I was with you 100% until this. If you have no coverage at all, don't you pay a penalty to the Federal gov't? Isn't that penalty more expensive than the cheapest available health plan?

Yes and no...under the current Administration, it is FAR easier to avoid the penalty tax (call it what it really is/was) since they basically removed the requirement to check the box.

Beyond that, it was essentially a roll of the dice since, unless there was an audit, there really was no follow-up to figure out who elected not to pay for the overpriced crap foisted upon the American public. For someone who is in generally good health, it is cheaper right now in many parts of the country to simply self-insure.

The flip-side is that one needs to have the funds to be able TO self-insure should some manner of health event arise. A basic visit to the doctor would generally be under $200, with some of the quack-in-a-box locations being far less. Medications can be had for discounted prices with GoodRX and similar programs. I learned after my accident a few years ago that even things like MRI's can be substantially less when being paid out of pocket (the one on my back was $250 on a cash price).

Damn, as usual I'm too much of a goodie two-shoes. I only bought insurance because of the threat of a penalty. I thought they'd catch it automatically; I didn't realize they'd only catch it if they happened to audit you for other reasons. So here I am paying for coverage I don't want and that I'll never use.

It's way ****ing harder now. At least that's what I've been told.

My roommate introduced me to poker a couple years ago (I was 21, he was 25ish) and we were grinding 10-25nl in 2016-17. He's a pretty decent player, crushes live, does decent online until he tilts, but he ended up not moving beyond 25nl (not sure if he still plays). Point is, there's still plenty of us young guys trying. Most of us don't get past the micros because the games are not as beatable as they used to be (partially because the micros are full of guys "working on their game")

Even if you can put up 7bb/100 at a micro stake (doable, but tough w/o rakeback) it will take you 3 times longer to move up in stakes as it took guys in 2004 who were crushing for 20+ bb/100. Unless you have outside income or shot take really aggressively, it could take years to grind out of the micros. (luckily I had some extra income when I started, which allowed me to shot take aggressively)

All that being said, I played my first hand of online poker in 2016, and now I play 200/500nl for a living. It's still very possible to rise through the stakes, but it takes a lot of dedication and a certain type of person (imo)


edit: I also think that those of us who never played from 2004-08 are at somewhat of an advantage, because we came up in really tough games

In 2009-10, 600NL regs had 30-60K months. Skill edge was bigger and there was an endless pool of games. When you know you can drop down to 600NL and make 50K, it's not as risky to take shots.

But also:

- Most of these nosebleed stars got their money from a few whales and Full Tilt Pros blowing their monthly checks. Bumhunting 101. Tables would insta fill when one of the whales would show up. Durrr/Galfond/Dang brothers didn't built their rolls playing other regs. They build it playing whales like Laliberte.

- Most poker TV shows were never on TV because they were popular. They were there as infomercials. TV stations knew they could sell all the advertising spots for these shows at very good prices that Party/UB/FT/PS were willing to pay.

- The big money was always in selling shovels and not in digging for gold. Hellmuth has only 22 million in tournament winnings for playing 30 years+ and this is enough to make him one of the biggest winners in Poker. That's not even 1M/year. How much do you think he made in sponsorship/products/promotion? Another example: Ivey's training site was estimated to make 10-25M/year.


The national trend follows my personal experiences. My friends and I used to have a very popular very low stakes social home game. 20-30 people would show up. Over the years, some people got serious and other people didn't. It became pretty clear that some people are losing every time they come. It's not fun to lose virtually every time. After years of playing, we were eventually down to 4 regs at which point the game died.

This year, I had 2 friends who started to get excited about live poker and gave it a shot. They read books and digested a lot of Doug Polk material. I shadowed them at the tables and there's just so many leaks to plug it's going to be a long time before they become winning players. Even at a measly live 1/2NL, people are not that horrible. Just to become an average loser in the game takes quite a bit of game refinement and coaching.

10 years ago you could make 400k+/year somewhat easily even if you didn't play the highest games. Nowadays only a couple of online players are making that kind of money on a consistent basis. It's just not worth it for "gifted" 18-21 year olds to grind for years to MAYBE make 200k/year. If you're smart enough to make it to high stakes (and not lazy) you could most likely be making more money elsewhere working a less stressful, more secure and (arguably) more fulfilliing job.

I ended up with over a 5k penalty for not having coverage when I could've had coverage for 30/month.

$30/month does not even get a whiff of the crappy policies available in my State. With the limited options, anything decent was going to be closer to $7K/year (or more). And that was still saddled with a deductible north of $5K.

I think another aspect that is not discussed enough is what do you do once you embarked on the career of poker pro but eventually become bored/want to do something else or the games became too hard.
Let's say you are around 30, presumably no degree and not this much savings to be stalling for too long, what do you do really ?
You either get back to college as a misfit or start an entry-level job. And good luck keeping the motivation while doing this without the money and instant gratification you experienced before.
There is no long term in poker, nobody (apart from Doyle) is playing this for life.

It is harder to raise up to the levels where there is still fish? Whatever, there are still players at medium (100+) to high limits who make up to and over 30k per month. I wouldn't mind getting a piece of that. I am aware of the grind problem.

I learn from players who are better than me and I don't think you know up to any one of those players. Maybe there is something wrong with the question itself.

I think this sort of sums it up best, even in this world of kids continuing to live at home longer and longer. At some point in time, the real world beckons. Poker player tends not to play well on a resume when in a pile of other resumes with applicants who have multiple degrees and real-world experiences to offer an employer.

For all the grief millennials get in the media, they do seem to at least grasp that, at some point, they really will have to quit sucking at the parental fiscal teet. If there is ANY good to have come out of the 2008 fiscal woes, it is that perhaps the kids saw a real need to prepare for the future...

The game has mostly been solved.

The break-even "recs" of today have the same skill set as the "pros" of the heyday, throwing around poker lingos like range-merging, iso, 3-betting light, etc. liberally at the table.

Players being less exploitable = winrates take a huge dive.

Winrates taking a huge dive = more difficult and less motivating for new hotshots to grind their way up to high stakes

The average player is much better than ten years ago, so the new players have a very large hill to climb now. They get beat up when they start playing and drift away from the game.

This has come full circle and i finally realize that the online poker industry will run itself into the dirt and players will follow it to the bitter end.

There will always be some guy at the "top" thinking it won't ever end that will coach and make vids, there will always be some sort of grinder that thinks with only xxx more hours of study and xxxx more hours of play they too will make it to the top. And there will always be some young guy who will see wow $xx/hr playing a video game?! Let's drop out of college!

It all ends the same. A couple guys at the bottom break into the grinders, the rest quit/ spin their wheels. A couple of the grinders make it to the "top" while the rest continue to spin their wheels or quit. And some guys at the top "retire" for ambiguous reasons.

In a way it's brilliant. It's a ponzi filled with addicts.

It's sort of like a race to the bottom when you think about it. Average stakes are decreasing, players are improving, people are willing to work harder for less money. It doesn't help either when you have countries with vastly different costs of living playing in the same player pool.

Very good post. Lots of people treat 2004-2008 as the norm, when it was a beautiful aberration caused by lots of factors that ain’t ever happening again.

To elaborate on my point even more...

These Asian high stakes games have become so exclusive that a young player who develops a reputation for being a crusher is often excluded from these games due to his accomplishments in the game. It's kinda hard to rise up to the very top echelon of the game when your skill level excludes you from even playing in the game.

That's another problem poker now faces compared to other games people play for money. The landscape has changed to where you have to accomplish a lot more to get noticed. The bar has been raised significantly. Winning 7 figs over a year, or two on Stars doesn't really get you noticed anymore. If it does get you noticed it excludes you from ultra-high stakes games against whales.

That's not exactly the Moneymaker "anybody can do this" dream that existed in 2005. The Guy Lalibertes of the world are now playing against each other and telling the successful pros "you're not allowed." Rising up through the stakes and getting to the very top isn't even possible anymore under those circumstances.

The billionaires are a bunch of p"""""", basically. This pretty much sums up the modern landscape.

Just like all pyramid/ponzi schemes, the window of opportunity is only open for a limited duration of time. Online poker was the perfect ponzi scheme for that period of time.

Should have kept a low profile =Þ.

Earning $200k in the real world is no walk in the park and takes years to achieve for most. I'd say earning $200k as a poker player would be way less stress then in the real world.

200k in the poker world equates to roughy 120k working for "the man"

Anyone who lives in a big city / urban area with a established, valued career is making at least that much. look at LA, SD, Silicon Valley, SF, SEA, NYC etc

No, the Guy Lalibertes are sick of being cheated by low life pros who feel they are entitled to fish money. Did the site Guy got cheated on online ever reimburse Guy for being ghosted?

Online poker and poker in general has basically been exposed with all the bots and shady crap that has went on since and including black friday. So fun players and whales like Guy don’t remember the good times they had with great players, they have a lasting image of trying to be scammed and in Guy’s case being scammed and would truly rather be amongst themselves with no worries of this. Its hard to wave people over to you with your pants pulled down. Pros in here have to remember you are not entitled to any new players money. What everyone is entitled too is an even playing field and fair game and that does not happen anymore. People will always cheat or try, i think most would agree but there hs to be far better policing of things like it was or seemed to be before. Todays online game is like baseball in the steroid era. If you’re not juicing whats the point of playing

Taking care of yourself isn’t white magic either, you can’t just stop any potential problems you might have by doing this.

My sister is a vegan who used to be able to run a 5k in her sleep. She took great care of herself. Despite this, her health began to deteriorate a few years ago due to a previously undiagnosed heart condition.

Hopefully you’re one of the lucky ones.

This of course is awesomely naive. Please list all the ailments and injuries that "common" insurance cover. Your list is too short if making a rational decision to carry or not to carry insurance.

My healthy 22 year old son had over $56K in medical bills last year.

do the opposite, what ailments and injuries do i need insurance for? hospitals are legally required to stabilize all patients so anything life threatening is taken care of.

maybe your son isn't as healthy as you think. maybe if he wasn't insured he would be more careful not to get in an accident.

whats his blood pressure? mine is 108/62 and im 31 years old. i figure most people are sick in comparison to me. the human body has been made weak by civilized society.

if your blood pressure was 108/62 with a resting heart rate of 65 would you be overly concerned with getting health care? im the picture of perfect health, any rate i would get on health insurance would be a HUGE ripoff.