I think it's huge. I went from a super soft raked game to a not as soft time game. Being able to play your blinds and getting to play more hands in general at a cheaper cost is a big deal.

Imagine if it was a rake base time online ...

not quite. i think he was offended by the term lazy, when for some people its not really possible to work that hard

100k/yr pretty easy only if your playing 80/160+, never plsy smaller

To me the key point isn't whether people get labeled "lazy", but that unless you are either very rich or very lucky, you have to work hard to make money in any vocation, and while poker can be an exception to the rigid hours of other professions, it is not an exception to the hard work.

(Indeed, my suspicion is that successful poker players actually work harder than people in other jobs-- they count the 40 to 50 hours a week at the table, but on top of that are the session reviews, research, math calculations, etc.)

lol, how could it not be possible to work 40 hours a week if thats your job. It's incredibly easy to put in that kind of volume, unless of course you just don't need to. Obviously if you are crushing 4-8 you don't need to make sure you get in 40 hours a week grinding 40, but I would imagine most people are not in that case.

If somebody really wanted to, they could probably clear that playing 20-40 fwiw. But it would not be a very fun year and certainly not easy. Also a somewhat moot point, because the players in LA that could do that will just play 40+ but I'm sure a lot of them could if they rally wanted to

^ you are again just stating your personal experience as fact, despite others saying it is not the case for them.

Agree that 40 hrs a week just isn't that hard. Keep in mind that the average person in a real job works far more than 40 hours/week.


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I've always been a masher online with eaaaase. Being in a casino is so so much harder for me. I'm often looking at the clock. Online I can just play and play and play some more.

Sorry for small sample sizes:
20/40 1.88 BB/hr (666 hours)
40/80 -2.58 BB/hr (31 hours)

If this thread is still active at all when I get to 1000 hours I'll update.

I'm the exact opposite. Online I was never able to handle more than 3-4 hours at a time, 6-8 hours total daily at the most.
Playing live, 10-14 hours hasn't really been a problem so far.
Though it can get quite boring if I'm card dead.

Won;y you admit that its possible all the people saying how hard it is, including yourself could actually just be lazy?

To be clear, I'm not saying abybody that doesn't work 40 hours a week is lazy, there are lots of good reasons not to, namely you don't have to. I wish that was the case for myself but its simply not. But to say you can't work 40 hours a week because its to hard or whatever (absent some reason like you need back surgery and cant sit that long or something) is just crazy to me.

Like others have said, one of the main things that probably attracted people to poker is the ability to make their own hours (or lack of) so they probably entered the work force with a pretty poor work ethic.

I know that it would be possible for me to work 40 hours a week, but when I did it in the past I was totally miserable and woke up wanting to die every single day. Life was not worth living. If you categorize that as lazy, then I guess we just have different definitions.

no rob, my personal experience was working 40 hours a week to put myself though law school was relatively manageable, so yes id imagine merely playing 40 hours a week is relatively easy.

I'm sorry to hear that, and to be honest I can't relate. It's also possible that if thats the case than gambling may not be the best vocation. Hopefully there exists some job out there that allows you to both do well financially and also enjoy doing it.

That's what I kept telling you, you can't relate; probably most people cannot.

I agree gambling isn't really the best thing for me either, but I don't know of any other "jobs" where you I could work part time on a very flexible schedule, and still make a fairly decent hourly rate.

why wouldn't you want to work a full time job, if you found something that you enjoyed. Looking for something where you only have to work part time is what leads people (or at least me) to assume laziness.

I wish I could play 30 hours a week, but I can't so I dont.

The point of only working part time is that it isn't as painful, and leads to me only being miserable some days instead of every day. I guess theoretically there could be some activity I could get paid for and be able to do 40 hours a week, but I can't even imagine anything. Even you just implied you would be happier working 30 hours a week than the 40 or more you do now.

that came across wrong, what i meant to say is that I would often rather be doing something else than working/playing poker, but its my job so I suck it up and do it.
That doesn't mean I would have a happier life working less, just time spent working would obviously be more enjoyable not working. I think thats universally true for almost everyone in any job save a few

Trying to avoid work in any form is a bad play if work is unavoidable.

Just had this discussion with another reg recently, but if anyone who plays for a living or aspires to and makes ~1BB/hr (or more lol) in live midstakes would not be playing as little as they do. As Jon_Locke said, approaching 2K hours would be a no brainer. The only reason it doesn't happen is a combo of three reasons: A) the games they could make that in don't run nearly enough thus making it moot, B) they don't actually beat the game for that much, or C) they have other sources of income that are more worthwhile, thus they don't actually play for a living with poker as sole income.

IMHO, everyone who thinks otherwise, just hasn't played enough to go on a significant downswing/BE stretch and has been on the positive side of variance because even a year of live is a small sample. Or they are just fooling themselves.

Dumb question but I wonder, when poker online was on in the states (full tilt era) , was the live scene bigger or smaller for limit poker ?

it was bigger

Since we are talking hours, I wanted to share an observation I have about some "pros".

I've seen plenty of players who take LOTS of breaks. They go to the bathroom once an hour, they are tobacco addicts and take smoke breaks all the time, they take long meal breaks, etc.

If you fancy yourself a pro, your hours need to be real hours. If you are at the casino eight hours but you only play five hours of poker for any reason other than the game not being good or available, that's really bad. Great time to quit smoking and go on a diet, and to train yourself to stay seated and watch the action.

Ehh, I think breaks are tops. Taking it too far is one thing...but walking away from the table occasionally seems better than not to me.

If a player needs to take frequent breaks to think clearly, that's probably a personality trait that is going to make it difficult for the player to be a successful poker player.

I agree an occasional short break is fine if that helps the player play better.

Breaks because of compulsions are really bad. A smoker who has to smoke once an hour and takes off an orbit is leaving A LOT of money on the table and is going to take a lot longer to outrun variance.