Those people in the gym are stuck there because they've used up all their newbie gains and muscle gains come ridiculously slowly after 1-2 years in the gym. That's pretty obvious. Of course, you can start cheating your way to a better physique by taking steroids (is that what you're referring to?).

Clearly you're some sort of genius if you can pick up any hobby or activity and reach the top 1% while only casually playing for 6 months. What's your secret? I'd like to see some proof of your methods. You certainly shouldn't be wasting your time on studying if you're really that good at poker.

I just table select some decent small stakes nl/plo games, but don't play all that much. Been playing for a few years. This is what I have always found: no matter how much studying of poker I did, it was virtually impossible to beat tables full of reasonably competent regs. However, I can do no studying at all and fish can easily be beaten. So I take the latter route, because the former route is a complete waste of time.

Really? The pros I know are forced to play certain times because that's when all the games run.

Example 1: you cannot realistically be an MTT pro from Europe and play only during the day, because all the big tournaments run in the evening/night.

Example 2: you cannot be a live pro and play during the day on weekdays. You are forced to play evenings and weekends.


Your schedule is dictated by when the good games run. So you have a lot less freedom than you think.

Lol @ being an MTT pro or live pro. I agree, both of those don't afford much freedom, and the variance/stress involved is way higher. Online cash is what I'm talking about

also, just to add, I started out playing live cash games during the morning/early afternoon. Where I used to live the best 2/5 game started at 7 am and ran until about 2pm. Then another one a few miles away would start up at 4-5pm. Not all live pros have to work Friday/Saturday nights, it depends where you live/who you're going to be playing. If it's a tourist area than yeah, weekends and nights. But in areas with a lot of rich retirees, mornings and weekday afternoons can be amazing, but weekends are completely dead.

All that is to say that you are massively over simplifying things.

It is worth noticing that, often, poker only offers an illusion of freedom. It's true that you don't have to wake up early, commute or appeal to an obnoxious hierarchy.
On the other hand, if you are not a self-motivated individual, poker can lead you to become complacent and do the minimum to get by.
If it's not the case and you have higher goals, then the game will be so draining that you'll barely have any energy left to use your freedom for personal development purposes. You will just use your time to play video games or do some sport, rather than learning new stuff or start a hypothetical project that won't be as immeditaly profitable as poker.
You cannot claim any social benefits so you can't afford to not play for too long, and the more you stop playing, the harder it is to get back to your winning ways as edges are so small and rely on fine-tuning.
You run the risk of being isolated socially since you live to another rythm as your peers.
Finally, while in a random job you can usually do your tasks no matter your psychological state, here you constantly need to be at the best of your capacities or your winrate will drop and the variance will tilt you even more into missplaying.

I do believe it is very important to have a lot of spare time and I still think poker provides you with this more than most other jobs. What I am saying is that if you are not responsible enough, it can lead you to be pretty unbalanced as well and not take advantage of it.

It's a false dichotomy, plenty of small business opportunities that aren't based in some urban center. I'd be shocked if making $30/hr playing poker, you weren't forced to work to 50 hrs a week anyhow.

I think as a learning tool online poker is still massively important but in general, above certain stakes, it doesn't make sense financially to be continually taking shots. In the past, you could aggressively take shots, safe in the knowledge that making the money back wasn't much of an issue by dropping down. Also, the kind of bankroll required was much less to take shots for the same kind of reasons. The money to this generation of players hasn't come nearly as quickly or easy when moving up and won't be recovered nearly as quickly by moving down. So I can see why people get stuck without huge heaters.


Back in the day, I could load up 6-8 tables of 6max 500nl and not give a **** about game selecting. It would have been better for the bottom line but it really wasn't a huge deal. The online games are so tough now at these levels that I think its probably easier to go hunting live games and just play higher to compensate. I know people in the last few years who have found it really hard to make it past playing 200nl online but transitioning the same skill level to the right live games you can crush.

Personally, I was never able to do that as I just find live poker to be one of the grimiest things on earth. It is funny that you always hear people talking about all the great things live poker has going for it over online but it is the complete opposite for myself. I loved online poker so much. Those days when you were loading up 6-8 tables and just battling it out for hours on end with decisions every other minute. The mental stimulation in that kind of environment I found incredibly rewarding and enjoyable. It is like a kind of drug that I've yet to capture doing other things in life.

Live poker at its core is about another set of tools entirely. Tools that you can learn but it isn't the same game as someone who grew up playing poker online. I always get really excited when I haven't played poker in a few months and I decide to play a decent sized tourney or something. I am like a little kid sitting down at the table. An hour in and I generally want to slit my wrists.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say

Who said anything about making $30/hour? I agree, if that's what you're earning playing poker you would be better off pursuing other things...

since clearly the gym example wasn't effective, let me clarify it: i'm referring to the people who have been struggling FOR YEARS to break a 1 plate ohp, 2 plate bench, etc. i'm referring to the people who want to have a nice physique but never gain (or lose) weight. this is 99% of people at the gym. they have the goals, they have access to the information as to how, but they just can't execute it. and i've explained why this is already. it is a parallel constant in everything in life. poker, the gym, everything.

if your standard for 'genius' is 'approaching things efficiently' then yeh i'm a massive genius. after all, i am in grad school anyway, there is no secret. it's approach and mindset. nothing else. what do you want proof of exactly? runit, tiggity, brokenstars, ch@otic, and all the other 2p2 users i mentioned have similar results and have documented their progress. check out their pgcs. pay attention to the dates.

so let's see. you're:

1) playing two completely different types of poker
2) not playing frequently
3) think beating people at your level (a low level) is "virtually impossible"
4) no longer studying

on top of the blatant mindset issues... yeah. this is why you can't even fathom what i'm talking about is actually possible.

if you ever decide to put a modicum of effort into your life, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish. much easier to ***** tho.

anyway, you're one of the most obnoxious people i've ever encountered online, so i'm done responding again. might just block you, not sure. either way, peace.

Yeah I've gotta echo that $30/hr should not be the goal. One of the good things about poker is that it's possible to earn hourlies a lot higher than most real world professions.

People don't want freedom. Most people are just born slaves. The amount of commitment and responsibility required to be free is a prerogative to a very few selected.
The number of people coming in here with random potential earnings in other fields as if that was at all relevant when choosing poker (or any other self employment) over other jobs goes to show just that.
They will never see the value of freedom and would never succeed in poker or other similar paths even if they tried their entire lives.

Plenty of players are working on their game. Just go to the micro forum and you can see that. Plenty of players are approaching things efficiently. Right down to the micros, plenty of players have a decent idea what they're doing.

Like I say, if you're so good (2nl to 200nl in 6 months), why have you just suddenly quit? Doesn't make sense. Sounds like you ran hot/used incorrect br management.

I only answered your questions about stakes and games because you asked them. I couldn't give a **** about rising up the stakes. I came to the conclusion (like many people in this thread and I'm sure many 18-21 years old have) that poker is a waste of time for making any real money. I put in plenty of effort at the beginning, before coming to this conclusion. Now I just bumhunt fish when I feel like it - much easier and less stressful.

Why would I play people of similar skill to me? You're out of your mind! You won't make money like that. You have to play people who are a lot worse than you to overcome the rake.

This is 100% true for 99%+ of people. Just like playing baseball is a waste of time for making any real money for 99%+ of people.

To get better? One of the best ways to improve is playing against tough competition. You may not be, but you come across as lazy. Also, cite specific #'s if you're going to keep blaming the rake. I know that in my experience the rake was a higher % of my winnings at the micros, but it didn't even come close to making the games unbeatable.

Using hourly figures when discussing pro poker players is ridiculous. A poker pro is just a another slave wager who gets to pick his own hours (and pays for it w/ a variable wage and no guarantees hanging over their heads). I want to guess most don't even average 1k hours per year.

People's notions of what a 9-5 look like are kinda crazy too. People who have to wear suits and attend stuffy meetings and such are 1. Doing it wrong and 2. Don't have hard skills. telecommuting is mainstream and very much the way to go these days.

EDIT: I also highly suggest reading some of the more "successful" pgcs that have run their course (hint: they all end the same). And these were from guys who truly were playing in amazing games and having quite amazing short term results.

They are beatable, but they are not the fish-fest that some people claim. You need to be pretty good to beat the micros these days.

Get better for what? To battle regs and achieve a slightly better than break even win rate while taking on huge amounts of variance? Waste of time. Much easier to table select some fishy games instead.

Obviously you should table select.

Did you suffer one or multiple blows to the head resulting in prolonged oxygen deprivation at any point in your life?

Yeah, I would like to know what BR management was used to achieve this. Like how much was deposited and how often?

SpinMeRightRound seems very mad that he can't beat the pokers. Incorrect bankroll management? There is no reason to use good bankroll management at the micros, it's not very hard to put together another roll and it's a rake trap that you need to get out of as soon as possible. At about 50-100NL is the time to start worrying about bankroll management, as it isn't as easy to come up with $1K-$2K to start over. Of course if you're in a 3rd world country things are different, but that's a whole other depressing topic.

Want to beat the micros? Deposit 10-20 buy ins and and move up as soon as you have 10-20 buy ins for the next level. Drop down or redeposit until it sticks, rinse and repeat. The micros might be 10x harder than they were in 2007, but they aren't even close to hard even on a site like WPN that's filled with Russians and Belarussian's playing 10NL for a living.

If you can't beat micros online you have the problem, not the game.

you're so ****ing adorable I can't even stand it

Yeah, but the guy said he ran it up from 5nl to 200nl, with no poker experience playing casually, in 6 months. I find that pretty implausible tbh.

Sure I could deposit $5000 and get to 200nl pretty quickly too, with little poker experience. Staying there would be a whole different story I suspect.

If you're intelligent, work hard, and play on the right site(s) there is nothing at all hard about that. Run good, take smart shots, profit? The issue is that most people aren't nearly as smart as they think they are, don't know how to study or just choose not to, and they don't know the proper way to go about moving up/down in stakes. People would rather come to NVG to ***** about how hard poker is instead of using that time and energy improving their game.

"Whether you think you can or can't, you're right."

this isn't really true for cash game players. there's good games live and online pretty much any hours outside of a small 4-5 hour window depending on if you play live or online. if you play both there's always good games. it's true that should probably not take off both Fri and Sat night, but taking one of em off isn't a big deal imo.

if all you're trying to do is set a schedule of 30-40 hours and your only restriction is you should play at least one weekend night that's a **** ton of freedom lol.

edit: the exception is 5/10+ online and 10/20+ live but at that point you can work only 25-30 hrs a week and make good $ if freedom is a priority

This is all it is. Throwing a tantrum. He started this thread a few minutes after criticizing WCG in his thread about not completing the bankroll challenge and how the games are even too tough for him. Spin, games are still easily beatable. Take some accountability for your not winning at the game. Blaming the games isn't going to help you or anyone else.

i was aggressive early on (<100nl) because my fundamentals were clearly far better than everyone else i was playing with. when you're that much of a winner, 20bi is fine. no point in wasting time, really.

i didn't move up to 200nl until i had over 50bi. think i had 60. way unnecessary. it's not about the brm if you're willing to move down. it's about your skill level relative to the field. keep in mind this is as someone who is playing for fun, not a job.

lol. i'm not some anomaly. check out the people i mentioned earlier who have pgcs documenting very similar (if not better) progress. i'm subbed to them, so here i'll just link a few:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...house-1708024/ -- nathana2, absolute beast. i'm NOTHING compared to this guy. if he sticks w/ poker he's gonna be the next otb/llinus. calling it now.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...-hsnl-1693128/ -- sicko.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...leeds-1708323/ not any real documentation, but i believe him solely due to https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...96&postcount=8 this is my mentality and the mentality of nearly everyone else who has made identical progress

feel free to check the other usernames i posted a page back.

i deposited <$200 btw.

also +1ing FreshThymes posts

Start ups are cheap that’s my point. 2 years to turn a profit? Guess you read that somewhere and happily lapped it up for your excuse bank

Crushing it at poker/just took 3 weeks off and “you don’t have any money” ok. Your rhetoric sure does map

Either sitting in awfully depressing casino waiting for whales to arrive or playing online to put in x volume of hands to reach your profit/rakeback targets is not freedom

Negative ramifications well as You pointed out ...there is a tonne. Let’s start with one.....you don’t have a girlfriend do you. Utter the words “I’m a professional poker player” and you just wiped out ~98% of your options. May as well say drug dealer for the types of girls in the 2%