1) Lots of people want to be winning online poker players. Not many people are willing to be losing online cash-game poker players regularly depositing, which means your husband is playing mostly against other fantasists in their parents basements who are also pretty good* so where would the money come from? The people who are willing to lose money at poker regularly for their enjoyment are playing live at your local casino or cardroom and your husband should be playing against them and taking their money, even though he doesn't currently have the needed stake to get into those games.

2) If you live in a city or town with any kind of cardroom then sell him the idea of getting a regular job and setting aside 100 euros per month for playing live poker, initially the smallest games in your community. If he can break-even at NL25 online then he can beat NL100 live or 30 euro live tournaments if they organise them. Probably he'll go bust with with his first month's 100 euros and have to wait till his next paycheck, but eventually he'll spin it up and be bringing home extra money from poker - but in the meantime he has a job anyway. If he is truly poker-crazy then make him understand that getting a job will help him get into the bigger and easier live games and give him a back-story for where his money comes from (losing players don't much like it when you answer "my money comes from suckers like you!").

3) Yes it is difficult to get a job but that is not a reason not to try. The worst thing that happens is they say no. That he will probably not succeed is a reason that might put off a normal person, but as a poker player, your husband should understand that the "pot odds" still make it a good move to try.

4) Are you in a situation re: visas which does not make it attractive/possible to leave your husband at the present time?

* I mean good relative to the 100 million people who enjoy playing poker in the world, not good relative to the average pro or average 2p2 poster.

I am not going to rehash what other people have already said but I do think your husband needs a wake up call. It feels to me like he is using poker as an escape to avoid facing up to the reality of previous bad career/educational decisions.

I support a family primarily through poker, although I am a qualified teacher and work in schools on a casual basis. Even though I am a winning MTT player with a decent world ranking I still at times feel guilty about my career choices in terms of security and future proofing our family finances.

I have always won at poker and would never have dreamed of using it as a primary income without this fact. Breaking even for two years is fairly atrocious for anyone putting in the work your husband supposedly has. I think often people underestimate the innate skills that many poker professionals have. Sure anyone can beat the game with the right training and discipline but for some people it will a hell of a lot easier than for others.

Ultimately he is probably miserable working away making absolutely no money. So you may be doing both of yourselves a favor by taking a firmer stance on this issue.

Please do not follow others advice of paying to receive coaching this is not a cure all and unless you are lucky you have a good chance of overpaying at best and at worst getting ripped off.

If he wants to keep trying I would suggest he looks for a staking deal which would include coaching and at least this would mean he was not using family funds to play with. This is something he could do part time while looks or takes on a job. This would have the extra benefit that he will have outsiders to the situation who will let him know fairly quickly if he is playing profitably or not.

One last piece of advice is that from what you say it would make sense that your husband is an overly tight player (which would explain his inability to beat cash games) and if this is the case then MTT's may be a better way for him to make money than cash games.

I really wish you and your partner the best.

Your only 20 let him be a idiot wasteing away grinding- no kids you can train for nice job then when all gos pear shaped for him . you wont need the wannabe phil the hellmoth man

Bolded is the only worthwhile piece of advice in this thread considering you are unlikely to leave him. Grinding less than nl100 online is a complete waste of time. If you are hot I would suggest becoming a cam girl. I'm sure that would set him straight pretty quick.

Unfair how men actually have to work for a living, whereas women always have the easy way out of selling their body for sex or marrying a rich man.

What limit(s) do you grind?

What winrate do you have at those limit(s)?

What sample size do you have?

Please post graphs to back it up. Thank you.

who are you and why do you want this information?

From the lowest micro limits to NL10? NL10 is pretty low.

Where do you live? General area?

To OP:

How much has your husband cashed out in these 2 years? If the number is zero, he is, at best, a recreational player. You are not a professional until that profession starts paying the bills.

sorry to say to it but two things.

the lady that posted this... she is a gold star amazing wife material, I have never heard of any women being this emotional giving to a man doing some thing as reckless as playing poker for a living.#

this is not free beer money maker 2000's

Also, I know all about gambling, I ran 400 to 20k in 16 hours, $1 to $400 in under 600 hands and worse, also my own father, I am 38 years old, my mother and father are emailing me after I have not seen them for 1 year, saying yeah come down fast because we are 13k £ in debt.

Excuse me, you have lived your full life gone to the bookmakers betting on ****** horses. I am myself working to pay off my own bills/ debts and then you hit me with this.

no body unless you are a gujarati seems to put two cents or care together.


Listen I will tell it as it is... balance, you cant go into a well and take all the water out because then it wont become a well but a cup and the universe ant no *** cup,

your husband, he is not abundant, he is also as reported by you not a tilt player of poker and has wisdom but in turn the wheels of full life are not hitting his face.

If you are playing 10nl after 12 months there is a problem it means he is not in peace and feeling it.


life is abundant, one can only hope for more kind and giving like this lady, I sure hope her love gets paid off.

appreciate the waiting you are giving him as a poker player, you are awesome by the way,.

this guy who ever he is should give up poker for at last one year I would prefer 3 and focus on doing good by this lady who ever she is, enough with the poker already.

Invest in coaching, he clearly isn't going to get there by himself

^ if you can afford at least $100/hour with no real guarantee of coaching quality or improvement in you as a player, sure.

I'm not drumming up business for myself, I coach a completely different game. But you're right, he should keep doing what he's doing now, that's working great, and coaching never helps.

If he has truly put in enough time studying the game there might be a few reasons he's not winning.

1) The rake below 50NL is very, very difficult to beat. Because it is capped, as you move up in stakes, rake becomes proportionately less significant. Not that 25NL and below can't be beat, but he might be a marginal winner at 50NL, but be loosing to the rake at 25NL.

2) If he has invested his efforts on developing a game suited for higher stakes, then he will struggle with winning at the micros. If he is focused too much on leveling, 3/4/5betting wars, GTO ranges, etc... in games where ABC poker wins the money, he will struggle.

3) If he isn't managing his bankroll properly, he will most likely not play his best. Most winning players don't have the psychological wherewithal to play well on a short bankroll and, instead, rely on being over-rolled for a particular stake in order to play correctly and aggressively enough. You play so much differently/better with 50+ buyins than with 15-20 buyins.

4) Without the experience that comes from sheer hand volume, it's nearly impossible to have a solid enough grasp of the game. You haven't said how many hands he has played, but it possibly isn't enough.

5) You haven't said how many tables he plays, but it might not be enough. Depending on personality type and stakes, playing only 1 or 2 tables can actually be detrimental because you often get bored. It might not be smart to 6 table 5/10NL, but at .5/.10NL it's better (imo) to multitable because you don't need to think that hard to beat the game. Furthermore, if you are a winning player (and have the mental concentration and endurance), building a bankroll happens much more quickly when multitabling. It's hard to win 10-15 buyins in a session on only 2 tables.

6) He might be playing too many tables. If he's always played 8+ tables and struggled, then he should drop to 2 tables and focus on a solid winrate. Once he's solidly beating the game on 2, he can start slowly adding tables to increase his hourly. Also, everybody has a maximum number of tables they can tend to, and that number decreases with age. I'm 33, and I simply can't focus on 8+ tables like I could when I was 24.

7) Because you need to play aggressively and take small edges when they present themselves to beat this game, depending on the money to support a family simply prevents you from playing your best. If he had a job or other income, he would be able to takes the risks needed to win at poker. As others have said, he's probably playing far to conservative, and that is unlikely to change if he is worried about failing his family.


I would advise getting a job and playing part time until he is way over-rolled for stakes that could support himself (likely 200NL+, maybe 100NL if he really crushes the game)...

This, of course, is assuming he actually has what it takes to be a winner. That remains to be seen, and some people will just never get it. I doubt that to be the case, however.

If he can't beat 25NL or less after spending this much time playing poker he most likely is never going to be a winning poker player. Maybe he could one day, but it isn't going to magically happen between now and the end of the year. Your husband sucks at poker, plain and simple. Tell him to get a job and to quit taking advantage of both you and his father. It's nice that you are supportive of him, but you are kidding yourself if you think anything is going to change for him in regards to poker. I don't need to tell you that though because you already know, you just don't want to believe it. No matter how bad the job situation is wherever you guys are at there is always a job doing something for someone willing to do anything.

What is his SN on stars? I want to see if I have him tagged :P

I'm just going to note that the OP hasn't logged in for four months. Any advice for her at this point is unlikely to be heeded or of any value.

I hope she has sex with her husband more than that

LOL! Someone who is married and can't even beat 25NL should just give up doing it full time and find a real job. I grind 50NL and my winnings are barely enough to support myself.

And no, it doesn't matter that the rake at 50NL is slightly less than the rake at 25NL. If someone can't beat 25NL they will get slaughtered at 50NL. The difficulty increase is significant since 50NL is generally the lowest level where you can live off poker.

That does not bode well for her husband.

Hopefully he saw sense and got a job and kept poker as a hobby because he has a decent wife there.

She can read the responses in the thread without logging in.

Also, 2p2 threads are always a resource for people with similar problems so you are never just advising one person.

Very good point. When I post, especially in Beginners Questions, I almost always throw in a little more information than OP asks for, for just that reason.

That's true enough. Carry on.

we dont need your permission to carry on. condescending ****

To OP,

I hate to say it but with the agreement you two came up with a time clock for him to blowup and take unnecessary risks has just been set in motion. Delaying a decision until the end of the year will almost guarantee he does one of the following.

1. By not making the tough decision now he will until the end of the year take terrible lines and take unnecessary risk in order to produce something that will be satisfactory in your eyes. He now has a timer in his head where he knows its running out before you possibly leave him and he will take shots at games where he is a huge dog.

2. He can’t beat 10NL consistently to even consider moving up to NL50 and for him to work out all his ‘leaks’ between your post and December is crazy. He is going to take on games where he is underolled, his sampling size between now and December will be insufficient to know if he has changed and his wiring is a GAMBLER not a poker professional who looks at the game as a business.

I deal in financial markets and dabble with poker but I know when you’re trading terrible losing money monthly or not at your best level YOU DON’T PLAY FOR HIGHER STAKES or ADD TO MAJOR LOSING POSITIONS.

You’re young enough to leave him and I suggest you do as one more comment stuck out to me which I think you failed to really consider.
You mentioned you gave him money once so he could beat a promotion but he never gave it back. So that begs the questions let’s say he starts making money regularly at what point will he say ‘ I have made enough to have a roll and pay bills’ is this a set number? Arbitrary? My guess is with his mindset he will make money and continually play higher games get knocked down and throughout all this not cash out once to support the family.

There may not be many jobs where you live but I’m sure there are Gamblers Anonymous meetings where he can take an hour of his day to listen to the stories because frankly he is going down that path.

I wish you all the best and you need to be selfish and think about what your life will look like in 10yrs and how you can do better.