Day Job vs. Night Job

I hate working for The Man.

I love playing poker.

This brings me to the difficult comparison of my day job vs. my night job.

Intellectual Property Specialist vs. Poker Player.



VS.



This is an age-old argument since the days when the great Greek philosophers were discussing what was more integral to the success of mankind: a provisional patent or a nut flush draw with top pair?

Before I begin the debate, I have to say that there really is no debate at all. But for the sake of my own personal sanity, which is currently being tested on my new nightly standard one hour of sleep, I will weigh the pros and cons of each challenging (yeah right) occupation.

Schedule

Intellectual Property: I’m required to be at work early in the morning, which causes me to fight L.A. traffic on a daily basis, battling the stop and go speeds on my way from West L.A. to Hollywood. I’m not a morning person at all and I’m late 90% of the time to work. Every day I stroll in late and everyone looks at me. Actually, I do it so often that they don’t even look anymore. My performance reviews usually state the following: Couldn’t be doing a better job, only thing that needs improvement is punctuality. They've been thinking about coming up with a point system to give employees 'points' when they're late. So many points would equal a write-up. The joke is that I'm going to be the Kobe Bryant of tardiness. Summary: I hate working on a schedule. Especially one that starts at 9 a.m. Do we even need to discuss further?

Poker: A schedule in poker is nonexistent. However, because I have a regular job my poker schedule is relegated to weeknights and weekends. This is not that bad, but it leaves me dead tired most of the time. But the beautiful thing about poker is that if I don’t feel like going in, nobody misses me. Poker gets the nod here easily.

Vote: Poker

Dress Code:

Intellectual Property: I work for a relatively young internet start-up company. Although we are not even close to the relaxed atmospheres of Microsoft and Google, we do have a somewhat generous dress code (although as we attempt to go public they are trying to tighten up all the company policies and it’s pissing me off). Jeans, T-shirts, hats, tennis shoes, etc. all acceptable. Shorts, torn jeans, tank tops, etc., not acceptable. The only thing here that I dislike is the shorts. This week alone it has been hot as fuck in L.A. and every time I step outside my legs start sweating in these hot ass jeans. I need to have some shorts on. Slide the kid a pina colada, let me wear my khaki shorts and wife beater and I’ll be much more productive in my cubicle.

Poker: There is no dress code. Do I need to say anything more about this? I can go to play poker straight from anywhere – home, the club, work, basketball, shit...I could go straight from my baseball game and show up in my baseball uniform. And to make it even better, I can play naked on Full Tilt. That’s a little sick so let me put a twist on that. I can play naked on Full Tilt with a naked chick giving me a massage while I’m playing.

Vote: Poker

Pay:

Intellectual Property: Right now I’m making roughly $22/hour or something like that. Probably closer to $21 or 20, I’m too lazy to do the math because I’m on salary. This is not a bad wage, I’m not complaining. That’s if I lived in Oregon or Wisconsin. But living in Los Angeles, this wage sucky sucky long time. Rent is expensive as hell, especially now that I’m about to be living on my own ($1300/month…thanks a lot Big Time), gas is killing me, on top of cable, gas, electricity, car insurance, hookers, movies are like $25/person now, not to mention drinks cost $10 at the club and everything else. Life is not cheap for your boy.

Poker: Based on this little experiment that I’m doing, I’m making $50/Hr. playing poker over the last 170+ hours. Obviously this is not a long time when judging my pay rate, but I’m pretty certain that I can maintain about $50/hr. playing poker. Over the course of this year I’m definitely not making that much money per hour. I have my spreadsheet but it doesn’t calculate $/hr. and I’m too lazy. The worst part about poker is there are days where I will take losses -$500/hour when I’m not on point. It happens. Even to the Phil Ivey’s and Killa Kev’s of the world. Pay in poker is obviously inconsistent, which sucks. But it’s a great feeling to crush a table on a sick heater and walk out with a few racks. Plus, the money is a big part of the motivation in poker and that’s obviously what keeps the game and players going. The potential in poker is much better for myself as there is no limit in income.

Vote: Poker

Commute:

Intellectual Property: This commute sucks my left…toe. I drive 45 minutes on the streets to work, stopping every other block. I don’t get road rage so the horrible L.A. drivers don’t bother me but it’s the time and gas money that pisses me off.

Poker: Hollywood Park is 18 minutes away. Hustler is 25 minutes away, Commerce is 30 minutes away. Nuff said.

Vote: Poker

Work Environment:

Intellectual Property: For a “9-to-5” day job, we have it pretty good at my company (at least in my department). It’s pretty relaxed and we can take lunch, breaks, etc. when we want to as long as we get our work done. Most of the people at work are young and there are some funny characters. A lot of guys (and girls) play cards at lunch, go out to the bar after work and we have some company sports teams that I play on so that’s nice. But it’s still work. And I still sit in a cube staring at a computer monitor all day long.



Poker: I hate the dirty tables at HP and being cramped in at a full table. But this is a job where the TV is on 24/7, breaks are whenever and anything goes as far as dress, topics of conversation, friends coming to work, etc. Plus in Vegas, you sit at a table and watch beautiful women walk by.



Vote: Poker

Career Path:

Mom, if you’re reading this, please close your eyes…now.

Intellectual Property: Do I really want to work in Intellectual Property my whole life? No. I don’t like working for someone else. I don’t like knowing that I’m bringing in thousands of dollars every day and getting paid $160/day to do it. In fact, it kind of pisses me off when I think about it.

Poker: Do I really want to play poker for a living my whole life? Yes. Being a successful (this is key) poker player offers someone a lot of freedom to travel and live their life the way they want to. In all honesty, I don’t even know many professional players (two) but I know what I can envision it being. Sure there’s a lot of stress but the great thing about that is I don’t stress out.

Vote: Poker

Location:

Intellectual Property: The location of my day job is definitely better in the heart of Hollywood. I can walk outside for five minutes and see three women that I’d want to marry based on appearance alone. It’s lovely. Plus I get free parking when I go out to certain clubs because my job is across the street.

Poker: Hollywood Park is in the heart of the hood. The location is horrible. But am I really restricted to that location? Not at all. However, all the casinos in the L.A. area are in terrible locations.

Vote: Intellectual Property (barely)

Co-Workers:

Intellectual Property: The people I work with are a lot of fun. I’d say 75% of the company is in my age bracket of 25-29 or at least 23-30 and amazingly I work with people that share a lot of the common interests that I have: poker players, rappers, basketball players/fans, etc. The girls aren’t the best but we have a lot of fun at work playing cards at lunch, going out for happy hour, etc.

Poker: Where do I start? Every single type of human being on this planet plays poker. Unfortunately, that includes the degenerates, greedy folks and just plain annoying people that won’t shut up about their bad beats and how good they play but how bad they run. I’ve met a few friends through poker but I really try not to make friends with too many people because I’m there to win money and I don’t want to win money off my friends. At the level I play, people value $100 so it’s hard to raise a friend $100 when I have the nuts. Also, it’s very rare that there are any women playing poker so it does suck to sit around with a bunch of angry old men for eight hours. Of course there is always the chance that I’m playing with Adam Morrison or Jose Canseco but that’s pretty rare.

Vote: Intellectual Property

Job Stability:

Intellectual Property: This job is pretty stable as long as I do a good job. Our company is growing at an amazing rate and I’ve been here for almost three years now.



Poker: Uhh…is stable even a thought? With my terrible bankroll management, I could go broke in a month easily. Even two weeks. If I were ever to go pro, I would need some kind of financial manager. It’s funny; just a month ago I felt like I couldn’t lose. I listened to people tell their bad beat stories and thought to myself ‘they whine so much, it’s easy to avoid those beats.’ Now, I feel like I can’t win. Every time I flop a set, someone flops a better set. Everytime I flop top pair/top kicker, someone flops two pair. And the sob story goes on.



Vote: Intellectual Property

Benefits:

Intellectual Property: Health insurance, dental coverage, stock options, parking, vision, AFLAC, bagel Fridays, occasional free lunches. Not bad. Actually pretty good. We’re not Google, but we get the average for a large corporation.

Poker: Player points, free food, possibly poker groupies (possibly celebrity status but that is very unlikely). That’s it. And I’m pretty sure poker groupies don’t even come until you’ve made a television appearance on a final table…at the minimum. I’m sure there are hundreds of televised players who don’t even get poker groupies because let’s face it: there aren’t many poker groupies outside of Vegas. Parking is about $5 for valet every session and there is no health coverage whatsoever.

Vote: Intellectual Property

Summary:

As great as the job stability is with my day job, I really have to give the edge to poker, which took the advantage in six categories to four for Intellectual Property. There is nothing like dragging in a huge pot and playing a hand perfectly, wrapping your opponent around your finger and reeling him in for the kill. Of course, it’s tough to compare replying to customer emails to check-raising assholes with the nuts, but both occupations have their advantages. Poker can obviously be very stressful when someone is in the midst of a downswing as I am right now, but with proper bankroll management (which I don’t have) it shouldn’t be too stressful. Based on my lifestyle of staying up until 3 a.m. every night, waking up whenever I feel like it and generally living the way I want to and not the way a 9-5 job dictates, poker is obviously the way to go.

The ideal professional poker player travels the world playing in tournaments and cash games, spends half their life in Las Vegas raking in pots, golfing and clubbing, and is never short on funds.

Unfortunately, I’m not even close to reaching that point where I can play cards for a living. So until then, I remain a slave to the man.

***Daily BS***

I didn't play at all last night. I'm kind of taking my time right now trying to let this downswing pass me by. I think that lately I haven't been thinking about making the right decisions. I've just been thinking about what I have in my hand and how much I want the other person's money. I need to get back to thinking about how many hands I can lose to, etc.

I took a boxing class last night that was a tough workout. I had pizza before the class and a lot of people *cough* Big Time *cough* thought I would throw up or something but I didn't. I was actually in decent shape comparatively, I just had no idea what I was doing.

This weekend should be fun...the Dallas Kid is making his return. I don't know when I'm gonna be able to watch the Simpsons and Transformers and play my cards but it'll get done.

Peace.