My definition of full time 2/5 would be like playing 1500 hours at least a year.


But are many of the skilled players in vegas or ac or pennsylvania etc who play 2/5nl full time clearing 50k plus a year easily without a sweat? Obviously someone like you who i assume is a very skilled player and so is squid face. But most 2/5 players are not at you or squid level. So players that are very skilled like you guys don't ever having a losing year ever?


So im curious but like a middle of the pack 2/5 reg. Im guessing this guy is making like 3bb an hour or so? Like are there 1/3 regs that do very well but barely is break even at say 2/5?


Also what stakes do you play and do you play full time? Do you play 2/5 and 5/10? Also im curious but if someone who plays 5/10nl full time, how can someone even get that many hours? Its like when you look at bravopokerlive, unless you play at bellagio or say commerce in LA... isn't it almost impossible to get like 1500 hours at say 5/10nl and up? The only casino that seems to show 5/10nl and up consistently at bravopokerlive is mgm national harbor.

How many full time 2/5 nl regs in vegas you estimate make at least 50k a year? What about on the east coast like say borgata or in the east coast casinos? 50k plus profit for every 2/5nl reg who grinds full time... would mean a ton of money has to be lost by the opposition. I mean when you look at bravo poker live and see how many games go at bellagio, wynn, aria, venetian, you think there are more than 8 players at each casino that avg at least 50k at 2/5 each year? I took that number because 5 would seem a bit low but more reasonable than say 10 full time players at each 2/5nl poker room.

Playing 150-200 hours a month I have no losing months, let alone losing years. I currently play 5-card Omaha (and 2/5 and 5/10 to a lesser extent). My last losing month I was playing very poorly at 1/3 and it’s fair to say I was kinda a fish. But that was a year ago.

In typical 2/5 games, 10k days are so rare they don't warrant discussion. I do know a player that regularly builds $5k+ stacks in a $500 cap game. However, will often plays 2 days straight with no sleep to do it and he is a very experienced player (full time pro for over a decade).


Your perception is wrong. There are many Vegas pros grinding 1/2 and 1/3 and there are many more wannabe pros grinding all the low stakes levels. I think it is a bit misleading to say that if one doesn't make $x/yr they are terrible. The fact is that the vast majority of players that try to become Vegas pros fail, and a large percentage of those that actually succeed are just scraping by. That's not to say there aren't successful pros who make good money at the table and are wise with it off the table. Squid is an example of such a player, but he is by far the exception rather than the rule.

Sure, but one could also structure his/her schedule to coincide with when the big games run. For instance, I knew a very good 5/T pro that would play 35hrs/week but he would put all of his hours in on Thursday/Friday/Saturday because he had no interest in playing lower than 5/T.

Ego is one of the biggest things that drives players to play higher and it's one of the biggest things that prevents that from dropping down when it's in their best interest to do so. There are definitely 5/T grinders with lower hourlies than 2/5 grinders.

I feel like most grinders have probably taken a shot at a higher level at one point or another but shot taking takes a significant amount of risk and it's not going to be worth it for everybody. Also, you have to consider bankroll. A lot of players simply don't ever have the bankroll necessary to move up.

1/3 is much more similar to 2/5 than 2/5 is to 5/T. Still, 1/3 games will tend to be softer which means certain players that do well at 1/3 will not do as well at 2/5.


A lot of people choose poker as a career because they are lazy. On top of that, poker gives players a lot of incentive to be lazy because the grind can be very monotonous and also the game loves to just kick you right in the balls whenever it feels like it.

I cant answer all of these questions and I doubt anyone else can either. Nobody really knows what anyone else makes or loses unless they are close friends. But if you are a "full time" player, and you arent making more than $50K, you probably wont last long. $50K isn't that much money if its your only income.

Thanks for the reply Soxfan. I was starting to think that Sundays were weirdly tough to beat, so it helps to see the #'s to support that observation.

it's not that it's a lot of money to make, it's that for every person making 50k in a room, a combination of people need to lose ~55k.

It's still just an anomaly. I would imagine as we play more Sunday hours, that should start to come up. It's not like games are magically tougher on Sunday.

If you play 1500 hours a year, that averages to about 29 hours a week, or about 4 days a week putting in about a 7 hour session. Pretty sweet gig hours-wise compared to most jobs.

If you want to win $50K a year at 2/5 playing 1500 hours, that puts you at about $33/hr, which is exactly 6.66 bb/hr (ha, ironic? smileyface). Now whether or not *you* can ship that rate at 2/5 NL is definitely questionable, but from where I sit it doesn't seem that inconceivable that the best players in the room could achieve that (and remember, I'm always the guy in here doubting large winrates). Whether the "average" pro could maintain this is certainly questionable.

So while Mike's delivery could use some work, I don't think anything he's said regarding the numbers is too terribly outrageous / lol.

Gno?G

Estimates Ive seen are that 90%+ of all poker players lose money. A guy I know who used to work for an online poker site and had access to records, told me that its well known in the industry that more like 95% of online players lose. The money is all being funneled to a relatively very small number of people.

I find it hard to believe that so many people keep losing at poker and keep coming back but then I think about the slot and table game players. They keep coming back also.

You’re moving the goalposts of the discussion. It’s not about 90+% of players lose, I don’t think anyone really is going to argue that, it’s that all full time pros should be making more than 50k/year.

Obviously there are players making 50k, some even 100+k, but for each one of them, the number of players in the player pool gets geometrically larger but the player pool is finite. Eventually, when you add (X) 100k winners, (Y) 75k winners, etc etc etc, you get to a point that to sustain that many winners becomes an outlandish number of losing players needed. Some poker ecosystems probably don’t have enough players to sustain all full time pros making > 50k.

I don't disagree at all but if that local poker economy cant support however many full time 2/5 pros are in the room, that eventually leads to less poker pros. The best will survive and keep playing. The others will most likely do 1 of 3 things.

1) move somewhere else
2) get a real job
3) get a part time job and play less poker

Either way, those guys are no longer full time pros at least not in the room where they cant make $50k+. You just cant survive very long on that small amount of money. Some may have room mates or a wife with a second income and be able to pull it off, but I doubt many of them will keep playing long term.

I guess the answer to the guys question....

"Do you think there are many 2/5 players that pull in on average 50k a year full time and done it in consisent years? Say they been doing it at least 5 years plus? Surely there has to be some right? "

Depends on what he considers to be "many". What percentage of 2/5 players in any room are even full time players? Maybe 5%? How many of those players break $50K? Not "many", but there are "some".

I don't know what a full time pro is but I consider a pro to be someone that makes the majority of his/her income from poker. There are a lot of these in Vegas and one doesn't need to make $50k/yr to support one's self in Vegas. The cost of living is pretty low there and many of them have roommates . Some have a private bedroom, and some live in living rooms. Hell, some of them even live in their car.

Wrong again! The losers' money is not being funneled to the winning players. The losers' money, for the most part, is funneled down the slot next to the dealer. The winners have to struggle to get some of it into their stacks before it is all drained away.

If one has to be in the 95th percentile to beat the game at all, then beating the game for a comfortable amount is going to be uncommon indeed.

I think you’re a little out of touch with reality on this one considering the median household income in the US, as of 2018, is ~62k. That means many people live, and survive, while presumably making < 50k/year

https://www.census.gov/library/stori...from-2017.html

I was going to post this exact link, then temp decided I didnt care enough.
It's also a bit misleading though becasue that's just income. Not total compensation. And poker doesn't have any benefits.

Regardless, it's perfectly possible to live a nice life on 50k/year. My Mom has done it for 40+ years including raising 2 kids, and owning a house.
So, agree with the premise of your post.

Obviously a huge amount of money is taken out of the poker economy thru the rake. What I meant was that there is a large number of losing players (of various amounts) losing their money to a small number of winning players.

I wouldn't say the winners have to "struggle" to get the money. The better players get it pretty easily.

If you are smart and hard working you can make more than 50k a year playing 2/5. A normal job people work around 2000 hours a year. My pro friend and I were guessing that maybe 10% of pros even play 2000 hours a year. Poker players are mostly lazy and 2/5 can absolutely be crushed if you are good. I see pros play that are beating the game for more than 50k a year and they have absolutely massive leaks. I’m not excluding myself from this, I have massive leaks and I’m still appalled at the stuff I see other people doing. It’s hard to be self motivated but if someone put the same amount of work into being great at poker as a field like say law (my background) they would absolutely crush.

Yeah agree. People with decent intelligence who also have patience and discipline (and emotional control) can make good money playing full time.

PS: I didn’t know you were a lawyer. What field? Why the switch?

Mostly business/contract law but did some section 1983 work (civil rights law basically). Not the thread for this so the tl;dr version is I got bored, couldn’t get into field I wanted, and I like poker.

Concerning law and on topic though, Mike is probably right about the 90-95% number. There was a 2012 case in NY and one issue in the case was if poker is a game of skill. A statistician went through millions of poker hands played on stars and said 90-95% of poker players are losing players. The case was U.S. v DiChristinia.

Wow that’s cool. I’ll have to try to read the opinion, if there was one. Found it:

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1641052.html

When I say this Im an *******. Other people say the same thing and nobody bats an eye. SMH

You implied a particular individual--that you were responding to--possessed those traits.

If I tell my wife "lots of people are lazy" then okay. If I imply that she is lazy, I'm probably going to have a bad day.

You have a forgiving wife. If I implied my wife was lazy, I’d be hearing about it for the next 50ish years

No I didnt. I guess it sounded that way, but that's not what I meant. The guy who asked the question doesnt even play 2/5 full time so I'm not sure why it sounded like I was talking about him. It was a general statement.