[Teedub]

Does anyone play, or know anyone who plays online poker a lot? A work colleague claims he knows someone who makes about £50,000 a year playing it online. I know more can be made in real-life poker. That's tax-free too as winnings aren't taxed in the UK.

Imagine funding your travels by becoming a wizard at online texas hold'em or whatever.

[presidentcarter]

(05-21-2013 03:27 PM)Teedub Wrote:  

Does anyone play, or know anyone who plays online poker a lot? A work colleague claims he knows someone who makes about £50,000 a year playing it online. I know more can be made in real-life poker.

Imagine funding your travels by becoming a wizard at online texas hold'em or whatever.

I used to play a lot when it was legal here and overall lost money. I've heard a lot of good players say they feel the online games are "rigged" and I have to say I felt that way as well. While you do play many more hands vs. real life, the number of times you see something ridiculous happen is surprisingly high (I know I had numerous royal flushes, many many four of a kinds, etc.).

Not to mention the U.S. gov't seized many of the sites assets here so even guys making $$ ended up losing it to the gov't.

You'd probably be better off learning how to trade stocks or options vs. playing poker if you want location independent high risk/high reward job.

[Teedub]

Sorry, can the mods move this to Lifestyle. I thought I was posting it there.

[The Pirate]

I have played a lot of online poker (Pokerstars, tournaments) especially in 2011/2012. The amount of action-flops, runner runner cards is completely different compared to live-poker. Now the support will always tell you it`s because of the high amounts of hands you play compared to live-tournaments, and it´s not in their interest to favor players because they have already made money when you pay the buy-in. Now they believe the whole world are morons since obviously it`s in their interest to finish the games fast so players will pay more buy-ins. The most obvious problem to me is the favoring of big-stacks later in the tournaments. They seem to hit the magic flops, and amazing rivers too often. And I have had the benefit of being a high-stack-player to, and witnessed it in my favor.

I used to have some kind of light ambition to have it as a little income on the side. Well, I am now back to being a recreational player having fun with it. A very marginal amount of players profit long term on it.

[rover]

(05-21-2013 03:27 PM)Teedub Wrote:  

Does anyone play, or know anyone who plays online poker a lot? A work colleague claims he knows someone who makes about £50,000 a year playing it online. I know more can be made in real-life poker. That's tax-free too as winnings aren't taxed in the UK.

Imagine funding your travels by becoming a wizard at online texas hold'em or whatever.

I used to play quite a bit (still do occasionally) - both online and live but more so online. There are many players who make decent money but it's a hard grind, and online games have gotten much tougher since 2004 when every american granma was trying to play. To make $50-100K a year playing poker online is very hard - if you are have talent and devote a few years to it, you have a chance to get there. Check out the twoplustwo.com poker forum, - they have lots of pro players there.

[KeepMovingForward]

Anyone arguing that online poker is rigged shows little understanding of the industry and an amateur's mindset when it comes to texas hold em. ("So many bad beats, oh no, game is rigged").

OP, yes, you can make an excellent living playing poker, but you have to treat it like a business and study your ass off.

Anyone who needs proof just go to sharkscope.com, select the "leaderboard" tabs, and choose the game format and buy-in range you want to see and the top 20 in profit and games played will display for this year in each category.

Example: The best heads up tournament player is currently up over $800,000 this year and on pace to set a record for most profit from heads up SNG's in a year.

Edit: Rover beat me to Twoplustwo recommendation.

[The Pirate]

Wow just wow! You really have good faith in the noble business of gambling... So your argument is that there are someone who does make money on online-poker out there, so there can be nothing wrong with it? 50 millions players are registered on Pokerstars and it`s so naive to think that a business of this nature doesn`t have a software that make sure they maximize their income. Someone`s got to give, and it`s not the 800 000$ player you mentioned. Successful players is great advertisement and keeps millions of poker-dreams alive.

Play poker for fun, and if you want to travel the world, work hard and save for it. I fold.

[KeepMovingForward]

(05-21-2013 08:57 PM)The Pirate Wrote:  

Wow just wow! You really have good faith in the noble business of gambling... So your argument is that there are someone who does make money on online-poker out there, so there can be nothing wrong with it? 50 millions players are registered on Pokerstars and it`s so naive to think that a business of this nature doesn`t have a software that make sure they maximize their income. Someone`s got to give, and it`s not the 800 000$ player you mentioned. Successful players is great advertisement and keeps millions of poker-dreams alive.

Play poker for fun, and if you want to travel the world, work hard and save for it.

I myself have subsisted solely on poker income this year and I will be moving out of the US in June to resume play on PokerStars and hopefully a very profitable year.

I've never met a hard-working, dedicated player who thinks the game is rigged, but I've known plenty of losing players who are all too happy to blame the Random Number Generator for bad results instead of their own poor play.

Also, I really think you don't understand how PokerStars makes their money. They regularly have tens of thousands of games running at every moment, and each person involved in a game is paying rake to PokerStars. For example, if you play a $30 heads up hyper turbo, $29.37 goes into the prize pool, and $.63 goes directly to Stars. Your opponent pays the $.63 fee as well. Avg. game time for a hyper turbo is 2-3 minutes, so you have this process repeated hundreds of thousands of times per day. Poker Stars amasses a fortune each year off rake, their is zero incentive for them to "rig" the game to speed things up.

[not_dead_yet]

I'll take this opportunity to disagree with all of you.

I think most sites are legit, and to the extent they're not legit, super-users aren't going to be wasting their time trying to steal your 10BB short stack at $1/$2 NL. If you're good enough to be playing the nosebleed tables, then: (1) you're not on this thread, and (2) maybe you should get paranoid.

I also think all the easy money is gone since Black Friday. Consult ch. 10 of Nate Silver's "The Signal and the Noise" for a longer explanation. The short version is that if you're not the best person at the table you're not making money, and you can't even be sure you're the best person at the table today.

Poker is, unfortunately, not a passive income stream. You're sitting in front of a screen playing 15 tables/8 hours a day to make your nut. Yes, you can do that on the beach in Thailand, but you're still working full time.

[DirectDanger]

From the outside it seems cool to make money playing poker online.

It's a fucking grind man. Focus your energy elsewhere.

[Jaylow]

The online poker gravy train had ended a while ago, even before black friday. If you have to ask about this you are nowhere near the level to being able to make a profit at it let alone making $100k a year.

I would suggest playing in casinos where there are far worse players and you can learn and beat up on them and avoid the really good players at the same time. You would be happy to make any type of profit let alone make minimum wage starting out in todays poker.

To put it into words how hard it is to make a GOOD living online: There is probably not a 1/2 live game on this planet that plays as hard as the average 1/2 game online. I used to play as high as 3/6 online but now I can't even make $20/hour playing .50/1. The best way to make $ in NLHE in the past 3 years has been bum hunting HU SNG's and HU cash games which basically means looking at poker tracking sites to see if your opponent is really bad and then playing him while avoiding the dudes that have good poker stats. I don't think you can reliably do this anymore either.

As far as online cheating goes, Ultimatebet/Absolute Poker have been proven to cheat players out of money but this was only the highest level games and tournies. If you are playing 25cent / 50cent you are not getting cheated, just raked to death and probably playing poker bots every once in a while. Pokerstars has always been the most legit sight to play on.

[rover]

(05-21-2013 08:57 PM)The Pirate Wrote:  

Wow just wow! You really have good faith in the noble business of gambling... So your argument is that there are someone who does make money on online-poker out there, so there can be nothing wrong with it? 50 millions players are registered on Pokerstars and it`s so naive to think that a business of this nature doesn`t have a software that make sure they maximize their income. Someone`s got to give, and it`s not the 800 000$ player you mentioned. Successful players is great advertisement and keeps millions of poker-dreams alive.

Play poker for fun, and if you want to travel the world, work hard and save for it. I fold.

There have been countless "is online poker rigged?" threads. The consensus is that it's not, although it's tempting to blame the site when you keep getting bad beat after bad beat, and every novice player goes through that stage. There are too few potential benefits and too much reputation to risk, at least for larger operators like Pokerstars.

[The Pirate]

@KeepMovingForward

I do very well know that they only get a small percentage of the buy in. That was my whole argument on why they want to favor a high-stackers at some point in tournaments to finish it faster, and get more players to pay another buy in again.

I have heard the arguments before that if you pretty much sense some strange patterns, then you are a losing player. Well, in my situation I am probably down 10% over 18 months out of my total bankroll (7-30 usd buy ins) It was way inside my comfort-zone economically, and I used this period to learn basics of the game. I still enjoy poker, but I am not living with the illusion that there ain`t something fishy going on here, compared to live-poker because there is. The flops you see on PS are made for action, and that is in their interest for sure.

@rover
People have done worse to make money than creating a gambling software that steal millions of peoples money...

[rover]

(05-21-2013 09:27 PM)Jaylow Wrote:  

To put it into words how hard it is to make a GOOD living online: There is probably not a 1/2 live game on this planet that plays as hard as the average 1/2 game online.

That's the problem when many live players try to play online for the same stakes and get their ass handed to them: they don't realize that their online opponents at 1/2 are 10 times better than the ones in their typical casino game. To OP: start with the smallest stakes, like $0.01 or whatever is the lowest - once you can beat those, move up a level etc.

(05-21-2013 09:27 PM)Jaylow Wrote:  

As far as online cheating goes, Ultimatebet/Absolute Poker have been proven to cheat players out of money but this was only the highest level games and tournies. If you are playing 25cent / 50cent you are not getting cheated, just raked to death and probably playing poker bots every once in a while. Pokerstars has always been the most legit sight to play on.

Are you referring to when a senior exec of Absolute was caught being able to see cards of his opponents? ( I think it was before it was bought by UB). - in that particular case it was dead obvious to better players who played with him, just the way he played. Eventually he was ratted out by his own staff when they "inadvertently" sent his hand history for a tourney to a player who got suspicious and talked to support. Even in that case he couldn't control the cards (rig the hand), but merely see what everyone else has (not that it didn't give him every advantage)..

[presidentcarter]

I still don't get why, even if it were even mostly legitimate, why you'd want to bother with then when you can invest your time into learning options or stock trading and operate in a legal environment.

[Jaylow]

(05-21-2013 09:50 PM)rover Wrote:  

Are you referring to when a senior exec of Absolute was caught being able to see cards of his opponents? ( I think it was before it was bought by UB). - in that particular case it was dead obvious to better players who played with him, just the way he played. Eventually he was ratted out by his own staff when they "inadvertently" sent his hand history for a tourney to a player who got suspicious and talked to support. Even in that case he couldn't control the cards (rig the hand), but merely see what everyone else has (not that it didn't give him every advantage)..

AP and UB were run by the same people at the start and had similar software. Ownerships changed and UB name was also changed to try and mask what happened. The story is so complex and has been going on for over 5 years now so I can't give a perfect account but as of 2 weeks ago Russ Hamilton is caught on tape admitting he stole millions due to intentional coding in software allowing specific players access to see opponents cards. He was heavily involved in the start of UB.

Quote:

To OP: start with the smallest stakes, like $0.01 or whatever is the lowest - once you can beat those, move up a level etc.

A new player won't even win at penny stakes because the rake is huge, even worse he won't learn how to properly play. I would recommend starting at .10/.25 and play really tight and expect to lose for a while. Have a 2 hour session then spend at least twice the time played reviewing all hands played past the flop over pokerstove and online poker strategy forums.

[Seadog]

Just to echo what other people said, it's a grind. I'll give you my story.

I was always patient and overly cautious, so I went slow (I was also a 19 yo college student at this time, so was concerned about losing $ too). Around 2003/04 when poker was starting to become hot, I bought a few books and read, read read. Winning Low limit holdem by Lee Jones for limit, and Super System/Super System II by Doyle Brunson for No Limit are enough to get you started.

During this time, I played a lot of free games to try and apply what I was learning. Very difficult, because with nothing actually on the line except pretend money, a lot of the principles don't really apply. Well they do, and in the *long* run you'll be rewarded, but in the short term the amount of retarded plays and bad beats you see leave you shaking your head and questioning the strategy you've read. Again at this point I'm just trying to put into practice what I've studied.

After a while, the site I was on asked me if I wanted $2 of real money to try out the real money tables. Sure. So I moved to .01/.02 limit, and again, much better than pretend money, but still a lot of people chasing stupid stuff. The strategy was solid, plus engineering background/good head for numbers made it fairly straight forward for me. I took pretty detailed notes on all my nights, hands played, win/loss, percentages, notable hands etc.

Anyways so got that up to $5, moved to .02/.04, and continued on and on. I learned, got experience, made money, and then when I had a comfortably bigger amount, move to the next blinds up.

Eventually months and months later I'm sitting on about $3k, and pretty steadily playing 3/6 and 5/10 limit, and making money. Lesson #1 is you're going to fold probably 70%+ of your hands, so I would generally just sit there doing my homework for uni, and if I got a hand worth playing, play it.

After about 3 years of casual play, final tally was about $12k profit, but almost half of that time was probably at the lower limits where I was after experience instead of money. I gave up poker somewhere around mid 2006 around the time I graduated.

All said and done, it worked out to about $9 an hour, which isn't bad for a past time you do in between engineering problems, but hardly a ticket to the promised land. Probably over double that toward the end when I was at higher limits.

Now, for a bit of commentary on the current situation.

1) IMO it's no longer worth it. The laws that came down in the mid 2000s outlawing it in a lot of places, the fact that everyone saw it on TV and thought it was easy and they'd be a pro have learned they are in fact wrong, and just the general life cycle of fads mean that the fish are no longer anywhere near as prevalent they were 7-10 years ago.

2) I'm up in the air about whether its rigged or not. If it is, it isn't so that bad players win, rather its purely to increase the size of the pots. The sites have zero interest in WHO actually wins, but, they do have an interest in big pots, because that means they take a bigger rake. How do you do that? By making more big hands. I've hit 3 x 4As in one night before. Seen multiple 4x vs 4xs, straight flushes beat etc. Now in the long run (if this is the case), you will deliver as many bad beats as you take, so that should more or less cancel out, except that since the pots where much bigger than they would have been otherwise, the house is taking a bigger cut.

3) If you do go this route, poker becomes mechanical and computational (particularly for limit). Play enough hands and you'll see every variation of bad beat, every possible starting combination, and it almost gets boring. You don't care if you take a bad beat. It's hard for me to enjoy a Friday night poker game with the boys, you get a bad beat and all you want to do is go on about statistics and odds and tell they guy who just pulled down a huge pot why long term, that's a stupid play. It almost takes the joy out of it. You get presented with situations, there is a correct move for that situation, you do it, and frankly it doesn't even matter what the river card is or whether you win or lose, because every time you are presented with the same situation you will make the same play, and ultimately make money from it.

4) Finally there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world. I studied and read for hundreds of hours on the subject, I played hundreds of hours at penny limits getting a hands on education, and only then moved to limits where even making a lot of correct moves, was still lucky to break $20 an hour by the end of it. And this was in the hey day of it. It's just like any other career really. Educate yourself, get experience in situations where the risks are low, progress, and hopefully in 5 years you'll know enough/have enough experience to make a living.

[Vicious]

Guy I know used to sustain himself on online poker.

Note the use of the word sustain. He had 6 tables open at all times playing for up to 12 hours a day. He became a recluse.

Unless you have a serious bankroll to start out with (six figures) you will have to grind low bet tables for months and months playing the percentages. You have to play it like it's a business and the business model is not very lucrative to begin with. If you don't make serious money from it how are you going to explain the void in your CV from the months you poured into playing?

You've probably heard some tale of someone somewhere just making bank in a short time with online poker. Well guess what, the ones that crash and burn rarely run their mouths about it.

[DVY]

I played a bit of live. Broke even online (played anywhere from 100 buyin to 400 buyin). I would say I am up around 10-20k lifetime. Now that I have a larger salary (I was a student before), I might play higher- anywhere from 500 or 5000 buy-in. These games run nonstop in LA.

LA is a good place to play poker. Lots of rich dudes who blow money. Thats where the money is. Good way to meet rich people, as well.

[renotime]

I've played poker recreationally since 2005.

Last year I lost my job so I headed out to Vegas for a few months. I ended making a profit, but the games weren't that great.

When Black Friday hit I had about 5k in my Full Tilt account. It's been 2 years and I haven't seen a fucking dime of it.

The current state of online poker is ok, but not great. There are a lot of guys just a couple of years ago that were sitting on fat stacks but are broke now because they never improved and thought the games would be great forever. Wrong.

You can be a good player, but if you don't have enough money for a bad run (which will happen) you will go broke.

If you don't know anything about poker besides what beats what, you have missed the boat.

I would advise against it Mr. Teedub.

[DVY]

@renotime- The softest games are the mid-stakes games held at Commerce/Bike 5/10 500-1500buy-in games. These run very well on weekends. I dont think these will ever die, as long as Armenians live in Los Angeles metropolis.

Although I haven't been, I have been invited a few times. There are soft games that run in Hollywood. 1 big one is in one of the penthouse on top of the Roosevelt Hotel. Mostly business guys, drug dealers, occasional recreationals, a few pros. They have dealers, drinks, beautiful waitresses, etc etc. Rake is high though. If you play a lot, you can negotiate a rakeback (% back of the rake). Games range anywhere from 1k buyin to 25k buyin. Sometimes the tables get deep. I've heard through 2nd-hand source that occasionally it gets really deep (200k stacks are not unheard of).

Some games run in Malibu hills mansions. These are also bigger. 2k-5k buyin. Sometimes they have 20k minimum, no max buyin games, but these are mostly rich biz guys and pros. Competition at these higher levels are stiff (and the biz guys take it very seriously, unlike the 2k games). When you can win or lose 100-200k in a night, nobody goofs off (unlike the 2k buyin games).

Also you have to be willing to give action and not be a nit, or you will not be invited back. A few years ago, my buddy (20 year old poker player) played in one of these games, ran up a 100k stack in the 20k buyin game, and was never invited back.

[Jaylow]

Is this Tobey Maguires game your talking about?

It really sounds like it, almost word for word.

[zarzuelazen]

Online poker nowadays is much much tougher than it was a few years ago, due to greatly increased competition. It is generally agreeed that only 'the smartest guy in the room' can make any money with online poker now. Nate Silver ('The Signal and The Noise') is a math genius, and he admits in the chapter on poker that even he had to give up online poker because he wasn't smart enough to win any more. That should tell you something about how tough things are nowadays.

To test this, I tried playing $1/$2 poker online at PokerStars for several weeks. Sure enough, I had my arse handed back to me in short order; I'd blown over 2K before I had to wave the white flag and quit.

The best book on poker I've read is 'Decide To Play Great Poker' (Annie Duke), it's a real eye-opener and gives you a good idea about how complex poker really is. In short, you're looking at months or years of study before you could make any money online. Not worth it unless you love the game.

[Don]

I've been playing online poker seriously for a couple of years now. I'll try to provide some insight into today's online poker climate and what to expect:

Poker is a mindgame, a game of skill. Luck influences poker results only in the short term. There are 2 types of poker players: losing/break even players - about 90% - and winning players. In order to be in the latter category, you need years of study into game theory and strategy, a sound mental game and sheer experience. Anyone can sit at a table, play 500 hands, get lucky, win a couple of pots. But an average poker pro can play up to 1.000.000 hands a year. When you play that much volume, you must constantly make decisions with the most expected value, otherwise you'll be constantly bleeding money. Cash game online pros will find a stake that they can beat for a high enough winrate and will grind that stake for hours on end, playing 4 up to 24 tables at one time. Kind of like this:

So there's a difference between playing poker, and making a living out of playing online poker. The difference isn't only the "+ev" oriented play, but also things like using tracking software.
All serious poker players use tracking software for their online sessions. This advanced software uses a database to constantly track your opponent's tendencies, and provides with a HUD with those stats. This is how it looks like

(Just by looking at this random pic i know why he colored the button with green, it's because he's a fish, running at 41/26 means he opens 41% of his hands, which is too loose to be profitable. Notice how all the other players are running at around 23/15 which is standard TAG play, means they're solid players)

Solid winning players also always discuss hands with other players. This way they check their line of thought and plug "leaks". This is how hands look like for a poker pro:

That will probably sound like gibberish to you, i know it did to me when i started..but it's not. The point i'm trying to make is, that not only poker is a hard game to master, but playing poker online profitably takes a lot of knowledge to pull off, which in turn takes a lot of effort to learn.

Back in the days(circa 2004) playing online poker was like printing money, if you were a good player. Now, post Black Friday(the day when Online poker was banned in USA) and with the current economy, the field is very tough, and full of hungry 'sharks'. The average player is much better, and in order to make a living in a western country from playing poker, you need to grind a lot and always be working on your game, in order to keep up with the constantly improving players.

On the flip-side, if you have the dedication and the possibility to excel at this, you will never have to work a 9 to 5. You also have maximum flexibility, being able to play from anywhere in the world. And your limit for profit is only dictated by your skill level, your bankroll, how much you work and of course, the stakes you play at. I don't think there's a better way to make a living other than travel the world playing poker..and there a few out there that can do it, it just takes a lot of work.

Oh, and to answer the question in the OP: "how much can you make", i'll leave some graphs here

[renotime]

(05-22-2013 08:58 PM)DVY Wrote:  

@renotime- The softest games are the mid-stakes games held at Commerce/Bike 5/10 500-1500buy-in games. These run very well on weekends. I dont think these will ever die, as long as Armenians live in Los Angeles metropolis.

Although I haven't been, I have been invited a few times. There are soft games that run in Hollywood. 1 big one is in one of the penthouse on top of the Roosevelt Hotel. Mostly business guys, drug dealers, occasional recreationals, a few pros. They have dealers, drinks, beautiful waitresses, etc etc. Rake is high though. If you play a lot, you can negotiate a rakeback (% back of the rake). Games range anywhere from 1k buyin to 25k buyin. Sometimes the tables get deep. I've heard through 2nd-hand source that occasionally it gets really deep (200k stacks are not unheard of).

Some games run in Malibu hills mansions. These are also bigger. 2k-5k buyin. Sometimes they have 20k minimum, no max buyin games, but these are mostly rich biz guys and pros. Competition at these higher levels are stiff (and the biz guys take it very seriously, unlike the 2k games). When you can win or lose 100-200k in a night, nobody goofs off (unlike the 2k buyin games).

Also you have to be willing to give action and not be a nit, or you will not be invited back. A few years ago, my buddy (20 year old poker player) played in one of these games, ran up a 100k stack in the 20k buyin game, and was never invited back.

Teedub lives in the UK and is talking about online poker.

You can find big poker games in any major city if you look hard enough.