There used to be some succesful 5 card draw pro's on stars.

But last couple of years online 5 card draw is pretty much dead.
Back in the day, this subforum on other poker was IIRC mostly 5 card draw threads. Now you never see a thread on 5 card draw here.

I wonder what players like Barbosyan, Drunka, lg1234567890 and such are doing now. They play other forms of poker? They do something completely different?

I always liked the whole small community playing 5cd in the NLHE boom days, and some of them making a very good living. Almost like a secret poker world it was.

So anybody knows what the old 5CD pro's do nowadays?

I’m just curious: what stakes were the pros playing on Stars, such that they could make a living? Were they playing FL, PL, or NL?

for FL it was mostly 5/10 FL and 10/20 FL IIRC

I myself almost always played FL, I think they played 2/4 PL and 3/6 PL

Wow. I’ve got mad respect for anyone paying their bills at those limits! I wonder what they’re playing now...

Very few play (at least, with the same nicknames) at Full Tilt. I have no idea of what happened to most of them. Probably, playing Hold 'em or Omaha. Or just moved on to some other job.

> Wow. I’ve got mad respect for anyone paying their bills at those limits!

In matter fact, many were paying the bills quite successfully multi-tabling at 0.25/0.50 PL and NL. In my case, 0.25/50 5CD draw and 27 SD were my part-time job and helped paying the bills for up to 7 years before Poker was banned for some time in Portugal prior to legalisation. Now only online hold 'em and omaha are legal in Portugal, so I don't play anymore. I don't like wild games.

Anyway, there was action up to 30/60 FL and 10/20 PL. Those were great days indeed (sigh).

I was wondering the other day whatever happened to all the players from Kiev. It seemed like every table had one player with that location. I never understood what was going on with that.

I was multitabling 6 or 7 tables at a time and there was probably three times that many tables running. I think what happened is the same thing that allegedly happened to draw in the old days. The tight, smart players beat the loose non-2+2 types and the games dried up.

> I was wondering the other day whatever happened to all the players from Kiev. It seemed like every table had one player with that location. I never understood what was going on with that.

Kiev players were reported as colluders by several other players, but Pokerstars didn't found any evidence against them (at least that I know of). Personally, I never felt threatened in any way by playing with 2 or 3 in the same table.

What I can say for sure is that some of them changed their nicknames, which is not allowed. When you see a newcomer multitabling at 6, 7 or 8 tables in the first day, obviously something is wrong. I reported it a couple times to Pokerstars, but to no avail.

> I think what happened is the same thing that allegedly happened to draw in the old days. The tight, smart players beat the loose non-2+2 types and the games dried up.

People like 5 Card Draw, specially in Europe. There were new players every day in ring games, and a lot more in the tourneys.

Black Friday was the first major blow, as there were a lot of American players, both regulars and tourists.

Then, regulation started in Europe (despite EU itself being against strict regulation and closed markets) and, one by one, several countries restricted online gaming to their borders, to the point that the all thing colapsed. Pokerstars.com just got depleted from players, and the regulars would hardly make a living playing against each other, which depleted it even more.