they're all fish to me.

So many people are just flat out wrong about a lot of ideas and one liners they are throwing out.

I'm talking about very good players, too!

Are you insinuating that they aren't all fish to me?

Can't people be both? I'd probably fairly consider myself a good player, but a fish to you

-92% ROI in '08 for me.

Games aint dead suckas, games aint dead. I'll be back on stars in march.

i dont really play enough mtts to add to the discussion much. just wanna add/ask a few things:

1) i agree that travel expenses are huge, especially when you consider the opportunity cost of not being able to grind (especially while in transit/tired/etc)

2) to what extent are people playing perfectly? given what i see in cash games on a dailey basis i have trouble believing that many people, if any, are actually playing perfect tournament poker. especially since what Im sure what some people consider "perfect" is simply being looked at incorrectly.

3) there's a lot to be said for grinding lower stakes with less variance since the winrates are higher and often the amount you win in the end isn't that much less than the significantly higher variance higher stakes.

edit: i highly doubt anyone is playing perfect tournament poker, but are there people out there working towards it/using gto concepts to build their game even?

as long as the majority of the biggest names/most visible on tv in tournament poker are terrible it's all good

I think one aspect to being a great MTTer that almost everyone fails at is realizing that, in order to achieve said greatness, you have to cope with the fact that you will fail most of the time.

This is inherently backwards from specializing in any skill, and therefore most people can't grasp it, and it has direct impacts on their playing abilities especially during variance rides to hell. Even the greatest players online run hotter than the sun and I think a lot of them would crumble really fast if they got completely blindsided for a few thousand MTTs (which is obviously highly feasible of a scenario for full time MTTers), and I don't mean because they aren't actually good. It's just that no one truly understands variance to the point that they can accurately rationalize their being comfortable with their current playing regiment, skill set and results. This makes it such that, for many, the feasibility of playing online HSMTTs for a living is shaky, short lived, or non existent.

As an aside, IMO this does have something to do with the state of the games, but I'd say *most* of it is the nature of poker and specifically the nature of high stakes online MTTs, and it always has been, and always will be.

I read OP and skimmed the thread but didn't read all responses but here's my two cents.


Online poker and especially tourneys are still crushable. You're not gonna see the ROIs you did a year or two ago and the tournaments are only gonna get tougher as time goes but they are definitely still beatable for those who have the drive to put the time and effort in to the game. I had my best year online this year by far over my previous two years and while the games were tougher I'm not even slightly concerned with not being able to beat them for a good profit.

If you're only playing the 100r, 1ks, and the big 150/300 nightly tourneys then yes you're gonna see some huge swings and get frustrated since these tourneys have gotten really tough (still beatable for a nice profit but tougher). Mix in some of the big 109/55 freeze outs on Stars and the 75s on Tilt. The mid stakes tourneys 25 freeze out on Stars and any of the 26s on Tilt are ridiculously soft and they are getting amazing prizepools now. The 3/5/10r on Stars are amazing tourneys and for all of these you are looking at over 8k for first most of the time.

If you're expecting to just move up in stakes and only play the largest tournaments that are paying out 50k+ for first then you are going to get really frustrated since those scores don't come along very often. Yes, a few players seem to always be pulling down majors but you have to realize how ridiculously far ahead of variance they are. I've been playing full time for three years now and still don't have a six figure score but could easily have 3 or 4 if coinflips or other big hands had gone my way late in majors.

"It's a hard way to make an easy living."

Oh and live is ridiculously easy compared to online. You can probably divided most of the live buy-ins you play by 50 and get a fairly good idea of how tough it would be online. (5k live tourney = 100 online).

You'll meet a lot of really nice people at the tables but there are a lot of scumbags in the live poker world who will do ANYTHING to scam/con/grim you out of money or chips if you're in a tourney. Also, the expenses you pay for flight/lodging/food can really cut into your profit.

And IMO live poker is rigged.

live is obv way easier but variance is still a ****, and i msure its way worse for a lot of other people than me

Ya this people are playing better but far from perfect.

This thread was the closest I ever got to getting an answer to your question.