Poker viability in 2014-2020 (and beyond)?

On May 11 2014 21:51 Sliggy wrote: Is it possible to make a living of $20.00/hr or so at NL50 and/or NL100 in 2014? Will it be possible for years to come?

Absolutely.

probably, i think it would be better to focus on PLO or mixed games though if you're looking for maximum edge in that timeframe.

I hear PLO is pretty soft. I don't know the first thing about it though, might have to check it out.

On May 11 2014 22:11 Sliggy wrote: I don't know the first thing about it though

me either

i know the microstakes are a huge rake-trap in PLO, presumably the players being horrible makes up for this but you might want to look into what kind of winrates are sustainable at micro PLO just to be sure if you decide to go that route.

There will always be fish. People gotta satisfy their degen necessities somehow. Just seems harder because the average player is better. Just get better and there will always be people worse than you.

just treat it as a hobby then. you're young and can still do both - you will enjoy poker that way. playing it for a living now is not advisable at all.
things will only get worse and worse for poker until it is fully regulated, companies can do whatever the fuck they want. unless you've got some huge edge over games, why would you go into an industry like that? school or skills training now is definitely the way to go.

I'm a musician. I'm used to the idea of working in unreliable and competitive industries where decent money is never a guarantee.

Poker appealed to me because I could play on tour, on holiday, anywhere in the world, any hours I deem fit. Perfect secondary income if music is the primary income.

Sure, you can't make much from music and it's harder and harder to make money from poker, but I'm not going for a Jordan Belfont lifestyle here. I just wanna spend my days doing shit I enjoy.

I already have a uni degree in sound engineering so that'd be the primary career focus if I ever decide I'm "done" trying to "make it" in a band / as a solo artist. If I can make $20.00/hr untaxed playing poker though that's hugely preferable to the shitty factory job I'm currently working to pay the bills.

hourly is really based on end month results so usually when people say they make this and this hourly its just an average of a huge number of hands played in x period of time which is most times based per month like with a job. it gets tricky when you quantify success with winning and rewards, poker is not about winning but enduring. you cant tell your landlord "hey i dont have your rent today but i learned a couple leaks in the blinds".

shitty jobs to pay bills are not meant to enrich your well being, its just a matter of getting by. if you want exciting things to do thatll also pay your bills then its going to be very exciting indeed, because you really cannot rely on it for a stable flow of x amount at all. also each time you do go over your "monthly/hourly", people really tend to get a false sense of security and spend unwisely, only to find themselves in a hole after a bad next month.

keep the shitty job, but by all means play poker like you would a MMO or console game.

bots will be better than humans in NL in a few years. poker will still be beatable but that will make things much tougher. PLO and live will be better money in future though

Bots eh? :0

live is always going to exist and be profitable for pros imo

there's always money in poker. i've made more money in live poker then prob half the time i spent playing online. i can't imagine online poker being that hard though considering the various fishy sites that are open to non US players.

i think the key though is whether you think investing time into poker is ideal. i think most people would be pretty surprised at how little money people require to be happy as long as they are pursing different goals.

i play maybe once a month if that. i find work so much more enjoyable!

well this is obscure but i vaguely remember your (op) name from TL over a decade ago.. you made one of the first 'RWAs' shortly after that was a new thing, and the main thing i remember is you had a cold and were sniffing the whole way through it. i had to end it after 2mins.

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If all you want to do is average $20/hr it's probably always going to be "possible" to do that for as long as online poker exists. ofcourse it's contingent on whether you can play consistently and clearly better than other people who are also trying to win since it's a negative-sum game. and every part of that is harder than it sounds. consistency in the long-haul through good times and bad is totally different from a couple months of running well and playing well. being able to correctly judge whether you're really playing better than your opponents is nontrivial (everyone at every table thinks they have positive expectation, they can't all be right). and finally just playing slightly better isn't good enough - not only do you have to overcome the rake (which is itself fearsome at lowstakes) but by a significant enough margin so that the swings you experience become less likely to wipe you out of the game in one way or another.

other thoughts:

- you'll be familiar with the situation of a consumer in some ultra-luxury retailer wondering how much something is and being met with a response like "If you have to ask......". I think it's a similar situation in poker when people want responses from others about whether it's doable to make a living playing poker. If you have to ask then no maybe it's not possible. The people who did 'make it' tend to be full of confidence about making it at the beginning. Something in their gut telling them they're making real progress, they have an edge, they can do it, they are doing it. And they go ahead and 'make it' even if everyone else told them it's impossible. (the danger here is being one of the people who have this total confidence, but are in actual fact delusional. there are plenty of people like this too - including on this forum though i won't mention any names)

- the question of whether it's even worth investing time into poker for a $20/hr return opportunity that lasts the next few years is a whole 'nother discussion. Considering first how much time and effort you have to invest and risk you have to take on (not just of money loss but loss of wasted time and effort if it doesn't go well) to start getting returns that make it worthwhile in the short-run. And second, which is even worse, even if it all goes really well and you make money for the next dozen years, maybe one day you'll burn out and won't want to play anymore. Then the extra income stops and you find the playing good poker skills you invested so much into acquiring for the past few years are really not that useful for anything else in the real world and you have to start from the beginning reacquiring useful skills that will serve you much longer than the amount of time you spent playing poker. I played poker for ~11 years, professionally for ~8 of them and this is about the point where I find myself now. Even though I did better from poker than I could have reasonably expected going in, I still wonder where I'd be at right now had I taken a more long-term view and done something more traditional like corporate/business where skills and experience gained compound and transfer over time.

getting too long now so i'll end here, but as a final note i can already guess you might respond something like "it's mainly a hobby so sinking time into it is no big deal" - it will be more than just a casual hobby you can just pick up whenever you feel bored and want some entertainment before you get to a point where you're making real returns. And when you're that invested, you'll be expecting real returns or will come out extremely disappointed

Thanks for that useful and relevant review of something I did many years ago as a teenager.

I think the implication I've somehow made is that I'm asking "hey guys, you think I should just scrap life for an easy living playing a game?"

This is very fun for me. Investing time and energy into improvement is fun and stimulating. I don't expect or need immediate returns to make exercising my brain a worthwhile exercise, otherwise I wouldn't read books or watch TED talks or play Sudoku. I've got no use for Richard Dawkins' selfish gene theory in everyday life, but it's stimulating to read and think about. Poker is much the same. I'd play it if there was no money to be made whatsoever.

I understand that variance is huge. I understand that to be a big winner or even a decent player you can never stop working on your game. Savagely finding and trying to eradicate weakness in my game is an everyday challenge that I look forward to, and I don't get why everyone feels they have to warn me that it takes more than watching a video and reading an article to beat this game.

"I'd love for this post to be a discussion of qualified speculation." Can we just leave it at that and have an interesting discussion about the potential future of poker? I didn't ask for and don't need: life advice / the hard truth / opinions on how I should spend my time / a reminder that doing well in a competitive field is difficult.

Stay relevant and keep the "well sonny boy here are my assumptions about ya and what I think ya need to be doin'"s to a minimum.

people make it about you because:

1. you spend half the op talking about yourself and your current poker situation.

2. if you want general speculation not about you there isnt anything to discuss. it's a no brainer $20/h is doable in 2014 and will be doable in 2020. people will make six or seven figures in 2014 at hourly rates of $200++++ who have consistently done so in past years.

3. anyone with actual experience in poker knows the factors most relevant to your question, and the discussion following from your questions in op necessarily have to become about the individual asking in order to be productive

All fair points, but if you'd read the thread and my comments prior you'd know that I don't have plans to make poker a primary career and that my reasons for wanting to monetize it as a hobby are as a supplement to another aspiration. This renders most of your post vaguely relevant at best.

"It's a no brainer $20/h is doable in 2014 and will be doable in 2020."

That's all I needed / wanted. Your 2c. Believe it or not, not everyone agrees with you, so posting such an opinion is interesting and relevant.

Giving me shit about some RWA I did years ago and following it up by giving me a bunch of obvious hints about the difficulty of poker that I've already addressed in this very thread = not productive.

I appreciate your opinions and advice as someone experienced with poker. I don't appreciate comments like "I can already guess you might respond with" or assumptions that I'm going to regret learning poker if I don't make returns. You know poker, you don't know me.

Your post was literally just:

- Assumption of no confidence.
- Assumption of ignorance.
- Assumption of possible response.
- Assumption of satisfaction from poker.
- "You shouldn't do it because I wish I hadn't done it. Go to school."

feisty, i like it

*black chick finger snap*
*yallneedjesus*

Y'all motherfuckers need repost.

On May 12 2014 19:31 Sliggy wrote: All fair points, but if you'd read the thread and my comments prior you'd know that I don't have plans to make poker a primary career and that my reasons for wanting to monetize it as a hobby are as a supplement to another aspiration. This renders most of your post vaguely relevant at best. "It's a no brainer $20/h is doable in 2014 and will be doable in 2020." That's all I needed / wanted. Your 2c. Believe it or not, not everyone agrees with you, so posting such an opinion is interesting and relevant. Giving me shit about some RWA I did years ago and following it up by giving me a bunch of obvious hints about the difficulty of poker that I've already addressed in this very thread = not productive. I appreciate your opinions and advice as someone experienced with poker. I don't appreciate comments like "I can already guess you might respond with" or assumptions that I'm going to regret learning poker if I don't make returns. You know poker, you don't know me. Your post was literally just: - Assumption of no confidence. - Assumption of ignorance. - Assumption of possible response. - Assumption of satisfaction from poker. - "You shouldn't do it because I wish I hadn't done it. Go to school."

Eh don't mean for u to take the rwa comment the wrong way, nobody can seriously give anybody shit for something they did as kids. Just got a little chuckle out of remembering something so obscure like that and thought you might as well. I guess tone doesnt really come across on the internet, esp when I don't use smileys.

- Assumption of no confidence.
Not exactly something I assumed out of thin air.. if you had confidence you wouldn't be asking whether its possible to net $20/h in 2014, you'd know in your bones this is very much doable and that you're a few months away from doing it. You'd jump at the chance to bet some nontrivial amount on the side at even odds against anyone who doubted you could.

- Assumption of ignorance.
True this is just an assumption. I assume this because I think everyone is necessarily ignorant about what it takes to walk the walk until they actually do. Thinking you understand, and saying words like "savagely finding and trying to eradicate weaknesses" ain't the same thing.

- Assumption of possible response.
I got it exactly right though

- Assumption of satisfaction from poker.
Ye another assumption, but based on seeing countless early-stage players experience it all in the past. It's easy to be enjoying it and enthusiastic now when you're dedicating minimal time to it and get that first sweet taste of some small progress, but "everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth", and poker serves up punches in the mouth on the regular. It's one thing for you to know this already, but something very different for you to really know.


As for the $20/h "debate", show me someone who disagrees and I'll show you a fool. It has been possible to make the PPP equivalent of $20/h in 2014 dollars in poker specifically for at least the last 100 years, and there is evidence of humans liking a gamble from as early as the Stone Age. What kind of drastic change is going to undo that in 6 years?

Here's some more of what you want:

In the very long term poker will continue its slow decline and settle on some post-boom equilibrium which is still quite a bit higher than the pre-boom equilibrium in the 60s-90s due to solid global exposure during the boom period. There will be shocks in the short and medium term that have lasting effects to disturb this very-long term trend.

Making bots better than humans is an academic exercise. The real damage bots can do is take lots out of the games from the low levels of the pyramid, where currently existing bots are already plenty good enough. There is already evidence from bots having done exactly this on a large scale, that we know about. If it gets worse it will have the mid-term effect of loss of trust playing online, especially on smaller sites, and a migration towards the best businesses (pokerstars), allowing them to increase their monopoly profits and be in a position where they can invest heavily in trying to curb the bot problem (they have to - too much at stake for them). This has already been an ongoing cat-and-mouse battle for years, and today poker on pokerstars still seems plenty trustworthy and profitable. Finally on bot issue, op didn't even specify he was talking about online poker, making bots even less of an issue in the medium-term.

Drastic decrease in players barring extreme shocks just can't happen in poker because you have to understand at the micro level, players play out of habit and habits are persistent. A fish always losing won't necessarily quit for a while. A breakeven player will not quit for life the instant game conditions get marginally worse and make him a small loser, it'll take time. New players continue to keep entering and forming their new habit to offset the gradual outflows of players, and habits are formed faster than they're broken, especially when dopamine is involved.

On May 13 2014 05:14 Romm3l wrote: Here's some more of what you want: In the very long term poker will continue its slow decline and settle on some post-boom equilibrium which is still quite a bit higher than the pre-boom equilibrium in the 60s-90s due to solid global exposure during the boom period. There will be shocks in the short and medium term that have lasting effects to disturb this very-long term trend. Making bots better than humans is an academic exercise. The real damage bots can do is take lots out of the games from the low levels of the pyramid, where currently existing bots are already plenty good enough. There is already evidence from bots having done exactly this on a large scale, that we know about. If it gets worse it will have the mid-term effect of loss of trust playing online, especially on smaller sites, and a migration towards the best businesses (pokerstars), allowing them to increase their monopoly profits and be in a position where they can invest heavily in trying to curb the bot problem (they have to - too much at stake for them). This has already been an ongoing cat-and-mouse battle for years, and today poker on pokerstars still seems plenty trustworthy and profitable. Finally on bot issue, op didn't even specify he was talking about online poker, making bots even less of an issue in the medium-term. Drastic decrease in players barring extreme shocks just can't happen in poker because you have to understand at the micro level, players play out of habit and habits are persistent. A fish always losing won't necessarily quit for a while. A breakeven player will not quit for life the instant game conditions get marginally worse and make him a small loser, it'll take time. New players continue to keep entering and forming their new habit to offset the gradual outflows of players, and habits are formed faster than they're broken, especially when dopamine is involved.

Thank you for this, and your other poker related insights.

In regards to your assumptions and life coaching:

If a beginning guitar player asked me how much a musician could realistically expect to make in 2014, I wouldn't do the following:

1. Assume he will never play the guitar well because by asking for general realistic expectations, he clearly hasn't the confidence to do it and should just give up.
2. Assume he doesn't realize he's going to have to practice religiously and work until he's sick to make any kind of impression.
3. Assume that when I answer "well it's tough" he's suddenly going to be pissed and lose all passion for guitar.

I wouldn't take it upon myself to advise him on what he needs to do instead of playing guitar.
I wouldn't come in as someone with 10+ years of experience and just say "knowing what practice is and KNOWING what practice is is different. As a dude who doesn't know you, I can safely say that you've never actually dedicated yourself to anything and therefore don't actually realize what it is to work towards something."
I wouldn't presume to know how he's going to respond and arrogantly assess his possible responses ahead of time.

I'd just answer the kid's question and leave it at that.

Where do you guys see poker going in the coming years? Is it possible to make a living of $20.00/hr or so at NL50 and/or NL100 in 2014? Will it be possible for years to come?

Will the fish dry out and the regs get too solid for any kind of living to be made? What are your opinions?

I just ask because I'm dedicating a lot of effort into poker right now. It's just a hobby because I love strategy games, but the more videos I study, the more session reviews I conduct, and the more I start to make tighter folds and thinner valuebets and bluff more effectively, the more hooked I get.

My goal is to be playing NL50 by the end of the year. I'm at NL10 now and I expect to be at NL16 next month. Is it still possible or viable for someone in my shoes (if I work hard enough) to be a solid NL50 reg and be able to make a decent wage for a few years?

These questions don't have definite answers, but I'd love for this post to be a discussion of qualified speculation.


Poker going: I think of this in terms of market/product/company cycles. Poker appears to be nearing the end of its S curve. So my extremely unqualified opinion is that playing numbers will shrink a bit for a few years (as they have been) and stabilize. Online poker won't go away because it's too lucrative/fun/convenient. Good times for stable market leaders like Stars to print money indefinitely though.

However, all of that is irrelevant because you are aiming for $20/hr...so, meh. Disregard.

$20/hr possible/years to come: Yes and yes.

Fish dry out/regs too solid: No.

Comment on the next sentence: sounds like an addiction.

Last question: Yes it's possible, if you want it, get it.


So in short, the general gist of your question is "I play $10 now, my goal is $50, can I get there and make $20/hr?". My answer to that question is yes.

I'd think more about what you do after you get there though.
Me in 2009: "exact same question, except I was playing 100nl and my goal was 400nl"
WCG|Rider in 2014: got to the highest stakes, secured his financial freedom, observing lack of drive ("the fire", is the phrase he uses) to continue to strive for greater results..."not sure what to do" (also his words)

didn't read the thread before I posted.
We're basically in agreement but Romm3l made a good post.

What rwa?

Romm3l's poker related insights were greatly appreciated.

It seems that people mistake passion for addiction / overinvestment a lot, which is sad. I don't bother doing anything unless I'm willing to do it right. Free time, TV, relaxing etc. all sound like a waste of time to me. I worked hard on my Brood War game long after it died just because I like to work hard, not because I wanted some huge return on that investment. Working hard in and of itself is a fun endeavor. Like it says in the Bhagavad Gita, we are not entitled to the fruits of our labour, only the labour itself. To assume that working on my poker game will suddenly be viewed as a waste of time if I don't get some whopping return on that investment is just a gigantic misunderstanding of my character, which is exactly what is liable to happen when people start making assumptions based on one post.

As poker players y'all ought to know what happens when you trust your stats too much with only a sample size of 6 hands. Same principle here.

I was only inquiring as to the possibility of the $20/hr because it'd be a very convenient source of income as a touring musician in an ideal lifestyle, so all answers and insights in regards to the state of poker are greatly appreciated.

If the answer was a resounding "no way" I would still play as many hands a week as I am now and study videos and read articles and look into coaches and be active in my Skype group. It's fun to invest.

As for what to do after, my passion has and always will be music first. That's covered