I have a few thousand hours in the game and I am running at $53/hr while paying on average $17/hr on time and tips. The reason I say "running" is because the hands a recreational player will play in an entire year, 500-750 hours, is a tiny sample size considering the amount of hands it takes to be relatively certain of an hourly wage. Averaging 35h/hr and only playing 1000 hours a year is what I would play in a month online. Using that information, I've run better over more hands online than live and then ran horrible and the ran average. It's nearly impossible to determine a relative fixed income you can earn playing the live 20 game at the borgata and have it be static. You could conceivably run well over two thousand hours and still not even be close to your true win rate. The best advice I received pertaining to this type of matter is: play your best, learn as much as you can, continuously be objective about your play so you can improve and separate expectations and emotions from an outcome you don't have much control over.

The Borgata 20 could indeed be the toughest 20 on the east coast and still be a very good game indeed. Just sayin'.

I mean, the guy couldn't even get into b-school and I know for a fact that he's only gotten two callbacks in the last 10 years of trying to get a job in finance.

This thread is a spectacular display of auto-trolling btw.

It's a great game. Last few weekends I've been in games with 6 way capped action. Over 2k pots multiple times.

That or foxwoods are your options so it's 50/50% !

Seriously though, assuming you consider the 15/30 @parx in the same class as borg 20. The same group of semi/regs play both games. There are a few borgata or parx only people, but not too many. Many more randoms @borgata than parx.

The 20 was better(obviously) when it was at taj. These days limit has lost it's bad fish. There are below average players but few and far between are the true fish, like days of yore. Can a good player beat the game? Of course, but it's not a walk in the park. The 20 game also has more "tough guys" and needlers. Thus making it much less enjoyable to sit through.

Jamest is correct, thurs-sun, there are 2-4 games of 10/20 and 20/40. During the week it's 1-2 tops of 10/20 and 0-2 games of 20/40. A lot of the middle limit guys stay "home" during the week at parx.

Yeah, I don't get it largely because it doesn't make any sense in this context. But someday when I want needlessly complex, jargon filled decision making criteria for relatively straightforward comparisons I'll pm you. Or call McKinsey.

I think the opportunity-cost-of-keeping-a-bankroll argument applies only to a point for people who are intelligent about keeping bankrolls.

To expand on KenoVictoryLap's point: suppose a pro keeps a 1000xBB bankroll for 40-80, i.e. $80,000. Let's say this pro keeps $20K in cash, turns $20K over every three months in CDs, and has the remaining $40K in equities (stocks).

Now let us suppose our pro goes through an epic-but-not-implausible -500BB runbad. Yeah, they should move down to 20-40, but note that they don't, at least in the short term, have to sell any of those stocks. They can raise bankroll by borrowing against their margin until either they turn around or the right time to sell comes along. (Borrowing on margin is *cheap*.)

I'm not saying this is the right mix, I just pulled the numbers out of my ass as an example. But the point it illustrates is valid.

To answer your expected yearly winnings question:

A .7 BB/hr winner playing 1500 hrs in a year will make between 0 and 1.4BB/hr most (over 90+%) of the years.

Some of the unlucky 1BB/hr winners (around 1% or so) lose in a year.

The question you asked ultimately can only get subjective responses. Like I said, it's possible to run really well for nearly 2k hours live and not know your true win rate based upon your level of understanding the game.

True. Was hoping someone who maybe calls themselves a poker pro playing 20/40 with a 3 year or more running experience could chime in and maybe give details on his average yearly income.

There are very few people that would have selected live 20/40 for a living over playing higher or playing online. the opportunity cost being as high as it is.

Probably right. Thought online sucks for most US players right now with it being such a hassle. And games in AC during the week the highest you see most of the time is 20/40 Unless we are talking about Friday and Saturday night.

I gave you the answer a few posts ago. You can use poker simulators to get percentages for other confidence intervals, but if you want over 90-95% confidence then you'll win somewhere between 0BB/hr and 1.4BB/hr in 1500 hrs if you are a .7BB/hr winner.

If you think the answer to your question will be something like 42 then you need to study/understand the typical swings of LHE.

gotcha sorry did miss that first post. I am reading these and watching baseball and missed it.

Lol. Someday maybe I'll be a treasurer somewhere and apply a ******ed opp cost metric to all decisions at the margin. Especially good if I apply it ex post so we can compare realized capital return to whatever the is the biggest hedge fund return I see reported in Bloomberg so I can basically find an excuse to turn the treasury function into an explicit fund of funds.

Heard about a couple peeps. One who broke even one year & one who just had to finally quit cause he was getting beat so bad in a years stretch. Both playing full time. Both were considered really solid players.

Sucks

Happens all the time.

I'm actually shocked at the number of live players I talk to, both people I know and people on 2+2 and other poker fora, who don't realize just how many hands you need to have a statistically significant sample in live poker and how long it takes to play that many hands. Remember, the typical online guideline was 15,000 to 20,000 hands. At 40 hands an hour, that's between 375 and 500 hours. Full time grinders get to that point in 3 months or so; recreational players may not get there for a couple of years. And that's the MINIMUM statistically significant sample. Online playing 1/2 and 2/4, I remember upswings and downswings playing out over 20,000 or more hands.

And of course, the higher limits you play, the greater the swings.

People really need a good bankroll and a sober assessment of their own abilities to be winning players.

I'd say leading up to black friday, a good sample for online was 100k hands minimum. In soft live games it'd be tough to imagine a downswing lasting over 20k hands considering a good player can win ~5BB/100.

But yes, live players are notably ignorant when it comes to these things. I know several live pros who blame their downswings mostly on poor play and not just variance.

When a live pro says they are playing badly, they are very likely right.

If your playing below 100/200 you better be a prop and work long hours if you want to make good living.

Being that there is 1 game going in the country right now at that level....the answer is no.

What's weird/interesting is that you can make a living at 2/5 no limit.

That I have heard. I also know two guys myself who do so in AC at 2/5 . Probably a lot more do as well who I do not know about.

So much of this really depends on someone's lifestyle / expenses. I have paid my bills for the last >2 years playing 10/20 part-time while living 4 hours away from the games.
Of course, I own a house with a lot of equity that I bought before the housing runup, so I have a lot of equity, which means I don't even need to have a "bankroll" because I have a home equity line of credit I can tap into at any time.

I only earned about $20K last year, but I have low expenses, no dependants, get free rooms and food while in the casino, and live very frugally by nature. If I had lived locally and played full time I could have made almost double that (and spent less on food and transpotation). But I realize that many people still think that is a small amount of money to live on and would not be worth doing.

Not sure I would want to do this long term, but when I lost my regular job, it was easy enough to change my "hobby" into my main source of income while I am figuring out what to do next.
Probably I will only want to do it permanently would be if I move and get a prop job with benefits, or find a traditionally employed spouse with whom I could share expenses and get benefits.

Nothing wrong with making only 20k if that covers what you need. I could not even attempt to play for a living unless I knew I would clear 60k per year (Mortgage, bills, two car payments, etc..). But my game is not ready for that anyway. But something one day I would love to try.

True, but that point is not inconsistent with the other point that live players almost never understand how much variance there is in the game.