With all that said, there are plenty of super tight ABC nut peddlers that never bluff other than the occasional c-bet in a HU pot. They might make $50/hour, maybe. They pretty much never go broke or move up beyond 5/10. Perhaps these are the players 663366 was referring to, but they are by no means the biggest winners or even a good representative of what can be accomplished with a good capable TAG style.

One more thing, the looser players are the ones that get into the games with the absolute biggest fish, whether it's a set-up game in the casino (such as the Zach games from earlier this year in Vegas) or a private game. This is really the big advantage that a loose winner has over a TAG winner, because getting invited to these kinds of games can turn you into a millionaire.

How many capable nits have made 200k over the past 12 months?

How many capable nits have made 400k over the past 24 months?

How many capable nits have made 600k over the past 36 months?

(not trolling, serious questions)

Specific to the current Aria ones I'm talking about?

Probably none, but none of them play enough hours to accumulate those winnings. I don't think any of the people I'm talking about play more than about 1200 hours/year.

Personally I tend to play about 850 hours/year of cash (mostly 5/10 with some 2/5 and some 10/20) plus about 30-50 live tournaments. I'm lazy and I like vacations.

K, that makes sense, but that's a pretty big wrinkle on the discussion. At 1200 hours/year (which is less than 25 a week), you can game select A LOT and also maintain your A game pretty much every session I'd imagine, coming in fresh and not staying too long. I guess I always assumed this discussion was based on playing full time (40 hours/week)...

Having said that, you know a decent amount of people who have won like 360k over the past 3 years playing 5-10? And then you would prob have to know some who have won signif more to make the number accurate IMO, if there are some who have won signif less.

This is a good discussion IMO, and I'm especially intrigued because you seem like a very knowledgeable vet who doesn't spew in his posts, and yet I know a lot of 5-10 pros and I cant think of any of them who have maintained 100/hour over the course of 3 years- much less that being the average.

100/hour is by no means the average winrate for all the TAG 5/10 winners. There's quite a few TAG Aria grinders, but most of them play pretty basic and make maybe half that (just a guess). They don't play 10/20.

There's under 10 people who would be in the biggest winners group. It's actually something that's been talked about recently, and that 100/hour figure gets mentioned repeatedly. Maybe a couple of the players have (theoretical) true winrates that are a little lower.

But I think it's reasonable to say "if you're consistently one of the very best players in your 5/10 game, and you play a good amount of 10/20 and are a solid winner at 10/20 as well, then you can expect to make around 100/hour at 5/10."

That's a fair point, although I think the depressed hours are more due to lazyness than game selection. Personally, I don't game select too much; obviously I stay in really good games, and I'll head home early sometimes if the game sucks or I'm tilting. But for the most part I play the same hours on the same days somewhat regardless of the game situation. And the other capable nits do the same.

If you're on the strip early in the day and trying different casinos and really game selecting hard, you can get a strong boost to your hourly. But none of the people I'm talking about do that.

3 of the top Aria 5/10 players are black friday refugees. I guess I'll get back to you in another 18 months.

That's my post from last December in this thread.

I consider post October 2009 to be almost a second poker career. I pretty much quit in September '09 and was looking for a job (lol that went well). I wasn't busto, but had a slightly smaller bankroll than when I moved to Vegas May '07. I did A LOT of work on my game prior to coming back about 6 weeks later, to the point that my results previous to that are almost irrelevant.

Anyway, my updated numbers are:

Total (2006-present): 3000 hours 5/10, $83/hour
"Career 2" (Oct '09-present): 1732 hours 5/10, $116/hour

Obv. no capable nits are making 200k+. They just aren't putting themselves in enough pots to do so.

But I do think the difference between a 100k year and a 200k year is super slim for both good tags and good lags. Maybe even less than 30 'spots' a year that are unique to each individual.

these are terrible questions. Better questions:

How many best of the best players have made 200k over the past 12 months who plays 5/10 over 75% of the time?

How many best of the best players have made 400k over the past 24 months who plays 5/10 over 75% of the time?

How many best of the best players have made 600k over the past 36 months who plays 5/10 over 75% of the time?

I would guess the answer is less than 5.

It's not really fair to lump the aria games in with other 5-10 games, being able to sit 3k deep when most other games are 1k or if you're lucky 1.5k is a huge advantage and definitely increases WR potential. Otherwise I'd agree with most of what you've said.

Yeah places like Cali this is the case. Vegas has deep 5/10 games. The games at V had avg stacks of $4k all summer with a bunch of people playing $ 10k+.

This is basically unattainable at 5/10 unless there is some amazing 5/10 going on somewhere very few ppl know about. If you changed that number to 100k you will start seeing some ppl who are hitting those numbers or near them.

It was established that "capable nits" = "best of the best" at aria...

Anyways, if no1 can maintain a winrate over 2k hours in a year, the discussion suffers IMO, because the root of it is 'how does playing poker for a living compare to having a full time job wrt compensation?' And people with full time jobs work 2k hours a year.

So... IMO anything less 2k hours logged in a year and winrate is artificially inflated (as it relates to the full time job comparison) due to game selection and playing fresh. And ofc if people are writing off all losers or low earners as "not top players" (which they always do), they are really just getting the average of the top players who ran the best, artificially inflating that number ("average" should = winrate running even) a ton more.

(I just gave myself a headache, hopefully this **** makes sense.)

Props to most of the people who have posted in this thread in August.

I haven't posted because for the most part I have agreed with everyone. A lot of good points made here. Most likely, the truth is somewhere in the middle between the optimistic viewpoints and the more conservative.

One thing kind of made me think though. I'm not quite sure if the old adage of LAGs having a higher win rate always applies in live deep stacked games.

I'd be really interested to see the top 3 SLAGS vs the top 3 STAGS in my game to see which group had the higher collective win rate.

Back in the day, I would have wholeheartedly accepted the notion, but now I don't know...

I don't know any poker pros that log 2k hours in a year. Maybe you know a few, but they are by far the minority. <5%, maybe even less than 1%.

Take out study time, accounting, commute, wait time for games and stupid fuqing nit deck changes, breaks... Who honestly logs 2k hrs/yr? If you're out there, you're my hero... Not rly you depraved social outcasts, you fat turds who never exercise, you losers with no friends, you all-night gaming addicts.

Winrates for diff tiers of players at capped 5-10 are not that difficult to gage. If you're a self-admitted lol "capable nit" that pre-clicks the fold btn every time you look at 64s fm MP, there's a limit to wat you can make and that limit is well discussed. If you look up to brunson, harrington, or sklansky for their lol fundamentals, there's a limit to wat you can make and that limit is well discussed. If when you sit in games nobody fears you, everyone's just annoyed that you're there taking up space and occasionally making dumbsht internet geek-slang comments to big clueless fish when you lose a pot to them, there's a limit to wat you can make and that limit is well discussed.

Pls feel free to guess and argue in perpituity as to wat this max possible num is so hopeless dreamers can continue to leave their boring full-time jobs and embark upon a life of day-to-day desperation and despair, expecting to make dbl their wages fm forced 2k hrs/yr, no-risk 40-80k salaries forfeited for dreams of glory; expectations and reality so horrendously out of alignment every time, always way too late before they realize it. Same story, diff dumbfuq each time.

If however you're a top 1% player and publicly sharing how much you've made at 5-10 and 10-20 for any sig amt of time, jesus t!ts on christ you're way more fuqing ******ed than these forum nits.

Wasn't saying anyone should or shouldn't log 2k hours, just that it should be noted when discussing what is an attainable winrate at live 5-10 (which is then used to determine how much one can expect to make/year) that not only is the consensus figure prob much higher than what is actually attainable due to not accounting for the results of good players who run bad, but it is also additionally inflated due to the fact that it was achieved with a light workload.

You seem really cool, and knowledgeable... Fwiw, 2k hours is 40 hours a week with 2 weeks off in a year. Yeah, that workload is impossible to deal with

Of the best Aria 5/10 regs, most are "capable nits." The biggest winner by far this year is much looser, but not crazy. Another top player is a HUSNG convert who plays quite aggro. Not all the best regs are nits.

Good point.

How does posting my hourlies make me ******ed? If people want to know, I'm willing to tell them. I pay all my taxes, so what's the difference?

C'mon... When you have the luxury to work your own hrs and the only costs you have to worry about are your own living expenses, btwn vaca days, holidays, travel days, sick days, mental mindfuq recovery days fm crazy sessions, out-of-town friends and fam visiting, days following sleepness nights bc you were chasing a whale/djcking around on 2+2/couldn't turn off your brain at bedtime, days you don't feel like working, days you feel like doing something else, days your gf or wife p!ss you the fuq off and you can't go to work bc you know you're gonna spew, days your gf or wife have an emotional meltdown and they force you to share in their misery bc if they're not happy then you're not allowed to be happy, do you rly only take 2 wks off a year?

40 hrs on a normal even-keeled wk I would def agree is very achievable even if you're exercising and socialising regularly. But if you or any f-t pro manage to only take the equiv of 2 wks off per year, that's rly impressive.

I didn't say you were a top 1% player. Pls don't take personal.

Comparing to "regular work-ppl" with 9-5 jobs- they get paid vaca, paid sick, paid holidays. They work closer to 1850 hrs a year. Half the time they aren't actively working and just djcking around (that's why they only get 5-fig salaries), so probably not a fair comparison.

A more accurate comparison wrt workload would be to look at traders. They do only 3-6 hrs of ACTIVE work each day while the mkts are open (unless you're a sicko and carry flat price positions overnight and want to die before you're 55). The rest of the "work hours" is mostly for strat planning, networking, mindless paperwork, etc. You're looking at only 750-1.5k hrs/yr that req intense focus and hi-lvl thinking.

So if you take out the accounting and studying we need to do, 2k of "active hrs" at the tbls is about the most you could do without burning yourself out. Most f-t grinders are closer to 1.5k hrs/yr (this is prob closer to a "normal" workload for us). Many even less (and that's also "normal" if they're hi-stakes regs).

Balance in life. That's wat mr miyagi would advocate. Can't reach your max potential if you're burnt out.

Annual w/r stdev in capped 5-10nl is only gonna be ~15-20/hr for f-t pros that put in good hrs. If someone who absolutely crushes that game is having the worst year of his [max 20-year] career, he should still have a w/r indicative of a top tier plyr and not a nit grinder.

In plo you won't have a fuqing clue.

TAG, LAG, doesn't rly matter. Smart LAGs in general are gonna know how to play a wider range of situations and more fluidly in uncommon situations. That's why the best players all seem like LAGs, and when they revert to a tighter and more selective starting range, they still crush for similar winrates.

Winrates are not a function of your playing style but of your overall skill sets, the most obv of which are your fundamental knowledge base, your game selection, and your steam ctrl. Less obvious but equally important is a godlike image where you're feared each and every time you sit down at a table (some call this home-field advantage), your ability to custom-tailor strats specific to your opponents' tendencies (playing LAG helps you get better at this), being able to determine mid-sess when your opponents are making adjustments with you and the magnitude of those adjustments so you can readjust, and using a wide range of bet sizing to manipulate your opponents and balance your actns.

The problem with certain classes of players, particularly "nits that try" and "lagtards that try too hard [to be like tom dwan]," is that they tend to be moderately insecure in the way they play, esp when HU with a tougher opponent. Doesn't matter if you're a lagtard like shane rose or more solid like jamie schaevel, the top earners in these games exude confidence, and they're feared not bc they play LAG, but bc they play rly fuqing good and their reputation gets around.