once again the SNOT NOSED PUNK attitude comes thru

yes 35-50k is MUCH more than most make and a decent living for a lot of folks

you will never be successful until you lose the pre-Madonna ego

LOL. Are you done talking out of your ass? And those jobs have benefits. Poker has none. Good luck making a "decent living" grinding 1/3 and trying to raise a family especially with the rising costs of living, rising rake and rising difficulty in the games.

You're another of the trolls who accidentally helped improve the quality of my life by convincing me that LLSNL is mostly a waste of time. I'd like to thank you for that. But again, how are people like you and bodybuilder not banned and allowed to continue to spread cancer on 2+2? I'm gonna try clicking the report button and seeing what happens.

EDIT: whoops it's average and not median. Median is for sure lower but can't be by much. My point stands.

Dude you are on a poker forum crap talking poker. What are you even doing here? Snowman hit the nail on the head about you. All you do is cry and complain

Also, nobody is saying 50k is great money. But the fact that you can make that at the lowest rung of poker is a great entry point. That's why I always question why you don't move up to 2/5.

If your so down on poker and think its a miserable life, then what do you plan on doing that's so much better?

this post is mostly for others who have questions related to your post.

we already get OP has pre-conceived hatred of all those who have succeeded and his refusal to see his errors holds him back from moving forward.
HOW-EVER
op has some valid concepts
isolating and attacking a V's weakness and tendencies' does allow for increased $$$$ but comes with increased variance and should be used sparingly. also see some of OP's HH posts they are tried with hands with zero equity, these are not the spots to try them.
these concepts first need a solid foundation to build off, then they can be applied correctly.


games all over have changed, some long time venues have seen the fish go broke or lose interest in playing.
some area's its because the hoodie wearing, headset wearing, lets talk hand analysis at the table and verbally abuse the fish wanna- be's chased off the recreational players.
other area's new rooms have opened and drawn players away.

Vegas now has local competition in nearly every corner of the map
one no longer has to travel to Sin city to play

define what makes you happy
grinding at low limits is grueling if you look at it that way and
with no bankroll can be very stressful
so even a part-time job will help while still putting in 20-25 hours weekly

decent living is what you decide is decent.
does $$$$ translate to decent???
or does freedom to work only when you want to define it????
or does being in a 9-5 job with bennies and a regular check offering security define decent to you

being under-rolled may have a big part in your unhappiness.

I don't understand why anyone should expect to be able to make a living playing the smallest stakes NL game in a casino. Instead, recreational players should be able to expect that the smallest stakes game won't be infested with a bunch of wannabe pros. Complaining you can't make a living at 1/2 or 1/3 is like complaining you can't make a living playing pick-up basketball against your neighbors.

You shouldn't expect that but some people listen to stories about how it was back in the day or believe in fairytales of other "pros".

I don't think anyone who has a (relevant) college degree and no personal issues that make them hard to hire or hard to stay employed would seriously consider a "career" as a full time 1/2 poker player today. Maybe some vastly overestimate their abilities and think they can move through the stakes quickly, but playing the lowest stakes available might be a way to at least make some money but certainly not a career.

That's especially true in a world where minimum wages are on the rise which is one factor why inflation rates will most likely climb back to above 2.5% for the coming years. Back when I started playing live poker over 10 years ago, the lowest stakes were the same 1/2 they are today. Unfortunately, $50k back then would be around $60k right now even though that period included years of (close to) zero interest that kept inflation low.

???

I agree playing 1/2 as a career is a poor long term choice, but I was able to play it professionally while building a huge bankroll for 2/5 (well over 100 max buyins with a years living expenses). This was all done as a 1/2 grinder. You have to pay your dues.

Inflation going up is a problem but its not like the job market is adjusting salaries to reflect the rise of inflation.

Honestly, I'm glad so many have such poor attitudes toward professional poker, since it keeps winning regs out of the games.

If you leave Vegas, you will see the games are hella soft.

I'm not sure what point you and snowman are trying to get at. I didn't say it was impossible to grind 1/3 for a living. Even if I took out the winnings I made at 2/5 last summer I was able to pay nearly $1k/month for rent, car rentals, flight and everything else with just profits from lower games, with money left over. And obviously as a non-local my monthly nut was waaaay higher than someone living in a $600/month apartment not paying up to $1900 a month on just rent and car rentals. I said if you want to live well playing 1/3 good luck with that. Did you misunderstand me?

My point is that its a career that you can make 100k a year at and not even be THAT good. If you are good it could be up to 200k+ if you play 5/10 or higher.

Sure there are better careers than poker, but if you're not on track to become a doctor or something very lucrative then I think poker is better, especially if you want to run businesses one day in the future. Its the advantage of being a young grinder.

On a side note, I'm not sure why you're expenses were so high. Did you travel to Vegas solely for the WSOP? If you have a spending problem, that's another reason where professional poker probably isn't for you. That's why most people have jobs, since they are living paycheck to paycheck and have too small a roll to start a business.

He must think Madonna had a bigger ego BEFORE she became famous. Lol.

Or maybe he doesn't know it's prima donna.

I guess we have different opinions of good. You need to make 10 bb/hr at 2/5 for 2k hours, over 13 bb/hr at 2/5 for 1500 hours (who tf plays 2k hours a year) or nearly 7 bb/hr at 5/10 for 1500 hours to win 100k (which is really 70k after tax in Nevada). So that's 70k with zero benefits or long term stability. How many grinders in Vegas do you think are doing better than 10 bb/hr at 2/5 or 7 bb/hr at 5/10? If you can accomplish those win rates at those stakes, you are no doubt one of the best players at those stakes.

So what I'm saying is most pros are making way less than 70k a year after tax. And again with zero benefits. That's why being a poker pro sucks IMO. You're absolutely right professional poker isn't for me. I'd much rather have a 9-5 that pays 70k after tax with good benefits and just play 2/5 or 5/10 on the side for fun/extra income.

1k/month rent isn't that bad. A nice place in Summerlin goes for way more. 900/month for a car rental is questionable. Even the guy at Fox said I should look into paying for a Nevada driver's license and getting a short term lease at a dealership.

Games really were amazing back then
It's absurd what a printing press online poker was for a while

However anyone who was playing back then and thought it would last forever is an idiot

And what they are saying is that most pros don't stay at 1/2-1/3 long enough to notice a year to year change. It's supposed to be an emtry level job, one where you put in 2500+ hours at low salary just to get by.

I totally agree with you in the sense that being a 1/2-1/3 NL pro sucks balls. But if you had expected any different, it's probably your expectations being too high rather than reality being too low.

That's a good way to think of it. However I think one's potential in this field will be very capped because of intelligence level, stress management, emotional control, etc. as opposed to the cap in the corporate world. There is a cap. Not everyone can become the next otb_redbaron despite what a surprising amount of people think is possible. I don't think it's debatable.

In my personal opinion, unless you're crushing 5/10+, being any poker pro sucks balls. But because poker is something I've cared about for years and still aspire to become great at, I have the utmost respect for anyone who grinds for a living and manages to actually make it.

If you have your mind made up that's fine. You mention Vegas games but have you considered other areas in the country to live? I play in a city where I see 1/2 degens can often be seen sitting in 5/10 on the weekend. There are still some massive fish in the higher stakes without it being infested with pros.

Vegas is the only place in the country where I would be at tables where everyone played tight preflop. I would never want to play poker there, yet I'm shocked at how so many aspiring pros want to move there. I think its the awful games that have left a bitter taste in your mouth.

But not because they move up to 2/5+ but because they don’t even make it one year at 1/3 before they quit again. During that time, they make the games less profitable for all other ‘serious’ players. Which is basically what OP was saying in the beginning.

As a super recreational (20 hours a year max) poker player but someone who is in a casino 80 hours a week I find all the low limit pros i meet have life issues and that is why they never move up. Drinking problems, pit problems, wives, kids, etc.

Not sure if having to grind low limit poker causes them or if the profession attracts those people.

You've listed a 30% discount on nominal winnings (100k to 70k) to compare a salary to a winrate but I think the discount should be more. Like at least 50%, probably closer to 60-70% if you factor in benefits. Variable money is worth less than certain money (it's about 30-50% alone) and then you have like the 20-40% discount for benefits.

Whether 100k sucks balls or not really depends on your alternatives. If you don't have a lot of skills, a Certainty Equivalent of $50,000/year is pretty good. If you're giving up a career as a nurse (high wages, high job security) to play poker, you're going to want much more.

As you move up in stakes, the hourly wage isn't as important as the yearly. Do you have to be "on call" to scramble to the casino whenever your preferred game runs? Does it run often and long enough? Can your opponents stand losing a living wage to you? Can you have a reasonable personal life on top of all this?

Fundamentally, people tend to get paid relative to the rarity of their skill. If something pays disproportionately well (like "website developer" in the late 90s or "poker pro" in yhe mid 00s or "social media consultant" in the mid 10s), people tend to flock into those fields until the pay equalizes. Poker is solidly contracting at this point, and you just shouldn't expect low effort high reward from it. Either put in the high effort to get high reward or settle for low effort low reward.

Trying to find nut low housing and living the nut low lifestyle is only a short term solution. The rest of the world gets raises and promotions and over time your winrate gets diluted by inflation and if you don't study and give yourself a raise and don't move up (promotion), you just end up old, bitter, and alone, grumbling about the world passing you by and "kids these days."

The alternative "real" job for some of those low-level pros would be a blue-collar job with a significant manual labor requirement that doesn't require a college education.

I know some players (not in Las Vegas) whose real job pays 20-30K/year and they certainly can make over 10K/year extra playing poker like it is a second, part-time job. These are players in the 35+ age bracket.

I've seen you discuss certainty equivalent before. I think you over estimate its value in relation to poker. The variance in poker is really not that high at all if you are a 7BB+ an hour winner. Unless your bankroll is lol less than 10 buyins, then the variance doesn't really matter and your income is just as certain as a nurse.

The games don't change very fast and opponents don't improve at a fast rate so you can expect the same player pool year in and year out. Poker is probably safer than many other businesses you could start or other professions that get wiped out by technology or changing conditions in the market place.

Another thing that doesn't get mentioned is that poker players aren't limited to 40 hours a week. You can grind more hours and make more money knowing there will always be games running.

The extra work isn't that draining as you can be on your cell phone and watch videos, text people, study poker, or surf the web.

There are many salaried professions that require you to work more than 40 hours a week with no additional overtime offered. If you factor in rush hour traffic getting to and from work, you can easily be spending an extra unpaid ten to fifteen hours a week devoted to your job.

If you factor in the time getting to the casino and being seated in a game, you can easily be spending an extra unpaid ten to fifteen hours a week devoted to your job.

I think the games were good this summer.

Some 7BB+ winners have higher variance than others. Can you describe in numerical terms what you consider to be typical variance for a 2/5 NL player who averages $40/hour?