I didn't read the thread, this may have been mentioned, but the boom in American poker now is in live poker. Casinos are popping up all over the country and their poker rooms are filled.

Live 2/5 and 1/2 games have the types of players and plays that you hear about from the "golden age" of poker. They limp call, check call everything

I live in MD and used to have to drive to Atlantic City to play. Now I have 5-6 casinos to pick from that are much shorter drive than that.

I just play casually these days so wouldn't really class myself as decent any more - would probably be a marginal winner at $25nl.

It's a trade off between how much time or money you are willing to invest. If you start at 25nl you may lose $500-$1k or so while you are figuring stuff out but it will be a lot faster than depositing $40 and grinding all the way up from $2nl.

this is not correct.Zoom nl25 is "super soft" even zoom nl100 is not that special imo.

So none of those Sunday winners ever lose money the rest of the year? Pretty sure quite a few of those winners luck boxed their one day win, and lose the rest of the year.

^I would imagine a decent number of people withdraw most of it after a big bink. Not everyone sits down at 25/50 as soon as they hit a 6 figure score.

Maybe so, but does that mean they don't redeposit and lose some of it back? I doubt most people withdraw the 100k and then say "hey, I'm good, I'm done with poker for the rest of the year!". It also doesn't take sitting down at 25/50 to lose a lot of money pretty quickly.

Graph or GTFO

If it's not correct, take 5 random people off the street in your city right now and teach them to beat 25nl in a month. Just because you crush at poker doesn't mean that everyone does. Most people lose, ok?

The bolded is the misguided view of a 2+2er who believes recs dream of one day playing for a living. This cannot be true for the overwhelming majority of recs.

Advertising this would be more of a deterrent than an attractor.

...."hey recs....come at play at our site and get raped by all the pro's playing for a living".

This year yes. How about 5 years from now? Or 5 years ago with whoever was king for a day?

Making hundreds per month extra money is realistic with a poker education. It being the best path for more money, generally not, but if lacking options, it is at least something, and better scores might happen.

Well obviously people are playing to win. I suppose it was inevitable that one day they would stumble upon the unexploitable GTO fold to 3-bet range of QQ-.

Plenty of real jobs suck too. People have compared mechanical multi-tabling to a data-entry job in terms of how much fun it is and what it's like. At least you get a private office and you are allowed to darken the room instead of working in an open-plan office under fluorescent strip lights. Thing is, data-entry is plenty of people's "real job" - some people have even worse jobs where you have to physically do something or even speak to customers.

Earlier ITT the alternative of working as a commercial pilot was raised. Not everyone is cut out for that - for example I often mentally tune-out from things, I don't even drive a car if I can avoid it, though I have a full licence with no penalty points. One career that I think pretty much any poker player could do would be what is called an IFA in the UK - i.e. an Independent Financial Advisor who doesn't work for any particular bank, but steers investment "fish" towards the best deals for their particular circumstances (or towards the deals that get them the best commissions, depending on the ethics of the advisor).

The thing is you can play poker alongside another source of income. Having one 40 hour job sucks generally and that includes poker. I do about 20 hours each of teaching English, running my small language school, translating and playing poker. It sounds like a lot of work but TBH when done on a 20h basis only one of those (translating) feels like actual work, and also only one of those (teaching English) has to cut into time when my kids are awake and not at school (for the record, poker is my lowest hourly out of all of those, it could also be classed as just a profitable hobby).

There is the alternative theory. Which is that for everyone to keep winning, we need new players to just enter on a recreational basis and anyone looking at it as a career to be put off from doing the work necessary because of reading posts like yours.

Sounds like you are making the right decisions given your circumstances then. Like I say above, it's best to do both. Poker & PhD. For money and breadth of life experience. Call it the Vicky Coren strategy - she's not only a poker player, or a TV presenter or the wife of a celebrity, or a journalist - she balances all 4 because even though they are things people aspire too, they actually most suck if they are your whole life.

Casinos are popping up everywhere, yes, but they aren't opening for poker. Poker is a tool to get people in the casino who wouldn't otherwise be there, in order to funnel them to the pits/slots. A casino makes much more per sq/ft with slots as opposed to poker.

I don't know how long you've been playing live, but it certainly is not 'booming', by any means. I've played live over 5 years now, and the games are nittier and drier now than they've ever been. Casinos that used to spread 5/10 daily now spread it on weekends. Casinos that used to have full poker rooms on weekends are now stuck with empty tables. There are more angsty backpack/hoodie/headphone kids than ever, nitting it up playing 'solid tag' and berating any rec player that dares to have some fun and play a little loose.

Poker is getting harder everywhere. I live in the area that's supposedly one of the 'juiciest' in the country (if you listen to this site), and it's not close to what it was when I started. This isn't 2008.

This isn't to say you can't make a living playing poker (live or online), but it's certainly not easy, and no part of poker is 'booming' by any stretch of the imagination.

I got this impression too. I know plenty of online grinders from my area, and we often chat when they drop by for a live MTT. Most of these guys never have any cash at the moment. All are staked and always in make up. Some bink a big score but soon end up back in make-up.

the amount of high staked tracked games has gone down drastically and I'm sure that the number of winners of 6figures+ has gone down from previous years but to think only 30 players made 6figures+ from poker last year online is absolutely ridiculous. The stakes you are tracking for the list you created are probably <.001% of the games being played on stars and there are a lot of traffic on sites other then stars. I think people are severely underestimating the amount of winners who play primarily at stakes lower than 25-50 and how much they win.

And I know more live players in LA alone then 30 that make 6figures plus playing poker. Hell I know people who play recreationally/as a second job that have to make more than 100k from poker.

Gambling addicts use the title of professional poker player to make themselves sound like less of a degenerate.

Pshhhh!

I don't know where you're located, but this is absolutely not true in my area. I live less than an hour from MD Live, which is the 2nd busiest poker room in the country, behind Commerce.

In this area, poker is certainly in a boom period. Poker rooms full and action is great. Last Saturday night at 3 am, 1/2 and 2/5 both had waiting lists.

I feel pretty strongly that any half-intelligent person with discipline and time can easily beat 1/2 or 2/5 in these casinos

And I've been playing both live and online for longer than 5 years

OP you're on to something.

Nobody said they were specifically opening for poker. But that doesn't change the indisputable fact that there are more poker rooms running across the country than there ever have been due to all of these casinos opening primarily for slots.

Well, I've been playing live for 30+ years and I'm telling you that you are out of your mind.

No, poker is not getting harder everywhere. And no, this isn't 2008. Hell, in 2008, you couldn't even buy in for more than $100 in Florida regardless of whether you were playing 1/2 or 5/10. But even that was better than playing down here in the 1990s and up until 2003 when the maximum amount in a pot couldn't exceed $10, lol.

Well, poker is booming in Florida, my friend. I don't know where you live, but if you're looking for juicy games, this is the place to be.

This thread went off on a tangent so to answer the original question of why anyone should start taking poker seriously in 2016, can be for many reasons. Poker is a game that's been around forever and it's been played by millions of people. Some people really enjoy it and want to get better at it and they're entitled to do that. Whether be for personal goals or monetary reasons people want to improve. I"m not sure why everyone is arguing about how many people made +100k in a year or how profitable the game is and how much harder it's gotten, it's irrelevant. If someone has a passion and love for the game and wants to try to beat it who can say that it's a bad idea? Maybe that person doesn't care about making +100k in 2016. Maybe they just want to set a goal to make more than they did in 2015. Maybe they want to move up in stakes. Whatever the reason is, if you love playing poker and want to start taking it seriously in 2016 go ahead.

If someone says the games are too hard now and no money can be made from it that's their opinion. Someone else might take that as a challenge and learn how the game has changed and learn how to profit from it. People are now folding to 3bet's with QQ? Great, now 3/4bet them lighter. Playing nittier can be exploitable. My point is you can't tell someone poker is a dead game and there's no money in it and they are better off getting a "real job". Anyone who has ever been successful in poker has done so through working on their game and that trend in poker will continue forever.

amen

Keep praying, or better yet just learn to beat GTO like the poster above you was suggesting.

someones mad?

i only play deep and if i see a GTOer i 5bet shove him 400bb deep with K3s and then pray which is +EV in case youre an atheist and you didnt adapt by taking gods path already

Gto is unbeatable fyi all

Maybe people not understanding this means NL holdem games will not be dead for a long time?