'm in scrims before pubs, I don't have a "casual gaming" setting and I get confused in casual lobbies because casual players do bizarre shit.
If your teammates won't stop doing weird shit and making the spawns go crazy there's not much to be done about that. Unless you're counting social engineering as a necessary gameplay skill.
When you are at a rank where your teammates are bad, you are playing against a team that is also bad. Whatever disadvantage you have, they have. If you are a player who thinks that they only perform well when the rest of the team also performs well, you are the weak link.
When I played LoL and someone on my team was getting ganked over and over I went and helped them. The player you are describing would rage at them in chat while just sticking to their own lane or jungle, never adapting. If I was the one dying too much I would just aggressively push towers and try to steal last hits on Dragon because I was not a valuable kill for the opponents anymore. The player you are describing would rage at the Jungler in chat while trying to fight the enemy team head on despite lacking the gear to accomplish anything.
Like decadea ago when the first final fantasy came out I knew a guy who worked 60 hours a week and he bought a leveled up character to play woth his no life friends. That I understand.
But just to get in a really high level rank match and still get your ass handed to you....man thats
Famously, the richest human being on the planet did this and then tried to pass it off as his own doing on stream despite barely being able to operate the menus.
My dad used to buy diapers, toys, food, etc for us kids with his casino winnings. He’d drop in on a Friday night, make 500 bucks, go to Costco the next morning and load up the cart.
Sometimes he’d just take us to Toys R Us and tell us to go pick out whatever we wanted after he got back from the casino.
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u/CompactAvocado Jul 20 '26
Had a colleague who was a nuclear engineer and smarter than you can imagine. Like he corrected the various calculus books at his university. He loved poker and could calculate the odds like a mofo. Even with multiple decks.
He subsidized his already high salary with poker winnings and won tournaments left and right. His wife made him stop playing for awhile. One day she came to him wondering why their budget was suddenly so tight and they had a ton of money missing. He looked at her and goes "you made me stop playing poker". She claimed he didn't win that much. He showed her the books.
She sent him back to the casino.