Poker was my primary source of income from about 2002 to 2012. I played well enough to beat the awful players that flooded the game after the Moneymaker effect, but once things toughened up post-GTO my win-rate took a nosedive and I found more lucrative sources of income. Cut to 10 years later and my financial situation is comfortable/stable enough that I really want to take a shot at playing poker professionally again. I always enjoyed playing and even enjoyed learning about the game, and I'm not afraid to devoting ~10 hours a day to learning/practicing. I know I'd be a fish in any reasonably tough game with my old skill level, so I'm basically looking for advice on how to start effectively (re)learning the game from the ground up: pre-flop ranges, betting/checking/3-betting frequency, etc. Here are some more concrete questions:

1. Best route for learning the fundamentals? Books? Online training (RunItOnce, Upswing, PokerCoaching?)? Free material?

2. Priority of fundamental training? (memorizing pre-flop charts, bet-sizing, etc?)

3. Ideas on the best distribution of time between learning/practicing? I'd like to start building up a database of my hands online in case I decide to get a coach later.

4. What software do I need? I assume HUDs are still a thing, as well as a way for tracking hands/winrate/time/etc., but I've been gone too long to know what people are using.

5. When should I look into working with solvers? I know that's a thing too but also don't have a clue how to use them. Any good books/guides on the basics as well as how to learn from them?

6. When should I look into coaching, or should I at all? I assume it's pretty winrate dependent?

7. How many hands should I aim for before I get a good idea of my winrate?

8. Assuming I start online (I only have one local casino that I might try as well), I'd appreciate advice on stakes. Bankroll isn't much of an issue (assuming 30 buy-ins is still standard) up to 400NL, but I obviously don't want to start at higher stakes where I'll definitely be in the negative. I have no idea what the "distribution of toughness" is now compared to when I played (where I'd crush micro, solid at 100NL, and barely winning at 200NL).

With your old skill set I would advise going to the casino and checking out the live action. With minor amounts of tweaking you should be able to stomp those games pretty hard. I am a long time pro who played online till BF and transitioned to mainly live play and I promise the live games are still highly profitible for a decent hourly.

What's BF? I'm definitely going to check out live play, but there are a lot of quality-of-life reasons for me to vastly prefer online if it's at all doable. I'm not afraid of putting in the work and the learning again; and even if I play live I'd still like to learn modern poker theory just to have a foundation to adjust from and better understand the mistakes players are making so I can know how to exploit.

Black Friday