Become a professional gambler

i think life is about taking the minimal amount of super high-conviction bets that have the best upside.

you have minimal resources, so you need to be able to concentrate as much of what you have into one single big bet.

but most of the people are scared to even play. "its too risky", you say.

the only thing you see as a risk is self-doubt, which at the end of the day is an ego thing. you're scared that people will look at you and think about you as a failure. but so what? who tf cares?

you're so much more scared of what you will look like if you fail instead of failing.

get rid of that ego.

and the maths are on my side at this: statistically you cant fail if you dont stop trying. only if you decide to throw the towel into the ring. if you decide to raise that white flag. to admit you quit.

but as long as you keep going after it, you havent failed.

self-doubt can seem like an ocean, but when you actually step inside you see that its a couple of cm deep.

poker has taught me so much about life and taking the right type of risk at the right time. and that you can win with terrible cards and lose with really good ones. its all about the way you play the game.

i think being able to spot good opportunities when they arise is a really important skill. i think it combines quick math (calculus) + clear thinking very well. being good at both will get you far in life.

but this is the skill most people suck at. most of the times they are wrong about what is risky and what are their chances of winning. but you cant win if you dont play. sometimes the cannon wins the whole pot.

but back to the beef.

in general risk means an unwanted event (or the cause for that) that may or may not occur (Stanford Encyclopedia)

so by definition, someone who would say that dropping out of uni and starting your own venture is risky, would be wrong.

and obviously you could argue that if the reason why i dropped out does not succeed, its the occurrence of the unwanted event.

but we also need to define the upside: the wanted event.

and here comes the fun part of being really optimistic up to being delusional.

you have no single wanted event. you can have 1000 different wanted events, some better than others, but at the end of the day‚ having 1000 wanted events vs 1 unwanted means your chances of succeeding are actually very high.

so i have nothing to lose. whatever happens, i've won.

from first principles, i wouldnt do anything with my diploma, i wont lose my apartment (thanks kela), i would have enough money for food etc.

so the downside is minimised but the upside is infinite? seems like you would be just either a) bad at spotting opportunities or b) afraid of looking like a failure.

and i know this is not how everyone thinks. 99% of the people want to grind the corporate ladder. but id hate that.

dont get me wrong, i wouldnt recommend dropping out for most of the people. university is good for them.

either way, succeeding 100% or 50% or 25%, i'd learn a ton and if i get knocked down, i will stand up again and do something else.

then lastly, some of you try to mitigate the risk by doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. firing to multiple targets at the same time and missing all of them. you're not a hedge fund.

using this method you will probably lose to the market. what you need to do is find the most interesting thing you can do and see yourself spending the rest of your life and commit to it.

like Elon said: "i dont care if all my eggs are in one basket, as long as im the one holding it"

be all in.

- T