It won't scare away recs though. Only people who want to play poker professionally. And they should be scared away because setting out to be a pro poker player from scratch starting today is a very bad idea. There is a lot more money to be made doing almost anything else. Learn to code. You're nearly drawing dead trying to set out to be a pro today. Poker ain't dead, not by a long stretch. But those that will succeed at it would be even more successful doing nearly anything else.

Well where to start? The boom is over, black friday happened, pools have been segregated, crazy taxes rules in some countries, rake increased, rewards for being a loyal customer shrunk, loyal customers treated like cockroaches, cheating scandals, robots at POKERSTARS beating the players for millions of US american dollars.

The real question is: How is it possible for online poker to still be alive?

"A new player, or fairly new player like myself, wants to hear that poker is thriving and there is so much money to be made - that the dream is alive and kicking, and if one has sufficient faculties and puts in the required work then one has a genuine opportunity to make great money playing poker."

The online poker dream?

Depends on what you consider the poker dream, I bet lots of people from poor countries would kill for 30k usd a year salary.In better parts of the world thats close to nothing. But I think most people considered the online poker dream making 100k+ USD a year (in EV) from playing with reasonable variance- WHILE HAVING TIME TO DO FUN STUFF, NOT JUST PLAYING/STUDYIING 90%+ OF YOUR WAKING HOURS. As far as I know, a minority of players make even close to that- to be honest maybe a handful of them and they work their asses off.
And who does have to weather insane variance as those are the format fish could win in $ (not in EV) for a matter of months- therefore more fish-saturated. (let's not go into the fact lots of players are in staking groups nowadays so most of the time they pay huge cuts of the winnings so we have no clue what players are actually making for themselves. )

Yep you for sure can make 40-50k USD a year with dedicated work ( ~7 /10 effort) AFTER BEING IN THE BUSINESS FOR YEARS. Not as an upper-comer for sure.
For this money to be made you need to have learning material (either for profit sharing or subscription-based), an okay computer to run solvers(or investing into solutions that cost almost as much), have to pay for a couple other software most of the good stuff is subscription-based also. Need to know at least basics of poker mental game / sport psychology because variance is HUGE. Need to eat somewhat clean, have to excercise, need to have social contact with other players to talk strategy and I could go on.

When I was in my late teens I made this kinda money (40-50k a year) playing part-time going to high school, using only a shitty laptop, playing in my bed, no 3rd party softwares and only "free" learning material from an affiliate, tilting buyins away as it was confetti. And this could be done in matter of months with no prior knowledge of poker. You didnt even need poker friends to talk about hands. You could be a boss TOTALLY alone.

Not sure if you have idea what you talk about here. 6-7 years ago it was totally normal to have a winrate 7-8bb/100 at 2/4 NLHM 6 max games as a decent player playing 8-10 tables PRE RAKEBACK. Not the best but a decent player. Nowdays the best players have that winrate at 2/4 and usually on 4-6 tabling, but most players playing for 2-3bb/100 (insane variance! and less and less RB)

Its fine when someone try to believe in things but what you say is complete nonsense.



TLDR: one can make decent money if living in 2-3rd world countries but thats nowhere close to 100k a year unless being 100% dedicated and being couple years in poker. But for most players the poker dream wasnt just about the money, it was the freedom which poker brought. Now if you wanna make 100k a year you need to focus on poker- and you will have no life but study and you almost have no chance of making it for years if you are a upper-comer player.

I don't want to hurt you but with 4 years of experience playing NL25 and Nl50 is not considered the poker dream and not even a good living in poker. So I dont know whats your point really.

In 2010-2013 games very insanely good, but you gave up poker that time. So can I assume you didnt make the poker dream? Despite it you think its the best to invest lots of time in it when games are half as good?

Seems kinda crazy for me.....

High Stakes Play Poker is getting slow.

Is this really a thing? Honest question, I really don't know. I would assume that people who create content like that are usually going to be poker players, and thus will be pro-poker, but I don't watch a lot of poker content, so perhaps there is more negative stuff than I'd expect.

This I can definitely believe is a thing. Live players who have had some kind of bad experience and then mouth off to everyone about how it's all rigged, or a scam, cheaters, etc., etc. And in the US, the general public who is misinformed about the legality and spread bad information. And I'm sure there are others.

I think poker forums play a positive role here, disseminating good information for the most part, clearing up some of the misinformation.

He specifically said lowstakes will never die but 5/10 and up is dying and you proceed to tell him he's speaking nonsense and provide as proof winrates at stakes lower than 5/10. The 5/10 games don't even run regularly like they did in the past. They are dying. Low stakes poker still running tables regularly.

Maybe he does know what he's talking about....

It’s not a thing in the sense of entire podcasts and videos dedicated to preaching PID, but it certainly gets mentioned a lot when the question arises. It’s obviously all a comparison between the then and now, rather than a purely objective view of the now.

Personally, I’m going to stick to studying and playing recreationally and hopefully I can bink a few big scores along the way.

I play no cash--98% online MTTs, 1.5% online SNGs, 0.5% live MTTs.

Online MTTs are alive and well. I'll take an unpopular opinion here and posit that they are not only not dead, but are very juicy. It's worth noting that I first played poker seriously in mid-2015, so I never got spoiled by these mythical "golden days" of poker.

I can't speak much about live MTTs given that I've only played one, but I saw very, very bad play in the one I played (and it was a $2700). So, if that data point is any indication (alongside what I've heard about from others), live MTTs are *even more* alive and well. For what it's worth, what I saw in the single $2700 I played made me rethink my entire approach--I went from having no intention of ever playing live poker (I hate casinos/being that physically close to humans) to planning to play a whole string of live tournaments.

People like to complain--to make noise. All this time could be spent studying poker harder. How many people complain about games being dead, but have never booted up PIO to solve even a single spot?

The poker pro community as a whole has also not yet realized just how much additional edge is to be had with mental game optimization--there is no difference between optimizing your, say, bet-sizing, and optimizing your mental game. Both are parameters that govern profitability.

The same people who meticulously calculate the % rake they're paying at a given MTT stake will sometimes, in-game, donk off a stack or make a terrible tilt-call. I've certainly done this, and still do once in a blue moon--think about how much edge is waiting to be harvested for the men that can eliminate these human psychological imperfections entirely. And yet this aspect gets so little attention, relatively speaking.

Now, I will say that I think cash won't be alive in 15 years, at least not as a viable sole source of income--bots, bumhunting culture, rake hell (combined with edges diminishing as people improve) will all contribute to its death. But the insanely high variance of MTTs will ensure that they survive as a game format--almost indefinitely, I think.

Edit: I want to clarify--I don't think you can crush the game in 2019 without hard, hard work. I think you also need a high degree of natural intelligence--specifically, logical reasoning (if crushing high school level math is unimaginable for someone, I think their prospects here are similarly dim--not that this math is necessary, simply that it requires a similar skill set in a sense). And, finally, the ability to perform/execute under pressure is paramount.

Do you have any threads documenting your progress? Do you play with rigid rules and goals? How quickly have you progressed through the stakes?

He said: "online poker is dying at 5/10 and up, anything below is still quite healthy"

Quite healthy? lol
Online poker above 5/10 is almost dead, not dying. Games below are dying when people are happy when they could get 1 fish on a 6 max table at nl50. Anyone who doesnt want to lie to themselves/others see this.

its amazing how many poker are dead threads are in this forum and still walls of text are being produced..

You either haven’t read the thread or haven’t understood the subject

Online cash games are dying. Nowadays, there's no point in starting as a beginner in them. Sure they're beatable, but you're so behind the curve already that you're facing insane odds to ever make any kind of real money at the game and they're getting tougher every single day.

MTTs? lol donkaments. Always people looking to get a big prize quickly so those will always have tons of fish.

Regular daily MTT's have lower guarantees than before and a couple of people I know who play in one stable also says that historically the ROI's have never been lower in lowstakes MTT's, for those who are always comparing sharkscopes and the like.

Poker series and High Stakes MTT's are indeed thriving, because poker companies and poker media are throwing all their attention and marketing dollars through that neglecting the rest.

This doesn't mean in any way that poker is dead, either cash games or MTT's, it just means that you'll earn less than before. It depends how much you love playing the game vs other activities and your financial expectations.

plz note that with few exceptions even good NVG thread have a half life and inevitably deteriorate into a cesspool of trolls, idiots, insults and off topic gibberish.

Yes there have been many threads with a similar theme to yours. Your perspective was a new one. Quick questiion

Do you truly believe the player community has the capability to come together in coordinated way to help bring new players into the game?


Even if this capability exists (I'd say it doesnt) but if it did, do you think they would come together in a coordinate plan. Have you ever tried to herd cats?

Perfect response to the thread imo. Thanks

If just one PID preacher happens to agree with me and stops preaching, then the world will be a better place

ha... fair enough.

under-promise, over-deliver.

The poker dream of spinning 50 bucks into 5 million in a couple years is dead ( minus running hot as the sun in mtts outside your roll.)

U.s. players can’t even play starts anymore and half the population thinks poker is illegal instead of everyone in America playing and watching it on tv.

The dream of grinding 30-40 hours a week in a card room, for 100ishk a year is still alive for Americans willing to relocate to an area where it is possible in the country.

The dream of making 20-40k a year playing low stakes live is alive for a lot of the smart individuals pretty much anywhere who could have made mass amounts in their underwear many years ago pre Black Friday.

The guys who want to never study and play 10 hours a week aren’t going to become superstars. The days of sitting around waiting for premiums and making a full buy in or more every time you picked them up and connected ( 80% of the time or so) are over. You can’t just wait around online for ak at a 2-4 table and pile it in on k 5 9 against kJ or k8 for 200bbs every time.

But if you want to study 20+ hours a week, and deal with the live poker environment you can still be a six figure earner. Not sure that is the poker dream though.

Even if there are poker niches where money is made easily no sane player will tell you about his/her cashcows anymore. On the hand I also thought that about pokerknowledge but ads and recruitments for pokerschools are still on everywhere.

Yes poker is DEAD and NO MONEY AT POKER, GO TRY SOMETHING ELSE GUYS, NOTHING TO SEE HERE. ;D

Its just shows how big of a fish you are.
One person's success / insane hotruns don't tell a single thing about the state of online poker.

Furthermore we can't now with the current decision of partypoker whether it's just a marketing scam and they actually played in 1-2$

Your points don’t map OP. “Poker is dead” actually stops potential grinders developing. Masses of wannabes/low stakes nits to recreationals ratio is the current problem with poker. Mostly online ....but sometimes at live tables too

Poker needs more recreationals/whales who are playing for fun/the gamble. They are not remotely affected by PiD narrative. Poker is dead? Can’t be ....look I found a place to play

Whales do not want to be pros, they do not want to play pros, they want it play other whales so their huge random bluffs have a chance of getting through

Pokers huge problem is this whale is not getting to play other whales. Instead they are swarmed by sharks and destroyed by their superior knowledge live, superior knowledge and cheating/software online. Whales are mostly not stupid so they go back to their other gambling options

Most wannabe/nits will fail, certainly in an opportunity cost type metric. So PiD is also useful as it prevents some young people of making the terrible mistake of trying to make a career out of it. People like u. This thread is not useful, but if it was ...may as well insert a rod in your own back

glgl

dude whales have been getting destroyed by better poker players since the beginning of poker, even in games where they get to sit with another whale they still get smashed by the rest of the players, and rightfully so, this game requires a certain amount of skill after all