However, my interest in the comparison of poker to sports lies within the middle of the pack, not the top. It really shouldn't surprise anyone that someone who is top 20 in the world at any sort of popular game, especially one that is both wagered upon and televised, is well compensated.
What I think would be surprising to laypeople is that someone who is say, the 8000th best poker player in North America, is likely making over 75k/year. (Please just ignore for now the difficulties of determining best and the fact that since poker income is a function of how much time is played so greater income does not necessarily mean a better player). I know 8000 seems like a lot of people, but I don't think this number is crazy, because you have to factor in all the different types of poker, the different sites people play on, the people who play live, and I think by the time you get to 8000 you'll still have a guy who is making solid chunk of change.
Compare this to baseball and there's only about 1300 MLB players if you include the 40 man roster. Minimum wage is 400k/yr for major leaguers, so they are probably doing pretty well on average compared to poker players even up to that point because I bet there's a very very steep drop off from people who make 7 figures in poker down to people who make more earthly incomes sometime between top 20 and top 1300. But for those who play baseball outside of the MLB things start getting worse even if skill levels are probably not even that much lower than the benchwarmers of the MLB. According to Wikipedia there are 246 minor league clubs, and at 20 players a team thats 6150 players. I used twenty instead of 25 to help correct for the overlap in those in the 40 man roster that play AAA ball most of the year. According to the MiLB the maximum starting salary for a minor league player is 1.1K a month with $25 a day for food. This clearly goes up with time but it is still peanuts considering the amount of skill it takes to achieve this. Also, I am assuming independent leagues have comparable salaries, if not worse. So, back around to the point I was trying to make... the 8000th best baseball player in North America may not even make a penny from his skills! He is likely to be retired, or in college!
I think that poker is by far the easiest zero-sum competitive pursuit to make a living at in terms of what the lowest percentile of skill you can be in to squeeze out a living. "Zero-sum competitive pursuit" includes everything from sports to video games to other card and board games, whether it be chess or Magic cards. In high school I was a high level competitive Scrabble player and there were a few characters who fancied themselves as "pro" Scrabble players. Considering the biggest Scrabble tournament of the year had a prize of 25k and most others had significantly less, making a living playing Scrabble is next to impossible, even for the best players in the English speaking world. In poker you don't even have to be the best player in your household to make a living, given some of the poker families that exist out there.
Now, comparing poker and sports is a bit of apples to oranges because almost all sports make their money from sponsors and paying spectators, not from entry fees of opponents, but nevertheless, it is interesting to see how different sports stack up against poker players. If anyone can think of something that is easier to make a living at than poker that meets the "zero sum competitive pursuit" criteria, drop me a comment!
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