Delusional? Not at all. Fresh is making some great points. I don't see the need to repeat what he says. If you wanted to have a 1 on 1 discussion pm is always open

Maybe you weren't around in 2011? Tons of guys who were crushing 200nl+ online simply moved after bf. Yes some stayed because they had families and others quit. But by and far most of the online "pros" that stayed were broke 50nl and 100nl grinders playing live poker for 10-20x their normal games with no roll. **** even the good pros that stayed were still better off grinding us facing sites back then.

It's much different this time around. Considering the pros these days (that are way better AND are rolled) only have two choices. Play live or quit.

Also- you don't need a bunch of winners in the games to make live not worth it. All they need to do is lose a lot less. Honestly, pretty sure any pro could teach a crash course under 15-20 hours that would turn a fish into a small loser. Live poker isn't rocket science (also a big reason why the games are much worse than what they were 5 years ago).

DC is right. Pros have to go where the money is, and it's mixed games

Reading comprehension must be really hard for you.

Top percentile score on the GMAT Verbal. Top percentile IQ. Retired before the age of 40. I'm good, thanks.

Yet you somehow think I ever told anyone to quit poker, interesting.

I'm not disagreeing with you either, obviously there is a lot more small to mid stakes NL games, so you get better flexibility in where you live and more game selection. I'm just saying there is a significant other universe outside of NL that makes it possible, if not easy, to make a living virtually anywhere. For example, I'm pretty sure that every western state other than Utah has a legal place to play poker with big enough stakes to make a living.

And I'm not exactly sure of what current day NL win rates are, but my memory says 1-2 use to be something like $15-$20 hour, 2-3 $20-$25 hour, 3-5 would be $30-$40 hour, and 5-10 maybe $50-$70 hour. So unless you live somewhere where good 5-10 games run every day so you can get in mass hours in them, NL income level potential is capped pretty severely. And what places have regular 10-20 or 25-50 games where your hourly can be similar to bigger limit games?

And as far as game selection goes, 6-12, 8-16 and 10-20 limit games probably have the same potential hourly rate as 1-2 & 2-3 NL, and there are many of those as well (4-8 and lower probably unbeatable due to rake).

If you just don't want to work a job for a living and can beat live 3-5, that's okay. I just think that if you want to make a career out of it you should devote yourself to ensuring you are decent, if not expert, at multiple games so you can play the best possible games at all times.

Where I play the best NL players also play the 20, 40 and 75 limit games when they think they are juicy. If you want to get anywhere near a 6 figure income I think you need to. It gives them even greater game selection.

For example where I play some amazing capped ($500 max bet) NL Omaha games sprang up last year, from 5-5 all the way up to 50/75 (essentially every bet/raise was $500 in that game). The 5-10 NL game essentially disappeared because of this, so if you were a 5-10 reg who couldn't play capped NLO, you weren't just missing out on super juicy Omaha games, you were being forced to play lower stakes 3-5 games which were mediocre at the time (cause their biggest fishes were shot-taking in the capped NLO) had to be awful for your win rate.

Oh, I was around. The question in my mind is whether you were around. I'm not sure grinding 10NL and 25NL constitutes being around but I don't know your situation.

I obviously didn't know every player that was making a living playing online poker and it's not like I had a tool to measure how many online players stayed in poker and how many left. I am just going by what I witnessed and most of the people I knew that were in poker are now out. Hell, I knew the guy that set the VPP record on stars. He's out. I wouldn't feel bad for him in the slightest though. The ones that you should feel bad for are the ones that decided to stick it out in a dying industry.

I suggest you re read the comments itt or take a break. Where did I ever say the pros from 2011 are still playing? Tell me where?

I said they moved out of the country to continue playing / making boat loads of money when bf hit- a big reason why the live games didn't see any change during that time- and many of the players that stayed behind to be live lol pros were the broke 50nl 100nl rb grinders.

I never said online pros from 2011 are still playing in 2016.

Edit: also don't get the lol brags about test scores that nobody gives a **** about on this site. It doesn't change the fact that smart people don't always understand and/or read things correctly.

you don't think online games are that hard these days? Please post a graph of 200k+ hands at small-mid with a wr equal to big winners 5+ years ago. You are the delusional one.

Again southern washington has La Center, it doesn't spread NL, but it's limit games are excellent and a decent player can easily make a living there. Around seattle there are multiple poker rooms, I'm not familiar with them because I've never played, but Muckleshoot is one.

So within Washington, there are full time poker possibilities within driving distance of 90% of the population. And La Center is 30 minutes from Portland Oregon, so about 90% of Oregon's population has that or Spirit Mountain as options.

There are casinos everywhere nowadays except for Utah. Most have poker rooms. Many of those run at least a few stakes you can make a living at.

And this is ignoring underground games.

What a coincidence. I retired before the age of 40 too. A little over a decade later I'm back at work. It's tough to make a good living at poker.

You took a decade off and just returned to poker or you took a decade off to play poker and have just re-entered the workforce? I considered poker work. I no longer play poker for a living.

Entire post was good, but this I feel is very important for people to read and let sink in.

The second.

I hope that works out for you. It was probably the right choice given the current state of poker.

How do you even get to this statement? There are quite a few making over that amount, post your sources and names of those who said please.

I'm not sure you understand what pyramid scheme means.

people saying poker is a pyramid scheme or ponzi scheme don't know what they're talking about

It pretty much is a ponzi scheme which breaks teh moment new money stops coming in

new money will never stop coming in.. its a matter of whether its beatable or not. either rake will be too high or too many smart players. there will always be the $$$

Except poker pros are parasites, tax dodgers and welfare cheats who provide nothing to society, so its not as simple as saying "live and let live"

The rest of your post is just as bad, as well as those who are going on about "working for a corporation 60 hours a week until you are 60" type scaremongering rubbish. That's NOT how business works at all. I own my own business now, but Ive worked for 6-7 companies, with 60-300 employees making $80-140k ......and I very rarely did I have to pull a 55 hours week (even then only mostly because at one point I worked in events)

Not to mention the tonnes of times I got paid to travel/went on fun boozy conferences/played golf on a Friday/did **** all all week cos I wasn't in the zone or whatever. I did my job.. I created RELATIONSHIPS with clients and suppliers and therefore I made my company money and was highly valued

Now I do my own thing/work from home so I can watch my daughter grow up, all that stuff about limited opportunities is just bull****. Theres this thing u guys should know about, its called the internet. Theres another thing you may have heard, of called social media, that's layered on top of the internet. Theres never been more opportunity to talk to as many people ever

Most of you justifying your crappy poker existence are just scared little boys whose dedication to poker has severely stunted your personal growth and social skills. Yet still you cling on for dear life finding more scummy ways to fleece whats left of the fish pool. Then some talk of the "goldmine" of playing live like 40 hours a week in a casino is such a wonderful thing.

It should be fun watching you smug little nerds from the last 2-3 years who RUINED online poker get your comeuppance, but its not. Its just sad, pathetic and somewhat perplexing. I guess poker is super addictive and people are delusional losers

here you go. all you need to do is substitute "deposit" for "investment" and you have online poker. Once the base of the pyramid is no longer strong enough to support the upper structure, ie when there are no longer any more "investors" to recruit, which is what we are seeing now, the entire thing WILL fall apart.

would you say this is true or not? if anything, the 90% number is probably LOW for online poker. I have seen the population winrate statistics posted on 2p2 ie the statistics that poker stars doesnt want you to see.

I can't compete with like the BIG winners from 5+ years ago because they were playing Guy at 50/100 and **** but here's my last 200k hands (in America btw).

This is a winrate of 8.14 bb/100, which I think is competitive with the good players from back then but not the crushers

And I'm not even that good so I mean it's not that hard

Why would anyone start taking poker seriously in (insert year)?

Pretty sure people have asking this for the last 5+ years.

..........and people haven't stopped starting taking it seriously in all that time.

The question is a bit too broad anyway.

The simple answer is: "It depends".

Would be nice to see a date on that graph (like "After April 2011") instead of "Last 200k hands" tbh.

Okay, I'm a pretty low volume player so 200k hands is a little bit more than a year and a half I guess. I just did last 200k hands because the guy asked to see 200k hands and I wanted to show the most recent ones because people are saying games are bad RIGHT NOW and that's all I wanted to say is they aren't



This was playing 50 hours a month on average apparently (although that doesn't take into account some nonzero amount of hours where I had tables up and was watching netflix or something waiting for games to be good, so let's say really 70 hours a month or something at computer for the purpose of poker). The average was also like 70 hours for real for just last year but this year I took like 3 months off at the beginning of the year so that dragged the average down a lot if you include this year. I'm hoping to make it up with a lot more hours to finish the year.

lol

eat a snickers

Stefan you've posted that graph before. It's impressive. It really is. But it's also misleading.

If I had to guess, I'd say a bunch of pros are stuck grinding right around 200nl. But probably bumhunting anything from 100-1k with again the majority of their volume being 200nl.

You are averaging over a $1 per hand. And putting in yearly volume a low stakes grinder would clear in matter of a few months (and they're making far less than you are).

It's also weird how you say you play on American sites as if that is a disadvantage? You have access to play on bovada which arguably has the softest games on the internet (because it's closed off from the rest of the world)

Again, your graph is really impressive. But to say it's normal or even easy to do is false. I think what we can agree on is that bumhunting still works even in 2016