I'm trying to get a sense of how much experience I'd need to beat a live 1/2 game, or at least be a +EV player.

My background:
Watched a lot of ESPN in the mid2000s and played a lot of terrible poker with friends in high school. Now I work as an actuary (in other words, Bayesian probability is my job) and I feel like I'm seeing the game a lot differently with my math/stat background. I read through Gordon's "Little Green Book" and found a couple of articles online more helpful for playing super TAG at microstakes cash games.

Results so far:
I turned the free WSOP.com $10 into $20 playing very tight over a weekend following Gordon's starting hand recommendations exactly; got looser and lost a little, then won $22 more in a 450 person $100 freeroll (really easy with a couple of early premium hands that built a big stack; googled M and MTT strategy youtube videos- did what they said about changing gears around bubbles and understanding M); lost a lot at .01/.02 going from high $30s to $25 playing big pots with marginal hands. (Wow, awful. Embarrassing. I think I was overconfident from the MTT and trying to bully people the same way. Lesson learned, humbled. Thankfully for cheap.)
Recently turned my roll from $25 to $33 at .01/.02 with very low variance by reading a little online (http://www.pokerlistings.com/how-to-...-strategy-pt-1) to understand when to avoid big pots and fold to reraises (TPTK is not for big pots, who knew). Moral victory: finally back > my "free" $10 and $22 even after paying something like $12 in rake.

My Goal:
My medium-term goal is to get enough experience before playing some $1/$2 live poker in AC for the first time this spring/summer (probably bring $600 I don't care about. Sounds way more fun than putting $400 on the craps table like I probably would've otherwise).
What suggestions do you guys have to give myself the best shot? How does live 1/2 compare to online .01/.02? Is there some measure of success I should reach before expecting to be successful at a live game (or to at least be better off playing poker than craps)?

My plan is to follow proper BRM and grind up to $80 before moving to .02/.04. I'm not opposed to putting my own $ in my account (e.g. no anxiety about busting) but I want to prove to myself that I'm crushing a lower stake before moving up. WSOP.com is kind of a ghost town so there aren't many higher stakes tables (sometimes .02/.04 is the highest stake available). I don't care at all about my online $/hr rate, I just want to make sure I'm learning and getting better.

live 1/2 is easier than 10nl online so if you can beat 10nl you are good.

live is different tho, I def lost some money/ev the first 4-5 times I played due to not paying attention not knowing rules.

Best way to beat live 1/2 is to skip online poker. People play very differently and online poker is unlikely to improve your live game.

Really disagree with this by a factor of a million.

Online poker is fine to prepare for live as long as you're thinking broadly about what tactics will work in what sorts of games. Unless you're paying nano-stakes, online week probably be looser. If you've built a solid game around barreling and trying to be unexploitable, you'll be in for a surprise when your opponents are just chasing draws and calling light because it's fun.

But focus on the theory of what you're doing, not the results, and you should find it applicable.

Live poker is very different, you can easily find games with 5way limpers every pot, which is hard to see even at 2NL. And a lot more tells live than online. I'm not saying online play will not improve live play at all, but since his goal is to beat live I'd advise him to invest his time in the most effective way - just play live.

Phone post and logic fail. I meant to say LIVE will generally be looser.

Point being, you'd best have a theoretical understanding of why you play one way in loose games, a different easy in tight games, etc. Sounds obvious but it's hard to break habits of what's worked before for you.

If he's a beginner then getting the basics down/volume is going to be easiest online, though of course if he's wanting to play live he should be doing both.

But you literally said it is unlikely to improve your game if you play online, and this is just not true.

Although the game play is very different, basic knowledge like pot odds, equity, implied odds, knowing how the pot size and villain's pot size affect game play, etc. is going to be imperative and more easily learned online. Of course how you play is going to be a function of how your opponent's play, but learning the basics and gaining experience is going to be significantly faster and easier online. As I said previously though, he will have to do a combination.

ugh

You can train against quality opponents at 200 hands per hour instead of 30, and at 1% of the price. But yeah, skip that step...if you can afford it. For most people, a $5K training budget is reasonably significant.

So basically you're saying people play tighter online even at .01/.02, so if I play live I should just tighten up a little more, because there will be a bunch of calling stations? Sounds awesome.

A big reason for me not to play live right now is there isn't a casino in my living room.

The more hands you see and the more positions you are in make you a better player unless you are an idiot to begin with. Live poker is a read infested play ground. Players give off so much information it makes it so much easier and comfortable for me. Jump on a 1/2 table and start seeing hands live. Try to work on your feel of the table, always consider your position on the table, study your opponents when you are not in pots. Watch their faces and movements pre and post flop and after later streets. Think of them as holograms giving off tells. The best players I know in my 40 years on the felt are the feel players. The gut players. The fearless players. A little luck never hurts either. Patience is also the greatest virtue in any pursuit you try especially in Poker.

Brain beats guts and feels at poker. It's a game of math and logic, not emotions.

rofl feel players

Any specifics to look out for?

basically I string bet and my mouth was too loose

remember saying raise is binding and you can't take it back. Don't push chips over the line lightly, when you want to take an action announce bet/raise verbally say the amount or count carefully and push the whole amount in the whole time.

Starting out, there's no question that playing on-line can help your live play. You can get a lot of hands in. If you're not working on areas in your game to improve it, it doesn't matter how many hands you play. You should be using it to clean up your biggest leaks.

Probably the biggest struggle micro level on-line players face when moving to live is that they bring in their one style of play that earns them 3-4 BB/100. With the much higher rake in live, that style will turn you into a breakeven to losing player. In addition, you can't table hop to find one that is playing a style you can exploit. You have to exploit all conditions.