I understand your point about being a rec and dont want to care. But then just dont play on sites where a hud is allowed... And why dont i program a bot? Because its ***** illegal and guess what a HUD isn't (HUDs dont even work on the sites they are not allowed at)



Hi Mason. I know where it is useful to apply etc. My point is that it could have been applied since the 1950's .

Using a bot isn't illegal. It's just against the sites terms and conditions..

I highly doubt that. In the software-forum you'll find support-threads for software allowing you having a HUD where it's not supposed to be and i'm 100% sure that's only the tip of the iceberg. When playing on a site where HUDs are not allowed/limited, you can count on it that someone has a HUD over your avatar.

Any danger of online poker being doomed as a form of entertainment is mitigated by the presidency of MPGA Trump.
DUCY

As a legit rec player, I think poker for me, is now 'Meh'. I used to play daily.
But these days its barely a day a month. I used run deep every now and then, but these days its nigh on impossible to have a good run.

2011 I shipped a WPT main package, and bubbled a WSOP seat.

This year I won a PS main event seat, but havent really had a deep run in any tournament for any significant cash. I have a very small sample, but my mindset is that the game is tougher now. How much of that is true, who knows. But the game just doesnt have the same appeal when i consider pro players are hunting players like me, have a hud, and software helping them beat me. i still play a social game of poker for pennies, but the thought of playing the sunday million is just not a thing anymore.

So ignoring this rambling nonsense which completely avoids the question, what is the minimum one should be earning at poker to realistically make a decent living?

Define decent living. For some people they can live happily making less than 50k a year. For others it's much more. If we say 50k minimum then how much do you need to make in total to offset the taxes where you live? What if you have a bad year at the tables? What is the bare minimum you expect to earn in a bad year? If you earn less than that, what is your plan?

So where is reading a poker book on this cheating scale?

This is very true. If you look at the software forum then you can just imagine what the software wizards that aren't posting their work are using. Creating software for sites that aren't actively preventing it is not too difficult for these guys. The sites that do take preventative measures play a game of cat and mouse with the software wizards who do whatever they can to go unnoticed.

If it's Phil Helmuth's book I'd say right after botting.

Decent living = you're able to pay rent, bills and food comfortably. You have money for socialising and having fun. You can put some money aside for buying a house, possibly starting a family in the future and also for when you retire. You may also want a car, which costs significant money to buy and maintain.

Not to mention your edge may diminish, you might have to drop stakes as games dry up, you might have a bad year, rakeback may decrease, regulation may force you to quit, and so on and so forth.

It would strike me that you'd need to be making at least $50k a year for this. Ideally a lot more.

HUDs are basically useless in tourneys like the sunday million

Well in a thread that is discussing the viability of poker, ignoring the opinions of people who have income to add to the poker economy is probably not a winning strategy. I used to play online poker quite a bit and had some success in MTTs. Now when friends ask me, I wanr them off of the game because of the tools that the pros use to "cheat" them. My definition of cheat.

I still play live poker occasionally, but if I went to a table (where the casino allowed it and it wasn't against the rules) that had 8 players on IPADs loading in all the hand history as it happened and referring to it when in a hand with me, I would not play there again.

So the site makes a rule that I think is cheating, they lose my business. You "pro" players who stare at HUDs all day enjoy trading your money back and forth. Long term, you chase away recs and online "poker" is in fact doomed.

Learning how these programs work and how to use them, which sites they are (supposedly) allowed/banned on, which situations they’re effective in...well, this all just sounds like a lot of not particularly enjoyable work, and not particularly related to poker.

I don’t want to get hung up on the term “cheating.” I think of it more like a legitimately unlevel playing field. It’s like with daily sports fantasy: I understand that it’s a legitimate strategy to use programming to create a slate of statistically balanced teams with a high percentage of winning. I just don’t want to play against them.

It's not on this scale.

Currently there are 70 000 players loged in on Stars. No one gives a **** if you play or not.

Why not? It is using something else than your brain to figure out how to play in a certain spot.

I'm not sure how you use books, but I use them to put information into my brain.

I can't play on Stars because I live in a dumb country. Have fun.

You mean like people use huds to put information into their brain?

A hud and a poker book is basically the same thing. None of them gurantee that the user will play well. Compare to a bot where the user dosen't play at all.

I guess it depends how you define “into your brain.” You can say the same thing about using a reference book during pub trivia night.

Anyway, your argument seems to be that these are legitimate tools; and anybody who doesn’t agree or feel comfortable using them or going up against them can go pound sand? Which I agree with.

Actually max 4 tables per site would be a really efficient measure to sustain what ecology that's left.
Maybe increase it on special sundays etc

HUDs put stats on the screen. So you don't have to remember things about your opponents.

When I sit at a table, your HUD gives you perfect recall of my stats. I don't have that about you.

Therefore, the game is not a fair game. i.e. you are cheating (IMO) so I don't want to play with you. When I explain HUDs to other rec players such as myself, they also don't want to play with you.

It is fairly amazing to me how the people who think HUDs are fine to use to get an advantage over them are the most outspoken about BOTs and how that next step of help is completely amazingly destroying "poker".

Personally, I don't see much difference between a HUD user and a Bot. One uses the HUD stats to click the buttons and the other has an auto button feature built in.

I think this HUD thing has been beaten to death many times before, but IMO, this is why cash game online poker is pretty well done as entertainment.

Any of my friends who ask about online poker, I tell them "Forget about it, don't bother". I've been actively discouraging anyone I know to not play online for the last 2 years or so. Any rec. player starting out in poker now is going to be repeatedly gang-raped and will have no fun.

Yes, online poker as entertainment is doomed.

Why would any "fun player" wanna play in a 24 tabling environment? I'm a rec player that wins and I don't wanna play anymore even tho I still enjoy poker as a game. If they capped the tables you could play at 4-6 it would be perfect. As is, there's a whole lot more I can do with my time and I still enjoy poker... I just don't enjoy 20 tablers timing down when I'm playing the micros lol.


At this point I'd be happier just playing a drunken home game with friends.

Sorry you got confused, let me reduce it to one sentence:

A decent living income is probably about the same amount as would be needed to be earned by a participant in any other industry impacted by automation of that participant's input.

Taxes aside, how you earn that income generally has little to do with how much net income you might need for a decent living.

If you crave a more specific answer ..... "About three-fiddy" ought to do the job for you. Happy now ?