Time to get a new job.

I used to have faith that RIO specifically would only hire really good "pro's" and that they had been vetted properly. I recently cancelled my elite membership and downgraded it to basic because this is not the case.

Run it once has a "pro" making videos for their site for who plays 100-200 zoom and recently started taking shots at 500 zoom. He has a blog on there that he updates regularly.

He's a 2bb winner at 100 zoom over almost 400k hands and a 2bb winner at 200 zoom over 170k hands based on his own graphs that he has posted on his blog at RIO. Not taking anything away from him or trying to insult him as he is "beating" the games, however marginally. But I really don't believe that a 2bb/100 winner is good enough to be a "pro" making videos for a coaching site.

Have we reached the point that we are now considering 2bb/100 winners good enough to be pros for which we pay for their coaching videos? The difference from a 2bb winner to a breakeven reg could be something as simple as their mental game and have nothing to do with their technical skills or it could even be variance over a 500k sample size

I don't think we have reached that point yet and became rather disgusted upon realizing that RIO has adopted that philosophy of other sites of hiring marginal winners in order to churn out more coaches. I guess I expected more from Galfond

It would be wise just to ignore this ****ing clown.
Any intelligent professional player should be working on an exit strategy.

lol, what exactly have you construed my post to say to make you so angry?

I was just wondering where he got the idea that so many poker coaches were losers. It's not something that seems correct to me, and until they replied to my question, I hadn't seen any data at all which supported what they were saying.

Sorry for doing research before I believe the things I read on the internet. It's pretty cool though, you should try it.

Do not patronize me simple jack.

Browse the coaching forum,
Coaching and training sites accelerated the learning curve,
The biggest impact on the games has been the segregation and taxing of the player pools.When you have a player in a Eastern European who can have a decent standard of living on €400-500 pm this is not even half a monthly mortgage/rent payment in Western Europe.

Player pools are contracting yearly on all sites and rake is going up.
There will never be another boom until all the player pools are connected again and this will never happen for years and years due to the regulation that is now already in place.

Isn't segregation good then if it cuts fish in Italy off from grinders in Eastern Europe?

Which raises the question of why someone would live in the UK then? This may sound unpatriotic but I gave up a job programming computers in financial markets and took one teaching English - initially a 10 to 1 pay cut - in order to get off that cold, dark, dangerous island, a decision I don't regret. Why would someone still live there if they were able to earn the same money someone warmer and safer and with a much lower cost of living?

I think you miss the point about segregation this is not necessary for poker.
Your sentence is ambiguous.

Maybe I did not make my point clear in regards economically agree but some have already been posted ITT.

Your personal life choices mean nothing.Why can any other business trade its goods/services with the rest of the world freely using the Internet and other means yet if you are a poker business this is not possible.I should be able to play in the Antarctic or the Bahamas if i so wish against a global playing pool.

One could argue its easier to trade weapons globally then play poker.

Are you saying the UK is less safe than Italy and Eastern Europe??

one of these threads again......there is a lot of money in poker, a lot!

there are events everyday. lucky chewy just shipped 2 mill in a tourney and the same day a wpt 5 diamond champ was crowned who took home 1.4 mil, dont know who won that one. All the while i saw some high roller event in europe on the same day where someone took home like 600k. All the while there were hundreds of thousands of cash tables, sngs, and mtts running elsewhere, live and online.

the game has gotten harder due to players skills developing and some legislation that has made things tougher. there is always going to be a lot of money to be made playing, it is up to you decide how much of it you want to take. Put in the work, u have to love the grind, you have to love the process, you will then make money. naturally, it will be hard to over come the best of the best, some ppl are born to be better than others, but hard work always beats natural talent when natural talent fails to work hard.

I rather just run good ..

I mean it doesn't make sense to say that two of the big problems are

1) Segregation.

2) E. Europeans being able to play in dot com player pools i.e. failure to segregate.

Sorry, went off topic a bit there.

Yes. Is that idea surprising to you?

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...%9312_YB14.png

Although it depends what you are thinking about when you hear the word "safe". Road traffic accidents are pretty low in the UK for example.

A poker room can be seen as an economic circuit. Deposits bring new money to the system. Money leaves the system through cashouts and rake (to be more specific: effective rake after all rakeback etc.).

This is a kind of flux equilibrium, where in the long run:

Deposits = Cashouts + Rake

A Professional player feeds of weaker players who deposit

I. Every Dollar that a poker room earns in rake or a player cashes out was deposited by some player.

II. If (Deposits < Cashouts + Rake), the poker room will shrink and tables will become tougher. contracting player pools and segregation!

III. If (Deposits > Cashouts + Rake), the poker room grows and the tables will become softer. Good players will win more.


The US was over half of the online poker market. They have the most disposable income and strongest interest in the game. The world poker ecology looks a lot different with the US involved than without one would agree yes as a professional player given the above.

The point is online poker as a living is far more attractive to player in less economically developed country's due to the contracting player pools were less money is in play due to the above.Eastern Europeans players are not a big problem in the overall picture.

Segregation and rake are the biggest problems without question

credit to Xantos

I wouldn't waste your time lektor. Note the fact that he posted a huge argumentative rant in reply to something I said, yet, nothing in his rant had anything to do with what I had said. He clearly just wants to spew the nonsense that's clanging around in his skull

@rimmerodds regulation is the problem, not the solution.

Actually, yes, 2bb/100 at midstakes zoom is a really good. And no, we did not "reach that point", as zoom is relativly new game format, one with low edges. However, due to it being a low edge format, 170k hands does not seem to be enough of a sample size to decide whether or not someone is skilled enough to be a coach (if he is in fact 2bb/100 winner there, he's for sure good enough).

I generally agree with your concerns. I think some players are too quick to defend the industry and just accept rake for whatever it is. I think all poker sites should be more in tune with the rake structure for the games they offer. IMO it's a big red flag to offer a poker game that is basically not beatable by ALL players because of the rake. If live games had such a scenario, players would (and rightfully so) complain. Just because it's not a problem live doesn't mean it shouldn't be a concern online.

However, some players can be too unrealistic about what can actually be done and are reluctant to accept that the games are generally tougher than they were in 2009 which were tougher games than 2005 which were tougher games than 2001 and so on.

When I worked my way up the NLHE ranks as a player before Black Friday, I started at $2NL full ring and went through every level winning 30 buy-ins before I played the next level up: $2NL, $5NL, $10NL, $25NL, $50NL, $100NL, $200NL ... I was pretty proud of myself and looking forward to moving to midstakes and then boom Black Friday happened. I took a long break after that but decided, "what the heck", I missed poker too much. I'll try again on a new site. I figured if I can get to just $25NL, maybe I could make it worth my while. I doubted the midstakes players from preBlackFriday were slumming it at $10NL or ever would.

So, I moved to a US serving site and started at the lowest NLHE full ring stake again. This time it was $4NL and then $10NL, then $25NL, then $50NL, and $100NL, and I was amazed I'm playing $200NL post Black Friday. The site I'm on doesn't even offer full ring games above $200NL, so if I can manage to win $200NL, I'll have to see what to do next to maximize earnings.

To be honest, I don't consider the play that much more difficult than it used to be. HOWEVER, I DO believe the lower microstakes games ARE much more difficult and the rake WAS a huge challenge. It took me a lot longer to move up from $10NL to $25NL than I anticipated both because the players were a lot better than they should have been AND the rake was a lot worse than it should have been. I'd win an all-in preflop and it was like "Hey, where's all my $ I just won?" and when you lose, obviously you lose and it's always gone.

So, I think the biggest challenge in today's landscape for players is moving up the smaller stakes and I can't even imagine what it's like if you're trying to learn the game from scratch. That would be a frustrating, expensive lesson. There USED to be a good entry points for new players since the games were so bad and easy but not so much now.

But, I think most all forms of poker will have fish and there's not enough training sites, books, or videos to help players who ask for deck changes or hate aces because they always get cracked or their favorite hand is J3 suited because one time they won a big pot with it or whatever silly thing that fish believe. There comes a point you can only lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Poker, in the right form (reasonable rake, no anonymous players, no zoom/rush, 100bb's or more in everyone's stack), is too complicated of a game for the better players not to be winning. Hopefully it'll always stay that way. I think that's the cornerstone of why most professionals and amateurs play. Amateur poker players are like most Republicans I know: "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"

As far as bitcoins, I'm not familiar with it enough to know if it's the answer, but I'm generally rooting for it as I think anything that will allow players to more easily deposit/withdrawal is a good thing for poker.

Many casinos offer 1-5 stud with no ante, or 2-4 LHE with $4+ rake. Most people consider these games unbeatable. I have never heard anybody cry about it.

If micro stakes poker was offered live, it would definitely be unbeatable. Micro stakes can be offered online because it still makes money for the site. It's a training ground for new/recreational players. Grinders/winning players not needed.

I think part of the problem is players who mass multitable microstakes for many hours a day in an attempt to earn a living at it. These players slow down games and dilute the fish pool who are trying to play what are supposed to be easier games. I don't agree with ringfencing players by winrate, or table restricting winning players - all players should be equal under the rules of the site. But I could see the value of restricting all players to a maximum of four to six tables.

The end maybe coming for all you bitcoin lovers

http://www.pokerupdate.com/news/busi...value-tumbles/

Surely all of the arguments about online rake being ok, because live rake is higher and still beatable, do not hold up.

This is because the effective rake in live games is actually very small still, even though it may be expensive in absolute dollar terms.

The rake cap is higher in live games than online, but I would be interested to know what the effective rake is for live $200NL, $500NL and $1,000NL in bb/100 because I bet it would be lower than the bb/100 of rake at the upper micro-stakes, (which these live games play like difficulty-wise, since the fish can't play any lower when playing live)..

You're right. If online games played big pots all the time like live games do so the rake hit the cap more often it would be more comparable. That's the problem with online...the large majority of pots are tiny. I can't even think of a live game I ever played in where the BB got a walk.

At least in AC and vegas in the morning-afternoon, the blinds will chop I would say at least once every two hours or so.

got in poker the worst time...around 2010 still somewhat stable but about to take a nose dive for the worst and seems government is putting a boot on it's neck and no plans of letting up.

Must have been nice if you were lucky to start playing around 2004...seems to be my luck to miss the boat.

How do you define "effective rake?" Live rake is so much higher than online rake, so what are we talking about here? Are you trying to create a new metric by combining rake with opponent skill, or something similar?

Read all the paragraphs of my post that you quoted, and you will see what effective rake means, and indeed its metric.