Early career researchers are often advised, at conferences and such, to have a ‘backup plan’ or ‘side hustle’ in case academia doesn’t work out for them. Personally, I’d rather hear about solutions than backup plans, because I didn’t spend years training to get into academia just to get out of it! But anyway, now that I’ve decided to forgoe traditional academia and try to fix it from the outside, it looks like I’ll be needing that side hustle after all. Luckily, I figured out in my undergraduate days that I could play Texas Holdem Poker profitably, and in the years since have been honing my skills alongside my studies. So, in the short term – at least until I can find a more sustainable revenue stream – I’ll be funding my open science projects by returning to the felt. I find it particularly ironic that I’ll be using game theory (in poker) to try and solve the mother of all game theory problems in academia – the collective action problem that prevents researchers from embracing open science practices. Wish me luck ;)

See my live tournament results, live recordings of two final table performances here and here, and results of the 2021 national player of the year competition where I placed 2nd.