Multiple players hit $30k one month. Although, that was mostly due to a snow storm. I hit $15k in that game in 100 hours one month so $30k while logging serious hours is certainly possible.

Ironically enough that talking strat at the table was brought up in this thread, because it was in these games where multiple people went out of their way to try and hush somebody who was trying to "coach" somebody, telling him to stop going all in.

While I actually appreciate the quite atmosphere and no talk of every hand, it's obviously not a great game when theres a bunch of kids with their earphones in on their phone -- not having any social interaction with rec players is going to keep them away from the games.


And yeah, 30k really isn't that difficult to believe in a hot month.

I know a guy who made 25k in a week in a 500 cap 2/5 game so clearly this is possible. 15k of it was in one session.

Maybe I live in some sort of sick bubble but none of my close friends who play for a living fall into these categories. I guess 5/10+ isn't really ssnl though.

true-the crazy thing is the bellagio floors and dealers used to be way worse and way shadier.

I think you might be onto something there. Quite a few regs don't table change at all. I'm one of them. I think the question then becomes: could consistently playing in bad games have such a drastic impact on winrate?

It's pretty mind blowing to me that someone would grind the same 5/T game for 1600+ hrs only averaging $14/hr. Why wouldn't you mix it up between various casinos?

Obviously. Where do you think real money comes from in poker? You're gonna beat bad players for a lot more than you can bleed off of mediocre nits.

in a 9 handed game 108 an hr plus tips is coming off the table.Look around the table at a ****ty game and tell me where you think you're gonna make a lot of money from.

look at online poker win rates now vs ten years ago- and keep in mind good players now are light years better than good players 10 years ago whose winrates were 5-10 times as big.

Online you can grind people thru volume- live you can't.well i guess you can for 14 an hour in 5/10.

i'm always amazed by some players' unwillingness to move down stakes if the higher limit games are bad. as if it's some badge of honor to trade coolers with regs over and over.

off topic but i also think it's hilarious when "pros" leave amazing games because their on some sort of schedule or something. i'm a casual player, so i mostly just play on weekends, and i can't tell you how many times i'm in an amazing game where everyone's deep, fish are up big, everyone's straddling/flipping/drunk at 3:00am and the pro tells his buddy he's been grinding all day and he'll see him tomorrow. as if the game he's gonna play on sunday or monday afternoon is going to show 5% of the profitability of the current game. like dude, you need to play in that game until you literally fall asleep at the table.

I know guys that play 5/10 for a living and have made a pretty decent life. That may not be true/possible in LA, but I doubt that is the case.

For pros yes it's a joke and amuses me as well if they don't have a commitment the next morning.

However for semi pros/winning regs with outside commitments it makes plenty of sense. Ie in a great game Sunday night but need to be somewhere Monday morning for work etc

Totally do-able in soft markets. Maybe not so much in SoCal or LV but in other parts of the country where casino poker is relatively new, absolutely.

To claim that 30k is "doable" is a total ****ing joke and shows a lack of understanding statistics.

Yes, in a soft enough 2/5 100bb game with a big enough pool of players SOMEBODY MAY have a 30k month over a several year span, but it certainly isn't a given.

This has no real correlation to the skill of the individual beyond that they are winning at some $/rate and std dev, they just have to run super ****ing hot over a specific sample size.

Must be nice to be that guy who has the deck hit them in the face, but it certainly isn't a given that it will happen to any person regardless of how good they are.

I understand how it can seem that way. I'm sure part of it is ego but I do have some reasons that made sense to me. First of all, I didn't table change during the prior two years either and both of those were over $50/hr. But who knows maybe I just ran good for those two years. I feel that playing in bad games forces me to improve as a player and I do feel that during the third year I played substantially better than during the last two. Money is not the primary motivator for me and I enjoy the challenge of beating a bad game. And I thought I could beat bad games for a somewhat decent rate because I've done it before.

I wouldn't be that pumped about $50/hr the previous 2 years playing exclusively 5/10 fwiw. $14/hr over 1600 hours would have me questioning a lot of things.

1) my game itself
2) my game selection
3) my stake selection
4) my casino selection

It sounds like you have leaks in all 4 areas and some pretty big leaks at that. Your game itself needs work if what you've made so far in 3 years of 5/10 is like $35/hr avg. You're game selection is terrible if you never change tables when it's an option and it is at Bellagio. Your stake selection/casino selection also seems really bad considering you're in Vegas with tons of great options between 2/5 and 5/10 and you've just played B 5/10 pretty much exclusively for the last 3 years with those results.

The most likely scenario is that your true winrate is somewhere between $14-50/hr at 5/10....probably in the $20-35 range. That isn't very good imo and considering the 2/5 games in Vegas play deep with way worse/more fish than 5/10 and worse/less regs, you're going to likely be able to make the same money with much less risk and potentially more money, especially if you work on your game in the process.

I realize my post is a bit harsh but the poker world is a pretty harsh reality for most of the people that try to make it as a pro. The game gets tougher every year and if you don't get better you become obsolete as a pro eventually. While $35/hr might be pretty good money compared to your average person, with inflation and poker getting a bit tougher each year, you'll be eaten alive within a few years if you keep on the same track you're currently on. It takes a ton of hard work on many levels to stay viable as a pro poker player so I wouldn't be so nonchalant about the whole thing if you plan to keep playing poker for a living.

Great post.

Also while it's good to want to improve your game, spending all year in **** nit filled games costing yourself tens of thousands of dollars isn't the way to do it.Learning how to bleed 5/10 nits for 20 bucks an hour isn't really improving your game much anyway.

As a pro, you guys are right, op should move down to 2/5. But op isn't good enough to make it as a pro anyway so it's irrelevant. And if op goes back to being an amateur then there's nothing wrong with playing the biggest limit he can beat for something, which is 5/t. He's definitely going to learn faster than he would at 2/5. I mean the stakes are so low, it's more about the learning then the money. If you want more money it makes more sense to just work harder at your job.

Also disagree that live games are getting worse and worse. I think 2013 was the worst year.

Not sure how you can say OP can't make it as a pro when he has been profitable for 3 years straight. People can live off $14/hr.

People live off of 14/hr, but it's usually temporary as they build job experience so they can get paid more in the future. Not the case for op.

This is lol, $14/hr is roughly median wage

No its not. In California it's soon to be below the minimum wage

Avg Household income in the US is around $52,000/yr which is around $26/hr. If a husband and wife are both professional poker players making $14/hr then their income is slightly above average.

One of the main arguments for raising minimum wage is so that people can raise a family on it.

somebody pop this guys bubble. he has been littering these forums with garbage of late and needs to get knocked off his high horse.

51% of all american workers make less than $30,000/year! Try googling something first idiot. oh wait, they are all preparing to upgrade soon right? but who am i to argue with a master pro who wins 90% of all his poker sessions.

https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2014

Yeh because it's totally standard in America for both husband and wife to work 40/hrs per week each, I mean who needs to raise their kids anyway?

Mm does this count retired people in the statistics?