To add to this thread, here's Lex's latest video from 2004 at 50/1



And Jnandez's bankroll challenge:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...TSvM6YEzplJqry

He made 1.5k his first month at around 50 hours, so a very good hourly.

The poker dream is definitely more alive if you want to learn PLO.

I wish he would finish it as I don't think it would take him too long to be honest.

I understand now. That's a strong point. It's tough to be successful without putting in a lot of volume, at least early on. However, you can get by just fine without exceeding 40 hour work weeks. I don't think anyone's goal should be to just "get by," but it's how a lot of Americans are living.

These are not sacrifices to me because these are not obstacles I've had to overcome.

I am so rarely in a situation where I can't stand the people I'm around that I can afford to go home for the day, or simply table change. The majority of the regs I play with are very friendly, as are the recs. The worst behavior from most people is a minor tantrum when they lose. Either I am very lucky to be in a place where most people are very pleasant, or these people you refer to have some very weak social skills.

I am not emotionally dead inside. I'm probably overly sensitive emotionally. Whoever said that is being a drama queen.

Big casinos run games 24/7. It's the professional's choice to play when everybody else is having fun. This is exactly where lifestyle flexibility comes in. If we want to make plans with friends we can play in the morning one day instead! It's not a big deal to sacrifice some peak hours. In fact I'm considering playing in the mornings full-time, and know some pros that do. A normal job does not allow you to trade your hours for a slight drop in pay on short notice.

There are not many casinos in the world where you can play 5/10+ at 9AM on a Tuesday morning.

There are not many cash game players who make $100-150k+ from playing 2/5 and below.

So except for a couple savants, it’s very hard for a poker player to make the equivalent of a college degree job without playing when big games run.

Back in the day, Supernova Elite players made that amount in rakeback alone, in their underwear in their parents basement.

Grinding poker for a living would be more like a nightmare than a dream if you ask me.

i am back after 6 years break. to begin with thought to start out at 25NL tables. sittling and playing 5NL right now trying to understand what a hell happened to poker.

Do you think games got a lot tougher?

Compared to what? Most jobs in the world?

I don't think so, grinding poker isn't even that bad and if you could make decent money like in the past, it's even better when you get to work 20-30 hours per week and still rake in 50k+ which is long gone today.

You answered your own question really. Most normal, reasonably paid jobs would be better nowadays. Grinding a game of chance for long hours for less than minimum wage in most western countries is my definition of a nightmare. Not to mention dealing with tilt, downswings, bad beats etc when your living depends on it.

I'll stick to playing for fun thanks.

Why aren't you doing it then?

I think your numbers are way off (probably due to tiny sample sizes). I tested out the Pokerstars Zoom games and no way in hell can you achieve 12bb/100 at the stakes you mentioned. I didn't run into a single fish when I played. It was all nitty regs and the odd weak-tight player. None of my big hands got paid off, yet it also seemed pretty difficult to bluff people off hands.

Perhaps there are people who find grinding those games fun, but I certainly don't. It's depressing as **** and if I had to do it even 2 hours a week, I'd want to kill myself, let alone 20 or 30.

That was the point of the thread, no idea what you're talking about.

The whole premise of my previous post was IF you could make a decent living at poker, I think the benefits far outweigh the negatives, but that's just me.

As outlined in the thread, that IF is not possible.

Why aren't I doing what? Did you read my thread? I have no delusions of making real money at poker and nor should anyone else after reviewing what I wrote.

I ran at 22bb/100 in 7k hands at 10NL and 5/100 9k hands at at 50NL hu. 12 is probably the absolute limit for 25NL, but it seems that online depending on the volume of tables you can put in $12-15 an hour isn't unreasonable which goes back to what I said:

IF you want to live in Eastern Europe or South East Asia or Latin America, you can do OK in online poker, but the big money is mostly gone for now, so unless you have mega contacts who can find you the best sites to play on or you're a crusher, it's highly likely that the 20-30k range is probably a best case scenario IF you are willing to 1.Put in work 2.Invest in training/some coaching.

So, apart from telling us what most of us already know, what was the point of your thread again?

This is in the beginner forum as in it's meant to inform beginners, if you're so advanced you probably wouldn't be posting about how to play flopped straights.

Nice thread and although somewhat pessimistic I think it applies to 98% of people.

LOL OK

I'll give myself a swift uppercut and stfu then. Excuse me for even commenting.

For some people they do, for others they don’t. And then there’s a pretty big group of (former) pros who started to hate the game after some time.

Why? Because it’s a mentally taxing grind that kills the joy of the game. At some point lots of people also come to the conclusion that they are a huge net negative for society. A poker pro doesn’t provide any real value for other people’s life except for when he loses and the other person is happy about winning. As soon as you play some higher stakes, you are also confronted with the fact that a significant part of your income results from other players gambling problem/addiction. That’s something that is only visible at live poker, not online, but you still know it’s there.

Besides that, there are a couple other online/live specific things, that bother some pros but certainly not everybody. Online, you “work” at home alone, without any social interaction with “co-workers” except for your skype study groups and things like that. Live, you spend your time at the casino around people who are close to the nut low of society. Sounds harsh, but just take a look around and ask yourself if that’s the people you want to be around all day, every day.

The financial gratification from poker is potentially huge, but that’s basically the only form of gratification you get. And you always only have one, financial success or happy customers, never both.

Again, some people are not bothered by that at all, especially if they are what others would call “gamblers”. For others it’s a really serious issue. You have to play all day, every day for a while to find out what type you are.

I still think you're way off with your numbers. Have you played the Pokerstars Zoom games over a large sample? I find it impossible that anyone could achieve 12bb/100 at 25nl zoom. Like I say, I didn't run into a single fish when I tested those games out a few days ago. Perhaps 12bb/100 is possible with very strict table selection at regular tables, but certainly not zoom.

Yeah the mental grind can get you for sure.

I will disagree on the huge net negative though, gambling itself is the huge net negative NOT poker which is a game of mostly skill. If you want to look at great social evils, look at casinos in general or the state run lottery system, those things are socially allowed despite the fact you have no chance of winning.

Say what you will about poker, but most players are probably 2-3k and 50-75 hours away from being able to absolutely crush 1/2 live or beat decent stakes online (25NL+), the same cannot be said about other MUCH larger games like roulette, slots and lottery tickets.

Poker also teaches you important life skills like:
1.Emotional awareness and dealing with negative emotions
2.Dealing with upswings and downswings
3.Understanding variance and understanding how it can play a role in life, i.e job openings, girls you like not having bfs, avoiding or having illnesses etc etc
4.Money management and long term planning

So relative to other degenerate habits, poker isn't even that degenerate on the gambling front, nver mind the drugs or sex front.

As far as what it "does" for society, I guess this is the sort of worldview people might concern themselves with if they think that society generally is good or at least the one they live in and in certain ways it is, but in certain other ways like the encroachment on liberty and people's through state sponsored force is extremely troubling, never mind all the blatant lies they peddle and build society around. So I think that although it's a good place where these concerns are coming from, they also come from

1.General ignorance about what society ALREADY IS
2.General ignorance of true philosophical and political concepts

The people thing I definitely agree with if you grind live or if you're away from them and have a hard time making friends. Personally I love being alone and have always made friends extremely easily, so it's not a problem for me at all.

I think the real problem is the lack of money to be made from simply "showing up" online, the games are just much tougher and making 50k aka a decent living is much tougher today that it ever was WITHOUT doing things that were entirely unnecessary in the past.

https://www.blackrain79.com/2014/06/...d-small_6.html

That's a site dedicated to low stakes, so I gave a slightly higher estimate at 25NL. 10NL is pure garbage though, you should be able to at least sustain high teen bb/100 (I only had 7k hands was around 23 bb/100) and yeah 25NL is much tougher, but I still think that top players might be able to push 10+.

Great post

I agree with all of your suggestions

Unless I'm miss reading your post you are way out of line. Pokerstars Microstakes Zoom is my playground and it is full of fish right up to 50nlz. Sure, there are tons of GTO regs to battle with, but saying there are no fish at 25nlz is so far off the mark, it ain't funny. Time of day is a big factor of course, but surely any decent regular player knows that intuitively???? Whether 12bb/100 is achievable for the better players over a large sample I've no idea...I'm an ultra low volume rec more than happy to waddle along at 3-4bb/100.

GOD. Imagine playing zoom for a living. Now that really would be a nightmare.

I've read this thread through, and I would llike to add my thoughts on it.
As far as I can see, the poker dream is very much alive today. There's no doubt, it was much easier to make huge money a decade ago, or even 3-4 years ago. But achiving a "dream" and making a ton of money is, by definition, not something every second person can do. It wouldn't really be called a dream, if there was a clear way, like you just do this and this and that, there you go, mr. millionaire. Only a very tiny percentage of those people who are winners (a very tiny percentage of all poker players) can finally make it. Either by winning a bigger tournament, or by becoming one of the best cash players in the world playing the highest stakes. Now this is something not many will reach, but I do think it is achievable. And hey, if the question is whether the dream is alive, the answer is yes. Like most of other "dreams", it will stay only a dream for the vast majority of players, but that's what makes it a dream.
Now, if I interpret it in another way, the dream is very much alive for quite a lot of people. I've started playing last summer, but only have taken it seriously since this January or so. My poker dream is to make a decent living from playing one day. This is a thing many people in 2nd world countries still consider as an achiveable goal. I live in Hungary, in Central Europe, but financially we are much closer to the East than to the West. The average salary here is somewhere around 550-600 USD, converted from our currency, of course. (You might see statistics that say it's over 800, but they are just faked by our government.) I earn about 630-650 with an ok job (project manager in a boring office, not too much to do), that is roughly 3,5 USD hourly. I've seen several posters' harmonious opinion about "10 bucks an hour, hardly a dreamjob". You can imagine how big a dream it would be for people who make one third of it hourly. Viewing it from this direction, the dream is alive and achievable. Making 10 bucks an hour would not make me a millionaire, but it would certainly mean an easier life. Earning more money, having more freedom by doing something that you like to do. That's a big enough dream for me and many others.

I personally didn't run into any fish. By fish, I mean a calling station who will pay off your big hands. Didn't find a single player like that. It was all nitty players with strong ranges.

3-4bb/100 is decent, but you could make more in any minimum wage job in the real world for a lot less effort. Hence the dream is dead.

All of that is very reasonable and everybody is entitled to define their 'dream' as whatever they want it to be.

But what was called 'the poker dream' was something pretty specific, as outlined by me early in this thread. It was young-ish people (mostly college kids) in first world countries making so much money by playing (online) poker that dropping out of school or leaving your well payed regular job was a smart decision with a positive long term effect.

If anyone is interested, just google for something along the lines of "what is supernova elite worth" and check out a couple websites or threads from 10 years ago. Just by getting to that status, a break-even player on PokerStars made >$100k/year. Did you have to put in a ton of volume at small stakes to get SNE? Sure, but a lot of people were able to do it. I think at it's highest point, there were close to 400 SNEs in 2012 (?). And those were the people who made a ton of money just by being willing to grind their ass off. The high stakes pros obviously made way more money with significantly less volume.

Putting it this way, yes, those times are very much over.

Also to add to this, look at how ****ing soft 2/4, 3/6 online were



Basically worse than live games, if you had basic sense to raise limpers with decent holdings, raise 88+ and pay attention to who is doing what in the game I would think 10+ bb/100 would be relatively easy.

I honestly don't think 10NL is this soft right now. Let's put it like this, there are people ITT who are rightly skeptical of 12bb at 25NL, would you be skeptical of 12bb at 400/600NL in that video?