1. I noticed you went into the finance world after Black Friday. Did Black Friday influence you in any way to leave poker? Why did you decide to give it up?

Yeah, Black Friday had a big impact. My bet was that the right job in finance would end up being more lucrative and have bigger long-term upside than poker. I had those types of thoughts before, but Black Friday pushed me over the edge.

Part of me still wanted to move abroad and keep playing, mostly because it felt unsatisfying to stop playing poker when it was getting bigger for me. I always imagined giving up professional poker when I couldn’t hack it anymore. But it seemed like the right opportunity and I took it.

2. Please remind to the husng.com audience your main successes in poker?

I earned over 300k from HUSNGs, most of it in the months before Black Friday. I taught a lot of people things that helped them play better poker, on husng.com and elsewhere.

3. What exactly do you do in finance? How do you like it?

I work at an electronic market-making firm. We use algorithmic models to post bids and offers – for example, one of our models might be willing to buy 100 shares of McDonald’s stock at $95.00, and simultaneously be willing to sell 100 shares at $95.02. My job is to improve our models and make new strategies so that we make more profitable trades and fewer unprofitable ones.

Overall, I really like the job. It has a lot of similarities to poker. There’s upward mobility and a lot of control over your own success, and there’s instant feedback about how well you’re doing based on your performance. There’s a ton of opportunity to learn more and do more and a massive problem set to work with.

4. Has your poker experience helped you in any way in the finance world?

Absolutely. I’m a pretty self-skeptical person, and initially I was really unsure about how well what I learned from poker would translate. Poker didn’t give me any “hard” technical skills – no advanced math, programming, finance knowledge, any of that. I came into the job really unsure if I was actually cut out for it.

But it’s turned out that there are a lot of softer skills poker gave me that have proven to be really helpful. I’ve gotten plenty of positive feedback about my “nose for money”. I think a lot of that comes from what I learned playing poker.

5. Do you believe the financial system is a positive one or is there even more greed and barriers involved than in poker?

I’ve found finance to have a pretty similar distribution as poker – there’s good behavior, bad behavior, and plenty of gray areas. There are some different typical personality traits in finance, but for the most part people are people.

6. What do you miss most about poker?

Poker really spoiled me in a lot of ways. Most of what I miss about poker exists in my current job too, but poker just had even more of it.

In trading, there’s a high correlation to the money I bring in and my income, but it’s not going to be as direct as poker is. Even the small amounts of office politics and impression management at my job make me miss poker. There’s nothing better than ending a day’s work and knowing exactly how much money my work produced for me, like I could know in poker.

In trading, there’s a lot of freedom in my schedule, but it doesn’t have the extreme flexibility that poker has. I mean this in terms of time off, which is what most people think of for schedule flexibility, but I also mean being able to put in those marathon 24-hour sessions and put up a huge result. I really miss that.

I have more stress now, but I’m not sure if poker vs. finance is the right comparison. I was in college for most of my poker experience, and in the year after college I wasn’t stressed mostly because I still didn’t really think about the long term at all. I really liked living in the moment and just making whatever I could of poker. For better and worse, I’ve gotten away from that approach.

8. Is your social life better after giving up poker? Could you compare it with some examples from your life?

My social life is pretty similar. I’ve always tried to make sure to have relationships that have nothing to do with poker or finance. Those friends were always very supportive of poker then and they’re supportive of finance now.

9. How about your hobbies? Are they the same?

Pretty much. I still love watching and playing sports, as well as card and board games. I’m still really into practical ethics and politics.

10. How often are you playing home games, or some cash games in casinos?

Honestly, it’s been rare. I don’t really like playing poker against randoms in casinos. I play in home games with work friends, but those are pretty small stakes and always for the social aspect of it and not for the money. My most recent live poker experience was on my birthday last month: My girlfriend and I played some heads up pineapple and I got absolutely crushed.

11. What are your long-term goals?

Good question. The finance bet has worked out well, but I’m still not sure about the future. A lot depends on whether I hit a wall in finance, both in terms of how much I continue to enjoy it and how well I’m able to do. I’ve gone a long way in three years but it’s always hard to project too far out.

Broadly speaking, when I think about the long-term I think about future family life (wife, kids, puppy), and I think about taking advantage of my career opportunities so I have a lot of impact in the world. I do a lot of reading about the best ways to use money to help people (www.givewell.org is a fantastic resource for this) and also about the most effective careers for having an impact. I’m not sure what my working life will look like when it’s all over but I hope I’m proud of what I’m able to do with it.

12. Do you still have lots of friends from poker world?

There are a few I’ve made sure to stay friends with – among them rumnchess, Barewire, filthyvermin, and ChicagoRy (though he probably should be de-modded) to name-drop a few of my favorite poker people. Those are four who I had a lot one-on-one conversations with in poker and those relationships are still there.

There are also plenty of people I haven’t kept touch with but will always feel really positively about. As one example, another_rack gave me a super baller desk for nothing when I moved to San Francisco. I played a ton of poker on it and it’s now at my girlfriend’s place and she uses it for all her med school work. Every time I look at that desk it makes me think of poker and people I met through poker.

13. What are the main advantages having an office job (comparing to poker)?

The main advantage for me is probably all the company provided vanilla soy milk I can drink. I also like the team I work with – the right in-person office environment makes a big difference and can be a lot of fun.

14. Could you wish something to husng.com?

Good luck! Feel free to email me (mers at husng.com) if there’s ever anything I can help out with.