[He has] spent much of his life trying to escape a “normal” adulthood, fleeing the prospect of working a dull desk job in Chicago to gamble in Las Vegas....James's father was an immigrant from Germany, and his grandmother — his maternal grandmother? — was, we're told, an immigrant from Japan.
“It’s just a regular slacker story,” said his 36-year-old brother, Ian Holzhauer. “Except it’s somebody who has a lot of really exceptional gifts.”...
[As a schoolchild, h]e consistently got A’s on math tests... But he was a C student — even in math — because he often skipped doing his homework or going to class, reasoning he could use the time more productively. "There were times in school where I would say, ‘I should go to class,'" Holzhauer said in an interview. “But I could make $100 playing online poker if I didn’t go.”...
After graduating from the University of Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, Holzhauer said, he spent a year applying for jobs as an actuary, even though it was the exact sort of desk job he loathed. He played online poker to pay the bills, but as legal restrictions tightened around the game, it began to lose its allure, he said. He decided to focus on sports betting....
Anyway, I'm interested in Americans who have stellar intellectual gifts but choose what their siblings might call a "slacker" lifestyle. It's one thing to miss out conventional career achievement because you're lazy or lost, something else to actively pursue freedom. It's usually hard even to see the people who are in that second category, and it's also hard to see inside the head of the many people who, like Juergen Holzhauer, can say, "I always had a steady job, always worked for 'the man' from 8 to 5," but wish they'd found another way. It takes nerve to be the one your family sees as a slacker, to have all these gifts and to squander them.
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[As a schoolchild, h]e consistently got A’s on math tests... But he was a C student — even in math — because he often skipped doing his homework or going to class, reasoning he could use the time more productively.
Yeah, there are a lot of people that the education system simply fails by boring them.
Third option: start a business or join a startup.
Is it really just slacking, though? Professional gambler, like pornographer, just seems to be synonymous with sleaze. I’ve been enjoying his run and am bummed out at the teacher tournament interruption, but there’s something about the guy I find very unlikable.
A students work for C students. Toiling in the cubes, generating wealth for someone else, may not be the highest and best use of one's gifts. But that's what success in school fits you for.
Sometimes you have to find your own path.
Around 2011, Holzhauer said, he was feeling that he needed a break from gambling when he met his future wife on a summer program teaching English in Thailand
All I see is sex tourist. I'm bad...
The era from 1970 to 2000 was a golden era for the self-employed computer geek in a major city.
Watch David Bowie's "The Man Who Fell to Earth."
Scolding not intended, but the opportunity to establish your own business as an illustrator and animator was out there, particularly in New York City. During this golden era, it was a Wild Wild West of opportunity.
You could have called your own shots.
His metrics aren't traditional, but to a gambler, he's successful. As far as "gifts", he's no different than the multitude of people with exceptional minds performing mundane tasks to make a living.
It takes nerve to be the one your family sees as a slacker, to have all these gifts and to squander them.
That sentence is so freighted with assumptions that I would have no idea where even to begin. I am sure the other commenters will sort it out for you, but as a start, why is dad letting him get away with it? Is it a choice, or did he just not fulfill his “duty” as a parent.
there’s something about the guy I find very unlikable.
His smile to me is off-putting.
There's a big element of gratification to honing and exploiting a statistical advantage. Would he get the same thing as an actuary or writing academic papers few people would bother to read?
LIfe's a book of chapters and this one for him is unique and compelling.
@rehajm:
All I see is sex tourist. I'm bad...
Try being a gay westerner who used to live there. Luckily I was in my mid-20s and in relatively good shape. The average sex tourist is an old fat slob. Nonetheless, stereotypes are true.
But the tale is that he was teaching English in Thailand. That's an absolute mug's game. The market is saturated, the pay is pathetic, and you typically have to board with a local family. The "teaching English in Thailand" crowd are mostly the Khao San Road backpacking set. Some of the most obnoxious, sophomoric people on the planet.
*tell
Too lazy to delete and repost.
Two people comment they find him unlikable and off-putting. They are probably not the only two who do. How would someone with his talents and likability fare in a corporate environment vs what he's doing now?
Althouse will take this guy down!
Fun fact. The producer and many of the writers are from Omaha.
It takes nerve to be the one your family sees as a slacker, to have all these gifts and to squander them.
snort. How dare that person have nerve.
"Professional gambler" might not be the most prosocial occupation, but at least it's fairly harmless.
@rehajm:
Two people comment they find him unlikable and off-putting. They are probably not the only two who do. How would someone with his talents and likability fare in a corporate environment vs what he's doing now?
Good point. But it's not as if corporate drudgery is the only other option for making a living. My father has earned a very good living and never worked in an office building a day in his life. I haven't had a 9-to-5 job since I was 20.
Also, I just can't wrap my head around anyone who would live in Las Vegas voluntarily. Other than Atlantic City, it seems to be the epicenter of loserville.
"Yeah, there are a lot of people that the education system simply fails by boring them."
Failed him? It launched him!
"Is it really just slacking, though?"
You're disagreeing with the brother, not me. I never called what he is doing slacking. I think it takes a lot of effort, energy, and nerve.
@Fernandistein:
"Professional gambler" might not be the most prosocial occupation, but at least it's fairly harmless.
Fairly, I suppose. Still seems to have a squalid underbelly. Frank Rosenthal, who brought the sports book to the Vegas casinos, was the inspiration for DeNiro's character in Casino.
@Ann:
You're disagreeing with the brother, not me. I never called what he is doing slacking. I think it takes a lot of effort, energy, and nerve.
Yes, I was taking issue with the brother's description of "slacking." And it seems we agree about the slacking. Yet your comment seems defensive.
His brother is wrong. It's not a regular slacker story if the person has a lot of exceptional gifts. He half-ass tried a normal job route but he would have failed at that is he had actually gotten an actuary job because he would have immediately realized how ridiculous it is to be that confined when you can play, have fun, and make a lot of money pretty much on your own schedule.
I read that he was unsuccessful for years in getting on Jeopardy when a friend advised him to smile so as to appear that he was enjoying himself which would make the audience feel good and that's apparently what it took to get him on.
Maybe Alex Trebek is the only who doesn't have to smile on the show.
Still seems to have a squalid underbelly.
Well, sure, love of money is the root of all gambling, as they say.
But it's not as if corporate drudgery is the only other option for making a living.
For someone with his talents? Wallowing in academia? Teaching? Blue collar work? Seem like those either doesn't use his talents or interests or wouldn't fare well. I suppose he could reinvent Fanduel or something...
A bachelor's degree in mathematics puts him in very rare company.
Nate Silver also kickstarted his real career playing online poker. From his wikipedia page:
After college graduation in 2000, Silver worked for three and a half years as a transfer pricing consultant with KPMG in Chicago. When asked in 2009, "What is your biggest regret in life?" Silver responded, "Spending four years of my life at a job I didn't like". While employed at KPMG, Silver continued to nurture his lifelong interest in baseball and statistics, and on the side he began to work on his PECOTA system for projecting player performance and careers. He quit his job at KPMG in April 2004 and for a time earned his living mainly by playing online poker.
Advice to non-geniuses: Make sure you have the gifts you think you have.
Shouting Thomas said...
The era from 1970 to 2000 was a golden era for the self-employed computer geek in a major city.
When I started my career, in the late '80s, there were still a lot of professional programmers who had never graduated from college.
apparently what it took to get him on.
Wasn't there a guy years ago that routinely went to the contestant searches (back when they had in person contestant searches) passed the test, did the mock game and ended up in the contestant pool but never got a call back? They finally put him on the show and he was incredibly awkward. One could see them saying he wasn't suited for television.
(I once passed the test and ended up in the pool too but didn't get called. I guess I can relate)
Failed him? It launched him!
The advantage of mediocre or bad grades is that it takes some of the pressure off one to pursue the academically oriented/professional career track, as it closes some doors in terms of elite schools and elite intro employers who care about your class rank, etc. You're risking less by striking out on a different path. In that respect, it launched him.
@Fernandistein:
Well, sure, love of money is the root of all gambling, as they say.
Ha. The love of easy money.
Sounds like James doesn't need to learn how to code.
He is only of note because he excels at a board game. He is non-traditional in his day job work. He makes money in a way most people perceive as slacking. Exceptionally smart, notably math, a subject the vast majority of the population don't like, because they were never taught to appreciate its beauty.
The notion of a slacker lifestyle is wrongly defined as as a person that works non-traditionally and doesn't make a lot of money. A person that makes lots of money is not a slacker, no matter how little they work. Somebody that works 60 hours a week in a dead end, low pay job because they refuse to move out of their comfortable lane, is not a slacker, but I find them extremely lazy. Money is the metric. A gambler is a slacker, an artist is not.
Just examining our own perceptions, and how those perceptions color how we judge people.
I really enjoy his style of play on Jeopardy, since I've always cringed when people squander daily doubles by betting conservatively. At the same time, it's players like him who've taken all the fun out of live or online poker for me: they play so aggressively, playing every advantage to its fullest by going all-in or pot-limit, that it makes the game stressful for me. It loses its recreational aspect when you have to contemplat losing your entire bankroll every third hand.
@daskol:
I really enjoy his style of play on Jeopardy, since I've always cringed when people squander daily doubles by betting conservatively.
Agree completely. He's also very fast paced. I loathe when contestants go "uhhh" and take three seconds to choose a category. Or when Alex announces there's a minute left, and people choose $400 clues when there are still $2000 clues on the board.
"Yes, I was taking issue with the brother's description of "slacking." And it seems we agree about the slacking. Yet your comment seems defensive."
I want everyone to see that I am praising him. If I've written in a way that makes that too hard to grasp, I'm not happy about the misunderstanding. Glad you didn't make it.
The father took what most people see as the safe route, but it's important to see the ways in which it is not safe. You know more clearly and securely what you will get, but if it's not what you actually want, you may be leaving yourself with no chance of getting what you want. What's the good of that safety?
@rehjam:
Seem like those either doesn't use his talents or interests or wouldn't fare well. I suppose he could reinvent Fanduel or something...
I'm not sure what his interests are, other than not having a boss. But then again, given that I find him to be a bit of a creep, perhaps I am simply judging him in too harsh a manner.
"The advantage of mediocre or bad grades is that it takes some of the pressure off one to pursue the academically oriented/professional career track, as it closes some doors in terms of elite schools and elite intro employers who care about your class rank, etc. "
And compare the people who strive and overachieve in school. They create expectations but then what happens, and did they ever form true desires even to try to pursue?
Ann Althouse:
I want everyone to see that I am praising him. If I've written in a way that makes that too hard to grasp, I'm not happy about the misunderstanding. Glad you didn't make it.
Ah, I gotcha. Rereading my comment, I obviously realized that I was being defensive in reaction to what I thought was me being corrected.
rehajm said...
There's a big element of gratification to honing and exploiting a statistical advantage. Would he get the same thing as an actuary or writing academic papers few people would bother to read?
There are thousands of slackers day trading futures markets. The don't bet on wheat going up or down, trying to "analyze" (guess) the market for the day or two, against a govt report, or a ProFarmer release. They short silver, against a long position in orange juice, and hedge both trades against a call in plywood. knowing the spreads on those three are out of alignment, and must correct. Sometime those opportunities exist for a few hours, sometime it takes a week to collect $100k. If that starts to bore them they can trade barge tariffs on the Mississippi, and hedge that against crude oil.
I'm no Holzhauer, but I haven't worked at a "conventional" job since 2007. Moved to NC ready to continue working in finance (I had worked in Annuities at Allmerica Financial for several years) but almost immediately met a guy who needed help maintaining a horse farm. So I worked with horses for about 5 years, and then I met another guy who needed someone to call HS/College/Amateur sporting events and I started doing sports commentary. Pay wasn't great but I got to travel up and down the East coast and cover some really interesting events/athletes. Now I'm doing a little play-by-play in my free time while I pursue an Associate's in Broadcast Prod. Tech. None of this would have been possible if my wife wasn't a tenured Professor, which gave us the financial security for me to try my hand at things that interest me.
For certain personalities, fulfilling those expectations is rewarding in itself. In Jungian/MBTI speak, many "S" types, for whom social standing and positive external feedback more generally are so important, and its absence or opposite so unpleasant, fulfilling expectations and avoiding disappointment is sufficient. For most "N" types, failing to form or discover true desires will probably be unpleasant, but these are a very small percentage of people.
But what about us guys who cannot settle on one True Desire at a time. That is like having one love for your entire lifetime...This is way too focused a discussion.
This dudes critics don't like his seeing so many more angles to everything...why that's like he is cheating.
I had a brother in law (he ended up committing suicide after planning it months in advance) who worked in IT and did professional gambling on the side (Texas Hold Em) until he quit the former and just gambled (cost him his marriage). He could make more $ that way. But what an awful life. You make money from others by outplaying them. You don't produce anything. You don't make a single other person happy/better off/entertained by your work. He described how disconcerting it was to routinely bet $20 or $50 or $100 on a hand with a good chance of losing and then, after finishing the night, going to a grocery store and comparing the price of bread loaves so as not to waste an extra $2. The ones at very top of the profession get enough fame & attention (they become almost entertainer) to make up for this. For those in the middle...
I have known several high flyers including a bookie for sports, but most of them also played the market from their laptop --it is a dramatic but intense life but when you win the feeling is euphoric.
Is it they don't like his seeing all the angles, or is it that if you can't see the angles yourself, or even imagine they might exist, he seems like a slacker/wastrel? He could have had a respectable, high social status job, and he squandered that. Some people really see that story here.
Virgil, one of James H's big points is that, aside from Saturdays when college football predominates, his job is more of an avocation: he does it on his own time, when he doesn't have other things he'd rather be doing (like raising his children, or browsing the library). That does not sound like a terrible lifestyle, even if he's not "productive" by some measure compared to what he might have helped produce.
I've known a few such men. None became highly successful and one ended up in prison.
I've come to like the guy. I've seen his sense of humor slip out a couple times. I'm not interested in psycho-analyzing him, or getting to know his personal story.
I said to the wife early on--almost all contestants sees Jeopardy as an opportunity. James sees it as a job. I also think he'll get bored by it and move on before it's due course.
"I'm interested in Americans who have stellar intellectual gifts but choose what their siblings might call a "slacker" lifestyle."
Talk to the servers or bartenders that are just doing this to get by until:
That acting break,
Their novel gets published (if I ever get around to writing it), or
They right person sees their art and understands the complexity of emotion they (and they alone) capture with those bold splashes of color. Boy once that first, big sale happens!
They all have self-proclaimed stellar gifts.
The Jeopardy dude happens to actually have stellar gifts. But if math talent was enough, Vegas would be a ghost town.
My brother lived his 69 years without a real job other than his stint in the Army in Vietnam. Not a genius but a skilled manager of money [even back in childhood] and lived largely off investments. He had a university degree in Anthropology or some other similarly useless field so it was clear he never had any intention of working for a living.
I do not believe this line: “... but was always a C student.” C students don’t exist anymore. No one gets a C. C’s are endangered speC’s. I know. I taught for 35 years. I observed the decline of the once mighty C. I even facilitated it, though against my will.
Here’s how modern grading works. A means good or hard worker. B is “Okay,” maybe lazy. C doesn’t exist. D means deadbeat who attends classes. F is a D without the “attends classes.”
Grading is ruined. We need to tear it down and start all over.
Why would anyone play online poker? I would guess the sites are infested with pros.
Failed him? It launched him!
I suppose that’s true. It taught him the math he needed, even if it didn’t give him the grades his understanding merited, so it all worked out. He’s blessed he didn’t get “trained” like a vine down a particular path, or led by the nose into a job as an actuary.
“From each according to his abilities” is always the hardest part. Able people have choices.
That's true, as is the adage if you look around the table and can't figure out who the sucker is, it's you. The level of play and aggressiveness of play have increased enormously over the last 10 years, but there remain a lot of suckers out there. I don't play these days, but 8 months into my first real job (mid-40s), with bosses and a matrixed hierarchy in a very large publicly traded corporation, I have to admit it occasionally looks like a nice way to make a little money.
When I was in college we went to the race track almost every Friday. I met a guy who made his living betting on horses. He had been a high school teacher but liked race tracks and eventually developed a pretty good system based on the lengths a horse won or lost the previous races. It worked pretty well and provided a reasonable living for him. As I recall, each length was an eighth of a second. He bet pretty conservatively and just liked race tracks, especially Santa Anita. Legal gambling, I suspect, has hurt horse racing badly,
The A's teach and the B's work for the C's, is how I heard it (and pretty accurate at least in large organizations).
And maybe I missed it, but what about, "Genius is the ability to invent your own job."
Seems to me Holzhauer approaches that kind of genius. My Jeopardy watching is spotty but I caught it one day when they showed his wife--who is a Keats scholar, apparently. May they flourish in their nonconventional lives!
Grade inflation is one of the main reasons I never wanted to be a teaching professor. I felt like a fraud the few times I adjuncted, playing a part in a farce. (But two or three students per section kept me going.)
Narr
"Faculty rank, no status"
but liked race tracks and eventually developed a pretty good system
I read a study once that was started out trying to figure out if IQ gave you an advantage at the track. I turned out that what gave you an advantage was extended immersion regardless of IQ. They said that if you spent ten years playing the horses almost every day, you could make a living at it.
My grandfather, who tried his hand at many things in life, was moderately successful financially at only two of them: picking horses and picking stocks. He focused on the latter, because it sounds better when you tell people you help manage people's money for a living ratherthan spending your days at the racetrack. But I think he enjoyed horses more.
That's true, as is the adage if you look around the table and can't figure out who the sucker is, it's you.
I have a friend who was dropped off at the race track by his mother at 14, which is when his formal education ended. He is maybe the most interesting person I have ever met. He said there’s always a “mule.”
I told him he should write a book, but he says “I worked too hard for my knowledge and I am not giving it away."
My wife can go to the racetrack and just by examining how the horses move in the paddock can pick the winner a remarkable number of times. Never tried to make a living at it though.
If you are a high school teacher who gets a student like this who never does the homework and pays minimal attention in class as you explain the material to the dullards who didn’t get it the first couple times you explained it, here is a suggestion, stop assigning him the same homework as everybody else, just assign him the last three questions in the “chapter test” section at the end of each chapter. These are usually pretty subtle tests of the understanding of the material, and are likely suitably challenging.
"Anyway, I'm interested in Americans who have stellar intellectual gifts but choose what their siblings might call a "slacker" lifestyle."
Allow me to introduce myself. Skippy, here. Pleased to meet you. Gifted in math. In the sixth grade, I took a standardized math test given to all middle-schoolers (grades five through eight) in Minnesota. I received the highest score in the state
My three siblings all have advanced degrees. My oldest brother received his PhD in chemistry from UCLA at the age of 25, where the work he did with Dr. Donald Cram won the Nobel Prize. He then went on to earn a post-doc at Columbia. My other brother and sister have similar histories. All are very successful. In standardized tests (Iowa Basics, SATs, etc.), I outscored them all. I was told there were no limits to what I could make of myself.
But instead of going to college, I chose to be a cook, a piano mover, a women's gymnastics coach (coached Olympians from around the world) and then a member of a road-band that fronted for headliners such as Steppenwolf and the Hollies. Also hitched around the country some. Motorcycled too. Met lots of interesting people. Some scary.
Ultimately got hired to support multi-millionaire business executives. The pay is well above the median and there are lots and lots of perks including learning every aspect of how a multi-billion dollar company is run.
Subscribed to the Harvard Law Review for a few years and read every one cover-to-cover, read Nietzsche, Huxley, Swedenborg, Plato, Polanyi* and whatnot to keep my mind in shape. Both my sister and my other brother get it. My PhD bother, not so much. I am now ready to retire comfortably and early.
Wouldn't change any of that for the world.
Feel free to ask me anything, Ann.
* He wrote Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, best book I ever read.
Reminds me of me. Bored out of my mind at school. If there had been online poker when I was a teenager, I probably would have skipped class all the time, too.
However, being the oldest of 4, I was saved from a life as a slacker until I retired at 43. Slacking away today.
Very interesting comments. I believe this is what's known as "living by your wits". I was not blessed with extraordinary cognitive abilities. I worked reasonably hard in school, but was a mediocre student. In college, I had a hell of a time deciding on a major; started in Biology and ended five years later with a degree in Marketing. I learned something useful in all of the classes. I just couldn't figure out a specific direction. I took a job in outside sales and managed to make a career out of it. There's pressure to meet goals, dealing with a variety of people and personalities, building relationships and income variability depending on degree of success.
I get the "instant gratification" component of online poker for example; I just don't see how that translates into job satisfaction.
I read that he was unsuccessful for years in getting on Jeopardy when a friend advised him to smile so as to appear that he was enjoying himself which would make the audience feel good and that's apparently what it took to get him on.
Not so sure about that. He had the same smile when he appeared on The Chase years ago.
"Anyway, I'm interested in Americans who have stellar intellectual gifts but choose what their siblings might call a "slacker" lifestyle."
Call me.
"Failed him? It launched him!"
As it did me. I dropped out of college before my senior year in a STEM major no less. I doubt that I would be the 1 percenter I eventually became if I stayed. I didn't really notice at the time, but I guess I was similarly bored in school. Like him, I did well on tests, but completely dropped the ball on homework, reports and such. I just wanted to learn as much as possible, so I loved the lectures, labs, and the field work, but the rest was tedious, and that ratio of work to learning got more work-sided each year. Senior year promised to be the worst. So I got very poor, went cross country to California and eventually found work that I could not stop doing whether I was paid or not. It eventually paid very well. So I gambled my way to success too, not with money, but with my time.
It’s true that it’s hard to keep a good man down. Still, had the schools nurtured his gifts properly, and had he gotten into a first rate. university like Harvey Mudd, he would have had many more options.
Everybody needs to find his advantage play. For some it's as simple as working 8 to 5 for 45 years.
A girl I knew in high school was proud to have perfected the insincere smile. It looked just like his.
It's the showing of all those lower teeth that turns it into a shit-eating grin.
Bill Gates. Larry Ellison. Michael Dell. Mark Zuckerberg.
A high school classmate of mine achieved a 1600 score on his SATs (mid 70's). He was one of the brightest people I knew and have known. Briefly attended MIT then quit to be an EMT. Said he wanted to help people, didn't think he had anything more to accomplish academically, and loved being out and about and responding to emergency situations.
I wonder if adrenaline figures into some of these decisions. Gambling--and I've never even been inside a casino--seems to bring a sense of excitement to some and there are people who require that element, which also explains why a humdrum kind of career doesn't appeal to them. Just a theory.
He may not be working for the man, but professional gamblers have to put in the hours. Most of them are grinding out tiny advantages over many bets.
I once had a math professor explain how to count cards. He then explained why he didn't do it anymore. Given perfect play, he was looking at a 1 or 2 percent advantage over the house. With the size of a bankroll that he could put together, that was maybe $50 an hour doing pretty mindless labor in a smoky room for hours at a time, minus the overhead of flying out there and paying for a hotel. It just wasn't worth his time.
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