Note I certainly don't want to discourage anyone to learn programming of any sort - it's imo extremely useful skill and anyone who thinks they might like it should try.

But yeah going from "what is notepad?" to $15/hr freelancer able to book 40 hours/week in 12 weeks is not likely.

A good thing to look at is something like App Academy, as promoted by our good friend Haseeb Q. These guys charge a mere ~$20k for a 12 week course, only let you in if you already know programming well enough to pass several time-limited coding tests including live over skype, and hammer you for those 12 weeks way more than 40 hours. There's 40 hours of class, and you are expected to study / practice in most all your free time too. Oh and you have to move / live there.

At the end of this, they use their extensive networking to set you up with interviews and you probably land a job at some tech company in SF or NY for average $50/hr. Which might sound amazing, but these places are super overpriced and while it perhaps sounds a bit of a stretch, I'm gonna say they're equivalent to a $15/hr EU freelancer on upwork or whatever.

At the end of an App Academy, I wouldn't say you know any of the languages they have taught "properly" - If you've done well, you know enough to build working portfolio type sites, and have a smattering of knowledge across a variety of technologies. The companies are employing app academy noobs to train them. But still, there's your "easy" $100k from programming.

Now think how many people put that kind of effort in to poker. It's not many, lol.

I'd think almost anyone who can do ok at the lowest stakes - if they did a 12 week "total immersion" of 40 PT4hours of play each and every week, with 10 hours a week of Coffee+ / Tipton+ / Acbarone+ / Ibavly+ etc. class coaching (remember, you got $20k to spend on this stuff!) and another 20 hours of personal study on top of that - you think this player is unlikely to make $100k if they keep up that work ethic for years at a time?

good point dave

I don't know much about haseeb's one, but there's a lot of live ones out by me that are less intensive and go for about 6 months.

One down the street from where I work costs 20k, goes 7 months and 93% of graduates have a full time job within 3 months. Those full time jobs average a starting salary of 74k.

The meat of that 74k # would have to do with which cities they live in. But a friend of mine took a similar course and is in North Carolina at a good paying job. Depends what you want, but seems very reasonable to get 50k+ starting salary after graduating from a reputable program and live outside of the big expensive tech hubs like NYC or the bay area.

Agree about the motivated poker player dave.

100+ people will make 6figures from scoop/wcoop, id guestimate proly top 50 spin regs will not including jackpot box's husng guys are in the masses the 200/300+ grinders are all making 6fig years, then theres some nl/PLO cash grinders who will make chunks, agree with ryans sentiment, maybe not 2000 but id guess 500+ will make a very comfortable living. maybe we should all stop worrying about who else will make what and try get ourselfs into that bracket? vamooooo

Also worth noting is that those six figures programmers work insane hours, are expected to answer emails / be on call at all times, have to take a lot of **** from managers and are expected to learn new technologies, do pet projects in their spare time to keep up with all the new libraries and industry trends.

It's not like you learn programming for a year then just chill in a nice office for 40 years playing ping pong. Also when we're talking 100k from programming in the US is that after tax or before?

If you're looking for 60-80k then i think programming is much easier to deal with. But most grinders when they get into poker are not all about the money, it's a lot about the competition, proving that you can win at this insanely hard game (esp now), that you can push yourself to do it. It's about the freedom of movement, freedom of working hours and most importantly, there isn't anyone micro managing your every move.

If you're a rational robot with insane work ethic and who's only goal is to make money then programming is ofc the way to go, you can make 300k+ from it if you're at the top of the field but for most people it's not only about the money.

I work in a closely related field to programming(design with development skills)and it's an easier life then you might think - especially if you go freelance and when home time comes they either pay you more money or you go home. Plus you can take 3 months of the year off because you earn the same equivalent money in that time as someone with a full time job.

And how long would you say it takes for someone with zero knowledge to get to the point where they can freelance and make an hourly 30% greater than a full time job and find projects to work on whenever they feel like working?

Don't know but it took me 2 years from knowing nothing to freelancing and pretty much getting work when I needed it. I started a long time ago though and employers in the creative industries were looking for designers and developers would often go on the strength of your portfolio and the work you've created rather then strictly job experience(besides you can just make stuff up/exaggerate). Maybe things are a bit tougher now, but these are skilled jobs and there has never been enough people to fill the jobs... It has so far always been a better market for the employee then the employer imo... I'd advise someone to do some cheap good courses online($20000 seems a major rip off to me plus unnecessary. Much info is free or cheap nowadays) and make an iPhone app or something or whatever inspires you...

^ Yeah, $20K is an overkill, $1K-2K is probably fine. I'm in a better spot here in mother Russia because the country has become piss poor and live courses now cost like $150 a month. Correspondingly, salaries for office jobs are also terrible, that's why I was talking about freelancing as an expat into (or a citizen of) a developing country as an efficient way to outsource yourself (earn decently while spending little).

I've heard that it's typical for a US programmer to earn $100K+ after tax but not everyone has a realistic chance for a green card without becoming very good at what s/he does.

Yeah, let's 3bet the flop with a bottom pair because it's a backdoor quad draw, vamooo.

I mean, how can a random low stake reg be legitimately sure that he's 'the one' who'll be the next Ike or at least the next Barone?

Recall the Dunning-Kruger effect. I was thinking the other day that my 'super-duper theoretical insight' would lift me to the 20s-30s skillwise but, to be realistic, it will only add 'bout 3.50% to my 10s-15s ROI (which can't happen at Stars, though) and even not be enough to move me up because adjustment to each particular opponent is key and I'm naturally terrible at observation (or, if you wish, can't 3-table with the same quality as others can).

he cant, but he can work hard and play alot, play focused and study his ass off to put him self in the position to be a great player... no one gifting you that. and i like c/r bd quads obv #ballance

Easily i'd imagine. Freelance iphone developers can I think earn £500+ per day - i don't even think you'd need to be the boss of iphone developing either. That would equate to £125000 a year before tax of course if you had a few weeks off holiday. The beauty as a freelancer is as well you charge a **** load to expenses like travel, equipment etc and pay yourself as LTD company in dividends. Alternatively the beauty of poker is it's tax free in the UK at least and you can sit around in your underpants all day earning money... And yep if you were established in the UK for instance you can earn remotely and some jobs are work from home anyway...

I think not only workaholism but also emotional stability and the ability to choose the right direction of effort are required to crush poker. Far not everyone has enough of that all.

Any regs on stars.fr? Was considering them or ipoker, but will prob avoid ipoker after their latest changes - ty

how to monitor the spins which are played in ACR ??

HM2 just picking the number of spins played but not the results

Help please ?

Try PT4 with Max Cut's summary generator.

only have HM2

ratio fish/regs are less favorable on higher limits then on .eu because of very small player pool, so if you go there be prepared for reg wars.

You can try the Jackpot Counter which is supposed to facilitate updating the HM2 database with prize pool amounts.

forumserver.twoplustwo.com/218/winning-poker-network/jackpot-counter-beta-1594300/

Yeah, I forgot that the counter and the TS generator are separate programs.

Would be nice if either ACR/WPN would stop being lazy (or perhaps obtuse) and put info in the hand history (or even the window title) or HM2/PT4 could stop being lazy and grab the info from the table.

I don't disagree that it's harder to make a living in poker in today's environment than it was 5-6 years ago. Pre Black Friday I was significantly worse when it came to poker theory/improvement, but I was still ahead of the curve and in a game that minimized my weaknesses.

Still, I think $100k is a very attainable figure it today's games. I like that quote Leatherass has about 'treating poker like your business,' but people need to understand that poker isn't a regular job -- it's more of a commission based job. The more time you spend honing your craft, the larger your expected hourly will be. And the more hours you put in, the more money you're going to make.

Thing is, very few people are doing that. They aren't playing more then the 40 hours of a traditional work week and the studying (if any) is halfhearted/self serving. Even among the guys who get coaching, a large percent of those simply expect the coach to magically solve all of their problems when it's on the student to pay close attention and learn from the sessions.

My impression is that both WPN and HM+PT programming teams are lazy

Thanks for the info! I was suspecting that anyway because the Expresso challenges award such high rakeback to the top finishers. Moreover, it's possible to calculate their ITMs (manually or by web scraping) as Winamax displays their results, and what I was seeing is that the 'top grinders' had 34-35% ITMs in €25s+ even in 2015. So the situation there looks much like the one at WPN's $25-40 Jackpot Poker, which is reg-infested dramatically because of the Sit & Crush race.

Another sad similarity is that Winamax recruits weak players pretty only from France but regs come from the entire EEA except the countries with regulated poker incl. the UK, much like the WPN draws fish from pretty only the US but regs from the entire world except ringfenced countries and a few American states.

Moreover, I'd say that all the games with 3-minute blinds are prone to reg-infestation nowadays because regs are allergic to 2-minute levels with antes

If all of the lower stakes regs would listen to that advice and actually gave their proper best it would soon be impossible to make $100K in this format for pretty much everyone

Same goes for almost any field.

Im trying to figure this out but i dont get it.
Could someone help me with an real example?


For example vpip or big blinds.
VPIP: 0-25 RED, 25-50 ORANGE, 50-80 GREEN, 80-100 BLUE
BB: 0-8 RED, 8-14 ORANGE, 14-40 GREEN, 40+ BLUE


What modifications would i have to do to get it right?