[dlmelvin86]

Ive been playing poker for bout 6 yrs now and have been playing 1-2, 5-5 cash games for about 3 years. Im a pretty good player when im patient and not on mad tilt. Anyways i was always skeptical of online poker sites. Well last night i decided to put in 30 bucks to poker stars, it was very easy using ebook or something by that name.

Well since last night ive just been playing .10 - 25 game buying in for 7 at the table and ive cashed out on all four tables i have played so far. Ive made alil over 100 since last night and today playing just .10 - .25 cent blinds. Once i get my bankroll up ima play at the .50 - 1, and 1 - 2 games.

But my question is for Americans, how easy / difficult is it to withdraw your money from poker stars and do they just direct deposit into your checking account?

This is a very feasible way to make money while traveling.

[Kona]

(02-26-2010 03:56 PM)dlmelvin86 Wrote:  

Anyways i was always skeptical of online poker sites.

How do you know you aren't playing against one person on the other end with 5 computers?

That stuff seems to me like an easy way to get hustled.

Aloha!

[Riker]

I play professionally and integrity is one of the most important priorities for major poker sites. They make tons of money without cheating anyone and cheating would cause people not to play. They have systems to check for plays that wouldn't be made unless there was collusion involved.

If a dude had 5 computers he'd need 5 different IP addresses and there would be no way to hide the fishy way he was playing. The small amounts of collusion that exists don't cut your positive expected value in a game by much especially since people who cheat aren't very good. If you play well you can spot it, or at worst you can select tables where you see players playing badly and only sit in those games.

If you study the game and are disciplined poker both online and live is a nice way to make a living.

[kingkong]

I had a roommate who played professionally for a while and then continued to supplement his income with it. It looked mind numbing and soul crushing to me. Hours and hours and hours of mechanistic clicking. Might as well just get a job, or spend time on Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

[UgSlayer]

It can be pretty fun and very rewarding. My old roommate's buddy came over. He was talking about going pro, but we lost touch. I saw him make 4 grand in less than 3 hours on fulltilt poker. To some guys it's an emotional rollercoaster because you can win or lose so much so fast.

[thegmanifesto]

There are a lot of in debt "professional" poker players out there.

Some guys that have won the world series are up a few million one day and owing a few million the next.

Cuidado.

At the end of the day, it is a hard way to make an easy living.

[Riker]

The most important thing in playing proffesional poker is having discipline. Discipline to sit in a games where you have 3-5% of all your poker money in play that way you can go through bad streaks with no worries and come back. Discipline to play in games where you have an edge and not to delude yourself into thinking your better than you are. Discipline to play your best at all times.

It doesn't matter how much you win or lose in a day, a week, even really a month. You have to keep very accurate records of the hours you play and the money you win and lose and then divide the amount you won by the hours played over a year to see your hourly rate. Thats what counts.

People have a romantic notion of what it is to be a pro player but theres alot of work to be put in. Its a game that has dozens of traps to seduce you into making wrong decisions. You really have to analyze what your doing not only at the table, but away from it as well.

People ask me if I consider myself a "good" player. I say "no, people are bad." Its the best attitude to have because if you think you are good you'll stop working hard to always learn and play your best.

I don't recommend it to people when I think about it, its a game that can bring out the worst in people and its helped people fuck up their lives. However if you truly enjoy it and are willing to work hard and have the right mindset for it, it can treat you well.

[yoyo]

Shit doesn't work, I tried it for a year and a half. There is about 5% of the peps winning and the other 95% losing. I can see a guy making some money playing tourny poker, but that cash game is for the fucking birds. Percentages only mean something if you are consistenly shoving you money in above teh 50% percentile, but 95% of the people arent because they never remember the times they sucked out, or the times they flopped a set against a guy that had Aces.

Plus, playing good poker is really fucking boring. It's a lot of sitting there and very little playing. If you go watch the big cash games in AC, its most a bunch of tight ass players sitting there waiting to cooler each other.

Plus, Poker is absurdly addictive. There is nothing normal about sitting a fucking poker table for 11 hours listening to your head phones.


I use to be crazy into poker, and now I look back at it and laugh. Aint nobody in there winning except maybe 3 guys and they are the boring rocks that never play a hand. If you really want to mix it up and go full bore, i'd advice tournaments, because tournaments reward solid play, because the clowns playing jack, 7 off get knocked out eventually. In the cash game they are just a bunch of kamakazis spreading the chips around. Trouble is, they'll get luck against you..

Plus - like a I said - it's addictive as hell and totall anti social. I think i've met about 2 poker players in my life that get laid.

[sankt]

Hey

First thread here on the forum.. seems like a fun and informative forum

Riker/ anyone else who plays pro:

Im playing full time and have lived in thailand and philippines for a few years now. Im just back in Denmark now for a "vacation" to see friends and family - but am changing my mind now about going back..
Im a MTT player and are sick and tired of the time zone in asia - meaning the optimal time frame for me to play is around midnight until early in the morning asian time. And Denmark is def not an option for a place to live! So im thinking of South America - thought about Medellin in Colombia but open for any country and city.
So a few questions i hope u could help me with:

First of all, how is the internet connection? is it stable?
Are there many electicity breakdowns
are there 3G/EDGE/HSPA backup net avaliable?
Is poker legal - live/online
Does Medellin have any casinos with tours in the 200-500$ range reguarly?
Is it easy to obtain visum for 9ish months holiday?
Cant think of else right now but if u have any other suggestions ill be happy to hear them..

Cheers
Se u there!
Dennis

[oldnemesis]

(02-26-2010 07:55 PM)Riker Wrote:  

If a dude had 5 computers he'd need 5 different IP addresses and there would be no way to hide the fishy way he was playing.

Any security professional would tell you that this is extremely easy. Just sign up for five VPN services, $15 a month each, and you will get 5 IP addresses in different regions/countries. If you use Linux and patched Firefox (which would bind sockets on the IP address you specify and not on INADDR_ANY), you can do it all from the same single machine. This is a very common way to cheat private torrent trackers.

[thekiller]

Question for Riker, what resources do you recommend to get better at Poker? I'm not looking to go pro, just improve my game with coworkers.

[loosewin]

Sankt,

I was in Medellin and can tell you that the city's infrastructure is getting better by the day. Internet is widely available and very reliable. You should not have issues with this. I played on FT and Stars and never had an issue with it. So no breakdowns, even with the rainy season. I don't know about backups but I'm confident you can find solutions if you need it while you're down there.

There are Casino's in the main area in Poblado. I never wen't in but I high doubt they're going to be running high limit games. I hear it's a lot of tournaments because its popular with tourists. No idea in buy in amounts but again, I doubt they run high.

When you enter the country most people get a 45 or 60 day visa. You can renew it with DAS (colombian immigration agency) to get that up to 90 days. After this they become very strict and you have to either exit the country or get a student visa or something else. I do know that if you invest enough money in Colombia like buying property you essentially are entitled to a permanent visa that lets you stay in the country year round.

@thekiller:

I'm assuming you're playing NL texas holdem? If so look for Ed Miller. His books are straight forward and will get you up the learning curve pretty fast. Other than that, it depends what game you want to play specifically. Do you want to play cash or tournaments? If its tournaments then nothing really beats Harringtons tournament books. Volume one is all you really need. Maybe Volume two if you want more in depth discussion.

http://www.amazon.com/Harrington-Expert-...1880685337

[dlmelvin86]

@thekiller

download poker stars and play on the free tables. you will learn the basics.

poker is about discipline, numbers/percentages, and well timed aggression.

if you can master those 3 elements than you can win ALOT of money.

im not sure what is the best cash game book out there...