Nate Silver poker news stories, interviews, and recaps. Total life earnings: $51,208. Latest cash: $2,521 on 19-Jul-2019. Click here to see the details of Nate Silver's 6 cashes. Nate Silver poker results, stats, photos, videos, news, magazine columns, blogs, Twitter, and more.

Nate Silver said this about playing poker, “I got out in 2007 when the games got a lot tighter.” Napoleon Bonaparte biographer Paul Johnson wondered what would have happened if the little emperor had taken the fight to the America’s rather than Europe.

Nate Silver is playing in the Aussie Millions poker championship at Crown Casino. Picture: Jason SammonSource:Herald Sun

Nate Silver Online Poker

ASK someone to describe a professional poker player, and they're likely to talk about smokey back rooms and down on their luck gamblers hoping for one run of good cards.

Nate Silver couldn’t be further from that image. He's a best selling author and hugely influential journalist … and he credits much of his success to lessons learnt playing poker professionally.

LESSON ONE: TREAT SUCCESS AND FAILURE EQUALLY
'I think poker helps with understanding (that) you can play the hand as well as you possibly can, and still lose. And vice versa, right?' he says during our interview at Crown Casino, where he's staying while competing in the Aussie Millions poker championship.

Silver defies many stereotypes. His a gay man who's a hero among baseball stats geeks. He's made writing about opinion polls sexy. And he was a hard core gambler who walked away while in front.

After graduating from college, Silver got a respectable job working for accounting firm KPMG.

It was a good, solid job. Only it bored Silver. So he started playing online poker at night.

He hit the game at the right time, when its popularity on TV brought a lot of average players to the online casinos. A player of Silver's skill - he describes himself of being in the top 10 per cent of poker players at the time - could make good money. More than $100,000 a year in his case. And that was on top of his day job.

LESSON TWO: KNOW WHEN TO FOLD ‘EM
Silver got so hooked, he would play through the night, then catch a cab straight to work.

But as the bad players busted out, Silver was no longer a big fish in a small poker pond, and he started racking up big losses. Quickly.

“I had hit a wall playing uncreative and uninspired poker,” he wrote in his book The Signal and the Noise.

“When I did play, I combined the most dangerous trait of the professional poker player – the sense I was entitled to money – with the bad habits of the amateur, playing late into the evening, sometimes after having been out with friends.”

LESSON THREE: KNOW WHEN TO WALK AWAY, KNOW WHEN TO RUN
Silver says being the in poker bubble, can sometimes feel like “you’re in a zero gravity environment” – where none of the usual rules of economics apply.

So he did what most gamblers don't - he walked away while he was well ahead. In five years, he estimates poker netted him a $400,000 profit.

“I sometimes wondered what would have happened if I played on … it’s possible for a losing player to go on a long winning streak before he realises that he isn’t much good.”

LESSON FOUR: DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF
Those winnings gave him some breathing room to focus on work that interested him. And the freedom to take risks.

'Having had that experience where you win and lose a lot of money … a lot of poker players are very indifferent about money,' he says.

In fact, poker players can be very generous.

'There's a stereotype a lot of people don't know about - if you are around your poker buddies, it's really hard to pay for a meal or a drink,' he says.

'Paying $100 for a steak meal is nothing when I've paid $25,000 to enter this tournament. So in some ways it's kind of healthy (being a poker player), you don't get hung up on little things.'

One stereotype that Silver fulfils is that the old formula of hard work plus good timing usually equals success.

Even if he does nothing else for the rest of his life, Silver be remembered for two things: 1. Creating a new baseball stat so impressive (it could be used to predict the likelihood of a minor league player becoming a major league star) that a company offered him a share of the business for the rights to it. 2. And being the most accurate political analyst working today.

In each of the past two US presidential elections, on his blog FiveThirtyEight, Silver has predicted the result with a high degree of success.

He was so confident in his formula, he put his reputation on the line months before election day. That drew a huge amount of highly personal abuse from other political pundits threatened by this self-assured yet quietly spoken man.

IS POKER GOOD FOR TEACHING LIFE SKILLS? HAVE YOUR SAY BELOW

When you interview Silver, it feels like he's about to explode with nervous energy. But he has proven to have nerves of steel, by both backing his judgement in the face of a torrent of criticism, but also refraining from mocking his critics when he was proven entirely correct, accurately picking the correct result in all 50 states.

While some journalists accused him of being biased towards Barack Obama, the most indefensible attack targeted his personality.

Dean Chambers, who ran competing political analysis site Unswekedpolls, centred his criticism of Silver around him being 'thin and effeminate' and having a 'soft-sounding voice'.

Rather than get riled, Silver laughed it off on Twitter, writing: 'Unskewedpolls argument: Nate Silver seems kinda gay + ??? = Romney landslide!'.

LESSON FIVE: KNOW WHO YOU ARE
Silver says the ups and downs you feel through playing poker prepared him for the slings and arrows of public life.

It's also helped him stay grounded despite being lionised - one US journalist called him Dork Elvis - for being so confident about Obama's victory. Even when the national opinion polls had Obama neck and neck with Mitt Romney, Silver gave him a 90 per cent chance of winning days ahead of the result.

'People like to say that when they get a good outcome, it's because of skill, and when they do poorly it's because of luck,' he says.

Nate Silver Poker Hendon

'In poker, there's so many ways to get lucky or unlucky. It's very easy to latch on to the noise and see yourself as highly skilled.'

It seems whatever Silver touches turns to gold. His first book – The Signal and the Noise – was published in November last year and quickly went top 10 on the New York Times bestseller lists

But he says experiencing big losses like he did (at one point he lost close to $70,000 in a night) taught him how close the line is between success and failure.

'Poker players grasp (the part luck plays) more than most people in other walks of life. You just become more zen in some sense. If that 10 per cent chance had come up and Romney had won, I probably wouldn't be sitting here, I'd be sitting in Atlantic City trying to find a game (of poker).'

Nate Silver is competing the $2 million Aussie Millions poker tournament against the top 20 poker players in the world at Crown Casino, which concludes on Sunday.

Originally published asWhat poker teaches you about life

Nate Silver quit his $55,000-a-year financial consulting job in April to play poker.

So far it's been a wise career move: The 26-year-old Silver expects to make more than $100,000 this year playing the card game, mainly on the Internet.

Silver belongs to a new generation of poker players who feast on the growing number of novices taking up poker after watching televised contests.

While few players go to the extreme of quitting their jobs, many spend their evenings stalking sites like PartyPoker.com and PokerStars.com, pocketing an extra $20,000 or $30,000 annually on top of their regular salaries.

And as more novices keep appearing, opportunity grows for experienced players.

'You'll see people make terrible plays routinely,' said Silver, who lives in Wrigleyville. 'For the most part these people call too much and play too aggressively.'

Online poker has exploded along with the recent surge of interest in the game.

In January 2003, $11.1 million was wagered on the major poker sites. That number rocketed to $136.1 million last month, according to PokerPulse.com, which tracks activity on 21 of the largest poker sites.

Total gambling at poker sites will easily clear $1 billion this year, based on PokerPulse's figures, which likely undercount total betting since they do not include popular online poker tournaments that charge entry fees.

People trying to bank quick online profits are reminiscent of another recent Internet phenomenon--day traders.

Rather than making rapid-fire stock trades online, these gamblers seek profits by leveraging small advantages with their poker experience, discipline and statistical savvy. While their gains and losses vary widely day to day, experienced players say the odds are heavily in their favor in the long run.

Still, the easy money could quickly disappear if the current poker fad fades.

Mike Kim, who lives in Lincoln Park, said he plays online poker every day, sometimes for a couple of hours and sometimes for 12 hours straight. He said his average winnings are $15,000 a month.

'I had no idea it would become my full-time job,' said Kim, who started playing online nearly a year ago while studying mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois. 'I didn't find a job when I graduated so I just kept playing for money.'

The 23-year-old Kim is no longer looking for a job, although his family is concerned he will lose money.

'At first they didn't like it because they thought I was gambling,' Kim said. 'When I told them how much money I made, they kind of understood I couldn't go back to a regular job.'

Neal Salmen, a 28-year-old Chicago real estate investor who said he has made about $25,000 this year playing online poker, noted the anonymity of Internet games often makes new players more aggressive. In casinos, Salmen said, 'You don't want to look too stupid so people play more conservatively.'

Internet poker offers experienced players some advantages, particularly the ability to play at multiple tables at the same time. Online games generally go faster than casino games, and by playing three or four tables simultaneously, players can easily participate in more than 200 hands an hour.

The main disadvantage of Internet play for poker pros is the inability to 'read' competitors--noticing small ticks and other mannerisms that can reveal if somebody is holding a strong hand or bluffing.

Even at in-person games, pros often have more trouble reading the novices.

'It's hard to read someone if they don't know if they have a good hand,' said Jim Karamanis, a Chicago attorney who plays online and in-person poker recreationally.

Nobody tracks how many people play poker for a living, but the number appears to be growing.

'Certainly at this point there are thousands,' said Greg Raymer, who left his job as a patent attorney at Pfizer Inc. after winning $5 million this year at poker's biggest event, the World Series of Poker.

The lure of Internet poker has intensified since Raymer and the 2003 World Series winner gained entry into the casino events, which were broadcast on ESPN, by winning online tournaments.

To prosper at Internet poker, players must be technically strong and quickly assess the thousands of scenarios that arise--betting aggressively on strong hands and folding when they're in a weak position.

Signing on to EmpirePoker.com late Tuesday afternoon, Silver put $1,000 into his account and folded most hands before the first round of betting, losing his $15 ante. On the first hand he played, Silver lost $170.

'If I lose $170 on a hand, it's nothing,' Silver said. 'You can't let it get to you.'

Silver usually plays on weekday evenings and sometimes stays up until sunrise so he can play against aggressive Scandinavian players.

'My sleep schedule has been terrible recently,' said Silver, who also does work for Baseball Prospectus, which does statistical analysis of baseball games.

Silver said he's done much better financially with online poker than he expected, though he and other players acknowledge their profitable poker days may not be long-lived.

'I'm just trying to ride it out,' said Kim. 'If poker starts dying down, I'm going to have to get a real job.'