Well it's pretty much a consensus that games aren't nearly as good as 2-3 years ago where anyone who had any respect for money would be a profitable player.

It's also clear that in 2007, poker was a rare opportunity, market-inneficiency if you will, that allowed some people earn vastly more than their skillset/intelligence would allow in other fields.

As more and more people study the game, the winnings will decrease until a point of relative equilibrium with other ventures. What this means is that you will be able to earn in poker the same as your opportunity-cost elsewhere.

So on average, if you have zero skills and can only hold a 5$/hr job flipping burgers, that's probably gonna be your winrate at poker, with no excess returns.

In fact, equilibrium might mean that profits are lower than opportunity cost because of the added enjoyment and time-flexibility of poker, so that more people might compete in poker than in other job markets turning it less profitable to compensate for it.

The only way for added returns to come back, is for either a law be passed to allow americans to play again with no hassle on depositing methods, or maybe tapping into the asian markets...
although in asia, people are much poorer per capta so not much money is gonna roll in.

But even if this occurs, its only a temporary "solution" cause eventually profits will dwindle again to this equilibrium

cliffnotes: sometimes, there IS a free lunch, but it's ephemeral.

this is fairly obvious.

I only started playing poker in 2007 but i am surprised when people say its getting tougher etc. I am still frequently stunned by how bad players are.

Nice Thread!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15...er-now-639923/

Maybe op wanna take a look at this as well

Back in 2005/2006, it was not uncommon to see players openshoving allin for 100 BB's. Even on stakes as high as 10/20NL (remember B.Buddy?)

I'd say that at its highpoint, 1 out of every 5000 hands of poker played at 2/4NL you'd see an openshove for 100BBs, compared to maybe 1 out of 1,000,000 hands today.

Thats just a side example to illustrate how much fish disrespected money. People were there just anxious to flip and gamble.

Sounds crazy, wish i could have witnessed it.

did you adjust your game since your thread: Cannot win at poker anymore! yet?

Seems to me, from everything that I have read anyway, that the online rooms are growing everyday from what they were in 2004 and on, the more people play, yeah the better the average person will seem to be, but in reality not being able to beat the game does not mean that there are not profits to be taken, or that if a guy works a burger king, cuz he is a lazy a** he will make the same playing poker as his job, that makes no sense what so ever. Maybe your game has changed over the years and your just not adjusting to peoples play,

If everyone sucked the game would be nice, winning tons of loot, but there would be no real point aside from the money, better players is good for the game

Is this the one where he posts and claims to have won a million dollars, and then everyone asks for a graph and he keeps posting but ignoring those requests? Yeah...

Mark

people lose more money over tilt than not knowing a correct strategy. tilt will always be an issue for everyone.

very true.

its not true if you play hu deepstack

+ 1

Not sure if this is life-long issue to everyone, but the couple times I busted in the past was completely due to tilt. I just took 100% of the balance to 1 table and donkey off in < 5mins then whined about it for a week.

Insightful thread OP although I wouldn't necessarily say that we have gone to equilibrium with the 5 dollar burger flipper in your analogy because one can flip burgers for 5 dollars right now but won't be able to earn a 5 dollar hourly without hours and hours of working on his game. That being said, I think its more the 3 months to a year it would take to learn the game become a decent reg making 15-25 an hour you could probably pick up a trade, take training classes, and start working to earn the same amount (opportunity cost). I do think however this is true for people of average to slightly above average intelligence. People who are smarter or much more naturally skilled in poker will probably still do better in poker than other fields since it won't take them as long as others to reach their poker goals, and their ceiling is much higher.

You should have saw the games in 05/06 when I started, huge difference in talent. Of course there are bad players, no one is saying everyone is good now, just the fish aren't as clueless and there aren't as many. Someone made a good open shoving example ITT, but if you go to any level you'll notice what was standard back then isn't standard today. Back then 50nl JJ was a play for stacks hand, nowadays its rare to see someone get it in pre full stacked with TT/JJ and even QQ sometimes. Some players dont' play them for stacks because they learned to be nits, some are actually good players who learned to play those pockets for value in position by flatting. Back then in 50nl flatting JJ/QQ was unheard up which made poker easy because anytime you pick up kings and aces your chances of stacking someone were way higher. This is just one example of how weak the games back then were of course. Even at 10nl I see people who probably woulda beat 50nl 3 years ago.

thanks for using big words that nobody else would ever use when speaking in real life but only use on the interwebz to sound smart.

From your two threads about games being so tough I can see why you do not win.

Choose the sword, or choose the ball...

Can somebody please come on here and reassure me that the live games will be good forever? Thanks .

As long as there's rich ppl with drinks and cards on their hands, ur granted!!

It has gotten exponentially more difficult. Shoving aces preflop for entire stack and getting regular callers in sng's used to work back in 05'. That's all the proof you need that the game and level of thinking has drastically improved.

These threads make my head assplode cus the standard of play i see everyday no matter what form of NLHE i play is beyond terrible.

Who are these people saying games are dead? I swear they don't play/ busto.

these threads are ****ing funny if slightly tilting.

As long as there's a game that involves some form of chance, money and some might say ego there are gonna be :

* People thinking they are god's gift to the world and can earn millions overnight
* People who like the thrill of plain gambling
* People who just wanna bluff the **** out of everyone
* Bad/Spewy regs
* shot-takers who are not in rhythm with the new level of play/aggression/overall style of opposition
* players who are prone to tilt
* players that can't lay down certain hands in certain spots/will always lay down certain hands in certain spots/will have unbalanced ranges in certain spots etc.

The list can go on forever, in the end, as we rely on math, we rely on exploiting others player's way of thinking/the lack of it, so as long as there's a human being behind the cards and he holds a line of thought there will be ways to exploit it (just look at what some hand history study did to Isildur).

That is not to say it won't be harder or we won't face better and more educated regs etc etc but in each level u can find those who take shots (and succeed or fail thus giving money to the regs), bad regs, good regs and those who crush (and sometimes even fat gamblin/tiltin/too-lazy-to-work-hard/tryin-to-constantly-bluff-ubernits/super-stationy FISH).

so untill we're all crai the river with air Ivey there's room to learn and improve and thus profit.

I'm aware that OP didn't say that there's not gonna be profit but that it will be marginal, call me an idealist but I believe that a player that is in a level of thought above his opposition is going to play 1 big pot every 100 hands and handle 70% +ev is still gonna have a nice WR.

just my two cents.

I lost way more money at poker back in 2005 than I do today, so the games have obviously become much easier.

Or, I don't have as much money to lose as I did back in 2005 because I lost it all back in 2005, so I can't lose as much now as I did in 2005, bcause I don't have as much money now as I did in 2005.

I dunno.

True story.